a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/01/AR2009070103202.html?hpid=topnews"Washington Post:/abr /br /blockquoteThousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.br /br /p The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan earlier this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban have evicted local police and government officials, and taken power. /p pOnce Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban, and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents. /p p"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work." /p pSimilar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half of the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income. /p The operation launched early Thursday morning represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern heartlands....br /br /p Traveling though swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight local time on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces were slated to pour into the valley during the predawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift-but-lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have implanted along the roads. /p pIt was not immediately clear whether the initial Marine units faced resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said prior to the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces likely would increase once they move into towns and begin patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings. /p pOfficers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines' largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, in a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iraq.html?nav=el" target=""Iraq/a. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines was scheduled to board a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward other towns along the river valley.br //pp.../pp The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan army soldiers. But thus far, the Marines only have been allotted about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability." /p p "They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country and they know it better than we do."br //pp...br //pbr //blockquoteThe story indicates the State Department is still not providing the reconstruction teams needed. The Marines have brought in some reservist to help with the task because of the failure of the State Department.br /br /They launched the operation in the middle of the night to catch the enemy by surprise and avoid taking casualties as they establish their area of operation. The Marines plan a counterinsurgency operations of protecting the people and overwhelming any enemy forces who try to interfere with the operation. It would help to have more Afghan forces to increase the intelligence needed to find and destroy the enemy.br /br /The Taliban have rarely faced the kind of intensity of operation the Marines are going to throw at them. By protecting the people and setting up check points that will directly effect the Taliban's mobility the enemy will find itself bumping into the Marines rather than waiting to spring ambushes on patrols.br /br /The a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?hp"NY Times/a notes the British inadequate force to space ratio in the same area and its failure to tame the insurgency.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051247-2126055901656307448?l=prairiepundit.blogspot.com'//div
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