Archive for the 'Marine Corps' Category

This is the sixth in a series following the U.S. Marines through the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit try to take shelter from a sand storm at forward operating base Dwyer in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan Wednesday, May 7, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Report

The Marines are continuing their success in the Garmser area of the Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

Rosie DiManno
Columnist

KABUL–American jarheads are either prudently pacifying a swath of Helmand province or kicking out the doors and ratcheting up the insurgency.

Depends on whom you ask.

From the distance of the capital, it’s impossible to confirm anything firsthand. But the commander of the 24th U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit came all the way to Kabul yesterday, both to proclaim initial combat success and to quash reports of extensive hardship visited upon a fleeing populace.

According to Lt.-Col. Kent Hayes, the known scorecard reads thusly: Marine casualties: 0. Civilian casualties: 0. Displaced persons: “Very, very few.”

Those citizens, Hayes adds, were already on the move when Marines set out to clear key transit routes – for arms and fighters crossing over the border from Pakistan, just to the south – in Garmser district. “I can’t even speculate as to the reason why, or where they went. I can tell you that they have not been leaving from any area that we have control over.”

While Hayes wouldn’t give out Taliban body counts from the past fortnight, the provincial governor puts the figure at 150, most of them allegedly foreign fighters.

Hayes merely agrees not to quibble with that.

“As practice, the Marines don’t use that as our way of determining success. We judge our success by what our mission was. The bottom line is, we fight them, we defeat them.”

British troops, who have charge of Helmand under the International Security Assistance Force – Canadians next door in Kandahar – had not been able to secure that area.

The U.S. Marines, 2,400 strong and many of them battle-hardened from combat in Iraq, were recently parachuted in at the urging of NATO, desperate for fighting-capable reinforcement.

… the Taliban are shoving back hard, which is a rarity since the insurgents avoid conventional confrontations, unable to counter heavy weapons and supporting air strikes.

“They are consistently engaging us in small numbers. It’s just continual, constant contact. And we’re defeating them. What we have set out to do, we have accomplished.”

No Afghan troops have been involved in this mission.

Hayes insists the effectiveness of the aggressive American approach is already evident on the ground. “We have seen that they are starting to have trouble reinforcing and getting arms.”

Intelligence gathered, some of it from Afghan military authorities, indicates the Taliban are pulling in their own reinforcements from other districts, perhaps other volatile southern provinces, maybe inadvertently easing the threat in places such as Kandahar, though this remains to be seen.

“Because we’ve seen fighters coming in from other areas, the rest of Helmand, rather than from just around Garmser, that is telling us about the success we’re having, that we are affecting and disrupting them,” said Hayes. “We are defeating the enemy when they oppose us and, when they reinforce, we’re defeating them as well.”

Garmser has long been used as a planning, staging and logistics hub by the neo-Taliban. Choking off Garmser is the Marines’ mission, though some diplomatic – even military – observers have questioned the long-term impact of a muscular offensive that alienates the local population …

There is no indication how long this Marine-led operation will last or how far south the Taliban will be chased.

“This is the start,” said Hayes. “We started in Garmser. As far as ending it, I will tell you that it’s not time-driven. We will leave Garmser at the time and place of our choosing.”

Analysis & Commentary

As a brief comment on the method of transport of the Marines to the theater and then to Helmand, they did not parachute in.  The unit is not airborne (except for MARSOC).

As we previously noted, the caterwauling about the aggressiveness of the Marine operations is expected and will subside when the success of the mission becomes apparent.  Regarding the history of success, it is too easy to forget who pacified the Anbar Province.

It is a very positve sign that the Taliban are deploying forces to Garmser to assist in their defenses, and it casts light on the propaganda recently spewed by the Taliban concerning this operation, proving it to be lies.

The Taliban have suffered their first major loss in this year’s offensive, but they are putting on a brave face, even spinning the setback as a triumph in their broader battle against foreign forces in Afghanistan …

The Taliban … claim the loss of one base is not critical, and anyway, for NATO to hold on to its gain it will have to commit thousands of troops to the outpost, which is located in the inhospitable desert, if it is to effectively guard the lawless and porous border through which the Taliban funnel men, arms and supplies.

It doesn’t help the Taliban if the Marines are generally confined to this area of operations if they too are so confined because they have decided that Garmser really does play an important role in their plan.  In other words, the Taliban are as tied down as the Marines, and in this case they are losing.

The report of Taliban moving fighters into this area is confirmed by other accounts.

