Prison Break in Afghanistan

By Fester:

The Guardian is reporting a massive prison break has occurred in Khandahar, Afghanistan:

militants have attacked the main prison in the southern city of Kandahar with a car bomb and rockets, killing police and setting nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners free.....

Militants first exploded a water tanker near the entrance to the gate of the Kandahar prison, then several suicide bombers entered and detonated their explosives, crumbling two prison walls, Karzai said.

Many police were killed, Karzai said, but he did not immediately know how many.

The prison holds common criminals but also some 400 Taliban militants, who have been fighting against Nato troops and the Afghan government.

This is a complex operation with multiple things that could go wrong against a high value and high prestige target.  It is also a Taliban attack that is aimed at delegitimatizing the government by highlighting its ineffectiveness while improving internal cohesion and morale as a demonstrated example of the Taliban taking care of its own. 

This attack also reminded me of an insurgent attack in Iraq in 2005.  A large field force of Sunni Arab insurgents attempted a similiar style assault on Abu Ghraib but their breaching car bomb got caught up in a ditch before it could hit the wall which spoiled the attack.  The Iraqis in that case ceased their attack and broke contact with minimal pursuit. 

Brandon Friedman at VetVoice notes that the violence rates in Afghanistan are increasing at a rapid rate:

In terms of enemy fire, May 2008 was the second deadliest month of the war since hostilities began in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11.  This also marked the end of the deadliest 12-month period for U.S. troops in combat in Afghanistan since the war began nearly seven years ago....

While hostile fire casualty rates in Iraq have been higher than .04 percent in about half of all months since the invasion, this shows us one fact that cannot be overlooked: The violence in Afghanistan only seems minimal to Americans because there are a mere 33,000 troops there.  But the rate of violence there is clearly comparable to that in Iraq--where 155,000 troops are now serving.  For those 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, for the first time now, life has become more dangerous than in Iraq.

Is there a systemic change in the quality and effectiveness of Taliban ability to organize and direct violence?  Or is this random noise?  I would hazard that it is a change in effectiveness in the Taliban as we have clear proof of their ability to plan and execute a very complex operation in the form of this prison break.