Red Cross condemns Taliban use of booby trap bombs

The Red Cross today condemned the use of booby trap bombs by the Taliban in an area of southern Afghanistan that has been so heavily mined people are afraid to leave their homes.


The bombs -- or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) -- are also preventing refugees from returning to the area of Helmand province where US Marines have led 15,000 troops in an assault against the Taliban, it said.

In an unusually strong statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the use of IEDs -- the main weapon in the Taliban arsenal -- was "completely unacceptable."

The Marjah farming area has been so heavily mined with IEDs that civilians were largely confined indoors and the sick and injured could not be evacuated for help, it said.

People who fled the area before and during the assault, launched on February 13, feared returning to villages where commanders and residents have said the bombs are planted in fields, hanging from trees and even embedded in the walls of houses.

"Improvised mines and other explosive devices are posing a deadly threat to civilians in Marjah," Reto Stocker, head of the ICRC in Kabul, was quoted in a statement as saying.

"They make it almost impossible for people to venture out or to evacuate the sick and wounded, who therefore receive little or no medical care," he said.

The use of mines, and the lack of any measures to protect civilians "runs counter to the most basic principles of international humanitarian law," the statement said.

"Any use of these weapons, which are prohibited in the country under the Mine Ban Convention just as they are in 155 other countries, is completely unacceptable."

The Red Cross rarely employs such powerful language, preferring to raise such issues confidentially with all parties to the conflict, in hopes they will adhere to accepted guidelines for treatment of civilians and war wounded.

The Geneva-based organisation is one of the few that maintains a dialogue with the leadership of the Taliban, which is waging a brutal war against the foreign troops in Afghanistan supporting President Hamid Karzai's government.

The condemnation of the use of IEDs implies extreme frustration with the use of weaponry that by definition is indiscriminate in its targeting.

The Taliban is the only party in the conflict to use IEDs, said Bijan Farnoudi, the ICRC's spokesman in Kabul, adding: "The improvised mines in Marjah have been left behind in huge numbers by the Taliban."

A UN report released earlier this year said most civilian casualties in the Afghan war -- now in its ninth year since the overthrow of the Taliban's 1996-2001 regime -- are caused by Taliban attacks, mostly using IEDs and suicide bombers.

Operation Mushtarak ("Together" in Dari) is slowly winding down as resistance wanes from the Taliban, who for years controlled the area along with drug traffickers, NATO and Afghan commanders said this week.

But Afghanistan's defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said IEDs are the main challenge facing troops yet to bring the area under complete control, and for civilians wanting to go home.

The UN said this week that 27,700 people left Marjah and Nad Ali, target areas of Mushtarak, which aimed to clear the way for the Afghan government to re-establish sovereignty, security and civil services.

By March 2, only 645 families, or about 4,500 people, had returned, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said.

"The conditions for return are not ideal as armed clashes are reputed to continue in a number of villages and IEDs are still present," UNOCHA said.

It said despite mine clearance efforts, IEDs were still being placed along the roads leading out of Marjah, which along with Taliban checkpoints were restricting movement of people and goods, leading to food shortages.

The ICRC's Stocker said little food was reaching Marjah as few commercial vehicles were able to enter.

"Sooner or later, residents and displaced persons will have no choice but to move about, if only to find food and water," he said.

"Sadly, there will almost certainly be casualties, as improvised mines and unexploded homemade bombs do not differentiate between a military vehicle and a boy on a bicycle."

First steps for stability in Marjah?

Mr Khalili (c) looks on as a US marine gave medical treatment to an Afghan mine victim in Marjan

By Chris Morris
BBC News, Marjah, Afghanistan

Afghanistan's Vice-President, Abdul Karim Khalili, has visited the town of Marjah in Helmand Province, days after the national flag was raised over the former Taliban stronghold.

Nothing too surprising about that, you might think.

After all, Marjah has been the main focus of Operation Moshtarak, the largest military operation carried out by Nato and its Afghan allies since 2001.

But Mr Khalili's fleeting visit - accompanied by Nato commander, Gen Stanley McChrystal and senior civilian representative, Mark Sedwill - draws attention to one of the most critical issues in this entire campaign.

Can the Afghan government, the central government in Kabul, actually deliver on its promises?

After stepping off a Nato helicopter, Mr Khalili certainly sought to reassure a crowd of local men gathered in a field on the edge of town.

'Only the beginning'

"We will bring peace and stability," he said.

"It is not going to be like the past. We will stay, and we will build and we will defend you.

"This," he said, "is only the beginning."

But do they believe him? Should they believe him?

There is no question that people have been badly let down before.

Mr Khalili's audience was polite but subdued. There were complaints about family members who were killed in the military operation, and about property which had been damaged or destroyed.

There is clearly a long way to go to establish trust. But Nato commanders hope something positive is beginning to happen.

Having a senior politician from Kabul visiting an area where the Taliban had held sway for so long in the absence of any government presence is a good first step.

"He came down to see Marjah and to represent the president," Gen McChrystal said as he watched from the sidelines, "[…] and, particularly in a difficult security environment, to get direct feedback from the people is really key".

For the full report click here for BBC Online

Afghan flag flies over Marjah

A young boy smiles as the Afghan flag flies once again over the town of Marjah in the Nad-e Ali district of Helmand province. The flag was raised in a ceremony involving Helmand governor Gulab Mangal, community officials, and Afghan and ISAF security partners.

The flag-raising symbolized the return of government authority in the community, a focal point of governance activities since the start of Operation Moshtarak.

The goal of Moshtarak – Dari for "together" – is for the combined force (ANA, ANP, ISAF and the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team) to support the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in asserting its authority in central Helmand, thereby demonstrating the government’s commitment to the people living there.

