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Afghanistan

Over 120 Taliban militants killed in recent battles in Afghanistan

2021-07-09

[AlAhram] The Taliban ...Arabic for students... bad boy group has not made comments on the reports so far. Details about possible casualties on the side of the security forces were unclear More than 120 Talibs were killed and over 50 others maimed as Afghan government security forces continued festivities in the countryside to prevent the turbans from advancing, according to multiple sources on Thursday. Early on Thursday, five turbans were killed and three others maimed in a security forces' ambush on the outskirts of Kunduz city, capital of northern Kunduz province, Esmatullah Muradi, a provincial government front man told Xinhua. The turbans tried to assault police security forces in the area. While the US and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... troops have been leaving the country, violence in the country is on the rise. In neighboring Takhar province, a Taliban shadow intelligence chief, Ahmadullah for Takhar Thursday morning died of wounds inflicted during a recent battle with security forces in suburban Farkhar district, Abdul Khalil Asir from the provincial police told Xinhua. In the western Nimroz province, five Talibs were killed and three Taliban, including Gul Nabi, a Taliban shadow district chief for Dilaram district, were maimed after Afghan Air Force targeted a Taliban vehicle in Dilaram, army's 215th Maiwand Corps confirmed in a statement. A Taliban vehicle, two cycle of violences and two AK-47 guns were also destroyed. Forty-three Taliban were killed and 23 others maimed during military operations and Afghan air force-led multiple Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in suburban districts of Marja, Garmser, Nahri Sarraj and on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah city, capital of southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province on Wednesday, the army corps said, adding 13 bad boys' motorbikes and handful weapons and ammunition were also desorbed. The province is notorious for militancy and opium poppy cultivation. In western Badghis province, at least 69 Talibs were killed and 23 others maimed after Afghan cops evicted turbans from the quiet provincial capital, Qala-e-Naw city, on Wednesday, the country's Defense Ministry confirmed earlier in the day. Heavily-armed Talibs stormed and briefly took control of the city on Wednesday before the Afghan cops launched a counter-offensive. The ANDSF also seized some bad boys' weapons and ammunition, the ministry said in a statement. "Reinforcement was dispatched and more Afghan National Army commandos arrived in Qala-e-Naw Wednesday night. The security forces' counter-attack is in full swing now and the situation in the city is getting better," the statement said. Sporadic festivities and fighting continued in Qala-e-Naw during Thursday, according to sources. On Wednesday, Afghan warplanes also destroyed a fast-moving Taliban suicide boom-mobile outside Qala-e-Naw city. The Taliban tried to detonate the massive boom-mobileing near a defense line of Afghan soldiers. The Taliban bad boy group has not made comments on the reports so far. Details about possible casualties on the side of the security forces were unclear. The Afghan provinces have been the scene of heavy battles in recent weeks as Talibs continued their fighting against government security forces and captured about 100 suburban districts out of the country's 400 districts since the drawdown of US troops on May 1.

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Afghanistan

Afghan official: Taliban capture district in Helmand

2016-07-30

[ABC] An important district in Afghanistan's southern poppy-growing province of Helmand has fallen under Taliban control after heavy fighting that killed around 17 police and wounded up to 10 others, an official said on Saturday. The director of Helmand's provincial council, Kareem Atal, said that Taliban militants attacked a series of police checkpoints Friday night as part of a larger assault in the Kanashin district. Earlier, his deputy, Abdul Majeed Akhonzada, told The Associated Press that Kanashin district has "fallen into Taliban hands." The fall of the district, which borders Pakistan and major poppy-producing districts, means "Taliban are in control of 60 percent of Helmand," Akhonzada said. Much of the area of Marjah, Sangin, Garmser and Dishu districts have already fallen to the Taliban, he said.

