With U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq, the Taliban just mounted an extremely brazen attack in Afghanistan. The New York Times:

Taliban insurgents mounted their most serious attacks in six years of fighting, one a complex attack with multiple suicide bombers on a United States military base Monday night, and another by some 100 insurgents on French forces in a district east of the capital, killing 10 French soldiers and wounding 21 others, military officials said Tuesday.

Three American soldiers were wounded and six members of the Afghan special forces in the attack on the base in the eastern province of Khost, bordering Pakistan, the Afghan military spokesman, General Zaher Azimi, said. The battle lasted all night, 10 suicide bombers were killed or blew themselves up, and the insurgents were repulsed without entering the base, he said.

That’s some Viet Cong-type shit right there. One hundred insurgents massed an attack? You’d think that the Taliban wouldn’t want to attack in mass, since it would presumably open them up to artillery and air assault. But apparently they don’t fear a sufficient U.S. or NATO retaliation. That attack, the Times reports, is believed to have been connected to the machinations of old-school guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who — surprise! — is believed to be in Pakistan. Not like you’d want to recognize that AfghaniPakistan is the central front of the war on terror or anything.

Seriously, these were pitched battles that lasted all night, the sort of thing that was practically unheard of two years ago. And the Pentagon still doesn’t treat Afghanistan like an emergency.

Crossposted to The Streak.