Lord knows there’s much I don’t understand about the Marja offensive in Helmand, but there’s stuff the Taliban doesn’t evidently understand, either. For instance:

“What, they will walk down empty streets?” the militant leader asked. “They (U.S. and coalition troops) will come in and announce that they have conquered the area. We will let them come in. They are welcome.

“They will ask, ‘Are there any Taliban in the area?’ We will say, ‘Yes, but they have left’,” the Taliban leader added.

“We will not fight them face-to-face,” he said. “We will shake their hands, as civilians. Then they will leave.”

Well, will they? This is a great insurgent strategy if U.S. troops and their Afghan counterparts are doing sweep-throughs. And while there’s much I don’t understand about the offensive, that’s not the impression Gen. McChrystal is giving about the mission. He’s talking instead about expanding the space for governance. That implies persistence.

Now, as the cliche about us having all the clocks and the insurgents having all the time goes, perhaps the Taliban commander here really is defining “leave” in relatively glacial terms. We’re not Afghans. He is. We will eventually go home. Afghanistan is his home, even if he’s not necessarily from Marja. But here’s the thing: experience teaches that governance, and shadow governance, really is zero-sum, a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately game. For U.S. troops to clear the path for representatives of Kabul to set up working services is an attempt to establish a virtuous circle. Perhaps it won’t work. But if it starts to deliver for people, then the Taliban either have to challenge it — exposing themselves in the process to the force of U.S. and allied arms — or gamble with irrelevance. And it’s hard to reestablish relevance, as we’ve learned.

None of this is to say anything is preordained. Nor is it to pretend that Marja is on any sort of glide path away from insurgent control. Nor is it to pretend that it won’t be harder for us to take Marja away from the Taliban than it is for the Taliban to control it. Nor is it to assert that Progress In Marja is even connected to greater strategic progress, because I’m not sure how much strategic value Marja — or even Helmand — actually has. But it is to say that an important Taliban assumption is exposed by this quote. It’s up to McChrystal and the Afghan government (cry) to knock it out from under the insurgents.