Cool Crocker

AMBASSADORS are expected to keep their cool in the most difficult of circumstances and Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, certainly lived up to this requirement when reporting on Tuesday's Taliban attack on the centre of Kabul.

He dismissed the 20-hour assault as “minor league stuff” and “not a very big deal” and said, “If that's the best they can do, I think it's actually a statement of their weakness.” The commander of US forces in Afghanistan commented, “The insurgency has failed.”

Whether such sang froid is justified in the face of the longest gun-battle in Afghanistan's capital city in a decade must be open to doubt.
The ten Taliban militants took over a 12-storey building and after firing rockets at the US Embassy and NATO's Kabul headquarters fought a rearguard action from floor-to-floor against Afghan security forces supported by NATO helicopters.

Mr Crocker also said that the attackers were probably from the Haqqani network whose base is in Pakistan -- “These were guys who rumbled into town with RPGs under their car seats.

They got into a building and did some harassment fire on us.” He did not deal with the question of how they were able to pass through the ring of steel that is supposed to protect the diplomatic zone and government offices in the centre of Kabul.