Elvis Ain’t Dead - He's In Afghanistan

Thomas Ruttig, Eurasia Review

He has been spotted in Marja (Helmand, Southern Afghanistan). The only problem is: Marja does not exist. Because it is not on Google Earth. And Operation Moshtarak in Helmand is a fake. But let me start from the beginning.

Marja Centre - Operation Moshtarak

Back in Kabul, as usual the unexpected happened: The rumour of the day did not come from sar-e chowk(1) but from Austria, via email. A journalist is asking me to tell her whether I ever had been to Marja and can "confirm that this place really exists, how many inhabitants it has and whether it really is a Taleban stronghold."

I was flabbergasted but decided to check what’s up.It turned out that a journalist of Afghan (Helmand) background based in Germany writing on an off-the-mainstream website had raised doubts about Marja being, as described in media reports, "a town of 80,000 to 85,000 inhabitants (…), with even a town-like centre (…) in which street- and house-to-house fighting can happen, similar to what happened in Iraqi Falludja in 2004." Under the subtitle, "Marja – media metamorphosis of a hamlet of mud houses into a town of 80,000," Anahita Girishki raises a couple of very valid questions, but also goes into the trap of journalism made too easy by relying on the internet searches.

Actually, she does not really question Marja’s existence. (This - and the extension into the conspiracy theory that, consequently, the latest military operation in Helmand is a fake - is done in discussions on the internet that comment on her article and apparently are picked up by some irritated journalists.) She just doubts that – as quoted above – Marja is a ‘town’ big enough to be a town or, in other words, that the capture of Marja by US marines is such a big achievement as presented to and reflected by the media: ‘the largest Afghan town under Taleban control’. This might well be the case.

Here are her own words (in my translation from German):

"I am an Afghan myself and even from Helmand province. As a child and teenager, I travelled around Helmand a lot and got, without exception, to all localities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, i.e. in all villages which, with some courtesy, you could call a town. But Marja I only knew as a miserable, scattered cluster of huts in Nad Ali district. Now, it is of course possible that a small hamlet can grow to a larger town within two decades."

Indeed, Marja, will have grown in population over the past two decades, as all of Afghanistan has. Whether Marja really has 80,000 inhabitants, I am not able to say – as for any other area of the country. We don’t know what Afghanistan’s population is. There has never been a census in Afghanistan, and the one often referred to (from 1979) was based on samples and had never had been finished because of domestic upheaval. We move on very shaky ground when it comes to population figures in Afghanistan. (I liked one comment, though, saying that in Marja because Karzai got 80,000 votes there. Quod erat demonstrandum.) But what is clear to everyone who has been to Afghanistan and beyond Kabul: a 80,000-inhabitant Afghan town would definitely not look like a comparable one in Germany, like the famous university town of Tübingen.

Valid questions are, for example, whether Operation ‘Moshtarak’ is blown a bit out of proportion. We all know that the governments of the US and its NATO allies urgently need some success stories to tell because they think that makes them win the next elections. Yes, maybe, Marja is the largest – well – settlement that has been under Taleban control. Marja (and Nad Ali and other neighbouring areas) might be an important area in an economically important region, the irrigated zone along Helmand River (the biggest poppy plantation in the world initially thought to grow cotton and wheat). It might be part of a strategically important region that stretches further along the river to Kandahar and constitutes the Taleban heartland. But will a victory there (whatever this may be) turn around the war?

What will happen when the troops leave again? Yes, I know, they will ‘stay’. But for how long? Till the Afghan local administration – that famous ‘government in a box’ – will function well? How long will this take? Six months? Six years? And how many Afghan troops are there really in Operation ‘Moshtarak’ and what are they exactly doing? And, if they are half or 40 per cent or more, why are mainly Western soldiers reported killed?

Operation ‘Moshtarak’ also poses the question to news agencies who report from or about the region, to journalists embedded in the troops, to newspapers that use their material and to analysts like us whether we sufficiently double-check what is presented to us.

Last but not least, the question is valid what a ‘town’ (or even a village) in Afghanistan is. Some authors have asked whether there actually is something like a 'village' in Afghanistan. (In some areas, people refer to smaller units like mosques etc.) Some geographers might argue that there are no towns in Afghanistan. Just look at Kabul’s different quarters, with no functional infrastructure binding them together. Most of them are – sorry - villages where people who migrated there from the same area live together.

What sounds like academic questions is relevant today politically. Where do cities, towns, villages end? Afghanistan's districts have not been officially delineated. There are ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ districts. (Most governments of the past 30 years have created new districts as sinecure.) Some of the ‘unofficial” districts still function but the people appointed there are not entitled to be paid by the government. The parliament has not done its homework on this, and the international community and its embassies in Kabul seem to have forgotten about it. No census, no delineated district boundaries – how do you want to have voters’ lists? How do you want to have meaningful elections?

By the way, Marja really exists. It was founded in 1957, as one of these ‘model villages’ that emerged in the result of the US and Afghan-funded Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority project. Pashtuns from many different tribes, among them apparently also kuchis (nomads), have been settled there. But indeed, if you only rely on Google and Wikipedia, you might have difficulties in locating Marja. It is also not on district lists of Afghanistan - simply because it is not a district but part of Nad Ali and most of the easily accessible material goes not down to the sub-district level.

