Marines Face Stiff Taliban Resistance 09/07/20
 

From the AKO Early Bird News 090720

Washington Post
July 20, 2009
Pg. 8

Marines Face Stiff Taliban Resistance
Logistical Difficulties Inhibit Troops During Clashes in Southern Afghan Province
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer

GARMSIR, Afghanistan, July 19 -- Marines pushing deep into a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province battled insurgents in a day of firefights around a key bazaar Sunday, as an operation designed as a U.S. show of force confronted resistance from Taliban fighters as well as constraints on supplies and manpower.
Insurgents at times showed unexpected boldness as they used machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to fight the advancing Marine forces. Although the Marines overpowered the Taliban with more sophisticated weapons, including attack helicopters, the clashes also indicated that the drive by about 4,500 Marines to dislodge the Taliban from its heartland in Helmand is running up against logistical hurdles.

The firefights erupted a day after the Marines raided Lakari Bazaar in Garmsir district, a market that the Taliban has long used to store and make weapons and drugs, as well as to levy taxes on civilians. The Taliban until now had free rein in the area because there had been virtually no Western or Afghan government presence.
"This has been their turf for a long time, and now we are in here, invading their space," said Capt. John Sun, Fox Company commander, at his makeshift headquarters in a fabric stall inside the bazaar. "The bazaar was a huge financial and logistics base for the Taliban, and they want to get that back."
The Marine advance began Friday when Fox Company, a unit of roughly 200 Marines, traveled in open-back trucks on a grueling, overnight journey east and south through the desert to avoid routes implanted with bombs. The Taliban has littered the main routes in Garmsir with roadside bombs, called improvised explosive devices or IEDs, forcing U.S. commanders to bar most travel by military vehicles on those roads. The number of IED attacks in southern Afghanistan has surged 78 percent over the past year, with much of the increase in Helmand.
Arriving at Lakari Bazaar at daybreak Saturday for the raid, the Marines went door to door, using explosives, rifles and axes to break into each store."Breaching!" yelled Lance Cpl. Travis Koehler, 21, of Fountain Valley, Calif., as he shot off a lock with his MK-12 marksman's rifle and kicked open the door for a team of Marines to enter. "All clear!"

Afghan soldiers advised by British troops searched the market and together with the Marines uncovered mortars, grenades, ammunition, and thousands of 100-pound bags of opium poppy and bomb-making materials, as well as facilities where the bombs and drugs were produced. They found tax receipts and recruiting leaflets calling on young men to join the Taliban and kill British and U.S. troops.
"The bazaar has been used by the Taliban as a staging area, weapons cache and profit base," by taxing local vendors, Sun said.
The Taliban had left the market before the raid, however, and only a handful of shopkeepers were around, leaving it deserted but for a few cats and donkeys.

