Feb. 11: U.S. soldiers work on a Stryker armored vehicle after it slid on a narrow road west of Lashkar Gah, in Helmand province.
Feb. 11: U.S. soldiers work on a Stryker armored vehicle after it slid on a narrow road west of Lashkar Gah, in Helmand province.
Roughly 15,000 American, Afghan and NATO forces began an assault late Friday on the Taliban in the central Helmand town of Marjah in what senior military commanders are calling the largest operation since the start of the Afghanistan war.
By early Saturday, there were reports that U.S. Marines were engaging in a firefight with militants.
Marines fired two rockets at militants who attacked from compounds, Reuters reported.
Officials in the area have been signaling the offensive for weeks with hopes that innocent civilians and dispassionate Taliban fighters would flee the area. Commanders are stressing the importance of protecting the population rather than simply killing the resistance. Yet there have been reports civilians are having trouble getting out.
"They (Taliban) don't allow families to leave. Families can only leave the village when they are not seen while leaving," Qari Mohammad Nabi, a Marjah resident, said Friday shortly before the invasion.
The objective of Operation Moshtarak, which means "together" in Dari, is to secure the region from narcoterrorism and establish basic services under supervision of the Afghan government, a senior defense official told Fox News. To do that, Afghan and NATO forces need to defeat the remaining insurgents and drastically reduce the number of heroin-producing crops that fund the Taliban. U.S. commanders are confident they'll win the fight, but removing the poppy crops will prove harder than the battle.
Helmand's poppy harvest produces 60 percent of the world's opium, and Marjah has become a significant trade route for the drug. The area is filled with poppy-producing farmers and militants who organize and profit from heroin production. Locals complain the drug business is not only dangerous, but it fuels widespread corruption and distrust in government.
Afghan officials are hoping they can convince farmers to switch from growing poppy to wheat. NATO-led teams will provide farmers with seed and loans to sustain them during their transition. Farmers who aren't persuaded will have their crop chopped at the stalk by Afghan security forces.
U.S. military commanders say it's critical that the locals see this as an Afghan-led mission. Of the 15,000 troops involved in the Marjah offensive, roughly 5,000 are Afghan National Army units and 1,900 are Afghan National Police. The rest are mainly U.S. Marines, Army Strykers and other NATO forces.
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