The last major operation executed by the NATO was in Serbia in 1999 to oust Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic through an air-bombing campaign and it has been quite a while since the grouping had taken up a land-operation but never to deal with insurgency. The force-levels is also more than double the current coalition deployment in the South and will increase the total ISAF presence to 18,000.

The US-led coalition has been training Afghans in modern day soldiering but the limited levels in the Taliban stronghold is often blamed for the increased insurgency action. The Taliban themselves live unchallenged in the inhospitable hilly country in Western Pakistan and have been training many fundamentalist elements from all parts of the world including Pakistan. Despite large successes, the Taliban has remained strong and well-funded primarily from narcotics trafficking. Pakistan has been frequently blamed by Afghanistan for its weak challenge to the fight against terror and encouraging fundamental elements and the US had to intervene forcing it to commit 10,000 more troops but the ground situation has not changed much.

The Taliban has been wrecking havoc on innocent civilians such as burning co-ed schools, suicide attacks, jail breakouts, etc. Pakistan itself is being threatened by a new Taliban created by officially-sanctioned religious fundamentalism. Officials say that they expect a surge in violence as the Taliban will try to take advantage of the new troops with little background or knowledge of the terrain.

India, which is helping in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, has deployed its Army’s Border Roads Organizations (BRO) engineers who have been targeted by the Taliban. India has deployed more Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel for protections.