Scratch four

In counter-insurgencies, you read a lot about how the bad guys attack and then fade away before the cavalry arrives.The IED-centric nature of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan bears this out. You have troops stressing over getting killed by bombs placed by people they have never seen.

Well, Free Range International's babatim has a post that establishes that bad guys in A-stan are perfectly capable of doing something incredibly stupid.

While enjoying a morning cup of coffee and checking email up on the Baba Deck with a group of friends who are in from the States we saw what was clearly the signature of a tanker attack just up the road. That has never happened this close to Jalalabad before so we conducted a brief staff meeting which consisted of saying “let’s go” and headed up the road to see what was what.

What was what was a Taleban ambush of a fuel tanker convoy Jalalabad had just kicked off - and the bad guys had picked the wrong place and the wrong time.

Worth a read.