Maj. Tom Clinton Jr. said the Marines would be in Garmser for several more weeks. It means the Marines might not take part in an operation that was planned in another southern province this month.

“The number of fighters that stood and fought is kind of surprising to me, but obviously they’re fighting for something,” Clinton said, alluding to poppies. “They’re flowing in, guys are going south and picking up arms. We have an opportunity to really clear them out, cripple them, so I think we’re exploiting the success we’re finding.”

U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, has said he needs three more brigades — two for combat and one to train Afghan soldiers, roughly 7,500 to 10,000 additional soldiers.

When the Marines eventually leave Garmser, any gains the 24th has made could be quickly erased unless other forces from NATO or the Afghan government move in.

“We can’t be a permanent 24/7 presence. We don’t have enough men to stay here,” said Staff Sgt. Darrell Penyak, 29, of Grove City, Ohio. “We would need the ANA (Afghan army) to move in, and right now the way we’re fighting, there’s no way the ANA can come in. They couldn’t handle it.”

Afghanistan’s army and police forces are steadily growing, but are still not big — or skilled — enough to protect much of the country. Spokesmen for both forces said they were not aware of plans to send forces to Garmser.

Col. Nick Borton, commander of British forces in the southern part of Helmand, recently visited U.S. positions in Garmser, where he told the Americans he’d be happy if they stayed on.

“If they’re here for only a short time, we can’t build very much off that,” he said. “Their presence for a few days doesn’t really help us.”

A representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. government aid arm, told Marine battalion commander Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson that “people lose faith if you pull out.”

The next day, at a meeting of Marines and Afghan elders, the bearded, turban-wearing men told Marine Capt. Charles O’Neill that the two sides could “join together” to fight the Taliban. “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you,” the leader of the elders said.

This last paragraph is stunning.  Note well how closely what the Afghan elders said matches professional counterinsurgency doctrine.  “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you.”  This statement comes from the elders very soon after operations by the Marines, and it is indicative of pregnant possibilities.

Yet the Marines must leave, presumably to conduct other kinetic operations elsewhere in Afghanistan.  The force size is not large enough, and it seems doubtful that the British will be able to hold the terrain once the Marines leave.

This most recent account of the Marines in Helmand breathes life into a languishing campaign with rapid and remarkable success, but it also shows the need for force projection and properly resourcing the campaign.  Taking the terrain will help little if we cannot hold it, and leaving will possibly hurt counterinsurgency efforts when the Taliban re-enter the town and kill those who have cooperated with the Marines.  Taking the terrain next time may not be so easy.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa - “Stay Free”

Following the Marines Through Helmand

Following the Marines Through Helmand II

This is the fifth in a series following the Marines through the Helmand Province.

Marines on patrol near Garmser, Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Marine operations are expanding outward from Garmser into other parts of the Helmand Province.

Fighting between U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan and the Taliban is intensifying, as U.S. marines push to cut the insurgents’ supply lines in Helmand province, officials in Kabul said Tuesday.

The coalition said in a statement that its troops opened fire and called in air strikes Monday after observing militants trying to set up an ambush. A dozen militants were killed, the statement said.

The troops also discovered weapons and ammunition in a search of compounds in the area, the statement said.

More specifically, operations are pushing towards the Pakistan border.

International and Afghan troops forged ahead with an offensive against the Taliban near the Pakistan border on Tuesday, with a governor insisting 150 rebels had been killed in the past week.

US Marines and British troops under NATO command launched a significant new operation two weeks ago in Garmser district in southern Helmand province, a key battleground for a Taliban-led insurgency and an opium-producing centre.

Soldiers in a separate US-led coalition have also reported several engagements in the area in the past week. They said Tuesday they had killed a dozen rebels in Garmser on Monday.

The international forces helping Afghanistan fight an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-backed Taliban normally do not issue death tolls from their engagements, saying they want to avoid a “body count.”

But Helmand governor Gulab Mangal told AFP on Tuesday that 150 Islamic rebels, most of whom he said were Al-Qaeda-linked Arab and Pakistani fighters, had been killed in military action in Garmser in the past week.

“In the past seven, eight days, we have killed about 150 insurgents, most of them foreign fighters,” he said, citing “intelligence.”

“We have intelligence reports that more than 500 enemy fighters, most of them foreign terrorists, are in the district,” he said. “The operation will continue until the district is cleared of these destructive elements.”

