It didn’t receive very much airtime, but the Taliban launched a complex and determined attack in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. They didn’t seem to get what they wanted. Publicity. Fortunately, people around the world have been focused on a most unfortunate event far from Afghanistan in the Caribbean island of Haiti.
Taliban fighters wearing suicide belts and carrying assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades attacked government targets and civilian areas this last Monday, the 18th of January. Normally, you would’ve heard plenty about this because the desperation of the news cycle would’ve swallowed up this attack on Kabul and made a major issue out of it. Although what happened to Haiti is horrible, the attention this tragedy garnered from the world blunted the Taliban attack without firing a shot.
This should remind us all of an offensive carried out over forty years ago during the month of January. The country wide attack during the Tet new year celebrations ended up being a military disaster for the Vietcong, but the publicity they gained made it possible for North Vietnam to eventually win the whole war.
We should make note of the fact that this recent attack on the Afghan capital had much less of an impact simply because it didn’t reverberate around the world. If it was a slow news day on January 18th and the poor people of Haiti could have skipped the tragedy that befell them, we may have been engrossed with the below video of gun battles in downtown Kabul.
