Monday, 15 February 2010 20:27
The Times

Jerome Starkey in Lashkar Gah, Tim Reid in Washington and Ben Anderson in Marjah

US Marines and Afghan troops were making slow progress as they came under attack from snipers on the third day of a major offensive to seize the Taleban's stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

Multiple firefights broke out in different areas in and around Marjah, the last militant stronghold in the country's most violent province, Helmand. The US troops leading Operation Moshtarak - "Togetherness" - advanced only 500 yards today. Marine units twice tried to capture the town's central bazaar, only to be pushed back.

Coming under heavy fire and sniper attacks, and faced with booby-trapped buildings, the US Marines were forced to call in Harrier jets and attacks helicopters armed with Hellfire missiles.

"There's still a good bit of the land to be cleared," said Captain Abraham Spice, a spokesman of the US Marines. "We're moving at a very deliberative pace.

"In many parts of Marjah, we have seen very little opposition. There are areas where Marines have met with stiff resistance, but they're making steady progress throughout the area."

US officers from Bravo Company 1st Battalion 6th Marine told The Times that the fighting on the first day of the operation was as intense as any that the same unit faced during the infamous clearance of Fallujah in Iraq in 2004.

They said that Taleban insurgents displayed very high levels of tactical awareness and training - including "walking" mortar fire onto the Marines and persistent and highly accurate sniper fire.

The massive offensive in Marjah - the largest Taleban stronghold and its main opium production area - involves about 15,000 US, British and Afghan troops. It is the biggest joint operation since the 2001 invasion that overthrew the Taleban. The troops are fighting over an area of less than 100 square miles, with a population of 80,000.

The slow progress strongly suggests that the campaign to seize insurgent-held areas ahead of a the troop withdrawal date of 2011 set by President Obama could slip.

US Marines said their ability to fight back has been tightly constrained by strict new rules of engagement that make their task more difficult and dangerous. Under the rules, troops cannot fire at people unless they commit a hostile act or show intent.

Corporal Travis Anderson, 20, from Iowa, said that his platoon had repeatedly seen Afghan fighters dropping their guns into ditches before melting away into the civilian population.

"It's hard to fight a war like this," he said. "They're using our rules of engagement against us."

There was further fallout from the Nato missile strike that killed 12 civilians yesterday, an error that dismayed General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato ground commander. He has repeatedly stressed that a failure to win over the civilian population will doom the military campaign to failure.

A Nato official confirmed that six of the dead were children. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, called for a thorough investigation.

Today, there was further embarrassment as it emerged that a Nato airstrike in Kandahar had killed a further five civilians and wounded two. An Isaf spokesman said the group of civilians was deliberately targeted under the mistaken belief that they were planting roadside bombs. The troops were not taking part in Operation Moshtarak.

In a blow to British forces, a soldier from 36 Engineer Regiment was hilled by a roadside bomb near Sangin, in Helmand. He, too, was not participating in Operation Moshtarak. The latest fatality comes after two British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan yesterday.

Major General Nick Carter, commander of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan, said: "You won't know how successful you've been probably for about eight weeks, downstream. The measure of it will be the extent to which the population is entirely on our side."

Afghan security chiefs gave a more optimistic assessment of the assault on Marjah. They said Government troops faced "sporadic resistance". The Defence Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, insisted most of the insurgents had either "hidden or escaped", and invited the Taleban fighters to swap sides.

"This is your country," he said in a message to them. "Take part in its development." Three suspected bomb makers were identified via biometric tests and arrested while trying to escape disguised as civilian refugees but many more had fled undetected, Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said.

"The enemy had ample time to flee the area," he said. "There are reports that we can't confirm at this point that some of them have been reported to have crossed the border." He promised more than 1,000 new policemen for the province and said half of the existing force had been vetted and drugs tested. The other half would be checked by April.

"Your best option is to take advantage of the Afghan government's peace and reconciliation process," Mr Atmar told the insurgents at a press conference in Lashkar Gah. "There's no way you can win." This is not the first time Taleban fighters have melted away in the face of an overwhelming Nato force and commanders warn it is only a matter of time before they regroup and launch guerrilla-style attacks.

"We will turn Marjah a hell for them," Mullah Abdul Razaq Akhend, the top Taleban commander in Marjah, vowed. "Marjah is not a strategic place for us, it is not as important as the Nato forces are propagating about. They want to put curtain in front of their previous failures by giving this operation a big name. We have more important and bigger districts in Helmand and other provinces in our hand that are more important and much bigger. They want to stop our spring offensive by this operation which is in two months, but they should know they wont be able to do anything. We will finally defeat them."

Source: TimesOnline