The Marines said: “While we are continuing operations to clear the Taliban from the Garmser district, it is not ISAF nor US Military policy to comment on enemy casualties as we do not consider this a reliable measure of success.”

Information is difficult to independently confirm in Garmser, a remote desert province where there are few roads and government authority is limited.

The military says Garmser is a rebel gateway into Afghanistan, bring fresh recruits and weapons from Pakistan where extremist rebels are said to have bases …

A local resident contacted by AFP by telephone said “more than 100 Taliban have been killed in the past several days.”

“They were killed in several different attacks and air bombardments,” said the man, who identified himself as Abdul Baqi.

He was speaking from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital located about 50 kilometres (35 miles) north of Garmser, where he was taking refuge from the fighting.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa - “Stay Free”

Following the Marines Through Helmand

This is one more in a series at The Captain’s Journal following Marine operations in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  A brief synopsis of their accomplishments thus far can be found here.

A U.S. Marine fires at a Taliban position near the town of Garmser, a main assembly and staging point for jihadists entering Afghanistan (AP Photo).

U.S. Marines fire on Taliban positions from a sand berm, May 2 (AP Photo).

The Marines continue to take the battle to the Taliban in Garmser.

The spring offensive is well launched – by NATO.

Or, put another way, pre-emptively provoked by the U.S. Marines Expeditionary Force.

If the best defence is a good offence, American troops recently arrived in the southern provinces have wasted no time taking the battle to the Taliban, putting an entirely different complexion on combat tactics in the heartland of the insurgency.

Joining forces with British troops who have responsibility for NATO operations in Helmand province, these battle-hardened Marines – many of them veterans of fierce combat in the Iraqi city of Ramadi two years ago – hurled themselves into the insurgency cauldron last week, with the objective of dislodging Taliban fighters from strongholds north of the border with Pakistan.

Although the British have a base in the town of Garmser, NATO’s most southerly outpost, and have battled strenuously to maintain it against encroachment, the vast surrounding district, much of it inhospitable desert, has been essentially free movement territory for the neo-Taliban.

Garmser is a main assembly and staging point for jihadists as they enter Afghan soil. It is also a key transit route for smuggling in arms and smuggling out opium – the vascular network that pumps blood into the insurgency.

The claims and counterclaims – success versus failure – have been fast and furious. While American authorities claimed on the weekend to have killed nine militants, Taliban spokesperson Qari Yosuf asserted it was the insurgents who had killed nine Americans.

There have been no official reports of U.S. casualties from the fighting. But provincial government sources, along with aid workers in the region, accuse the Marines of conducting aggressive door-to-door searches, rousting civilians from their homes, arresting innocents and forcing upward of 15,000 Afghans to flee into the hot desert for safety.

None of these claims has been confirmed. However, the U.S. propensity for using air strikes and artillery and mortar barrages in support of their ground troops has much of the domestic media here caterwauling about a suddenly “Americanized war” in Afghanistan.

Caterwauling indeed.  The British didn’t really hold any terrain inside Garmser proper, and their role in this specific operation was transport (h/t Rogue Gunner).  “Although British framework operations are currently focused further north, in the areas of Lashkar Gar, Sangin, Gereshk and Musa Qaleh, the British Task Force has had an important role to play facilitating the move of the MEU down through the province.”

This report on the Marines is somewhat amusing.  Whether the “claims and counterclaims” have been fast and furious being quite irrelevant, the success of the Marines has been fast.  The Provincial Government is fabricating information about the operation because they don’t know what else to do, but the shock of rapid success will hopefully give way to an understanding of what a change in strategy can accomplish.  It is certainly the case that the combat action has been directed and aggressive, with the Marines “unleashing earsplitting barrages of machine gun fire, mortars and artillery” at Taliban positions.

O’Neill, the company commander, says all-day potshots by Taliban fighters are little more than nuisance attacks. The militants use binoculars and have forward observers with cell phones to try to aim better at the Marines, he says.

“This is pure asymmetric harassment,” he says. “They’ll pop out of a position and fire a rocket or mortar.”

But in a bleak British assessment of Garmser a week ago, the UK is said to be losing the battle.

In Garmser, the Scottish infantrymen hope to push the Taliban back and fill the town with people again. The continuing marine operation may help that objective.

But the main British effort is concentrated in northern Helmand, and local governance is weak in Garmser, where most of the town elders and administrators have fled to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

And as the poppy harvest draws to a close, commanders expect a fresh spurt of fighting in the coming weeks. Combined with the stream of Taliban from Pakistan, British officers recognise they are only holding the line.

