"...An enemy that can generate 8,000 IEDS & bring 8,000 IEDS to bear & have a major effect ..."

McClatchy's/ here

"..... Today, although the United States and more than three dozen NATO allies and other countries are supporting Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban dominate a growing swath of territory, and their power trumps the government's in three-quarters of the country. Although they're often portrayed as mindless fanatics, the militant Islamists' "life experience" from their years in the wilderness, their study of American military tactics and their analysis of the Karzai government's shortcomings have helped reverse their fortunes, U.S. intelligence experts say .... Western intelligence officials cite varied signs of the "new" Taliban:

• During and after every military operation, top Taliban leaders — who intelligence officials think move along the Afghan-Pakistani border but sometimes retreat to Karachi and other Pakistani cities — routinely run circles around the Karzai government with rapid-response public relations.
• Some Taliban still fight as they did a decade ago, in flip-flops and traditional baggy pants, but the hard-core "Taliban cavalry" is equipped with North Face jackets, good boots, warm clothing and swift motorbikes purchased in Pakistan.
• The Taliban made some 8,000 improvised explosive devices last year, an astonishing rate of almost 22 a day. "An enemy that can generate 8,000 IEDS and bring 8,000 IEDS to bear and have a major effect, we ought to hire the J-4, the logistician," said a top general with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.
• Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a 67-article code of conduct for his fighters last summer, ordering them to protect the civilian population.
• Based on debriefings of some 4,000 Taliban detainees captured over the past four to five years, the ISAF general concludes that the insurgents are motivated to seize power either by conquest or by negotiation and to establish the rule of law in the areas they control. Taliban fighters say they want to bring Shariah, Islamic law, to rural areas where government officials are known to be corrupt......

Taliban policies also have become somewhat more sophisticated. Mojdeh said that in the past year, the insurgents had stopped burning down schools, and they no longer oppose vaccination campaigns for children or health clinics."There's a new generation. They are familiar with computers. They communicate with text messages. They're in favor of education," he told McClatchy. Unlike the Taliban of the 1990s, he said, "They are no longer all illiterates."..."