US Marines poured into a lawless town in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand
province — the first time a sizeable American force has fought in the
largely British sector of the country for several years.
About 2,400 Marines, many veterans of the war in Iraq, were involved in the
dawn assault on Garmser. Helicopters and armoured vehicles surrounded the
town, known as a Taleban stronghold and big staging post for drug
traffickers involved in the thriving opium trade in Helmand.
“We haven’t seen anybody who isn’t carrying a gun,” said Major Tom Clinton,
the commander of US forces at Forward Operating Base Dwyer, a small British
camp ten miles (15km) west of Garmser. “They are trying to figure out what
we are doing. They are shooting at us, letting us know they are there.”
Captain Kelly Frushour, a Marine spokeswoman, said American forces had sealed
off the town and entered some areas but that the operation was continuing.
The Marines came under machinegun and rocket fire. They also recovered
rockets and bomb-making equipment. There were no reports of casualties. It
is unlikely that the Marines, whose deployment was announced weeks ago as
part of a US-led build-up of troops, will have surprised any Taleban
commanders. The size and speed of their attack, however, will serve notice
to insurgents in Helmand that this is likely to be a long, hard-fought
summer. Both sides expect the violence to increase sharply after the poppy
harvest, Helmand’s main commodity, is completed in the coming days and weeks.
For two years British forces have been trying to drive Taleban forces out of
Helmand and help to restore the authority of the Afghan Government. The
7,500 British troops are concentrated mainly in the centre and north of the
province but have not had the manpower to tackle the south. The Marine
operation coincided with fresh violence elsewhere in Afghanistan, where a
suicide bomber killed 18 people, most of them police anti-narcotics officers
involved in a poppy eradication operation near the eastern city of Jalalabad.
The district chief and two Australian journalists were believed to be among
those wounded in the attack, which was claimed by a Taleban spokesman.
The bombing followed the failed assassination attempt against President Karzai
on Sunday, when gunmen opened fire on an independence day parade, killing
three people.
At a special sitting of the Afghan parliament yesterday, the country’s top
three security chiefs were made to account for the failure to protect the
parade. Amrullah Saleh, the head of intelligence, Abdur Rahim Wardak, the
Defence Minister, and Zarar Ahmad Moqbel, the Interior Minister, lost
no-confidence votes against them but the parliamentary majority was too
small to force their removal from office.
Mr Saleh admitted that the security forces failed in their duties despite a
tip-off last month that an attack was likely. He said that the three
attackers had hidden in a three-storey hotel near the parade ground 36 hours
before the attack and were killed in their hotel room.