“I’m under no illusions. We are not stopping the movement north,” said Den-McKay. “We’re just giving them something to talk about.”

Perhaps an alternative picture is emerging for the chaps in the UK - that of aggressive contact with the enemy by enough troops on the ground to accomplish the mission?  One can only hope that NATO is watching closely.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa - “Stay Free”

In Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province we discussed the beginnings of the Operation Azada Wosa (”Stay Free” in the local Pashto language) by the U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province.  The operation is going forward with success without serious Marines Corps casualties thus far.

The Taliban aren’t giving up without a fight. In groups of three and four, they open fire at the Marines with assault rifles or rockets, then flee. Sometimes they attempt infantry maneuvers, trying to draw the Marines in one direction with a feint, then attacking from another direction. “They were tactically sound,” Moder says. “It shows that they’ve done it before, that they might have been trained.”

Moder estimates his men have killed 30 Taliban fighters. Maj. Tom Clinton, executive officer of the Marines’ infantry battalion, could not confirm Taliban casualties, but he says the Marines are getting reports that wounded Afghan men are seeking medical treatment in Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah.

So far, U.S. casualties have been relatively light. Through Thursday afternoon, no Marines had been killed in the operation, although two died last month when a roadside bomb hit their supply convoy.

Six Marines had been injured, none critically: One was shot in the foot, perhaps accidentally; one suffered a concussion from a Taliban rocket or mortar attack; one was bitten by a dog; one fell from a roof and broke an ankle; two broke their legs; and two more sprained their ankles.

The nagging injuries and intense heat are sometimes a more immediate threat than the enemy itself, troops say. “Imagine carrying 75 to 120 pounds of gear and playing a football game where each quarter lasts three hours,” says 1st Lt. Mark Matzke, 21, of Arlington, Va.

Keeping them supplied with water, ready-to-eat meals and ammunition is a full-time operation. From Camp Dwyer, a handpicked team of two dozen Marines runs convoys to infantrymen in the field.

“We wanted to be called ‘The Nomads’ but they gave us ‘Wagon Wheel’ ” instead, says Gunnery Sgt. Javier Duarte, 34, of Miami. Before every convoy, Duarte usually gives the Wagon Wheel team a profanity-laden pep talk, then introduces the chaplain for a prayer.

The convoy heads outside Camp Dwyer’s concertina wire and into the desert on the way to the Marines fighting on the outskirts of Garmser. Along the way, they pass Afghans working in the fields, harvesting the poppy that could be turned into heroin and sold in Europe and the United States.

Back at Camp Dwyer, a special team of combat surgeons, doctors, nurses and medics plays cards and lounges in scarce shade, relieved that light casualties mean their skills haven’t been needed. Some of the doctors have trained in emergency rooms in Los Angeles and Baltimore, treating victims of gangland shootings.

The picture below is taken from DVIDS.  Click for high resolution version of the photograph.

Marines with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO – International Security Assistance Force conduct operations in Garmsir District, Helmand province, Afghanistan.

We recently discussed the first combat engagement of the Marines in Afghanistan, involving a town named Garmser.  The Marines are fully prepared and will push the operation through to success.  However, false doctrine dies hard in war, and the problems associated with the Afghanistan campaign become clearer with passing time and attention.  The Canadians are concerned about the recent addition of the Marines.

Bush has come to shove in southern Afghanistan (Editorial note: This is a pitiful pun - TCJ). The U.S. commander-in-chief has sent in the marines.

It’s reported that this has made NATO forces operating there uneasy.

It’s not that the Canadians and British and the rest of them don’t appreciate the extra manpower the 3,500 U.S. marines will provide, or the extra aircraft and light armoured vehicles they’ve brought.

But the other NATO forces have been told they have to learn to operate in what’s called “the American way” alongside the marines, and they’re not quite sure how this is going to make the job of winning hearts and minds any easier when the Americans have left in seven months when their “mini-surge” is over …

The United Nations envoy, Kai Eide, has just warned that everything won in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was overthrown seven years ago is in danger of being lost because of the fragmented international approach to securing and rebuilding the country and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The president himself had to be hustled away from the scene of an attack by insurgents near his palace in Kabul on Sunday while all those Afghan soldiers ran for cover.

And in the eastern part of the country yesterday, 19 members of a poppy-eradication team under NATO guard were killed in an attack.

