Helmand River

When U.S. Marines surged into southern Afghanistan in 2010, one of their top priorities was to secure a towering dam on the Helmand River so the U.S. Agency for International Development could begin a construction project to provide much-needed electricity to Kandahar, the country's second-largest city. Simply reaching the outskirts of the Kajaki Dam was perilous. More than 50 American troops were killed in combat operations to evict the Taliban from areas along a 30-mile road leading to...

When U.S. Marines surged into southern Afghanistan in 2010, one of their top priorities was to secure a towering dam on the Helmand River so the U.S. Agency for International Development could begin a construction project to provide much-needed electricity to Kandahar, the country's second-largest city. Simply reaching the outskirts of the Kajaki Dam was perilous. More than 50 American troops were killed in combat operations to evict the Taliban from areas along a 30-mile road leading to...

GARMSER, Afghanistan — Since September 2009, this district along the Helmand River has seen five different Marine battalion commanders, two governors and two police chiefs. The only constant was a compact American whom everyone here calls Carter Sahib. Carter Malkasian, who had been the State Department's representative in Garmser until last month, is perhaps the only foreign official in the country to have been so widely embraced as a sahib, an Urdu salutation once used to address British...

GARMSER, Afghanistan — Since September 2009, this district along the Helmand River has seen five different Marine battalion commanders, two governors and two police chiefs. The only constant was a compact American whom everyone here calls Carter Sahib. Carter Malkasian, who had been the State Department's representative in Garmser until last month, is perhaps the only foreign official in the country to have been so widely embraced as a sahib, an Urdu salutation once used to address British...

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan , July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces.

Helmand Province, Afghanistan Until five months ago, Forward Operating Base Jackson, in Sangin, was an island in a Taliban sea. Patrol bases were ringed by Taliban flags, about 100 to 200 meters out, to dramatize the state of siege. Everywhere beyond the main road was an enemy sanctuary. Each spring the fertile land along the Helmand River bloomed red with poppies from horizon to horizon. Thirty-five drug-processing labs helped fund the Taliban. In October, about 1,500 Marines arrived, took the...

GARMSIR, Afghanistan -- Perched on the banks of the Helmand River, this desolate town occupied by British forces marks Afghanistan's de facto border: Beyond here, the Afghan government is powerless and Taliban insurgents hold sway, their ranks replenished by recruits who enter unchallenged from Pakistan . "Everything you see to your south . . . that's all enemy territory," said Lt. Nicholas Moran, a platoon leader from Bravo Company, 1st...

MIANPOSHTEH, Afghanistan -- U.S. Marines pushing into Afghanistan's southern Helmand province are running up against a skeptical Afghan population heavily influenced by Taliban insurgents, signaling a long campaign ahead. Afghan villagers, many of whom fled the Marines' advance, say they feel caught in a tug of war between U.S. forces and the Taliban, and are fearful of both. The Afghans, primarily illiterate farmers who tend livestock and crops in the irrigated lands alongside the Helmand River, often say they...

CAMP LEATHERNECK, AFGHANISTAN -- In the late 1950s, scores of U.S. engineers transformed a swath of uninhabited desert in southern Afghanistan into verdant farmland by constructing a network of irrigation canals fed by the Helmand River. The Afghan government filled the area, which it called Marja, with Pashtun nomads and told them to grow wheat. The wheat fields have since been replaced by tracts of opium-producing poppies. The mud-walled compounds that once housed families now conceal drug-processing labs and...

NAWA, Afghanistan -- Most of the mud-brick stalls that line the street in this sweltering town on the Helmand River closed down a year ago when Taliban fighters began swaggering through the bazaar, levying taxes on merchants and seeding the roads with homemade bombs. Shopkeepers placed their wares behind padlocked tin doors, teachers shuttered the school, the doctor abandoned the health clinic and residents with means fled to other parts of southern Afghanistan. This town does not merit a dot on most maps of Afghanistan.

