What happened to the Marines in Afghanistan?

Marine Corps Times:

It hasn’t been easy for 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines.

Deployed to Afghanistan since March, the battalion has fought off ambushes in lawless areas of Afghan wilderness, traveled bomb-laden roads and experienced more casualties than any other unit in the Corps this year.

As 2/7’s deployment winds down, however, Marine officials say the unit has made progress in bringing stability to eight districts in Helmand and Farah provinces, two of volatile southern Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas. It has trained more than 800 Afghan police officers and launched a variety of outreach efforts, planning schools, roads and irrigation systems.

“As the regions across which 2/7 operated differed vastly, there is no solution or project which will work across the board,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hall, 2/7’s commander. “The most important thing we could do was listen to what the people needed and wanted.”

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Deployed in part to Helmand districts near the MEU’s area of operations, 2/7 has seen at least 16 Marines and a Navy corpsman killed in action between June and November. By contrast, the Defense Department said four Marines with the MEU were killed during its deployment, which included launching an assault in April in Garmser district, a Taliban stronghold bursting with opium poppy fields.

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Marine officials said the training mission isn’t simply a matter of mentoring — it also includes some counterinsurgency.

Hall said that in three districts designated the most dangerous, 2/7 used In-District Reform, a program in which Marines patrol the region and provide security while police recruits attend an eight-week boot-camp-style training program.

In the other five districts, the battalion used the Focused District Development program, with Marines training police recruits while a smaller, more highly trained Afghan police force — the Afghan National Civil Order Police — handled regional security.

The mission spread 2/7’s Marines over 10,000 square miles, Hall said, leaving some platoons to fight off ambushes more than eight hours away from the battalion’s headquarters at Camp Bastion, a British base in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.

In one case described by Marine officials, about 150 Taliban attacked a platoon of about 65 Marines, leading to intense fighting in a location where the only fire support Marines had was aircraft above them. Two Marines were wounded after a rocket-propelled grenade hit the platoon’s command operations center, but no casualties were sustained.

“Certainly the tyranny of distance is problematic at times, but nothing insurmountable,” Hall said. “Aviation is an invaluable asset here.”

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It is hard to get word of what the troops are doing in Afghanistan if they aren't getting taking heavy casualties are bombing wedding parties. The Taliban PR guys have not been eager to report on the Marine action either. They are doing important work with Afghan forces that is going to pay off down the line.

The story also suggest two issues that I discuss from time to time. The first is the force to space problem. A larger force is needed to protect the people in an area this size. Whether that comes from Afghan forces or additional US forces it will be needed to tame the area. The second is in in someways a product of the first. It is the importance of air cover and its effect on enemy operations. Air cover is what gives us the ability to cover this large area with small forces.

Without air cover the Taliban could mass their forces an overwhelm these small units. With it the enemy cannot afford to mass his troops without fear of destruction. That is why it is so important for the enemy to advance the war against the wedding party story lines in hopes of getting us to hesitate in attacks on his forces.