But to stop your search there and then raise doubts about its existence is lazy journalism. There are good maps of Afghanistan that show the place. And if you google for ‘provincial profile Helmand’, you get one published by the Afghan investment agency (AISA) which mentions Marja a couple of times. (This took no five minutes, with a slow internet connection in Kabul.) Ms Girishki also refers to Marja-related climate data from the 1950s and an AIMS map, showing the place although spelled slightly differently (Marjeh). This is also not a bad source; AIMS is kind of the UN’s cartographical service.

Furthermore, plenty of Afghan journalists have been and are reporting from Marja, before and during the Operation ‘Moshtarak’. Check www.iwpr.net/. Reports about people killed there, Afghan and otherwise, photos of refugees and reports that they are sheltered and supported by relatives, Afghan authorities or international organisations in neighbouring districts also confirm Marja’s existence and that of Operation ‘Moshtarak’.

And finally, I have to confess: It wasn’t Elvis. It was Haji Zaher Aryan, Marja’s new wuluswal.

Taking It to the Taliban

Time Online


Two days before launching the most ambitious military campaign of the Obama Administration, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, convened a meeting in Kabul of 450 tribal elders and scholars from Helmand province. The general's objective: to build support for Operation Moshtarak, a massive offensive on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah. McChrystal ran through the military phase of the plan, which would involve 6,000 U.S. Marines and British soldiers and 4,500 Afghan troops and police. Then he described how these troops would protect the town while a "government in a box" — a corps of Afghan officials who had been training for this moment for months — would start administering the town. The elders all signed off on the plan, but not before one of them warned the American general, "You have to understand that if you don't do what you say, we'll all be killed."

McChrystal repeated the chieftain's words Feb. 18 in a secure video teleconference with President Barack Obama and his top advisers on Afghanistan and Pakistan. By then, the operation, by all accounts, was going well. NATO troops had encountered only sporadic resistance; much of the town was under the control of the U.S. Marines. British-led forces, meanwhile, had taken the nearby community of Showal. Some government in a box was already being unpacked.

There was good news from other fronts too. In Pakistan, a joint operation in Karachi by the CIA and Pakistan's own spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had netted a very big fish: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's military chief. In quick succession, the ISI had also rolled up two of the Taliban's "shadow" governors of Afghanistan's provinces and another senior figure. And in North Waziristan, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a missile launched from a CIA drone had struck at the heart of the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for countless attacks on NATO troops. The network's current leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, survived, but his younger brother Mohammed had been killed.

After a year of mostly grim tidings from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama could have been allowed a moment of satisfaction. But McChrystal's recounting of the Helmand chieftain's warning ensured that the mood in the White House's Situation Room during the conference call was somber. According to National Security Adviser Jim Jones, who was there, Obama added an exhortation of his own, using the idioms of counterinsurgency warfare. "Do not clear and hold what you are not willing to build and transfer," he told McChrystal, a maxim he had repeated often over the previous months. "You've heard me say it many times, but it bears repeating," Obama said as he signed off.

Q&A: Afghan journalist in Helmand

BBC News


Majid Dawari is one of the first Afghan journalists to see first-hand the effects of fighting in the southern province of Helmand, where the biggest offensive in Afghanistan since 2001 is continuing.

Unlike his Western counterparts, Mr Dawari was visiting the area without being embedded with foreign troops. Here he tells BBC Pashto's Emal Pasarly what he saw.

Have Nato succeeded in restoring a sense of order in Marjah?

On the front line, the Afghan army is based behind the US Marines, giving Afghans a supporting role. A large number of Afghan police are also now in Marjah. Wherever the army "clears" an area, the police stay put and build their security posts.

But ordinary people are yet to restart their normal lives. The main bazaar in Marjah remains closed and no-one is to be seen walking around the town.

Local people complain that they can't move freely because the clothes they wear are similar to the clothes worn by the Taliban. The army seems to be suspicious of everyone.

What are the military people doing to reassure people that they are safe?The Afghan army has been looking for shop owners to tell them that they will pay compensation to those whose businesses have been damaged. After that, some shops have reopened and I can see some local people beginning to come out their homes.

Are food and other essentials readily available?

Yes, but prices are very high here. For example potatoes are eightfold more expensive than in [the nearby town of] Lashkar Gah. Local people are very poor and they say they can't afford these prices.

How easy was it for you to get to Marjah?

Before the current military operations, Marjah was only 30 minutes drive from Lashkar Gah. But now it can take longer than three hours, because the Taliban has planted so many mines on the road. The best way for me was to accept Governor Gulab Mangal's invitation to visit Marjah in a military helicopter.

How reliable are communications with the town?

In the past few days the phone system has gone down in Marjah and the Afghan army has cut off the mobile phone system in the hope that this will interrupt Taliban communications. But it also made life for journalists very hard. You don't get much information unless you go to Marjah itself.

What is the latest on the fighting?

I have been reliably informed that foreign elements along with hard-core Taliban militants are now in the western parts of Marjah, close to the province of Nimruz, and are still resisting there. The "local Taliban" seemed to have returned to their homes, where they are hiding their light weapons.

What else is the Afghan army doing?

It is trying to win the hearts and minds of local people by handing over food, books and other help. They speak Pashto and can communicate with local people. But the Afghan police force who are now in Marjah are Dari-speaking and are not able to communicate with local people.

Is there any news from the Taliban side?

I was told by local people in Marjah that since the beginning of Operation Moshtarak, the Taliban have hanged six men alleged to be spying for Nato. That sort of action has made local people very scared to talk to me.

VIDEO: Marjah residents receive food aid

Al Jazeera English



Residents of the southern Afghan town of Marjah have received their first food supplies since the start of a joint US-Afghan military operation against the Taliban in the area 11 days ago.

Afghan officials distributed bags of rice and tea in central Marjah, in southern Helmand province, on Tuesday, as sporadic fighting continued outside the city centre.