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Afghanistan

MoD Rejects Claims That Helmand's Khanshin District Has Collapsed

2016-03-16

As military operations continue in parts of southern Helmand province - particularly in Khanshin district - the ministries of Interior and Defense said Tuesday the district has not fallen to the enemy and that they made a tactical retreat but now they are once again fighting militants. "No, no, certainly not!" "We made a tactical retreat once but the area is again under our control," said the deputy spokesman for Interior Ministry, Najibullah Danish. Meanwhile, Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said Khanshin has not fallen to militants, but added that there is fighting between security forces and the Taliban in parts of the district. "There was pressure on Khanshin [district]. We confirm that the enemy had attacked the district but our troops are there in Khanshin and the district has not fallen [to militants]," Waziri added. The Helmand Provincial Council however claimed that the majority of the district is controlled by the Taliban. "The security forces went one kilometer far from Qalat [district] and were stationed in Garmser [district], but Khanshin district is completely under the enemy's control," said Baryalai Nazari, a member of Helmand Provincial Council. He said they are concerned about the security situation in parts of Helmand and that government should pay attention to this matter. The conflict in Khanshin district started on Monday after dozens of Taliban fighters attacked the district compound.

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Afghanistan

Help Sought For Helmand's Marjah District

2015-12-14

Marjah district in southern Helmand province will fall to the Taliban if reinforcement troops and more military hardware is not sent in to help locally-based security forces, said local officials on Sunday. The officials raised their concerns over the deteriorating security situation in the district – which follows on the heels of the recent falling of Khanshin district to the Taliban. "Khanshin district fell to Taliban, Marjah is under threat of collapse and Garmser [district] is a target for them [militants]," said Mohammad Hashim Alokozay, a senator from Helmand. "If the security situation prevails, Helmand will soon witness major attacks by the Taliban," he added. The head of Helmand provincial council Mohammad Karim Atal also raised the same concerns over the security situation in the district. "Marjah [district] is under serious threat. If it is not supported it will soon fall to anti-government militants," he said. Meanwhile, the mother of a soldier in Helmand claims that her son, along with several of his colleagues, have been under siege by militants for the past few days. "My son is under siege with several other troops. They have been promised help but no attention has been paid to them so far. What are air force planes for - that they are not going to their help," asked the woman. However, Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said militants have been defeated in Marjah and that the security situation is improving there. "There is no problem in Marjah. A militant attack occurred yesterday [Saturday] but they faced serious defeat [by security forces]," the spokesman said. Waziri added: "Currently there is no security problem in Marjah and there is nothing to worry about." With winter having set in in the northern and eastern parts of the country, militants appear to have focused attention on southern, warmer provinces - Helmand and Zabul. Video report at the link

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Afghanistan

Afghan Forces Kill 27 Militants in South

2011-01-19

[Tolo News] A total of 27 beturbanned goons were killed and 10 others were hurt during a military operation in southern Helmand province, local military officials said in a statement on Tuesday. Three Taliban capos were among the dead, senior military officials said. The operation was launched in Greshk, Sangin, Musa Qala, Nad Ali and Garmser districts in Helmand two days ago, a statement by 215 National Army Corps said. One Afghan soldier lost his life in a mine kaboom in the operation, the statement said. Officials said the operation was part of Operation Omid which is going on since a while in different parts of the country mainly focused to hunt down turbans. But the Taliban Spokesman, Qari Yosuf Ahmadi, claimed that the Taliban fighters have suffered no casualties in the offensive. Volatile southern Helmand province, a key stronghold of the Taliban, has recently been the scene of deadly attacks carried out by Taliban turbans.

