Monday's Washington Post noted that the war between Israel and Hezbollah during the summer of 2006 has sparked concern in the U.S. military:
U.S. military experts were stunned by the destruction that Hezbollah forces, using sophisticated antitank guided missiles, were able to wreak on Israeli armor columns. Unlike the guerrilla forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, who employed mostly hit-and-run tactics, the Hezbollah fighters held their ground against Israeli forces in battles that stretched as long as 12 hours. They were able to eavesdrop on Israeli communications and even struck an Israeli ship with a cruise missile.
While the article focused on the internal dispute inside the military over the need to gear the force to fight counterinsurgencies or traditional combat, there is another reason the military is interested in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War that isn't mentioned: the rise of the al-Qaeda-Taliban-jihadi alliance in Pakistan.
While U.S. and NATO forces have yet to fight battles in Afghanistan against the Taliban on the scale that Israel has, the Pakistani Army has engaged in large scale operations against similar forces inside Pakistan. The Taliban have defeated the Pakistani military in open engagements on numerous occasions in North and South Waziristan forcing the military to sign an agreement not to operate there. During these battles, the Taliban reportedly used anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, sophisticated communications equipment, and fought at the company and battalion level. The Taliban were able to overrun forts and take an entire regular Army unit captive.
Like their allies in the south, the well-armed and trained Taliban in Swat and Bajaur withstood offensives for months on end, and fought the Pakistani military to a standstill. There's a truce in Bajaur at the moment, while the Swat Taliban have forced the government to cede much of the Northwest Frontier Province to the extremists. And in cities such as Lahore and Mumbai, India, the Taliban have staged small-scale military assaults that have shocked both nations.
The Taliban, emboldened from their successes in Pakistan and at the urging of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, are setting their sights on Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban has fought in Afghanistan, but the best forces have been held in reserve to secure the local fronts. That may change this year, and the U.S. military is preparing for just that.
