Inside the Taliban's Winter War Game

The winter months in Afghanistan are traditionally a time for combatants to regroup, assess the lessons of the previous fighting season and consider what may be improved or altered for the following year.

The Taliban are a multitude of tribal and often highly localized armed groups fighting for a range of reasons and masters. They have no central command in the conventional military sense. However, there is a core leadership based along the Afghan-Pakistan border that may be seen as setting the tone of the campaign to oppose President Hamid Karzai's government and the largely western forces that support him.

This process of down time to absorb the lessons of warfare is a key element of military staff work, and martial Prussia in the early 19th Century institutionalized the process, where it was dubbed Kriegsspiel (wargame). In peacetime Kriegsspiel map exercises, traditionally held once the exercise season had ended and field formations were back in barracks for the winter, were intended to train and test officers within a collegiate and intellectual framework in the skills required to maneuver, supply and reinforce units.

In wartime the process is constant, with the advanced military powers relying on dense and intricate computer simulations for planning, training and testing. These electronic war games allow endless tactical permutations to be feed down to the most junior commanders as broader strategic concerns challenge the command chain's apex.

While this process can lead to false positives and other dangerous misjudgements, it also enables a wide range of debate over military capabilities, needs, wants and solutions. In modern armies, where the political and civilian input to such metrics is either embedded or anticipated, the outcomes for the personnel on the front line may often result in confusion, frustration and misaligned resources.

Such concerns are unlikely to trouble those leading the insurgencies in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan. However, this is not to suggest they do not have a firm grasp on their tactical and strategic priorities, and how these may be shaped to fit their war aims.