Nato forces launched the campaign, known as Operation Moshtarak, on February 13, in an effort to bring government control over southern Afghanistan. The US military has said Taliban resistance has begun to ease since the start of the offensive.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Helmand, said Afghan officials are the most "up-beat" they have been since the start of the operation.

"The (Helmand) governor believes the offensive stage of this offensive could be over soon. He's talking about opening an interim district center in this town by Thursday," our correspondent said.

Taliban Flee Marjah, For Now

CBS Evening News

Afghanistan Taliban 'using human shields'

BBC News


Taliban militants are increasingly using civilians as "human shields" as they battle against a joint Afghan-Nato offensive, an Afghan general has said.

Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them.

The joint offensive in southern Helmand province has entered its fifth day.

US Marines fighting to take the Taliban haven of Marjah have had to call in air support as they come under heavy fire.

They have faced sustained machine-gun fire from fighters hiding in bunkers and in buildings including homes and mosques. Gen Ghori, the senior commander for Afghan troops in the area, accused the Taliban of taking civilians hostage in Marjah and putting them in the line of fire.

"Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third-floor window," he is quoted by Associated Press as saying.

"They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians."

As a result, his forces were having to make the choice either not to return fire, he said, or to advance much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians. Nato has stressed that the safety of civilians in the areas targeted in the joint Nato and Afghan Operation Moshtarak is its highest priority.

Journalist Jawad Dawari, based in Lashkar Gah, told BBC Pashto that Taliban fighters remained in many residential areas of Marjah and were defending their positions with heavy weapons.

"It is difficult for the Afghan army and Nato to storm Taliban-held areas because to do so may inflict heavy civilian casualties and there are still a lot of civilians in Marjah.

"Whenever they launch an attack, the Taliban take refuge in civilians' homes."

He had spoken to many local people in Marjah, he said, and they had all said the Nato offensive had made little progress since the first day.

An Afghan military official had told reporters that the backbone of the resistance came from foreign fighters - Pakistani and Arab - and that it was feared they might resort to suicide attacks, he added.

Taliban forced to retreat as battle for Marjah intensifies

Julius Cavendish, The Independant

Civilians in the southern Afghan town of Marjah said fighting there continued yesterday at "maximum intensity" as Taliban insurgents were squeezed into ever-smaller pockets.


Despite encountering fierce resistance from small bands of guerrillas, the allies claim most of the town in Helmand province is under the control of Nato and Afghan troops. They are unable to take the main bazaar, however, having been forced back twice by heavy fire from Taliban sharp shooters.

"The foreign troops have control of all the main roundabouts," Ajmal Gullai, a 33-year-old taxi driver who lives in Marjah, told The Independent by phone. Like many other civilians in the town Mr Gullai has remained indoors, terrified that any attempt to venture out will be met with a bullet or a bomb.

"We're learning to recognise the different kinds of gunfire and can tell who is firing what," he said. "The Taliban use small weapons like AK-47s, PKM machine guns and rocket launchers. Most of the fire is coming from foreign troops."

Although progress is slow, with British soldiers in the Nad-e-Ali area engaged in clearing minefields, there was a sense of optimism among Afghan troops, who are involved in unprecedented numbers.

"Almost all Nad-e-Ali and Marjah had been taken", General Aminullah Patiani, the senior Afghan officer in Operation Moshtarak, claimed.

To read the full article click here

Governor of Helmand: Operation Moshtarak could last a month

Ben Farmer, The Telegraph

Fighting in Operation Moshtarak to clear hundreds of Taliban fighters from a stronghold in Afghanistan's Helmand province could last a month, the governor has warned.


Progress is being slowed by booby traps and homemade bombs sown in Nad-i-Ali and Marjah, which American marine commanders have called the largest minefield Nato has ever seen.

Allied commanders have said they will proceed cautiously to avoid killing thousands of civilians in the path of the biggest Nato-led offensive yet launched in the Afghan campaign.Villagers inside Marjah have also told The Sunday Telegraph they are being held as human shields by Taliban who refuse to let them leave.

A combined force of 15,000 British, American and Afghan troops began the long-awaited assault on the region in the early hours of Saturday.

An armada of helicopters ferried troops into the town of Marjah, while ground forces pushed to the outskirts and fought sporadic gun battles.

At the end of the operation's first day, Gulab Mangal, governor of Helmand, said it was "the most successful operation we have ever carried out", but warned it would be long.

"We are aiming to finish the military operation in a month," he said.

Abdul Raheem Wardak, defence minister added: "The area has been heavily mined, that's why we are moving so slowly."

Gen Sher Mohammad Zazai, commander of the Afghan 205 Corps, said 20 insurgents had been killed in the early hours of the operation.

Up to 1,000 fighters, including Arab fanatics, were estimated to be inside the central Helmand district in the days before the assault, but it was not known how many were left as the fighting began.

Many are expected to melt into the civilian population to either continue their fight using guerrilla tactics or simply evade the security cordon and flee to other towns or provinces.

Pahlawan, a 28-year-old wheat farmer from inside Marjah, said the militants had insisted villagers remain.

He said: "Taliban are preventing people from leaving because they can hide themselves behind people. The Taliban also know the foreigners will not attack or not drop bombs. They are also taking food from the people."

Governor Mangal said: "People were taken as hostages prior to our arrival. In the areas we now have under control, they are free to come and go."

Saturday morning's assault followed an intense information campaign by the coalition, which has emphasised the significance and scale of the operation in an attempt to demoralise waiting fighters.

