U.S. Military Uses Strategy From ISIS Fight To Attack Taliban
U.S. Military Uses Strategy From ISIS Fight To Attack Taliban by John Vandiver - Stars & Stripes
The U.S. military is ratcheting up its attack on Taliban funding streams in Afghanistan, where troops are using a strategy that paid dividends in the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the general in charge of U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.
“This is a lesson learned from Iraq and Syria, where we got serious about going after the funding streams that supported ISIS,” Army Gen. Joseph Votel said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “We started to see an immediate impact, so that is exactly the intention here.”
As the war in Afghanistan enters its 17th year, the U.S. military is again building up in the country. With ISIS largely defeated in Iraq and Syria, the United States is shifting more assets from the region to the war effort in Afghanistan, Votel said.
Part of the rejiggered U.S. strategy is to once again go after a multibillion dollar drug trade in Afghanistan that the Taliban has relied on for years to fund its operations. But the trade has proven resilient despite international efforts to neutralize it…