U.S. Marines Make Fragile Progress in Helmand

World Politics Review

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Marine Capt. Scott Cuomo of Fox company, 2nd battalion, 2nd Marine regiment, must have felt very confident. How else to explain his climbing into an armorless Afghan army truck -- a coffin on four wheels -- next to Haji Abdullah Jan, the Afghan district governor, with only a few Afghan army soldiers for protection, to speed down empty dirt roads almost certainly mined by the Taliban?

But Cuomo's confidence is not misplaced. The men make it safely to their destination: a destroyed compound beside which the barren, twisted remains of three dead trees point grotesquely to the sky. The district governor, clearly moved, walks to the building. It is his house, which he is visiting for the first time in four years because of the war. Cuomo grins excitedly. The governor is home.

"This is a big success," Cuomo says. "It may be harder to quantify than counting the number of bad guys we have killed, but it is success."

Garmsir district lies in the southern-central part of Helmand, Afghanistan's most war-torn province and home to a massive, opium-fed insurgency. Since 2006, most of the district had been Taliban country. Forays by the British army, until recently the NATO nation in charge of Helmand, had never quite managed to dislodge the insurgents, in part because the British never had enough troops to hold and build the areas that they had cleared of insurgents.

All that is changing. And this may herald the most significant shift in the efforts to stamp out the Taliban insurgency in the south of Afghanistan since its resurgence in 2006. Thanks to the recent influx of thousands of U.S. Marines, bringing the total number of Western forces in Helmand alone to 20,000, NATO has enough troops to fight a proper counterinsurgency campaign here for the first time.

And it seems to be producing some results.

Following an offensive that began last July, the Marines managed to secure most of Garmsir by the end of the year. The southern bit of the district is still under Taliban control, but most of the district is now regularly patrolled by American and Afghan government forces. And after months of fighting, the area is relatively secure.

"When this company first came here last November, we had to fight every day. Now, we haven't had a fight since the end of December," says Cuomo. And people are starting to get used to the Marine presence. "Initially, people were very cautious. Two village elders came to the shura we held in November. At the shura today, there were 80."

But Cuomo's greatest cause for optimism is the fact that of the 70 roadside bombs unearthed by his Marines, 52 were discovered based on information given by locals. Although most of the Taliban fighters are thought to be from the region, many locals clearly dislike their heavy-handed rule.

Many are also motivated by the cash-for-works programs, and the new schools and clinics the Marines have promised. The Mian Poshte bazaar, emptied and damaged by years of war, is to reopen in a few weeks, a prospect that elicits visible excitement. One elderly man, when asked what has changed since the Marines got here, wordlessly produces a small bag of medicine from under his clothes.

To be sure, the situation is still very fragile. Roadside bombs are everywhere. Riots turned bloody at Garmsir district center two weeks ago following rumors that American troops had desecrated the Quran. (The Marines deny the allegation and call the incident a Taliban provocation.) The district center's school was burnt down. And the downturn in violence is partly explained by the onset of winter, always relatively peaceful in Afghanistan.

Another difficulty is that even with the present troop levels -- about 1,000 Marines in Garmsir alone -- the Americans have to rely on the Afghan security forces to hold some of the newly cleared areas, with the northern tip of Garmsir mostly under their control already. But there are too few Afghans -- about 500 total, between soldiers and police -- and they are badly equipped. Without the Marines, they are no match for the Taliban.

More are promised, with Western nations trying to raise Afghan National Army troop levels to 159,000 by mid-2011, when the Americans are scheduled to start drawing down their forces under President Barack Obama's revised Afghanistan strategy. But so far, only a third of the promised foreign trainers have arrived.

But the Marines here are confident that they've got a grip on the situation. "When the enemy comes back in the spring, he'll find there is less poppy here, so he'll have less money [to finance the insurgency]," says Lt. Col. John McDonough of the 2-2 Marines. "He'll also find a populace that is less easy to cow because of all the security and development that we have brought."

McDonough called the riots provoked two weeks ago a sign of the Taliban's desperation, adding, "They will probably happen again. But they will only further alienate them from the Afghan people."

For their part, Afghans exhibit a mix of friendly curiosity and wariness toward the patrolling Marines, although vacant and vaguely hostile glances are not rare, either. In the bazaar in Lakari village, elders asked the Marines not to patrol on Fridays, to avoid frightening away shoppers. But others in the bazaar say that security has improved since the coalition and Afghan government forces took over from the Taliban.

At a shura meeting in Garmsir, Jan exhorts the local elders to work with the Americans. "I lost two brothers in the war against the Russians," he tells them. "But the Americans are different. They are here to help. The Taliban's war is no jihad."

Many of the elders just stare straight ahead, their faces expressionless. It's hard to tell what they really think. But when two of them stand up and denounce the Taliban for burning down the district center's school, it draws applause.

Off to Garmsir

I've been stuck here for two days and I'm bored out of my skull. There is absolutely nothing to do. I can't even go for a run because I left my shoes in Budapest. The internet is patchy. But, as they say, "sleep till you're hungry, eat till you're sleepy". Supposedly I have a flight this evening down to Garmsir but, as they say, the only flight you can be certain of here is the one you have already got off.