The assault is the biggest test yet of Gen Stanley McChrystal's counter insurgency strategy and doctrine of "courageous restraint" aimed at reducing civilian deaths.

Governor Mangal said coalition forces had refrained from calling in air strikes and agreed following a meeting with 34 local elders that compounds and people would only be searched by Afghans.

He said: "Members of the council have agreed to search compounds for us."

Marjah has repeatedly been raided by British and US forces in the past, but soldiers have immediately withdrawn because of a lack of resources, leaving the townsfolk at the mercy of Taliban reprisal.

Governor Mangal said: "This operation is completely different to the previous operations in Helmand. This started with the support and consultation of the tribal leaders in clergy."

Troops Take Positions in Taliban Haven

The New York Times

American, Afghan and British troops occupied crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marja on Saturday, encountering only sporadic fighting as they began the long and possibly bloody ordeal of house-to-house searches.

American Marines exchanged gunfire with Taliban insurgents throughout the day, and discovered several homemade bombs and other weapons. One American serviceman was reported killed in Marja on Saturday, and a British servicemen as well, officials said in Kabul. Three American soldiers were killed in neighboring Kandahar Province when the vehicle they were riding in struck a large explosive buried in the road.

American commanders said Saturday that the 6,000 American, Afghan and British troops who moved into the area earlier in the day had achieved every objective they had set for themselves. That included advancing into the city itself, seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the city’s two main bazaars in the center of town.

Some military units held meetings with local Afghans, to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban fighters and hidden bombs.

Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand Province’s governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 posts across Marja and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali. “We now occupy all the strategic points in the area,” he said.

The invasion of Marja is the largest military operation of its kind since the American-backed war began eight years ago. The area, about 77 square miles of farmland, villages and irrigation canals, is believed to be the largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan.

In the prelude to the attack, Afghan and Americans commanders said that the area contained hundreds of Taliban fighters, several hundred homemade bombs and a number of opium factories that the insurgents use to finance their operations.

On the first full day of operations, much of the expected Taliban resistance failed to materialize. Afghan and NATO troops discovered some bombs, narcotics and weapons caches, but the fighting itself was relatively desultory. There was certainly none of the eyeball-to-eyeball fighting that typified the battle for Falluja in Iraq in 2004, to which the invasion of Marja had been compared.

Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, said in a news conference in Kabul that the Afghan Army had suffered no dead at all and only a handful of wounded. He seemed a little surprised at the day’s events.

“Actually, the resistance is not there,” Mr. Wardak said. “Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area. But we still expected there to be several hundred in the area. Just yesterday, we received reports that reinforcements had arrived from neighboring provinces.”

It seemed possible that many insurgents had just faded away, or at least were waiting to show themselves. American and Afghan commanders took the unusual step of broadcasting their intention to clear Marja several weeks ago, in hopes that Taliban fighters would leave the city and thus make it easier to take hold of the place.

Dangerous days may yet lie ahead, though, officials said. Military officers estimate that the American, Afghan and British troops will need several days to clear most of the buildings in the area of fighters and bombs.

In addition, what has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marja operation has yet to begin. After clearing Marja, American and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in.

Taliban killed in Helmand during fighting in massive Operation Moshtarak

Ben Farmer, The Telegraph

Five Taliban fighters were killed during fighting in the last major Taliban stronghold in Helmand province on Saturday, after thousands of British and American troops attacked in the early hours.


An armada of helicopters ferried troops into the Marjah area of Nad-e-Ali district before dawn, and soldiers quickly engaged in sporadic firefights with waiting gunmen.

The operation, in a district which has become a hub of insurgent fighters, bomb-makers and opium-growers, has been described as the biggest of the war in Afghanistan. Commanders said the force was making good progress against hundreds of Taliban fighters.

By noon on Saturday, Afghan generals said five Taliban fighters had been killed and eight more arrested without any casualties being suffered by the Nato or Afghan government forces. But Nato commanders have warned that there would "definitely be casualties" in the coming days.

The offensive has been widely trailed in an information war designed to warn civilians and demoralise a mixed defence of Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters.

Taliban fighters have turned the district, which is criss-crossed with irrigation canals, into what has been described as the biggest minefield Nato forces have ever ventured into.

While some troops were airlifted into the town at dawn, others punched through to the main canal on the outskirts of the town by mid-morning.

Gen Sher Mohammad Zazai, commander of the 205th Brigade, said that the early stages of Operation Moshtarak, which means "together", had been highly successful.

He said: "Definitely there will be casualties and fighting. Our operation so far is very successful. We have not faced any casualties.

"Five insurgents have been killed and we have arrested eight more. I am sure this number will get higher.

"Different types of bombs have been planted in the area."

He said that in the early stages of the operation there had been little Taliban resistance.

The operation is the largest yet of the Afghan war, and aims to break the back of the Taliban insurgency in Helmand province.

It followed two days of shuras, meetings with local elders, in which the Afghan government and international forces sought help from leaders of the 120,000 residents of the district.

Nato signalled the offensive for weeks before its start, and in turn the Taliban announced that they would fight a classic guerrilla campaign instead of standing and fighting. They have promised to melt into the civilian population to continue their fight.

British and US commanders estimated that many of up to 1,000 fighters who had been based in the district may have slipped away in recent days.

Gulab Mangal, governor of Helmand, said the shura had decided on Friday that the assault should take place as soon as possible, though elders pleaded with the British and US to minimise civilian casualties.

There were no airstrikes in the early hours of the assault, in line with Nato's policy of trying to avoid civilian casualties. Witnesses said the night had been lit by flares and missile strikes.

Residents told The Sunday Telegraph on the eve of the assault that they were terrified of being caught in the crossfire.