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Afghanistan

Security forces kill 20 insurgents in Afghanistan

2009-10-12

[Dawn] Afghan and US forces killed 20 insurgents in separate operations in eastern and southern Afghanistan while a 12-year-old girl died in a roadside bomb blast, officials said Sunday. Afghan and US forces killed 16 insurgents during an overnight operation against al-Qaeda in eastern Kunar province, which borders Pakistan. 'Today a joint security force killed more than a dozen militants and detained a suspected militant after searching a mountainside compound in Kunar province known to be used by an Al-Qaeda commander,' NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement. 'During the search of the compound located near Tantil village, northeast of Jalalabad, the force received hostile enemy fire on two occasions and returned fire, killing the enemy militants. 'The joint force also found a number of rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, multiple AK-47 rifles and other grenades. All items were destroyed in place,' the statement added. An ISAF spokesman said 16 people were killed and there were no civilian casualties. Kunar's police chief, Khalilullah Ziayi, said: 'Sixteen people were killed. All of them were Taliban.' However, in the village of Tantil, residents Asghar and Sayed Hassan insisted that those killed were civilians, among them an 80-year-old man, as well as nine members of one family. This claim could not be confirmed by official sources. Kunar is known for high levels of insurgent attacks and as a centre of operations by the powerful Haqqani insurgent group, named after Jalaluddin Haqqani, which cut its teeth resisting Soviet rule in the 1980s. In southern Helmand province, a Taliban bastion, the Afghan army killed four insurgents in Garmser district on Saturday. And in eastern Khowst province, a police car was struck by a roadside bomb but none of its passengers was injured, the interior ministry said. However, shrapnel also hit a nearby car, killing a 12-year-old girl and wounding three other civilians, the ministry said.

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Afghanistan

U.S. offensive meets little Taliban resistance

2009-07-04

U.S. Marines pushed deeper into Taliban areas of southern Afghanistan today, seeking to cut insurgent supply lines and win over local elders on the second day of the biggest U.S. military operation here since the American-led invasion of 2001. On the other side of the border, U.S. missiles struck a Pakistani Taliban militant training centre and communications centre, killing 17 people and wounding nearly 30, Pakistani intelligence officials said. Both U.S. operations were aimed at what President Barack Obama considers as the biggest dangers in the region: a resurgent Taliban-led insurgency allied with al-Qaida that threatens both nuclear-armed Pakistan and the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. The 4,000-strong U.S. force met little resistance today as troops fanned out into villages in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, although one Marine was killed and several others were wounded the day before, U.S. officials said. Despite minimal contact, the Marines could see militants using flashlights late Thursday to signal one another about American troop movements. Military spokesman Capt. Bill Pelletier said the goal of the Helmand operation was not simply to kill Taliban fighters but to win over the local population -- a difficult task in a region where foreigners are viewed with suspicion. It's made more difficult by the knowledge that next year at this time the Marines are going to be somewhere else, whereas the Haqqani forces expect to be right where they are now. Marines also hope to cut the routes used by militants to funnel weapons, ammunition and fighters from Pakistan to the Taliban. The new U.S. operation will test the Obama administration's new strategy of holding territory to let the Afghan government establish a presence in rural areas where Taliban influence is strong. Haqqani is telling himself right now that the Marines are doing what the Russers used to do -- surging, then withdrawing to base. As Operation Khanjar, or "Strike of the Sword," entered its second day, Marines took control of the district centres of Nawa and Garmser, and negotiated entry into Khan Neshin, the capital of Rig district, Pelletier said. In Nawa, Marines met with about 20 Afghan men and boys, seeking to reassure them that the Americans wanted to protect them from the Taliban. "Are you going to enter our houses?" asked Mohammad Nabi, 25, who was there with five of his younger brothers. "We are afraid that you will leave, and the Taliban will come back." Bingo. They also complained that local police were thieves not to be trusted. Marine officers promised not to enter homes and said they would remain in the area to keep out the Taliban. One elder with a grey beard asked the Marines whether they would prevent residents from saying Muslim prayers. The troops assured him they would not. In one village near Nawa, however, the atmosphere was tense. "When we asked if they had a village elder or mullah for the American commander to talk to, the answer was no," said Capt. Drew Schoenmaker, a Marine company commander. "It's fear of reprisal. Fear and intimidation is one thing the enemy does very well." Taking territory from the Taliban has always proved easier than holding it. The challenge is especially great in Helmand because it is a centre of Afghanistan's thriving opium production, and drug profits feed both the insurgency and corrupt government officials. On Wednesday, a British lieutenant colonel was killed in an explosion in Helmand. Lt. Col. Rupert Thorneloe, commander of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was the highest-ranking British officer killed in Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan

US(MC) says 400 Afghan insurgents killed since April

2008-07-09

A U.S. Marines commander said Wednesday his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April. Col. Peter Petronzio, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said the figure came from the governor of the southern Helmand province, where his troops have been deployed since late April. Some 2,200 U.S. Marines moved into the town of Garmser in Helmand province to clean the area of insurgents. After months of fighting around Garmser, Petronzio said the area is not yet secure but is more stable. 'The Taliban proved they wanted to fight for Garmser and we took the fight to them,' he told a news conference in Kabul. Petronzio said NATO and Afghan forces are committed to completing their mission in an area that is an important gateway for insurgent fighters smuggling weapons from Pakistan. The Marines will be replaced by British troops this fall. 'If the Taliban are waiting for us to leave, they will have a very long wait,' he said. Meanwhile, the top NATO commander here told The Associated Press in an interview this week that rockets and mortars fired from militants in Pakistan at U.S. and Afghan border outposts in Afghanistan have spiked in the last month. 'We have seen an increase in the eastern part of Afghanistan of cross-border indirect fires coming into some of our, not only our but Afghan' outposts, said McKiernan, who took command of the 40-nation International Security Assistance Force mission last month. But McKiernan said that U.S. and NATO forces have been returning fire. 'Of course our presumption is that the threat feels safer firing (from) across that border. I'm not sure that's the case, that they're any safer, because we do return those fires, coordinated with the Pak military,' McKiernan said. U.S. troops have fired artillery and used airstrikes to hit militants inside Pakistan. The militants use that country's lawless border areas as a base for staging their attacks against Afghan and foreign troops here. McKiernan offered no specifics on the number of attacks coming into Afghanistan from Pakistan, but said: 'There definitely has been an increase since I've been here in the last 30 days.' The four-star general said he thinks those attacks have spiked because militant groups have the freedom in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas to move across the Afghan-Pakistan border unimpeded and resupply and recruit in Pakistan.

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Afghanistan

Dozens killed in Afghan carnage

2008-05-28

A dozen policemen and 12 civilians including three children were killed in violence Tuesday, officials said, in one of insurgency-hit Afghanistan's bloodiest days in weeks. Five of the policemen were killed in an exchange of fire with Taliban rebels who attacked their remote outpost on the Pakistani border in the southern province of Kandahar in the early hours of the morning, police said. Four others sent as reinforcements were killed when their vehicles were blown up by remote-controlled bombs, Kandahar police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told AFP. "They were going to reinforce the post under attack," he said. "We lost nine policemen." I take it Amnesty International had no problem with any of this ... Elsewhere in the same province three children and a militant died when a bomb the rebel was putting under a bridge exploded, Saqeb said. "The device he was planting exploded and killed himself and three children who were watching him playing nearby," he said. Also Tuesday, three police officers and a civilian passer-by were killed in a roadside bomb explosion in Logar province just south of the capital, Kabul, police there said. "It was a remote-control bomb that struck one of our police vehicles patrolling the area," Logar police chief Ghulam Mustafa said. "We blame the Taliban for this attack." Eight civilians were killed in a third blast, also caused by a roadside bomb, in the southwestern province of Farah, deputy provincial governor Younus Rasouli told AFP. Several other people were injured in the bombing in the province's troubled Delaram district, the official said, without giving a precise toll. "It was the work of the Taliban. They had planted the mine to target security forces but it hit the civilian bus," Rasouli said. Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahamdi claimed responsibility for the Kandahar attacks but there were no immediate claims of responsibility for the Farah one. US-led forces pursuing anti-militant operations in the restive south announced meanwhile they had killed "several" rebels in raids in Helmand province, a heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency and a booming drugs trade. The militants were killed in Garmser district bordering Pakistan during a hunt for a "Taliban leader involved with weapons smuggling operations," the US-led coalition said in a statement. Thousands of US Marines serving under NATO are also operating in Garmser, which military officials say is used as a logistics hub for the Al-Qaeda-linked rebels who skim profits off Afghanistan's huge drugs trade.

