Canadian troops tread fine line on village patrols
Canadian soldiers with night vision goggles slowly navigate through grape fields, wary of triggering booby traps planted by Taliban insurgents.
The Taliban, who have fought NATO forces for nine years, are masters of the terrain, so they could have the advantage. Militants may be hiding a few feet away in irrigation ditches as deep as eight feet.
After hours of heavy hiking, the Canadians reach a hamlet of mud-brick huts they have never previously visited, seeking intelligence that is becoming more critical by the day as NATO troops push to stabilize Afghanistan before a gradual U.S. pullout in 2011.
A cell phone battery is discovered on a young man, immediately raising suspicions. Batteries are often used to trigger improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have killed more NATO soldiers than any other weapon in the conflict with insurgents.
Questioned through a translator about why he is carrying a battery and no cell phone, the Afghan responds: “The Taliban don't allow us to have them. They would arrest me and hold me for 15 days.
The Taliban frequently ban cell phones in areas where they operate to prevent being informed on.
It is that sort of question Canadians and other U.S.-led troops constantly ask as they attempt to break Taliban networks.
Finding answers has become increasingly urgent since Western forces launched a two-pronged strategy to pacify the Taliban.
NATO forces in the Taliban's heartland of Kandahar Province will improve security and that will enable the Afghan government to win over the population by providing better services and creating jobs.
The plan depends heavily on the cooperation and trust of the Afghan people, who are well aware of the risks of crossing the Taliban, a group that does not hesitate to publicly execute opponents.
So it may take painstaking efforts to persuade Afghans that it is in their best interest to come forward. As part of their campaign to build ties with the local population, the Canadians donated speakers to a mosque.
If the Taliban are not seriously weakened before the pullout, and there are no eventual peace negotiations, they may be in a position to return to power, which would be a foreign policy disaster for the White House.
NATO fighter planes, tanks and combat helicopters have failed to do the job, so gaining intelligence is a huge priority.
The Canadians have to be efficient to get results since they are expected withdraw from Afghanistan next year.
The sergeant leading the night patrol, John Carr, was careful to be respectful of villagers. He makes a point of first approaching elders, who said they were happy his troops working to improve security.
The Taliban had been moving through the area, he learned. Was it a small intelligence victory? It's hard to tell. After all, this is Afghanistan, where militants look and speak like everybody else.
The Canadians pressed ahead in an area heavily infested with IEDs. After the call to prayer, they came upon about a dozen bearded men who had just left a mosque. The group also had nice things to say about the Canadian presence.
But jumping to conclusions is risky in Afghanistan.
While there no engagements during the patrol, after the Canadians ended the mission and recalled details of their grueling hike over burritos and chicken cutlets, someone fired an RPG at them.
Related information:
In military tactics, a patrol is a small tactical unit sent out from a larger unit by land, sea or air for the purpose of combat, reconnaissance, or a combination of both. The basic task of a patrol is to follow a known route at regular intervals looking out for anything out of the ordinary — which if found will be reported or dealt with as appropriate.Patrol can refer to reconnaissance patrols, which sent to investigate some feature of interest, or to fighting patrols (US combat patrol), sent to find and engage the enemy. A patrol can also mean a small cavalry or armoured unit, subordinate to a troop or platoon. A patrol usually comprises a section or squad of mounted troopers, or two AFVs (often tanks).
Britain ‘pleased’ with progress in Afghan operation
NATO commanders are "very pleased" with the start of a major operation focusing on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan, a British military spokesman said on Saturday.
British troops had secured their "key" objectives but thousands of US troops supported by Afghan soldiers were continuing their attack on Marjah and surrounding areas, Major General Gordon Messenger told journalists in London.
Overall, NATO commanders were "very pleased with how it has gone", he said.
"The key objective has been secured," he said, explaining that the main aims for British troops were to secure the main population centres and installations such as police stations in the the Chah-e Anjir Triangle northeast of Marjah.
There had been some "sporadic fighting", but the Taliban appeared to be "confused and disjointed" and "have not been able to put up a coherent response", Messenger told the briefing.
He said that while he personally had been briefed by British commanders, their US counterparts were also satisfied with the start of the operation.
Operation Mushtarak ("together" in Dari), as the assault involving a total of 15,000 troops is known, aims to clear the area of Taliban and re-establish Afghan sovereignty and civil services.
US, British and Afghan troops along with Danish and Estonian soldiers are attacking Marjah in the central Helmand River valley and surrounding towns.
The attack was supported by the "full array" of NATO aircraft, but bombing was being kept to a minimum, Messenger said.
More than 1,000 British troops were involved in their part of the operation focusing on the Chah-e Anjir Triangle, said Messenger, the chief of the defence staff's strategic communications officer.
"Low numbers" of insurgents were killed during the assault, he added, although he was unable to confirm whether any British soldiers had died.
Messenger said troops had faced sniper fire and IEDs, or improvised explosive devices -- the roadside bombs which the Taliban uses against NATO forces - had been found.
Despite reports that local residents had fled the area ahead of the assault, "significant numbers" of people remained, the spokesman said.
He stressed that while the initial stage of the attacks had gone well, the hard part of the operation would be the work to secure the area and win over the local population.
"There's no complacency -- everyone understands this is the easy bit. The hard bit is what comes next in reassuring the public.
"This is all about winning the allegiance of the population. The allegiance is not won in a day it must be won over time. It cannot be forced."
Marines wait in the cold for Afghan offensive
Take a desert of yellow-orange dust so flat it looks like Mars, with a freezing wind that blows so hard it can lift a large tent.