Pahlawan, a 28-year-old farmer from Marjah with only one name, said: "We are living like prisoners because all around Marjah there is fighting. We think our houses will be damaged and civilians will be killed."

Ahmad Zia, a 37-year-old farmer added: "I think this operation will take time because the Taliban have put a lot of landmines in the streets and in the roads.

"I think Marjah will be the scene of fighting for one year or more."

Allied forces poised for biggest push of Afghanistan war

The Guardian

Skirmishes erupt and citizens flee as Taliban hole up in marsh town on eve of largest military offensive


Thousands of American and Afghan soldiers are poised to pounce on a major Taliban stronghold and narcotics hub in Helmand province as part of the biggest military offensive of the nine-year war.

Skirmishes have erupted on the fringes of Marjah, a town in the Helmand river valley, where hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to be holed up. The town, whose citizens were fleeing, is surrounded by a treacherous network of canals and heavily mined fields and roads.

Most of the opposing forces were locked in a stand-off. The US marine-led Nato force, which has been ringing the town for the past week, was still sealing off escape routes into the desert.

Roads leading from Marjah, home to an estimated 125,000 people, were clogged with cars and buses filled with civilians. It was not clear how many remained behind.

Government officials have made provisions for 7,000 displaced families in the Helmand capital, Lashkar Gah. But just 450 families had turned up.

Some of those escaping told Afghan reporters they were trying to slip quietly out of Marjah, fearing Taliban retribution.

The operation start date remains a secret but its American commander, Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, has vowed to go in "big, strong and fast". British troops are expected to launch simultaneous attacks on other Taliban strongholds in the province. In all, about 15,000 British and American troops will be involved.

A Taliban spokesman dismissed the operation as "more propaganda than military necessity".

What is being billed as Nato's largest assault since 2001 has also been its most heavily telegraphed. Sensitive to Afghan criticisms of civilian casualties, Nato commanders have given loud warning of their intentions to ensure villagers have time to flee or hunker down in their homes.

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Afghanistan’s very public offensive : teasing out the Taliban or walking into a trap ?

Reuters

(U.S. Marines in a dust storm in a camp near Marjah. Photograph by Reuters’ Goran Tomasevic)

Back in December, we were told about an operation, at some point in the near-future, which will target a Taliban hotspot in Afghanistan’s dangerous and restive southern Helmand province.

The U.S. Marines had been in Helmand since May and had already completed one major operation, Operation Khanjar, which saw them advancing into parts of Helmand where NATO forces, specifically the British, had until that point been struggling to break a stalemate with insurgents. Khanjar was very well covered by the media and it was touted as the biggest Marine offensive since the battle of Fallujah in Iraq in 2004 and the biggest airborne assault since the Vietnam War.

Operation Moshdarak, we have been told for the past two months, will apparently trump Khanjar in size and scale. It involves less Marines but more Afghan troops and more British troops. Moshdarak, which aims to take Marjah, a town said by Marine commanders to be one of the few left in Helmand still under total Taliban control, has been promoted by the U.S. military and NATO with enthusiasm and zeal.

Much has also been made of the Afghan army contribution to the operation. There will be more Afghan soldiers involved in Moshdarak than in any other joint operation conducted in the war in Afghanistan so far. But the emphasis on the Afghan soldier’s involvement serves more as a signal from Washington to Kabul and the rest of the world that Afghans need to start taking over the steering wheel when it comes to managing their own security. Ill equipped, and young, there are question marks over how much power and strength the Afghan army can bring to an operation this size.

The reason for publicising the operation so far in advance and feeding it to the media, we have been told, is so that Taliban fighters come out of the woodwork and prepare to face the strength of the U.S. military and its allies. NATO also hopes that radio announcements will persuade some fighters to give up and run away.

But the months of notice have also given insurgents ample opportunity to place plenty of bombs and booby traps in Marjah. Heavy rainfall in and around the town in the last few days may have done some damage to command-wire bombs – the kind that are triggered by a spotter from a distance. But Marines and soldiers say they never underestimate the deftness of their enemy when it comes to their crude expertise in the lethal art of bomb-making. They often comment on insurgents’ canny ability at planting complex networks of explosives and their success with tricky ambushes that force foreign troops to take cover behind walls rigged with bombs.

On some bases close to Marjah, Marines say they are already finding an average of three improvised explosive devices a day on the outskirts of the town. What awaits them in the centre of Marjah, only the insurgents know.

Ousted tribal leaders poised to take over after Nato offensive

Times Online


A “government-in-waiting” is poised to seize control in Marjah once thousands of Afghan and international soldiers force the Taleban from their central Helmand stronghold.

Tribal elders who were forced to flee by the insurgents are on standby in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, for what Nato commanders have warned will be the most difficult part of their operation.

More than 15,000 American, Afghan and British soldiers are making their final manoeuvres before Operation Moshtarak. Their mission is to reclaim a symbolic patch of farmland — about 12 miles (19km) from the British headquarters — where the Taleban govern more than 80,000 people.

Nato’s long-term counter-insurgency strategy, however, relies on creating an Afghan administration that is preferable to the insurgents’ rule — and that is up to the elders to deliver.Gulab Mangal, the Governor of Helmand, is due to hold a shura — council — with Marjah’s community leaders today to discuss why the troops will invade and what they hope to do afterwards.

“They want to discuss their plans for after the operation,” said Haji Sar Mualem Sahib, the deputy head of the exiled Marjah council. The leader was forced to flee last year after two councilmen were murdered.

“We were five people in our council, but the Taleban arrested me and two others, who they killed. They wanted to kill me, but the people protested and they let me free,” he said. “After that I came to live in Lashkar Gah, but I’m ready to go back.”

