Marines in Afghanistan discombobulate Taliban

The Star:

...

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."

...

When asked by the Star, Hayes refused to specify what the Marines have done in the past two weeks to push back and apparently discombobulate Taliban forces.

"I can tell you what our partners in the coalition have done. They've done very well. But we were given a mission. We've gone out there and we've succeeded. We are making great ground."

Hayes did agree that 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....

...

There is more. Apparently there have been bogus reports of civilian displacement. That is probably part of a Taliban information/victims operation to cover for their serious losses in the area. At this point it is looking like something better than a rout. The Marines have become a magnet for the Taliban who keep throwing their selves into the fray and losing. This gives the Marines little reason to move on. They are accomplishing a defeat of the Taliban just by being there.

Hat tip Captain's Journal and Larwyn.