Marines push Taliban out of Garmser

NY Times:

For two years British troops staked out a presence in this small district center in southern Afghanistan and fended off attacks from the Taliban. The constant firefights left it a ghost town, its bazaar broken and empty but for one baker, its houses and orchards reduced to rubble and weeds.

But it took the Marines, specifically the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 96 hours to clear out the Taliban in a fierce battle in the past month and push them back about 6 miles.

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The marines’ drive against the Taliban in this large farming region is certainly not finished, and the Taliban have often been pushed out of areas in Afghanistan only to return in force later. But for the British forces and Afghan residents here, the result of the recent operation has been palpable.

The district chief returned to his job from his refuge in the provincial capital within days of the battle and 200 people — including 100 elders of the community — gathered for a meeting with him and the British to plan the regeneration of the town.

“They have disrupted the Taliban’s freedom of movement and pushed them south, and that has created the grounds for us to develop the hospital and set the conditions for the government to come back,” said Maj. Neil Den-McKay, the officer commanding a company of the Royal Regiment of Scotland based here. People have already started coming back to villages north of the town, he said, adding, “There has been huge optimism from the people.”

For the marines, it was a chance to hit the enemy with the full panoply of their firepower in places where they were confident there were few civilians. The Taliban put up a tenacious fight, rushing in reinforcements in cars and vans from the south and returning repeatedly to the attack, but they were beaten back in four days by three companies of marines, two of which were dropped in by helicopter to the southeast.

In the days after the assault began, hundreds of families, their belongings packed high on tractor-trailers, fled north from villages in the southern part of the battle zone, according to marines staffing a checkpoint. The Taliban told them to leave as the fighting began, they said. Hospital officials in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, reported receiving eight civilian casualties as a result of the fighting, including a 14-year-old boy who died from his injuries. The marines did not sustain any casualties, but one was killed and two were wounded in subsequent clashes.

Marines from the unit’s Company C said the reaction from the returning civilians, mostly farmers, had been favorable. “Everyone says they don’t like the Taliban,” said Capt. John Moder, 34, the commander of the company. People had complained that the Taliban stole food, clothes and vehicles from them, he said.

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“This is an artery, and we did not realize that when we squeezed that artery, it would have such an effect,” said First Lt. Mark Matzke, the executive officer of Company C.

They also realized it was worth exploiting their initial success. The whole area was unexpectedly welcoming to the American forces and eager for security and development, Captain Moder said. “Us pushing the Taliban out allows the Afghan National Army to come in,” he said. “This is a real breadbasket here. There’s a lot of potential here.”

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The region has long been an infiltration route for insurgents coming across the southern border with Pakistan, crossing from Baluchistan Province in Pakistan via an Afghan refugee camp known as Girdi Jungle. The Taliban, and the drug runners, then race across a region known ominously as the desert of death until they reach the river valley, which provides the ideal cover of villages and greenery.

With such a large area under their control, the Taliban were able to gather in numbers, stockpile weapons and provide a logistics route to send fighters and weapons into northern Helmand and the provinces of Kandahar and Oruzgan beyond.

The Taliban, who kicked out villagers and took over their farmhouses, were also mixed with an unusual proportion of Arabs and Pakistanis, Major Den-McKay said.

“The majority of elements in this area are Arab and Pakistani, and the locals detest them,” he said. The insurgent commanders were from Iran, which shares a border with Afghanistan to the southwest, as well as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, he said.

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Locals complained that the Taliban taxed them heavily on the opium harvest. They demanded up to about 30 pounds of opium from every farmer, which was more than the entire harvest of some, so they were forced to go and buy opium to meet the demand, said Abdul Taher, a 45-year-old farmer.

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The Marines will likely move further south to deny more area to the Taliban and let the British and Afghan national forces take over the Garmser area. For some reason the story made a couple of references to an unrelated Marine special forces unit which responded to a Taliban ambush in which it is alleged that civilians were killed.

It was a different unit on a different mission and attempts to compare the two make no sense. Special forces units tend to operate behind enemy lines in small groups. Because of that fact their reaction to attack must be aggressive are they risk being wiped out. In contrast, a Marine Expeditionary Unit has significant combat power and can stand up to anything the Taliban might throw at them. The two units could not be more different other than the fact that they are both made up of Marines.

It appears the Marines have done in a few days what the Brits failed to do in several months. I get the impression that the British forces in Afghanistan and in Southern Iraq play a cat and mouse game with the enemy and avoid taking decisive action. The Marines tend to be aggressive and decisive. There motto in these operations is "No better friend, no worse enemy." I think the Taliban got the message.