Sir, thank you for the question.
Mr. Chair, what I would say is this: I would take anything the Taliban say with an enormous grain of salt. As I have said to you, they are unconstrained by the law of war, they're unconstrained by the Geneva Convention, and they certainly are unconstrained by the truth.
They obviously inflate their numbers. We don't believe there are 400 warriors in that entire district. They have obviously inflated the number of villages in which they have some control or some presence on the ground. I think some of the TV photographs that have shown families going about their normal lives in those supposedly captured Taliban villages actually put the lie to their words.
The Afghan forces have demonstrated to us this time that out of any dark cloud, there is always a silver lining. What we've seen in these last days are Afghan forces surging into Kandahar province, another entire brigade on top of the one that's there. Last fall, as we worked with them to do operations against the Taliban, the most they could manage were basic operations for one battalion at a time.
Now they're running operations at the brigade and corps level and they have taken on an increasing responsibility that is very positive over these last several days—not perfect, but very positive—to bring in the forces, move them to the Arghandab district, restabilize the area, and ensure that the Taliban in fact do not control the villages there.
Those operations are progressing. The Taliban spokesperson, whoever he is, can stay on TV and talk about it all he wishes. At the end of the day, the Afghan National Army forces, supported by us but also by other allied forces, will ensure the security of Kandahar City, which is where the Taliban would like to go; and secondly, will re-establish the stability and security in that Arghandab district. We'll do this over the next days, and the Taliban will be pushed from that area, and hopefully we, with the Afghan security forces, will have such a significantly robust footprint that the Taliban will not be able to come back into it in the very near future.
So I would take everything he says with a grain of salt. We're conducting operations. Those operations will be successful, and we'll help re-establish security in the few villages where the Taliban are right now.