Late Saturday, Sun received word that the Taliban was regrouping in a nearby village across a canal to the west. At 3 a.m. Sunday, he launched 2nd Platoon, which includes dozens of Marines, on a foot patrol to investigate. At about 8, the patrol moved into an open field, where it was ambushed by Taliban fighters positioned in two tree lines to the south and east. When Taliban fighters fired the first shot with an AK-47 assault rifle, Sgt. Benjamin Pratt thought one of his Marines had discharged a round accidentally, he recounted. "Hey, who shot?" he called back to his squad. But within seconds, the men realized they were under fire. "Where is the . . . fire coming from?!" shouted Lance Cpl. James Faddis, 21, of Annapolis, Md. Faddis, in his first firefight, was the M-240 machine gunner for a weapons team that had advanced farther across the field than any other Marines and initially took the most direct fire from Taliban rifles and machine guns. Bullets were cracking around their heads and kicking up dust nearby. "Get your gun up!" yelled Cpl. Jonathan Kowalski, 25, of Erie, Pa., ordering the Marines to fire toward the tree line to the south, where he saw muzzle flashes and Taliban fighters in dark dishdashas running between positions.
The insurgents began firing mortar rounds, honing their aim until one landed just 150 yards from the Marines. The Marines called in mortars of their own, which were fired from the bazaar onto the tree line, causing a few minutes' lull in the fighting. Faddis and his team scrambled and crawled to a better position, but on the way Kowalski dropped his radio. So he and the other machine gunners had to shout to the infantrymen to indicate they could move forward.
Sgt. Deacon Holton bounded into the soggy field along with Cpl. Clayton Bowman and other Marines, running and slipping through knee-deep mud saturated from recent irrigation. As the Marines maneuvered, a Huey and a Cobra attack helicopter flew in low overhead, circling above to spot the fighters. Capt. Brian Hill, the forward air controller, put on a bright orange panel and wore it like a cape to identify the Marine position.
Often Taliban fighters flee when helicopters arrive, Sun said, but this time they stayed, and attempted to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at one of the aircraft. The Huey made two strafing runs with its Gatling guns over the tree lines, while the Cobra fired missiles, finally ending the firefight. The helicopter crew spotted at least two dead Taliban fighters.
Although the Marines asked to pursue the Taliban fighters south, more senior commanders denied the request. Sun said he thinks the problem was a lack of helicopters to provide air power and to evacuate any possible casualties, as well as roads that had not been cleared of bombs. "Due to the limited numbers of helicopters available, it would not have been in our best interest to get decisively engaged," Sun said. In addition, moving south would leave the bazaar open to attack, he said.

But some Marines voiced disappointment at not being able to track the Taliban, saying that decision may have allowed the insurgents to stage fresh attacks on the bazaar later in the afternoon. Faddis, Kowalski and their machine-gunning team were on guard duty in a mud-brick structure in the market that had a window facing fields to the south when shots broke out from a nearby compound. Faddis spotted a target and fired back. "They're moving out of the compound!" one Marine yelled, unleashing another volley of machine-gun fire. The gun battle was complicated by the presence of women, children and shepherds in adjacent fields. Having staked out a claim in Lakari Bazaar, Sun said, the question remains whether his company should continue to hold this relatively strung-out position or pull back, knowing such a move would allow the Taliban to return, at least temporarily."That's a dilemma," Sun said.

Kick Ass Marines........:lifter

Get some, Marines. Keep safe.

Drive on fellas. SEMPER FI!!!

Rock On Brothers..... Be Safe

Is this solving our long term challenge of separating the civilians from the insurgents, ensuring the legitimacy and long-term success of the HN government?

Are we trying to kill our way to success here?

TR

Exactly, Afghanistan is not Iraq. The only similarity betwen the two conflicts is that we are in both places. Historically, NO ONE has ever killed their way to success in Afghanistan. Ask the Persians:confused:, the British:(, the Russians:mad:. . . IMHO

Dozer,TR

Serious question.....If this strategy isn't right,what should we be doing there?

Big Teddy :munchin

Showing the civilian populace that it is in their best interest to support us and our policies (us being US and the Afghan government) rather than the Taliban and AQ.

Making our HN leadership look good.

Using Afghan forces when interacting with the populace.

Taking time to drink chai with the local leadership, repeatedly over several months, and work with them on projects to make them look good. Then you start asking them for things, quietly.

Help your friends.

Saying please and thank you when appropriate.

Not busting into every store to find caches, unless every store has one.

Paying when you break something.

The tool for surgery is a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

You look for networks, and attack key personnel only if you cannot co-opt them.

You close the borders.

Not firing in the vicinity of women, children, and non-combatants with area effect weapons.

Keep the rock and roll with everything you have, to include air strikes, when you are in a defensive location, or out in the boonies.

If you have to hit someone, you swoop in under cover of darkness, hit the house you are after, the specific room you need to, with a minimum of fanfare, and grab the guy and get out without his family even knowing you are there.

