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View Full Version : Revenge is the mission as Marines push into Taleban heartland



thedrifter
05-14-04, 10:35 PM
Revenge is the mission as Marines push into Taleban heartland
(AFP)

14 May 2004



NORTHERN KANDAHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan - Hours after 23-year-old Corporal Ronald Payne was killed by suspected Taleban in southcentral Afghanistan, his fellow marines are preparing to re-engage the enemy. Their mission is clear -- to hunt his killers.


“Corporal Payne was our KIA (Killed In Action). Staff Sergeant Thompson is fighting for his life. We’re going into the mountains to get the bad guys and we’re going to kill them,” Captain Paul Merita of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) tells his troops.

The first marine from the newly-deployed 2,700-strong group to die in Afghanistan, Payne received multiple shot wounds in the early hours of Saturday morning when his five-man foot patrol was ambushed near the border between Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces.

Sent into the area after receiving information that Taleban were present there, the marines came upon a man carrying a machine gun. They beckoned him to approach and as he did so he opened fire, shooting Payne. Other militants then emerged from the mountainous terrain to engage in the firefight in which at least two suspected Taleban were also killed.

Hours later, three companies from the Battalion Landing Team under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Assad Khan are positioning for a retaliatory assault.

Khan, who was born in Pakistan’s tribal area bordering Afghanistan and who speaks the local language of Pashto, is in command of the frontline marines brought here to fight, capture and kill Taleban and other militants.

Part of his mission here he says is to “disrupt the supply lines” feeding insurgents and arms into an area which has not had a permanent coalition presence before.

The MEU are in Afghanistan as part of the US-led coalition’s push to eradicate Al Qaeda, Taleban and other militants’ networks in the country.

They are also part of a new American strategy under which troops will stay longer in the field and build relationships with locals rather than just fly into hotspots to conduct operations.

At present some 1,400 marines are out patrolling villages, delivering assistance where possible and gathering evidence of Taleban activity, says the unit’s Public Affairs Officer Captain Eric Dent.

“We’ve got to do as much as we can to disrupt Taleban/ACM (Anti-Coalition Militia) activity,” he says.

The area is a known Taleban mountain hideaway and “C’ Company has already found weapons caches buried in the walls and floors of homes in these villages. One of these caches was so large that the marines borrowed donkeys to transport it away for destruction.

Hidden away behind remote mountains and primitive roads, the villagers survive on opium production and poppies are openly cultivated.

During the cordon and searches of two villages the residents tell the Americans that two Afghans had crossed into the province from Pakistan, had threatened locals and demanded food. It’s these men, who were killed by the Americans during the ambush, who carried out the attack, they say.

Although a Taleban leaflet is found in one village, nothing else turns up but two boxes of food and one of water, left behind by the Americans on a previous visit.

The response frustrates the marines. “We have a guy who just got killed, we have another guy who we’ve just heard is fighting for his life,” says Hospital Medic Lori Butierries, one of six women in the company. “But they are not going to tell us anything because they are scared of the Taleban.”

The marines leave without anything of significance, a single bullet found in one building is pocketed by a needy ANA soldier for use in his own weapon.

Next morning the marines, who have now been told the injured man will survive, hike five kilometres over a mountain pass to arrive in another village as locals are burying the two suspected Taleban.

Meanwhile memorial services are being held in American bases in memory of Corporal Payne, who survived deployment to Iraq only to become America’s latest loss in this quieter war.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2004/May/subcontinent_May286.xml&section=subcontinent


Ellie