This farming district along the Helmand River, once one of the most Taliban-saturated corners of southern Afghanistan, has turned so quiet over the past three months that some U.S. Marines here quietly wish for a gunfight. "Just to get off a few rounds," said one, "so we can feel like Marines. " Since the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment arrived in Garmser in mid-April, they have struck fewer than 10 roadside bombs, none of which have proved fatal. Just one grenade and "no more bullets than you...

Helmand Province, Afghanistan Until five months ago, Forward Operating Base Jackson, in Sangin, was an island in a Taliban sea. Patrol bases were ringed by Taliban flags, about 100 to 200 meters out, to dramatize the state of siege. Everywhere beyond the main road was an enemy sanctuary. Each spring the fertile land along the Helmand River bloomed red with poppies from horizon to horizon. Thirty-five drug-processing labs helped fund the Taliban. In October, about 1,500 Marines arrived, took the...

American military officials in Afghanistan expect that the Taliban will mount a spring campaign to regain ground lost to U.S. troops last year and use suicide bombing teams to strike at those associated with the Afghan government or coalition forces. But U.S. commanders in Kabul, as well as officers working in insurgent strongholds in the south and east, said their troops are better positioned than they were last year to fend off the insurgency, now that they have 70,000 new Afghan...

CAMP LEATHERNECK, AFGHANISTAN -- Thousands of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers traveling in helicopters and mine-resistant vehicles began punching into a key Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan early Saturday, as the largest military operation since 2001 to assert government control over this country got underway. The first wave of Marines and Afghan soldiers swooped into the farming community of Marja about 2 a.m. Saturday local time (4:30 p.m. Eastern), their CH-53 Super Stallion transport helicopters landing amid...

CAMP LEATHERNECK, AFGHANISTAN -- In the late 1950s, scores of U.S. engineers transformed a swath of uninhabited desert in southern Afghanistan into verdant farmland by constructing a network of irrigation canals fed by the Helmand River. The Afghan government filled the area, which it called Marja, with Pashtun nomads and told them to grow wheat. The wheat fields have since been replaced by tracts of opium-producing poppies. The mud-walled compounds that once housed families now conceal drug-processing labs and...

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan -- Even before the American paratroopers entered the Afghan barracks, the lack of discipline was evident: torn screens, trash collecting in the hallways, bedrooms and bushes. The checkpoints were even worse, they said, with used syringes littering the ground. A well-trained and disciplined Afghan force of police and soldiers is considered the fragile government's best hope of keeping power against the Taliban, and is central to the NATO strategy of curbing violence in this...

NAWA, Afghanistan , July 6 -- Roadside bombings and a gun attack killed seven U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday, providing a grim reminder of the insurgency's resilience even as Marines moved to consolidate gains in their operation against the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand. Four members of a U.S. military team training Afghan security forces died after a bomb struck their convoy near the northern city of Kunduz, according to American military officials. Northern Afghanistan has been relatively stable compared...

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan -- Even before the American paratroopers entered the Afghan barracks, the lack of discipline was evident: torn screens, trash collecting in the hallways, bedrooms and bushes. The checkpoints were even worse, they said, with used syringes littering the ground. A well-trained and disciplined Afghan force of police and soldiers is considered the fragile government's best hope of keeping power against the Taliban, and is central to the NATO strategy of curbing violence in this...

MIANPOSHTEH, Afghanistan -- U.S. Marines pushing into Afghanistan's southern Helmand province are running up against a skeptical Afghan population heavily influenced by Taliban insurgents, signaling a long campaign ahead. Afghan villagers, many of whom fled the Marines' advance, say they feel caught in a tug of war between U.S. forces and the Taliban, and are fearful of both. The Afghans, primarily illiterate farmers who tend livestock and crops in the irrigated lands alongside the Helmand River, often say they simply want to be...

MIANPOSHTEH, Afghanistan -- The new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, as articulated in military headquarters and congressional hearing rooms, puts the emphasis not on killing Taliban fighters but on winning over the local people. But in this highly contested swath of Helmand province, Sgt. Anibal Paz's squad is likely to be ambushed before he has time to sit down for tea. The sergeants' war that Paz fights is often craftier and more complex than the war mapped out by generals, and it's always dirtier and bloodier.