Gen. Dan McNeill is the U.S. army officer who commands NATO troops in Afghanistan, and it’s he who says things must be done there, now, the American way.

Specifically, he wants the Canadians and other forces to deploy their soldiers for longer periods, make more effort to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies and get more involved in reconstruction and humanitarian work.

The marines are under McNeill’s direct command and seem to have the same gung-ho approach that they exhibited in Iraq, where many of them served. McNeill himself has said they’re in the southern part of the country to “stir things up.”

In March last year, about 100 marines, it was reported, were sent packing for responding to an ambush using “Iraq rules” that violated the less violent rules of engagement that were supposed to be in place in Afghanistan.

It looks as if the Afghan war, at least for the next seven months, is to be played by Iraq rules, which don’t seem to have endeared a lot of people in that country to the American invaders.

Restoring security and rebuilding a country is a long, slow process. First, a region has to be cleared of insurgent fighters, then it has to be held to provide the security under which the third stage, rebuilding, can take place.

The marines might be in Afghanistan long enough to rout the insurgents where they are concentrated.

They might even be able to stop or reduce the traffic in fighters, arms, opium and money.

But when they have gone, someone else is going to have to hold what they’ve gained and someone else is going to carry on with the rebuilding.

When the marine mini-surge was announced in January, a Pentagon spokesman said it was to be “a one-time deal — that’s it.”

Maybe we should hope it’s not. Maybe we should hope that the Americans will be persuaded — if only because their allies aren’t up to the job — to stay long enough to finish what, after all, they started.

The Captain’s Journal has been critical of General McNeill, but we appreciate his sentiments and applaud his perspective with the deployment of the Marines.  He has a tough row to hoe because of the strategic differences within the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Canadians seem to assume that they couldn’t adopt a posture like the U.S. Marines on the one hand (such that they would be rather lost without the Marines in place), but on the other hand, seem to criticize the Marine posture as if it somehow cannot be successful because of failing to win hearts and minds (which begs the question why the Canadians want the Marines to stay?).  The Canadian narrative is so confused and contradictory that it brings into question just what the Canadians themselves would propose.

That question is also recently answered for us.  The Canadians want to talk to the Taliban.

Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban for the first time, military and diplomatic officials say, as Canada softens its ban on speaking with the insurgents.

After years of rejecting any contact with the insurgents, Canadian officials say those involved with the mission are now rethinking the policy in hopes of helping peace efforts led by the Afghan government.

The Canadian work on political solutions follows two separate tracks: tactical discussions at a local level in Kandahar, and strategic talks through the Kabul government and its allies. Neither type of negotiation appears to have made progress so far, though efforts are still in the early stages.

The Afghanistan campaign has faltered and proceeded haltingly when negotiations are pursued with the Taliban, most recently when the British used this approach in Musa Qala.  What affect has this approach had on the recent Pakistani negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban?  In this instance, Baitullah Mehsud has used the stand down in combat operations to his advantage.

Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, based in the South Waziristan tribal area, has ended peace talks with the Islamabad government, just a week after ordering a ceasefire against security forces. A spokesman for Mehsud is reported to have said the talks broke down because the government refused to withdraw troops from the tribal areas, the strategic backyard of the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan.

Under a well-orchestrated program, the Taliban “switched off” their attacks on politically vulnerable Pakistan this month and they patiently allowed the Western-sponsored game of carrots and sticks involving tribal peace accords to play out, even letting anti-Taliban politicians into their region. For the Taliban, it was just a matter of buying time until the end of April to put the finishing touches to their spring campaign in Afghanistan.

It should be pointed out again just who the U.S. engaged in negotiations in the Anbar province.  The peace accord involved the tribes and muktars, not the more religiously motivated al Qaeda or Ansar al Sunna fighters.  Again it bears repeating: negotiations were never engaged with al Qaeda.  Not a single time.  Negotiations with the Taliban will not redound to success in the campaign any more than they would have with al Qaeda.  Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan doesn’t refer to the Taliban.  It refers to everyone but the Taliban.

It should also be remembered that between the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only province where major combat operations have ceased and the enemy has been vanquished is the Anbar Province where the Marines were assigned.

Even if confused by the more aggressive posture of the Marines, the Canadians appear to be concerned not about the fate of the Taliban, but of themselves.  The Marines might have a long term Afghanistan presence in their future.  A one-time seven month deployment may not be nearly enough.