The insurgents are adept at exploiting disputes and decapitating traditional governance structures to entrench their control. Re-establishing government, or at least community control, will be the key to a Nato victory. “Taking Marjah’s not the hard part,” said an Afghan analyst in Kabul. “Nato say there’s a few hundred Taleban there and there are 15,000 troops. The hard part’s going to be what happens afterwards.”

The Taleban have vowed to stay and fight. Residents who fled before the impending battle said that insurgents had been laying improvised explosive devices.

Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor, said that about 300 families, roughly 1,800 people, had left Marjah. He said that 60 were in an emergency shelter in a half-built school in Lashkar Gah, and the others were with relatives and friends.

The UN and International Committee of the Red Cross will provide tents, blankets and food if more refugees arrive, but US commanders will be keen for them to return to Marjah once the fighting is finished.

Military planners are to spend millions of dollars on quick reconstruction projects designed to win hearts and minds after the offensive — which senior officers warned would probably be very bloody.

Afghan officials have picked a tribal leader from the notorious hotspot of Musa Qala in northern Helmand to oversee the reconstruction efforts. Haji Zahir Khan, who friends say has a wife in Germany and a wife in Musa Qala, worked with the former Taleban commander Mullah Salaam, who swapped sides in 2007 before a British operation to retake the town.

Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a tribal elder from Nad-e Ali, which includes Marjah, said that Mr Khan had lived in Germany and was an experienced administrator from his time as the deputy head of Musa Qala’s district council. Mr Khan could not be reached for comment.

300 families flee Afghan town ahead of offensive

Associated Press


About 300 families have already fled a southern Afghan town ahead of a major U.S.-Afghan offensive planned on a key Taliban stronghold, provincial officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesman vowed that insurgent forces in and near Marjah in southern Helmand province are ready "to do jihad, to sacrifice their lives" in the upcoming battle, which will serve as a significant test of the new U.S. strategy for turning back the Taliban.

In Brussels, a NATO spokesman said the Taliban garrison in Marjah had the option to surrender, leave or fight. "They are well advised to take up options one or two," spokesman James Appathurai said.

"The area which is the focus of this operation has been known for years as an insurgent stronghold. It is actively defended and will require a large military operation to clear," he said.

No date for the main attack has been announced but all signs indicate it will come soon. It will be the first major military offensive since President Barack Obama announced last December that he was sending 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal, said some 300 families — an estimated 1,800 people — have already moved out of Marjah in recent weeks and days to the capital of Lashkar Gah, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast, where they are living with relatives or in government-sponsored shelters.

About 60 families are living in a school, which has been converted into a temporary shelter stocked with tents, blankets, food and non-food items, he said. The other 240 families are living with relatives in the area, he said.

Ahmadi said preparations have been made to receive more refugees if necessary. Afghan families have an average of six members, according to private relief groups.

"All these things have been prepared by the governor's office and disaster department," he said.

The U.S. goal is to quickly retake control of Marjah, a farming community and major opium-production center, from Taliban forces. That would enable the Afghan government to re-establish a presence, bringing security, electricity, clean water and other public services to the estimated 80,000 inhabitants.

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Afghanistan: A new role for British troops

Kim Sengupta, The Independant


This time last year Major Tom Bewick was scrambling along a ditch under heavy Taliban mortar and rocket fire in hours of rolling, close quarter combat in the heart of the Helmand badlands.

Since then he has returned home, got married, had a baby and volunteered to go back with the next brigade deploying to the frontline, an example of how the Afghan war has become the defining feature in a British soldier’s life.

The Independent accompanied Major Bewick and his troops in Operation Kapcha Salaam, of ‘Cobra Salute’, to Lakari, on that last action. The furthest that a British combat team had ever gone in the lawless ungoverned space of southern Afghanistan.

Major Bewick’s next mission will see the start of a new role for British troops in the conflict, providing security for Marjah, the tract of Taliban territory due to be recovered in an impending operation.

General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, has warned that holding the area would provide more of a challenge than taking it. The insurgents may disappear in the face of vastly superior Western firepower during the assault, but, as they have shown in the past, they will return to fight another day. At the same time the loyalty of the residents would have to be won and maintained, not the easiest task for a foreign force in the fiercely independent Pashtun belt.

Major Bewick will be chief of staff to the 4th Mechanised Brigade which is being sent at a time of relentlessly rising number of fatalities. The last few days saw the numbers of British dead rise to 256, reaching and surpassing the toll of the Falklands War. There is little doubt that other such grim milestones will be reached in this bitter attritional struggle.

Speaking at the brigade’s pre-deployment exercise on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, Major Bewick, 36, said “It will be silly to say that this is something one does not think about. We see what is happening every day, the news that is coming through. There are risks involved and each time one goes back that risk heightens. But I had no hesitation about volunteering for this brigade, I picked up a bit of local knowledge when on the ground and I want to pass this on in my new job. Obviously my wife is a bit apprehensive, but she has been fully supportive.

“It is, I think, important to have continuity, learn from what you have done in the past, understand the Afghan people, that is the only way we have ahead and I just want to play my part in that.”

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Refugees flee to capital of Helmand to avoid huge Nato Afghan offensive

The Times Onlines

As British troops count the hours until the start of the largest Nato offensive since the US-led invasion of 2001, Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, is witnessing the arrival of a grim procession of frightened refugees desperate to escape the battle.

Nato forces have urged civilians to flee Marjah — one of the most heavily populated parts of rural Helmand — as more than 15,000 British, Afghan and American troops make their final preparations for Operation Moshtarak — “Togetherness”.