Consider that we are about the third or fourth occupiers in the last 100 years, and those before us all failed.

Think about it like this. A potentially hostile force has invaded the U.S. under the guise of providing military assistance. A bunch of them drive from the next state to descend on your neighborhood looking for the resistance and their support. They bust into your store, and trash it. They break down the door to your house, and rough you up in front of your wife and kids before groping them and slapping them around. They do not speak your language, and use collaborators as translators. Their U.S. lackeys ransack your house, and take your personal possessions for their own. Then they leave, having seized your cash, crops, gun collection, son, and a few of the prominent citizens from your neighborhood, like your mayor, the teachers, the veterans, etc. They kill a couple of dozen of your neighbors, friends, and family, only a few who were actual Taliban supporters. Does this make you more likely to support the government that they have helped establish? Doesn't matter if the above actually happened as described, or not. Perceptions are everything. did you ever see "Red Dawn"?

That is the point we seem to have lost, unfortunately, especially the Marines.

That is the difference between a quiet, professional special operations force, who do this for years at the time, and guys who just claim the name for a few months.

This isn't just a poster:

SOF Imperatives

Understand the operational environment
Recognize political implications
Facilitate interagency activities
Engage the threat discriminately
Consider long-term effects
Ensure legitimacy and credibility of Special Operations
Anticipate and control psychological effects
Apply capabilities indirectly
Develop multiple options
Ensure long-term sustainment
Provide sufficient intelligence
Balance security and synchronization

TR

TR, Thanks for your excellent answer. :lifter

TR,

Your point is loud and clear,so why aren't we doing it? :confused: We (SF) have established ourselves (almost 60 years now),why don't they allow us to use it? :mad:

Big Teddy :munchin

Only time will tell if the current operation in Helmand will be a success. Not much can be gleaned from this article except for the Marines moved in and "raided" the market. Was a "raid" warranted? I don't know. It seems they found a good stockpile of weapons and drugs so the ends appeared to justify the means in this case. Is this always the case? Of course not. I'll agree to the strategy of building rapport with the indigenous as per TR's previous post. However, Marines are not known for their "bedside manner". DA has always been the bread and butter for us. However, its blatantly obvious that the old addage of peace thru superior firepower doesn't always do the trick. But, maybe an old dog can learn new tricks. We'll just have to wait and see. I wish my fellow Marines on the ground nothing but success and a safe return home. Semper Fi.

Mentality
 

I concur with TR’s assessment of how the Corps operates and more importantly, the impact it will have on the local populous. We as Marines are taught from that very first day in boot camp that every Marine is a rifleman and your primary job in life is to “close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver” and that all problems can be solved by fire superiority. Those concepts are invaluable when dealing with a straight up gun fight…They worked well during the Island Hopping Campaign and in Fallujah. But as it has been displayed time and time again, that type of application of force is ultimately detrimental in developing a support network comprised of locals.

One of my biggest frustrations when dealing with my fellow Marines is trying to sway that mentality. Most of them are very young men, (though some of the older ones are worse), and their motivation hinges on destroying things and killing the bad guys. Many do not understand or care that for every one bad guy you kill, there are 2 or 3 ready to fill his shoes. Job security I guess. We all need to focus on more positive interaction with the local populous if we ever really plan on winning this conflict.

I understand that it is rough there in the Helmand, but it can be done.

TR

Your SOF Imperatives are somewhat similar to the Strategic Hamlet Initiatives, used in early VN.

This particular program was labled a failure by those "In the know". But the SF people I talked to said the program was working till the "Ash and Trash, with all the Brass" deemed a heavy hand would promote a more expiditious victory.

I guess we'll never know if that one would have worked or not. But like they say; "Those that refuse to study history..............."

Sigh.....
 

Sigh;

I don't know either - but finding weapons and drugs? Man, thats like pulling a raid in a US neighborhood and saying you found cars and SUVs.