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U.S. launches Afghan surge

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran,February 13, 2010

(Page 2 of 2)

Even if the insurgents do not fight in large numbers, Marja will remain treacherous ground, littered with buried homemade explosive devices. Marine officers say it is the most heavily mined part of the country.

In the hours before the Marines landed, unmanned Predator aircraft and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters targeted men who were spotted laying roadside bombs and setting up antiaircraft guns. Eleven of them were killed in the strikes.

Civilians sought to leave the area ahead of the operation. Some made it out, in cars and on tractors piled with their belongings, but the insurgents forced others to remain in their homes, military officers said. In some cases, they said, Taliban members told residents that roads out of Marja had been mined.

About 3,500 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers, accompanied by about 1,500 Afghan army infantrymen, are directly involved in the mission, supported by thousands more troops at nearby bases. More than 500 paramilitary police will join the effort Sunday or Monday.

The push to retake Marja is part of a larger NATO effort, dubbed Operation Moshtarak, which means "together" in the Dari language, to reassert control over parts of Helmand that have become Taliban sanctuaries. About 5,000 British, Danish and Afghan forces, also traveling in helicopters and armored vehicles, moved into the northern part of Nad Ali district shortly after the first Marines arrived in Marja.

Marja, a 155-square-mile farming community of 80,000 people, is crisscrossed with irrigation canals. They were built by U.S. contractors in the 1950s in an effort to transform the desert into cropland so Afghanistan could provide enough food to feed its people.

The Taliban moved into the area three years ago after striking deals with opium-producing poppy growers and drug traffickers to protect their operations in exchange for the freedom to set up bomb factories among the canals, which are too deep for combat vehicles to drive across.

"The United States built Marja," Nicholson said. "We're going to come back and fix it."

Nicholson and other commanders say that pacifying Marja is essential to implementing counterinsurgency operations in more populous areas of Helmand, which in turn are regarded as central to improving security in Kandahar, the country's second-largest city.

The canals pose a significant challenge for the Marines. The two principal units in the area -- the 1st and 3rd battalions of the 6th Marine Regiment -- will operate largely on foot, carting food, water and other supplies on their backs. Engineering units will seek to set up temporary bridges to allow combat vehicles to cross.

Once the central part of Marja is cleared of fighters, a team of U.S. and British diplomats and reconstruction personnel will set up a stabilization office. A top priority will be to assist the newly appointed district governor, Haji Zahir, who recently returned to Afghanistan after spending 15 years in Germany. The Marines have identified dozens of potential quick-impact projects to help the local population -- from fixing health clinics to drilling wells -- and have received permission to spend more than $800,000 on such activities.

But U.S. officials also want the Karzai administration to send personnel and deliver services to the area, describing the mission as a gauge of Kabul's willingness to take advantage of opportunities created by the new troops.

Weston, the State Department representative, said, "Marja is a test of the central government's ability to reach down to a still-volatile part of the country and deliver sustainable governance."

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