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Afghanistan

Optimism Grows as Marines Push Against Taliban

2008-05-27

GARMSER, Afghanistan — For two years British troops staked out a presence in this small district center in southern Afghanistan and fended off attacks from the Taliban. The constant firefights left it a ghost town, its bazaar broken and empty but for one baker, its houses and orchards reduced to rubble and weeds. But it took the Marines, specifically the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 96 hours to clear out the Taliban in a fierce battle in the past month and push them back about 6 miles. It was their first major combat operation since landing in March, and it stood in stark contrast to the events of a year earlier, when a Marine unit was removed in disgrace within weeks of arriving because its members shot and killed 19 civilians after a suicide bombing attack. This time, the performance of the latest unit of marines, here in Afghanistan for seven months to help bolster NATO forces, will be under particular scrutiny. The NATO-led campaign against the Taliban has not only come under increasing pressure for its slow progress in curbing the insurgency, but it has also been widely criticized for the high numbers of civilian casualties in the fighting. The marines’ drive against the Taliban in this large farming region is certainly not finished, and the Taliban have often been pushed out of areas in Afghanistan only to return in force later. But for the British forces and Afghan residents here, the result of the recent operation has been palpable. The district chief returned to his job from his refuge in the provincial capital within days of the battle and 200 people — including 100 elders of the community — gathered for a meeting with him and the British to plan the regeneration of the town. “They have disrupted the Taliban’s freedom of movement and pushed them south, and that has created the grounds for us to develop the hospital and set the conditions for the government to come back,” said Maj. Neil Den-McKay, the officer commanding a company of the Royal Regiment of Scotland based here. People have already started coming back to villages north of the town, he said, adding, “There has been huge optimism from the people.” For the marines, it was a chance to hit the enemy with the full panoply of their firepower in places where they were confident there were few civilians. The Taliban put up a tenacious fight, rushing in reinforcements in cars and vans from the south and returning repeatedly to the attack, but they were beaten back in four days by three companies of marines, two of which were dropped in by helicopter to the southeast. In the days after the assault began, hundreds of families, their belongings packed high on tractor-trailers, fled north from villages in the southern part of the battle zone, according to marines staffing a checkpoint. The Taliban told them to leave as the fighting began, they said. Hospital officials in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, reported receiving eight civilian casualties as a result of the fighting, including a 14-year-old boy who died from his injuries. The marines did not sustain any casualties, but one was killed and two were wounded in subsequent clashes. Marines from the unit’s Company C said the reaction from the returning civilians, mostly farmers, had been favorable. “Everyone says they don’t like the Taliban,” said Capt. John Moder, 34, the commander of the company. People had complained that the Taliban stole food, clothes and vehicles from them, he said. There are about 34,000 American troops in Afghanistan, with more than 3,000 marines having been sent into the country after NATO requested additional help in the south, where the Taliban are particularly strong. The deployment occurred almost a year after up to 19 unarmed civilians were killed and 50 people wounded on March 4, 2007, when a Marine convoy opened fire after a suicide car bomb wounded one marine. On Friday, the Marine Corps said it would not bring charges against two of the commanding officers from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit for the episode, a decision that was greeted with dismay in Afghanistan. The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, had a checklist of tasks around the country for 3,200 marines when they arrived in March. But the majority of them have spent a month in Garmser after changing their original plan, which was to secure a single road here, when they realized how important the area was to the Taliban as an infiltration and supply route to fighters in northern part of Helmand Province. “This is an artery, and we did not realize that when we squeezed that artery, it would have such an effect,” said First Lt. Mark Matzke, the executive officer of Company C. They also realized it was worth exploiting their