Add hundreds of U.S. Marines, squads of Afghan soldiers, some Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a few private contractors, along with dozens of armored cars, mine breachers and an improvised helicopter landing zone.
That's Outpost Belleau Wood, a Marine base near the edge of the Taliban-controlled town of Marjah, which the Marines plan to attack in the coming days.
It took barely a week for the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment to create the outpost from scratch.
They bulldozed earth berms to make a protection wall, pitched lines of pup-tents that bend and wobble in the gale, and set up batteries of mortars and 155-millimeter artillery cannons.
"Those guns started shooting the night they got here," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, as he leaned forward against the wind while walking through the base in full body armor and helmet.
Named after a World War I battle where the 6th Marines earned the label "devil dogs" for the ferocity of their fight against German troops, Belleau Wood lies about seven miles (10 kilometers) north of Marjah.
Several units from the battalion are already pushing in toward the town, where an estimated 600 fighters are entrenched. While the outpost has been hit only once, companies closer to Marjah face daily skirmishes and bombings.
Marjah is the biggest community in southern Afghanistan that is under Taliban control and a center of their logistical and drug-smuggling networks. The NATO command believes restoring government control there would go a long way to discrediting the Taliban among Afghans in a part of the country where the militants have been strong for years.
The offensive proper is expected to be the biggest in the nine-year Afghan war, and troops on the outpost are all waiting for battle.
Dozens of Marine engineers have been rehearsing how to lay out massive metallic bridges they plan to use when troops will need to cross the canals surrounding Marjah. Route clearance teams were also fine-tuning their tactics to detect the bombs that litter the area.
NATO commanders have been very outspoken on their plans to take Marjah. But they've remained tightlipped on one key bit of information: timing.
Few know when the offensive will begin, and those who do are saying nothing. So the Marines are in the starting blocks, waiting in the cold.
"The wait is part of the fight," says Daniel Perez, a Navy medic. "It gives people the time to pump up with anticipation."
Marjah is suspected to be one of the biggest, most dangerous minefields NATO forces have ever faced, and hundreds of the fighters barricaded inside could be planning to fight until death.
But Perez said he hasn't seen anyone frightened by the fight — "or if they are, they're hiding it very well."
He says waiting, however long, doesn't matter for the Marines.
"It's almost like the Olympics," he said. "You train and train and train ... and this is finally the big show."
Afghanistan’s NATO head: Military push needs gov’t
The success of a planned major U.S.-Afghan offensive in the south depends on how quickly troops and civilian development workers can get public services up and running once the Taliban have been driven away, the top U.S. and NATO commander said Sunday.
The military has widely publicized the upcoming offensive in Marjah — the biggest Taliban-held community in the south — although the precise date for the attack in Helmand province remains classified.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal said the element of surprise is not as important as letting Marjah's estimated 80,000 residents know that an Afghan government is on its way to replace Taliban overlords and drug traffickers.
"We're trying to create a situation where we communicate to them that when the government re-establishes security, they'll have choices," McChrystal said.
Establishing functioning government has been messy even in the relatively safe parts of Afghanistan. NATO forces and international diplomats have to balance the need to increase security with the desire to build up Afghan institutions that have too-often been corrupt or ineffective .
U.S.-led forces also have often had an uneasy relationship with their Afghan partners amid efforts to train the government forces to take over their own security so the international troops can eventually withdraw.
As a sign of those strains, NATO-led forces said Sunday they had arrested a deputy provincial police chief they accused of helping insurgents place roadside bombs north of Kabul.
Officials in Kapisa province defended Attaullah Wahab, saying he was an honest and good officer and complaining that Afghan authorities hadn't been informed about Friday's arrest in advance.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary complained early Friday that the ministry, which oversees the police, wasn't informed about the arrest in advance. However, the Interior Ministry later said in a statement that it was jointly following Wahab's activities with NATO forces and that the Afghan government was involved in the ongoing investigation.
NATO said Wahab was arrested Friday in the Kapisa provincial capital of Mahmud-i-Raqi for involvement in the storage, distribution and planting of roadside bombs as well as corruption related to road reconstruction.
Telegraphing the Marjah offensive has raised concerns that the Taliban might plant more bombs — known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs — to inflict casualties on the attackers.
"The number of IEDs around the country went very high in 2009, so we do expect a very large number of IEDs," McChrystal said.
But the military appears more concerned that the Taliban may return to Marjah later. To prevent that, McChrystal said the Marjah operation will fully integrate military and civilian components, with government officials involved at every step.
McChrystal spoke alongside NATO's new civilian chief, former British Ambassador Mark Sedwill, who started his new job Sunday with a briefing at NATO headquarters in Kabul.
Sedwill and McChrystal said they plan to work as a single unit — integrating the military and civilian efforts at a level not seen previously.
"We've been somewhat out of sequence," Sedwill said of the previous civilian and military efforts, explaining that civilian government-building efforts have often been less organized and slower to start than military pushes.
Marjah — an area long run by the Taliban and a major drug-production center — will likely end up being a tougher test case for the civilian side than the military.
"In the example of Marjah, we need to ensure that the government and development follows up any advances that we make in security," Sedwill said. "To the Afghan citizen, what matters is: Can his kids get to school and is the school open? Is the clinic open? Can they get decent justice from the Afghan government rather than a Taliban motorcycle court?"
Also Sunday, a bomb detonated by remote control struck an Afghan patrol, killing three policemen, according to a local policeman, Mohammad Razaq.
