From the article:

"TheTimes of London reported Saturday, January 26, that a 5,000 strong army of Taliban soldiers, equipped with 450 tanks, armored carriers and pick-up trucks, has regrouped among villages in the mountainous region of Ghazni province, northwest of Kandahar. Able to flit rapidly among the civilian population, the American forces are finding it hard to locate and destroy this army."

Hmmm. We will indeed find it hard to identify enemy combatants, but I think we should be able to spot those tanks.

In any event, I think this war has entered a very dangerous phase. I don't know if the numbers of escaped Taliban and al Qaeda are accurate, but bin Laden, Mullah Omar and others are apparently still at large.

In searching for lingering/regrouping Taliban units, American forces often use local informants as one "good" source of intelligence, but we should be extremely wary and double- and triple-check these sources.

Afghan villagers claimed that American forces attacked the wrong people during a recent raid on a weapon's cache, and I can't help recalling a Russian officer's comment about local Afghans as a source of intelligence: "They would take our money, and lie to us."

U.S. forces must be extremely wary of unwittingly getting involved in disputes among the local warlords, who may accuse each other of being Taliban as a way of settling old scores, or or to shift the balance of power in the region.

sp