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Next stop: Afganistan
| quote: | US launches major offensive against Taliban
US Lt Col Christian cabaniss addresses Marines before major push
(Getty Images)
Lt Colonel Christian Cabassis addresses Marines before the offensive
Times Online
Thousands of U.S. Marines stormed into an Afghan river valley by helicopter and land early today, launching the biggest military offensive of Barack Obama's presidency with an assault deep into Taliban territory.
Operation River Liberty, which the Marines call simply "the decisive op", is intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand River valley, heartland of the Taliban insurgency and the world's biggest heroin producing region.
In swiftly seizing the valley, commanders hope to accomplish within hours what NATO troops had failed to achieve over several years, and by doing so turn the tide of a stale-mated war in time for an Afghan presidential election on August 20.
"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan said in a statement.
He told his staff before the operation: "The intent is to go big, go strong and go fast, and by doing so we are going to save lives on both sides."
The operation would have an initial highly aggressive stage lasting 36 hours, AFP reported.
Wave upon wave of helicopters landed Marines in the early morning darkness at locations throughout the valley, a crescent of opium and wheat fields criss-crossed by canals and dotted with mud-brick homes, where firmly entrenched fighters defied NATO forces for years.
Hundreds more Marines raced by ground in convoys through a barren area known as the Desert of Death.
In all, about 4,000 Marines surged forward and thousands more were mobilised to assist them along with 650 Afghan forces, an operation by foreign ground troops on a scale unseen in Afghanistan since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
Captain Bill Pelletier, a spokesman for the Marines, said no clashes with Taliban troops had been reported, but a Marine had been slightly injured by a roadside bomb.
The operation was aimed at putting pressure on insurgents, "and to show our commitment to the Afghan people that when we come in we are going to stay long enough to set up their own institutions," Captain Pelletier said.
He said the US military was prepared for casualties, but stressed that "it is absolutely essential that no civilians be harmed".
"We do not want people of Helmand province to see us as an enemy, we want to protect them from the enemy," he said.
The Marines hope by appearing suddenly and in overwhelming numbers, they can capture some of the Taliban's firmest strongholds with little resistance.
"Towns that were the Taliban heartland will fall. They will fall quickly. And hopefully they will fall without a shot. That's our intent," Brigadier General Nicholson said.
The 10,000 Marines in Helmand Province, 8,500 of whom arrived in the last two months, form the biggest wave of an escalation ordered by President Obama.
He has declared the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan to be America's main foreign threat. Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan are at their highest since the militants were toppled in 2001.
Under President Obama, the US force in Afghanistan is more than doubling this year, from 32,000 at the start of 2009 to an anticipated 68,000 troops by year's end, many of them diverted from Iraq. Other Western countries have about 33,000 troops in Afghanistan.
The arrival of the Marines doubles the international force in Helmand, where an overstretched British-led NATO contingent has in the past lacked the manpower to hold onto territory it cleared, and instead mainly defended a few scattered outposts in heavy fighting.
Most of the province has remained outside government control, and produced by far the largest share of Afghanistan's opium crop, which accounts for 90 percent of the world's heroin.
Taliban fighters have had years to reinforce positions among the valley's irrigation ditches and canals. They have fiercely resisted past advances.
But US and NATO commanders hope a rapid and decisive victory in the Helmand Valley will prove the tipping point that will turn the course of the war once and for all.
Addressing Marine commanders days before the assault, Dutch Major-General Mart de Kruif compared it to the D-Day invasion that changed the course of World War Two.
"We have people out there who do not realise that progress is about to come to them," he said. "We have enemies out there who do not yet realise that they are going to lose."
The governor of Helmand province, Gulab Mangal predicted the operation would be "very effective."
"The security forces will build bases to provide security for the local people so that they can carry out every activity with this favorable background, and take their lives forward in peace," the governor said in a Pentagon news release.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...icle6621649.ece |
They may not be calling this a surge but it sure as hell sounds like one.
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