US military noose tightens on Afghanistan town

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Offensive looms in Helmand province
US military noose tightens on Afghanistan town
By Patrick Martin
12 February 2010

Thousands of US Marines and Army troops have moved into position on
the outskirts of Marjah, a town in central Helmand province,
identified publicly by the Pentagon as the first major target of the
offensive authorized by President Barack Obama.

The town is the largest population center under Taliban control and
has been dubbed a “Taliban stronghold” in the US media in order to
excuse in advance what are likely to be massive civilian casualties.
Press reports citing military sources claim that up to 1,000
“militants” are making a stand in Marjah, lacing the roads and fields
with land mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

US officials described the attack as “the biggest offensive of the
nine-year war,” and portrayed the impending battle as a turning point.
The town was briefly occupied by British troops last spring, an attack
whose purpose was to prevent a Taliban offensive against the Helmand
provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, 25 miles to the northeast. The
farming and market town was abandoned soon after capture because there
were too few Afghan forces available to garrison it.

This time the intention is to seize the town and eliminate the Taliban
presence in the surrounding district of Nad Ali, which has a total
population of about 80,000. A massive force of some 15,000 US,
British, Canadian and Afghan puppet troops has been mobilized for
Operation Moshtarak (Operation Together in the local language),
approximately 15 times the number of Taliban fighters said to be in
the area.

Reports in the British press, beginning with the Sunday Times of
London February 7, claimed that British SAS troops, the equivalent of
US Army Rangers or Navy Seals, had been sent into the area around
Marjah and had killed as many as 50 Taliban commanders. “Special
forces guys have been going in on assassination missions with the aim
of decapitating the Taliban force,” the Times reported. Leaflets
naming some of the murdered men were then air-dropped over the town,
in an effort to demoralize the Taliban fighters, although most cannot
read.

British troops were said to be positioned directly north of Marjah,
while soldiers in the US Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade and Marines were
northeast of the town, moving down from Lashkar Gah, accompanied by
Afghan puppet troops led by Canadian “advisers.” Another unit of
Marines was moving on the town from the east, securing crossing points
along the Helmand River.

Press reports said that Marines came under sniper fire beginning
Tuesday, February 9, and that Cobra attack helicopters had been called
in to suppress it.

The Marines have deployed the new Assault Breacher Vehicle, a 72-ton
vehicle built to be relatively impervious to land mines and smaller
IEDs, combining the functions of tank and bulldozer. The ABV is
equipped with a 15-foot blade that plows 14 inches deep—detonating
mines and also destroying fields. It also carries a rocket-fired
linked-charge made of high-powered C4 explosive, which can blow up an
entire minefield.

Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern
Afghanistan said of Marjah: “This may be the largest IED threat and
largest minefield that NATO has ever faced.”

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn carried an interview with a Taliban
commander in Marjah, who said that the initial resistance his forces
would engage in would be guerrilla warfare. “We are men from the
villages, we know the area, we can hide our guns in the village and we
can use them again when we have the opportunity,” he said. “The
operation will not be successful.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned February 10 that
“the current upsurge in military operations in Helmand... has resulted
in a marked increase in the number of casualties requiring emergency
medical treatment.” It added, “Staff working at the ICRC’s first aid
post in Marjah have been seeing increasing numbers of war casualties.”
Local officials in Helmand province said that fewer than 500 families
have fled to escape the fighting, and that the bulk of the civilian
population was still in their homes.

US officials have given repeated warnings of the offensive, naming the
town they are targeting. While the American media has made much of
these warnings, presenting them as an extraordinary effort to alert
the population and avoid civilian casualties, there have been
conflicting signals. Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said the
population should be encouraged to flee, but US and British commanders
have urged residents of Marjah to stay in their homes.

The Washington Post gave another reason for the advance notice,
reporting, “U.S. and NATO commanders contend that telling Afghans that
the operation is imminent also could help prevent Afghan President
Hamid Karzai, who gave his approval for the mission two weeks ago,
from backing down in the face of pressure from tribal chieftains who
have profited from Marjah’s drug industry.”

As with most military operations in Afghanistan, with or without media
announcements, the offensive against Marjah would not be a secret to
the Taliban guerrillas, who are based among the people in the area and
can see and feel the impact of the efforts by US and NATO forces to
prepare the battlefield.

The real attitude of the American and other imperialist forces towards
the local population can be seen in a report carried Thursday in the
Wall Street Journal, describing US military operations in the Pashmul
area of Kandahar, the province immediately to the east of Helmand, and
another major center of guerrilla opposition to the US-led occupation.

The article carries the blunt headline, “New Battles Test U.S.
Strategy In Afghanistan:

Focus on Safeguarding Civilian Lives Frustrates Troops in Taliban
Territory.”

It goes on to describe the mounting hostility of rank-and-file US
soldiers and lower-ranking officers to the restrictions being placed
on their use of firepower, in the name of reducing civilian casualties.

“Across southern Afghanistan, including the Marjah district where
coalition forces are massing for a large offensive, the line between
peaceful villager and enemy fighter is often blurred,” the Journal
article reports. “American troops have dubbed Pashmul, a cluster of
villages sprawling across the fertile belt of grape and poppy fields
west of Kandahar city, ‘the heart of darkness.’”

The newspaper cites the estimate by the local US commander, Captain
Duke Reim, that 95 percent of the local population are either Taliban
themselves or help the Taliban. “People here are on the side of the
insurgency and have no trust in the government,” District Gov. Niyaz
Mohammad Serhadi told the newspaper. “Insurgents are in their villages
24 hours.”

The report continues: “Since assuming command of coalition troops last
summer, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal curtailed airstrikes, limited
house searches, and put the onus on winning the population’s trust.
Forgoing some attacks on the Taliban to spare Afghan civilians, the
counterinsurgency theory goes, would eventually convince the local
population to side with the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan authorities.
In the meantime, however, new restrictions on American firepower can
also exact a steep toll in American lives—and give the Taliban a
tactical advantage.”

The Journal, voice of the most right-wing militarist faction of the US
ruling elite, clearly objects to such restrictions on slaughtering the
natives, and its reporter found similar feelings in the military ranks:

“Among front-line troops, many of them used to more liberal rules of
engagement in Iraq, frustration is boiling over. ‘It’s like fighting
with two hands behind your back,’ says Sgt. First Class Samuel Frantz,
a platoon sergeant in Capt. Reim’s unit, the Charlie Company of the
1st Battalion of the 12th Infantry Regiment. ‘We’re so worried about
not hurting the population’s feelings that we’re not doing our jobs’.”

Such sentiments are the predictable byproduct of the escalating
resistance to the occupation of Afghanistan by the most powerful
imperialist military force. These sentiments lead inexorably to the
perpetration of Vietnam-style atrocities, in towns and villages that
will become the Afghan equivalents of My Lai.

Meanwhile, the casualties among the occupiers will continue to rise,
alongside the higher, but relatively unreported, death toll among the
occupied. An explosion blasted a joint Afghan-US combat post in the
eastern province of Paktia Thursday, injuring several US troops.

The Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday that British hospitals have
been warned to prepare for the “very real risk” of increased
casualties among troops participating in the Helmand offensive. It
cited a National Audit Office report detailing growing strain on
British medical facilities, including the possibility that some
British hospitals would have to displace civilians to make way for
more military patients.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/afgh-f12.shtml

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