Marine muscle adds to Afghan offensive
Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 2:55 PM
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On Assignment
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
OUTSIDE GARMSER, Afghanistan –
The U.S. Marines began a major operation to try to disrupt the Taliban’s stranglehold on southern Afghanistan early Tuesday. NBC News’ Jim Maceda is embedded with Marines at Forward Operating Base Dwyer outside of Garmser, Afghanistan, in Helmand province, and responded to questions via satellite phone.
You’ve reported from Afghanistan extensively since the war began in 2001 – what makes this military embed different from your past trips to Afghanistan?
The most significant difference is that this embed is in southern Afghanistan. Most of my trips into Afghanistan over the last couple of years have been with U.S. forces in the east, along the Pakistan border. During those missions, the U.S. troops were self-contained, giving themselves their own orders. Here they are working with the British-led NATO forces responsible for Helmand province.
The troops in the east were making big changes, I think, in improving the situation for local Afghans up and down the border with Pakistan. In April 2006, they started to apply a kind of Gen. Petraeus counter-insurgency plan, which has not been the case in the south. Since probably 2002, this area has been no-man’s land for Westerners and for international coalition forces, and it has become a safe-haven and fiefdom of the Taliban.
The reason why we are here now is because we had the opportunity to embed with the first large contingent of U.S. forces to operate this far south in Helmand province, the first Marines to be here since they left in 2002. So this is really a kind of "back to the future" type operation. The Marines arrived in Afghanistan about six weeks ago, and after weeks of preparation, the first major offensive operation launched today.
What is the significance of the timing? Is it to counteract a spring offensive from the Taliban?
One senior officer on the forward operating base here said that the idea of a spring offensive has become a cliché. He said that it is actually "fighting season" – meaning it has warmed up to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit a day here in Helmand province and the time is right for an offensive. What the Marines are trying to do is to prevent the offensive that they anticipate the Taliban will try to launch by taking the fight to the Taliban in their own backyard.
Specifically, what is happening now and will probably continue over the next 7-10 days, is an operation called "Operation Stay Free." The idea is to push out southwards from a town called Garmser – an area that is a rather complex combination of dykes, canals and compounds on the east side of the Helmand River.
Garmser is a de facto borderline that cuts Helmand province in two. The northern part of Helmand province is pretty much under the control of NATO and the central government emanating from Kabul. Everything south, all the way to Pakistan, has been referred to as "Talibanistan" because the area is controlled entirely by Taliban militants, drug traffickers and corrupt politicians.
What is happening in a nutshell is that the muscle has now come – meaning about 3,200 Marines – to help the British-led NATO forces who have been fighting here over the past year. The goal of the Marines is to help the British open up corridors southwards towards Pakistan and disrupt the Taliban and take away some high ground that they use to control smuggling routes.
A lot of opium goes from the poppy-infested Helmand province into Pakistan where it is processed into heroin and sold for about $4 billion dollars a year. Helmand province is the drug capital of the world in many ways.
The Taliban is going to fight, no doubt, to maintain its control of these areas. But, with the Marines here, it gives NATO the muscle to open up these routes, to take these compounds and to expand the NATO footprint which so far has only gone as far as Garmser.
You mentioned the issue of the resurgence of the Taliban and the opium trade. We’ve been hearing about this problem for years. Have the coalition forces made any dent in the opium trade?
Yes, they have. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan; 13 of them were opium or poppy-free last year and the government says 16 of them are poppy-free this year, so there has been an increase in the number of poppy-free provinces.
The problem is that poppy-growing provinces, mostly in the south, are doubling and tripling their output because they are controlled by the Taliban and any eradication efforts there have failed.
To give you one example of the difficulty, USAID and the Afghan government have been trying a program called the Alternative Livelihood Program or ALP. The idea is to get poppy farmers away from the poppy crop and into infrastructure and rebuilding roads and bridges.
There was supposed to be an influx of cash – millions of dollars – into provinces like Helmand and elsewhere, but that money never came. It either ended up in the pockets of politicians in Kabul or it did show up and was immediately confiscated by the Taliban. So there is no financial incentive for poppy farmers to stop growing the crop and all signs are that poppy cultivation this year will be even larger than the record-breaking cultivation in 2007 and 2006.
So poppy cultivation is still a major issue – there have been some gains in the northern, central and eastern parts of the country, but those are counterbalanced by the ongoing problem of poppy growing in the south.
How is the morale of Marines, given they are back there for the first time since 2002?
I’ve spent a good deal of time with them over the last week – speaking to everyone from grunts to officers – and I’ve got to say that the morale is excellent. These guys are professionals – they trained for six months before they came here and are well-prepared and well-seasoned.
Many of these Marines have deployed two or three times – including in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq, in 2006 and 2007. They say that they’ve seen how things can change – like in Ramadi – where it went from being a hellhole to an almost thriving and peaceful area of Iraq at the end of their 15-month deployment.
So they’ve seen the changes there, and they think it’s possible to apply the same counter-insurgency model here in Afghanistan. They believe it is just a question of patience.
Now this first operation is under way, and the conditions are very difficult, but their morale is terrific.
