Taliban falling back or running away as Marines advance

LA Times:

Picking their way through a dense tangle of homemade bombs, U.S. Marines on Saturday seized key positions in the Taliban stronghold of Marja, as thousands of coalition troops consolidated their hold on a wide swath of desert and farm territory surrounding the southern Afghan town.

U.S. and Afghan commanders reported only scattered resistance from Taliban fighters, who boasted _ despite clear evidence to the contrary _ that they were holding off the massive coalition assault.

Western military officials said some insurgents had fled the town in advance of the offensive, and that others appeared to have fallen back, finding sanctuary in parts of the town not yet secured by the Marines.

At least 20 insurgents were reported killed on the first full day of the offensive, meant to establish security and governance in what had been a particularly chaotic corner of Helmand province. The Marines, who pushed into the Helmand River valley seven months ago, had described Marja as the last main Taliban sanctuary in their theater of operations.

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The offensive began hours before dawn, with the thunder of helicopters filling the dark sky. More than 60 choppers took part in what Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, described as a "successful insertion" by air of thousands of coalition and Afghan troops into the town itself, as well as surrounding farmlands.

The ground advance into the main population center in the 140-square-mile subdistrict was slower, delayed by the painstaking task of clearing away one of the thickest layers of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that Western commanders had encountered in a concentrated area.

Homemade bombs, planted by insurgents on roads, in culverts and in open terrain, are the No. 1 killer of Western troops in Afghanistan. Throughout the day, the boom of detonations echoed through the streets as bomb-disposal teams disabled one IED after another.

The network of canals ringing the town _ built decades ago as part of an American-sponsored agricultural-development program _ were used by the insurgents as makeshift fortifications, with the defenders seeding the banks with bombs and trying to flood a main waterway. The Marines laid down metal bridges to cross the canals.

Several thousand civilians have fled the town, with the exodus continuing even amid the fighting. NATO had urged noncombatants to stay in their homes once the battle began, rather than risking their safety on the roads, but some families braved IEDs and Taliban checkpoints to get clear.

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The commander of Afghan forces, Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, said his troops had helped uncover Taliban weapons caches throughout the day, seizing arms that included heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and carried out house searches that cultural sensitivities dictate be done by Afghan troops rather than foreigners.

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Despite their braggadocio they Taliban were unable to resist the offensive and most of them fled. It is still a costly retreat becuase they are losing a secure base of operations and control over a revenue source. So far, the Taliban defenses have been wholly ineffective although they have slowed the ground troops advance.