As the first Gulf-war showed to anybody: Forward positions are impossible to hold when you do not have air-superiority, so following this common logic, the socalled 'Taliban' -- which in reality consists of all kinds of people including staunch nationalists wanting Afghanistan to be for Afghans, religious fundamentalists and people who have seen family or clan-mebers killed by indiscriminatory U.S.-attacks from the air, and promised revenge -- simply abandoned their forward positions (including Kabul) and retreated to their stronghold in the South (including Helmand). Indeed just a few years earlier, it was The Northern Alliance that have held Kabul, and in this way the frontlines had shifted back and forth. In October 2001 the two fractions were in a stalemate, so it was just a question of pushing on the back of one of them, to make the situation shift.

The very great strategic blunder was for the US by 2005 to begin aggressively to attack the 'Taleban's stronghold in the South - and from 2006 giving the command to NATO, while the US concentrated on Iraq, deluting the rersponsibility by delegating it to more (perhaps the US considered it quite handy, not being the sole responsible part in this strategic blunder?) So again we see the distraction of Iraq having an influence of the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. Now you have got a defense organisation belonging to the North-Atlantic area - which everybody says cannot afford to loose - fighting poor mountain-peasants in a land-locked country in the middle of the Asian continent -- and loosing!