thedrifter
03-11-08, 05:19 AM
Marines see re-run in Afghan theatre
Matthew Fisher, National Post
Published: Monday, March 10, 2008
Dave Martin/Pool/Reuters
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -A forward party of 3,200 U.S. Marines is already on the ground preparing to begin combat operations next month. It is not the first time that there have been jarheads at the Kandahar Airfield.
As the Marines are fond of saying, they were the tip of the spear when the province of Kandahar became the last Taliban and al-Qaeda redoubt to fall to U.S. forces, 11 weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Choppering 650 kilometres from assault ships in the Arabian Sea to Kandahar, the Marines routed forces loyal to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.
After holding the area for about one month, the jarheads handed over what was then thought to have been the last gasps of the Afghan war to elements of the U.S. army's 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division and a 845-man strong battle group built from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry led by then-Lieut. Col. Pat Stogran.
Canadian and U.S. forces fought the Taliban and al-Qaeda in operations in mountains to the northeast of Kandahar at Tora Bora and also a place that became known to those who were there as the Whale.
After that, in what will likely go down as one of the greatest military/ political blunders in history, Washington declared the war in Afghanistan over and switched its attention and almost all of its manpower and firepower to Iraq, where U.S. President George W. Bush quickly claimed a non-existent victory with tragic consequences for both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, six years after the Taliban and al-Qaeda were thought to have been crushed, Marines and the Patricias, who have just arrived for another tour, are once again taking up arms against exactly the same enemy in roughly the same place. An infantry battalion out of southern California is on its ways to Kandahar to devote itself to mentor Afghan police.
More interesting, from a Canadian point of view, is the deployment to Kandahar from North Carolina of the 24th MEU, or Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has at its centre a reinforced infantry battalion.
Officially, everyone here remains tight-lipped about how many of the Marines will be deployed alongside the Canadians here.
However, that has not stopped rampant speculation about this or about how robust the storied Marines' rules of engagement will be.
Given the Marines fierce fighting doctrine and the fact that the first of nearly 30 Marine aircraft -- Harrier attack jets, Cobra attack helicopters and troop helicopters -- have begun to arrive, as well as recent hawkish comments from political and military leaders in the U.S. about what their mission was expected to achieve, wherever the Marines end up, it is clear that they will add a more aggressive dimension to the war against the Taliban.
This is the make or break year for NATO in Afghanistan.
Or so everyone keeps saying every spring.
Aside from the fact that the Marines will be here, there are several new twists which suggest this year may be different than any other since the spring of 2002.
The UN has concluded that opium production in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand -- which feeds many poor Afghan farmers as well as the Taliban insurgency and a Mafia that is sometimes indistinguishable from the Taliban -- has reached record levels.
Another grim development is that while the Taliban almost never attempt to engage the coalition in direct combat any more because they have learned that they will always suffer catastrophic losses, the number of IED attacks and suicide attacks carried out by the insurgency has continued to rise. While tactically ineffective instruments of war, they have partially succeeded in undermining Western political will.
The Marines streaming into Afghanistan today are coming for only seven months.
However, encouraged by comments by Marine Corps commandant General James Conway, who has publicly lobbied to move most or all of the more than 20,000 Marines in Iraq to Afghanistan, the buzz around Marine bases in the United States these days has shifted from Iraq's Anbar province to Kandahar.
Some stateside Marine units have already been told to develop counter-insurgency training cycles designed to put them in the Afghan theatre next year.
Whether other NATO countries chose to answer Canada's plea for more boots on the ground in Kandahar, the Manley Panel's intentionally low demand that 1,000 combat troops be sent to the province will undoubtedly be met by the Marines.
Ellie
Matthew Fisher, National Post
Published: Monday, March 10, 2008
Dave Martin/Pool/Reuters
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -A forward party of 3,200 U.S. Marines is already on the ground preparing to begin combat operations next month. It is not the first time that there have been jarheads at the Kandahar Airfield.
As the Marines are fond of saying, they were the tip of the spear when the province of Kandahar became the last Taliban and al-Qaeda redoubt to fall to U.S. forces, 11 weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Choppering 650 kilometres from assault ships in the Arabian Sea to Kandahar, the Marines routed forces loyal to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.
After holding the area for about one month, the jarheads handed over what was then thought to have been the last gasps of the Afghan war to elements of the U.S. army's 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division and a 845-man strong battle group built from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry led by then-Lieut. Col. Pat Stogran.
Canadian and U.S. forces fought the Taliban and al-Qaeda in operations in mountains to the northeast of Kandahar at Tora Bora and also a place that became known to those who were there as the Whale.
After that, in what will likely go down as one of the greatest military/ political blunders in history, Washington declared the war in Afghanistan over and switched its attention and almost all of its manpower and firepower to Iraq, where U.S. President George W. Bush quickly claimed a non-existent victory with tragic consequences for both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, six years after the Taliban and al-Qaeda were thought to have been crushed, Marines and the Patricias, who have just arrived for another tour, are once again taking up arms against exactly the same enemy in roughly the same place. An infantry battalion out of southern California is on its ways to Kandahar to devote itself to mentor Afghan police.
More interesting, from a Canadian point of view, is the deployment to Kandahar from North Carolina of the 24th MEU, or Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has at its centre a reinforced infantry battalion.
Officially, everyone here remains tight-lipped about how many of the Marines will be deployed alongside the Canadians here.
However, that has not stopped rampant speculation about this or about how robust the storied Marines' rules of engagement will be.
Given the Marines fierce fighting doctrine and the fact that the first of nearly 30 Marine aircraft -- Harrier attack jets, Cobra attack helicopters and troop helicopters -- have begun to arrive, as well as recent hawkish comments from political and military leaders in the U.S. about what their mission was expected to achieve, wherever the Marines end up, it is clear that they will add a more aggressive dimension to the war against the Taliban.
This is the make or break year for NATO in Afghanistan.
Or so everyone keeps saying every spring.
Aside from the fact that the Marines will be here, there are several new twists which suggest this year may be different than any other since the spring of 2002.
The UN has concluded that opium production in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand -- which feeds many poor Afghan farmers as well as the Taliban insurgency and a Mafia that is sometimes indistinguishable from the Taliban -- has reached record levels.
Another grim development is that while the Taliban almost never attempt to engage the coalition in direct combat any more because they have learned that they will always suffer catastrophic losses, the number of IED attacks and suicide attacks carried out by the insurgency has continued to rise. While tactically ineffective instruments of war, they have partially succeeded in undermining Western political will.
The Marines streaming into Afghanistan today are coming for only seven months.
However, encouraged by comments by Marine Corps commandant General James Conway, who has publicly lobbied to move most or all of the more than 20,000 Marines in Iraq to Afghanistan, the buzz around Marine bases in the United States these days has shifted from Iraq's Anbar province to Kandahar.
Some stateside Marine units have already been told to develop counter-insurgency training cycles designed to put them in the Afghan theatre next year.
Whether other NATO countries chose to answer Canada's plea for more boots on the ground in Kandahar, the Manley Panel's intentionally low demand that 1,000 combat troops be sent to the province will undoubtedly be met by the Marines.
Ellie