However, refugees reaching the city have claimed that as much as 90 per cent of the population are trapped in the war zone by belts of improvised bombs, which have rendered the road network impassable.

With his two-year-old son clasped to his chest, Haji Mohammed Manan said yesterday that he had walked eight hours through flooded opium fields with his wife and seven children to avoid the danger on the roads.

“During the day and during the night, the Taleban are laying landmines everywhere,” Mr Manan said. “We had no choice. We had to walk through the water.”

Western commanders have taken the unusual decision to publicise the impending operation to give civilians the chance to leave the area.

While commanders expect advancing troops to face thousands of roadside bombs, less clear is whether the Taleban will fight or, more likely, melt away and mount a guerrilla war.

“What we are seeking to do is to make sure people are safe. That’s why we’ve gone out of our way to explain what we were trying to do and when we were going to do it,” Brigadier James Cowan, the commander of British Forces in Helmand, said yesterday.

Afghan officials said that bombs and booby traps would slow the advance into Marjah and that the initial push could be expected to last about three weeks. Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, has broadcast to people in the district advising them to stay away from Taleban positions if they cannot escape the area entirely.

Daoud Ahmadi, the governor’s spokesman, said: “The Taleban have laid lots of landmines, making it difficult for people to leave. We have to clear the landmines. Then we have to be careful about the civilians.”

Marjah was originally reclaimed from the desert by American engineers who built irrigation canals as part of an aid project in the 1950s. The terrain, accessed by narrow tracks and criss-crossed with deep ditches, is easy to defend and difficult to attack. One local journalist based in Lashkar Gah told The Times that a mood of pessimism and apprehension reigned among local people, despite Nato’s concerted effort in recent months to avoid civilian casualties.

“The Nato forces go to an area and drive out the Taleban. A few weeks later they are back and the fighting goes on,” he said, declining to be named. “The proportion of people who think that the foreign forces are good is very small.”

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said that its staff had already given emergency aid to 600 displaced families in Lashkar Gah last week, and it was planning to help 420 families this week.

So far, in what commanders refer to as a “shaping operation” before the start of the main offensive, British and US troops have mounted probing attacks around Marjah from more securely held territory in Nad Ali.

Helmand Refugees Fleeing Ahead Of Anti-Taliban Offensive

Helmand Refugees Fleeing Ahead Of Anti-Taliban Offensive


By Elias Dai, Ron Synovitz, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Hundreds of Afghan families have been fleeing Taliban-controlled territory in the southern Afghan province of Helmand ahead of an expected offensive by NATO and Afghan government troops.

As many as 2,000 Taliban fighters reportedly are concentrated and fortifying themselves in and around the town of Marjah.

Fearful of being caught in the violence, some residents are heading for Helmand's provincial capital of Lashkar Gah or places in neighboring Kandahar province that they consider to be relatively safe.

At the central bus station in Lashkar Gah, buses arriving straight from the town of Marjah have been packed full of the displaced in recent days. Meanwhile, many trucks can be seen along the road -- loaded with furniture, home appliances, and other personal belongings of fleeing families.

Mauwla Dad, a truck driver from Marjah, tells RFE/RL he has made more than a dozen recent journeys, shuttling families and their belongings to safe haven.

"Every day, I have been providing transportation for three or four families," Dad says. "People are leaving Marjah amid rumors that the [anti-Taliban] offensive could begin any day now."

A Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent in Helmand Province reports that villagers also are escaping to the nearby districts of Baba-ji, Nad-Ali, and Gereshk.

But Brigadier James Cowen, the British commander of Task Force Helmand, tells Reuters in Lashkar Gah that he thinks reporters are blowing the civilian movements out of proportion.

"I think those reports of fleeing residents is a little exaggerated, in fact. I mean there are some leaving the area, but by no means the numbers that the news are reporting," Cowen says, according to Reuters. "I think we may see more of that in the forthcoming days, but we are keeping a close eye on it."

Families Uprooted

Ghulam Farouq Noorzai, who heads the Afghan government's refugee affairs department in Helmand Province, says officials have formed an "emergency commission" with plans to receive 15,000 families. They have also sent a delegation to meet with UN humanitarian aid officials responsible for southern Afghanistan.

"The World Health Organization, the World Food Program, and the United Nations Refugee Agency -- the UNHCR -- have accepted our plan," Noorzai says.

Noorzai tells RFE/RL that villagers in and around Marjah are gravely concerned about the expected military offensive. He says many are staying in their homes for now because they have no place to go, but adds that a flood of displaced families are expected in Lashkar Gah and in nearby Kandahar Province once the anticipated offensive begins.

"Around 400 to 500 families already have arrived [in Lashkar Gah]," Noorzai says. "Our emergency commission is registering these displaced people. We have created a refugee center at a school ground in Lashkar Gah and plan to move them there soon."

Haji Akhtar Mohammad, a resident of Marjah, tells Reuters that he considers the offensive a necessary step by Afghan and NATO forces to keep the province free from the kind of intimidation that Taliban fighters have imposed on residents of his community.

"The military operation is being launched in our village in order to keep us from any possible danger," Mohammad says, according to Reuters. "I decided to leave the village [for now] and we are heading to Lashkar Gah to rent a house."

Military Might

Meanwhile, NATO and Afghan government checkpoints have been set up around the Marjah district in an attempt to stop Taliban fighters from slipping out of the area among the fleeing civilian population.

RFE/RL's correspondent in Helmand reports that scattered clashes were occurring today at villages in the nearby district of Nad-Ali, where NATO and Afghan government troops have set up blocking positions.

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