Anyway, Garmsir should be interesting: there is a whole battalion of Marines down there, the boys who went in last July to kick out the Taleban. I have heard of little heavy fighting, it's mostly mortaring and IEDs, I think, but will soon see. There is also the small matter of a few Afghan civilian deaths caused in the last few days and a number of corresponding demonstrations. As Reuters put it, the political temperature is high. The idea is to see the shura meetings, the small patrol bases and above all how good/bad the local Afghan security forces are - remember, that's Nato's exit strategy.

Not sure when I can write next, till then here is a picture of some Marine's doing their spring cleaning, and another of my small recluse next to the media tent for the last two days.

Camp Leatherneck

I'm finally in Helmand after an eardrum-shattering flight on a propeller-driven Italian Isaf flight from Kabul full of various Nato soldiers falling asleep two minutes after take-off. Camp Leatherhead is a big US base next to Camp Bastion, the British HQ, built for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade, about 10,000 US Marines who came in last spring-summer to help the struggling British out. Since then the Marines have taken over most of the Helmand valley, to the point where some of their generals are declaring that they have beaten the Taleban.


I'm soon flying out to one of the small combat outposts where things are actually happening to see if this is true. My guess is that the Taleban have probably run away and melted into the land. The high number of IED attacks and relatively big coalition casualty figures (for the winter) suggest that they are far from giving up. In the meantime, there is still fighting north of Now Zad, plus there is a big offensive coming up against Marjah, apparently the last big population centre that the Taleban openly control (and the centre of the opium trade).

On a lighter note: the dining camp here is much merrier than the one in Kabul, the ceiling is much closer, it isn't so damn cold and there are Afghan soldiers, too. Plus you have a cheery Marine flag hanging above a connecting door with a big skull and the following lines on it: Mess with the best / die like the rest. With this, I remain, etc.

Democracy's decline

It may be slightly off-topic in the middle of an Afghan blog, but I wrote this for the Economist about my favourite subject.

Democracy's decline

Crying for freedom

Jan 14th 2010 | BUDAPEST AND KABUL
From The Economist print edition

A disturbing decline in global liberty prompts some hard thinking about what is needed for democracy to prevail

Continue reading here.

I don't know, I'm from Phoenix

A big military camp, especially one with an airstrip, is like a big, breathing, living beast, its generators cluttering, big machines rumbling away between the tents, flights taking off and shaking the containers, and everything is big, big, big, the wire around the base, the concrete blocks separating the streets, even the food hall is so huge you can hardly see its ceiling. It's so vast and raw it will get to me in a few days, I hope I can get the flight out to the south tomorrow.

My interview this morning was cancelled because my Afghan fixer, who also works for an American newspapers, received word that somebody wants to drive a fuel tanker into their office, and so he sped off to move his boss to a hotel. Unsure how safe those are but at least I don't have to go out to the freezing cold. Here's a photo of a few Afghan geezers who clearly haven't been so lucky.


The New York Times says the Americans may be gearing up for an offensive in Helmand. Not sure whether this is good news for me or not.

On a lighter note: it took a while to find the internet tent, this place is so big. I asked a random bloke but he just looked at me blankly and said, "I don't know. I'm from Phoenix."

Winter no longer calm in Helmand

Reuters says there is heavy fighting in Helmand as the US Marines are trying to clean areas previously contested by the British and the Taleban. The British used to go out every now and then to "mow the grass", as they called it, and then fall back as they never really had enough troops to properly hold their ground. The idea now is to properly secure the population centres so the Taleban cannot terrorise the locals. Hence the fighting to flush the enemy out.

Winter used to be fairly calm in Afghanistan, outside the spring and summer "fighting season". Apparently that has now changed, partly because of the influx of more Western troops and partly because the Taleban have changed tactics: they try to avoid open confrontation and plant roadside bombs instead. That you can do in the winter, too. The New York Times has a story on this.

No snow

Apparently no snow has fallen this winter yet in Afghanistan, which is really very unusual. It also means there will be less water in the spring and the summer. My Afghan fixer tells me farmers are already worried about a drought this year. Never mind the misery of all the bankrupt farmers, that's a potential security disaster waiting to happen. Because guess what all the jobless men will get up to. The war in Helmand in 2006 and 2007 was partly due to a massive drought which uprooted many of the farmers and turned them to the Taleban.

Kabul winter

Kabul's fresh, clean and cool, quite unlike in the spring, winter or autumn. Everything is much more pleasant except, perhaps, for the two suspected suicide bombers that some Belgian and American troops said were being hunted about town. Or perhaps it's just bad intel.

I had never before flown in to Afghanistan with such clear skies. The planes and the Hindu Kush looked amazing from the plane, really the first time I truly got what they mean when they say Moon-like landscapes. The lower slopes of the mountains looked just like the sea, waves upon waves upon waves, or rolling dunes, first I even thought they were clouds, only a very odd colour, a bit like sand, only more metallic, darker and harsher, and with these small dark dots speckled about, like craters almost. And no signs of life anywhere, no roads, no towns, nothing, only the ever-deeper scars of the mountains rising up towards the Pamir, with these massive gorges and canyons among them. Truly the ends of the Earth. Very dramatic.

And here is to Rupert Hamer of the Sunday Mirror who was killed last Saturday when his vehicle hit an explosive device down in Helmand. Philip Coburn, his photographer colleague, is, I am told, in a critical but stable condition. Let's hope he pulls through.

Magyar blog

Magyarul ezentúl itt bloggolok: cluelessontheglobe.blog.hu. Majd kitalálok egy rendes magyar címet neki. I'll continue putting up English-language pieces here.