One More Thing . . . About the Marine Offensive In Helmand Posted by Michael Cohen

I'm curious about something. If the new US focus in Afghanistan is to protect the population why are sending 1,000 Marines into Helmand Province to occupy a ghost town?

Hundreds of US Marines and Afghan soldiers descended on a nearly empty city in southern Afghanistan on Friday to cut off supply routes for Taliban fighters who have taken refuge in the area. The troops want to starve out the insurgents holed up around Now Zad, which was once a vibrant city of 30,000 but now is a virtual ghost town because years of fighting.

This combined with all the tough talk from the Administration about cracking down on Afghan Taliban safe havens in Pakistan makes me think that in the short term our focus in Afghanistan will be a bit more enemy centric and a bit less population centric. Good (ish). If we're really going to make a fight of this then regaining the military initiative against the Taliban seems to be an essential first step - and squeezing the Taliban from both sides seems like a smart approach.

Of course there are two problems here. One, we have no guarantees that the Pakistanis will actually allow us to to take the fight to the Quetta Shura or will even do it themselves. Second, we have no Afghan Army to help us hold the gains made in Helmand, a point confirmed by Admiral Mullen.

Mullen, pressed by Levin, conceded that there may be some cases where the United States has to hold areas after clearing them, at least until Afghan National Army capabilities rise. Mullen’s estimate: there will be 170,00 Afghan troops available by July 2011. Gates said the goal by December 2010 is 130,000 soldiers.

170,000 Afghan troops available by July 2011? And I want to play shortstop for the Boston Red Sox. Color me skeptical. This gets to the proverbial fly in the ointment of this whole Afghan strategy. Even if we do everything right over the next 18 months, if the Pakistanis, the Afghans and yes, the Taliban, don't do their part the whole thing either isn't going to work or it's not going to be sustainable.

UPDATE: Gregg Carlstrom makes another interesting point about the reports he is seeing out of Afghanistan that coercion and violence by ISAF forces is on the rise:

None of this stuff -- killing civilians, detaining elders, focusing on the drug trade and "Taliban strongholds" -- comports with Gen. Stanley McChrystal's stated mission of population-centric counterinsurgency.

What? I am shocked; shocked I tell you to hear anyone suggest that population centric counter-insurgency is occasionally coercive and violent. I'm sure news of this will send the folks who wrote FM 3-24 back to the drawing board.

Comments

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Operation Cobra's Revenge (sigh - who names these things?) has plenty of goals. Here is my cut'n'paste summary from the media coverage:

The local valley is "a major through-route" for the Taliban and the town of Now Zad has become a nest of bomb making camps, opium storing centres, a "blooding ground" where young jihadists cut their teeth and a transit point for foreign fighters, mainly Pakistanis, to other parts of Helmand.

The offensive aims at cutting off the Taliban communication routes & supply lines, finding weapons caches, and killing and capturing Taliban forces.

The larger goal is provide enough security for the Afghan government and NGOs to begin clearing explosives so they can repopulate the town. Aiding them was the combat debut of the Marines' massive mine and bomb-clearing machine, the Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV) which is built on the chassis of the M1A1 Abrams tank. One area of town is so heavily mined, Marines refer to it as "no leg alley." Since 2005 several Marines have lost limbs there.

In order to secure control of the area, the ISAF are building checkposts and outposts as they go. Once the Marines (& Brits, Dutch, ANA) have secured the area, however, it is the Afghans who are expected to hang on to it.

So that's the rationale at least.

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