Taliban's spring offensive: What you need to know

The attack on a guest house in Kabul by the Taliban earlier this week was yet another sign of the spring offensive launched by the terror outfit.

The Taliban every year launches a spring offensive and this year the same was announced in the month of April.

The spring offensive that the Taliban launches is a yearly occurrence, but this time around there is a different approach that the outfit is taking.

Security analysts believe that this time it would be more of a battle for survival. The Taliban has not been as effective as it used to be and the growing clout of the ISIS known as the Al-Khorasan or Daesh in Afghanistan has the Taliban worried.

What is the spring offensive?

The spring offensive is launched by the Taliban every year in the month of April. The Taliban finds this as the best time to launch attacks. The spring offensive is connected with the weather situation in Afghanistan.

It is at this time that the snow recedes from the mountains as a result of which the weather improves. This provides the Taliban a better fighting ground and hence they launch the spring offensive every year at this time.

It is during the spring offensive the Taliban is the most effective and if one looks at the attacks launched during this period since the past 10 years, the attacks have been most brutal and continous.

Fighting the establishment and the foreigners:

This year around the Taliban has a bigger point to prove. The outfit has not been very effective off late and is threatened by the influx of several other outfits. Its former members who are now part of the Tehrik-e-Taliban have been posing a major threat to them.

Moreover after the death of Ilyas Kashmiri and Osama Bin Laden, their ally the Al-Qaeda too is not effective enough. To make matters worse, the Al-Qaeda announcing its sub-continent wing has turned out to be a damp squib. Further there is also a looming threat from the ISIS which has already announced its arrival in Afghanistan.

The Taliban in its spring offensive of 2015 called the Azm has decided to target intelligence, military and government installations. They have also decided to target foreigners. All these are indications that they want to overthrow the government and rule the country once again.

Fighting for survival:

The spring offensive of 2015 also will see the Taliban fighting for survival. The past couple of months have seen a lot of Taliban fighters switching loyalties and joining groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban or the ISIS. The Taliban without a strong leader has not been able to prevent these defections.

The Taliban realizes that it will need to wage a bloody battle and carry out attacks regularly to stay in business. Taliban fighters want results and battle every single day and this is the only way to sustain the outfit, the leadership of the outfit feels.

Security experts tell OneIndia that the Taliban will be more determined during this years spring offensive. They would try their best to avoid civilian casualties and focus all their resources just on government installations.