initial success. The whole area was unexpectedly welcoming to the American forces and eager for security and development, Captain Moder said. “Us pushing the Taliban out allows the Afghan National Army to come in,” he said. “This is a real breadbasket here. There’s a lot of potential here.” This southern part of Helmand Province, along the Helmand River valley, is prime agricultural land and still benefits from the large-scale irrigation plan kicked off by American government assistance in the 1950s and 1960s. It has traditionally been the main producer of wheat and other crops for the country. During the last 30 years of war, however, the area has given way to poppy production, providing a large percentage of the crop that has made Afghanistan the producer of 98 percent of the world’s opium. The region has long been an infiltration route for insurgents coming across the southern border with Pakistan, crossing from Baluchistan Province in Pakistan via an Afghan refugee camp known as Girdi Jungle. The Taliban, and the drug runners, then race across a region known ominously as the desert of death until they reach the river valley, which provides the ideal cover of villages and greenery. With such a large area under their control, the Taliban were able to gather in numbers, stockpile weapons and provide a logistics route to send fighters and weapons into northern Helmand and the provinces of Kandahar and Oruzgan beyond. The Taliban, who kicked out villagers and took over their farmhouses, were also mixed with an unusual proportion of Arabs and Pakistanis, Major Den-McKay said. Imagine that. “The majority of elements in this area are Arab and Pakistani, and the locals detest them,” he said. The insurgent commanders were from Iran, which shares a border with Afghanistan to the southwest, as well as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, he said. Afghan villagers confirmed that there were local Afghan Taliban fighting, too. But they also said that there were Pakistanis, ethnic Baluchis from southern Iran and Arabs fighting as well. Locals complained that the Taliban taxed them heavily on the opium harvest. They demanded up to about 30 pounds of opium from every farmer, which was more than the entire harvest of some, so they were forced to go and buy opium to meet the demand, said Abdul Taher, a 45-year-old farmer. “We had a lot of trouble these last two years,” said Sher Ahmad, 32. “We are very grateful for the security,” said his father, Abdul Nabi, the elder of a small hamlet in the village of Hazarjoft, a few miles south of Garmser. “We don’t need your help, just security,” he said. Villagers were refusing humanitarian aid offered by the marines because the Taliban were already infiltrating back and threatening anyone who took it, Lieutenant Matzke said. After a month in the region, the marines have secured only half of a roughly six-square-mile area south of Garmser. Taliban forces operating out of two villages are still attacking the southern flank of the marines and are even creeping up to fire at British positions on the edge of the town. But the bigger test will come in the next few weeks as the marines move on and the Afghans, supported by the British, take over. The concern here is that the Taliban will try to blend in among the returning villagers and orchestrate attacks. Major Den-McKay said they were ready. “The threat will migrate from direct attacks to suicide attacks” and roadside bombs, he said. Now on his fourth tour in Afghanistan, Major Den-McKay said he had seen considerable progress in the confidence and ability of the Afghan security forces. Reinforcements of the police, trained and mentored by the British and Americans, have already moved in and are working well with border police and intelligence service personnel, he said. The marines, meanwhile, prepare for their next move. To the south are miles upon miles of uncontrolled territory where the Taliban still operate freely, as well as a dozen other districts around the country demanding their attention.

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Afghanistan

Photos Show Marine's Narrow Escape From Death in Afghanistan

2008-05-19

Dramatic photos show a Marine's narrow escape from death Sunday while facing insurgent gunfire in Afghanistan. The Marine, part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), was exchanging gunfire with Taliban fighters near Garmser in Afghanistan's Helmand Province when a Reuters photographer captured the soldier's very close call. Click here to see the dramatic photo sequence of the Marine under fire. A series of six photos show the Marine, wearing a T-shirt and fatigues but no combat helmet, ducking as insurgent gunfire tears through the top of a mud wall he's using for cover. Remarkably, the Marine escaped the gunfight without injury. “The insurgents are finding that every time they engage with the Marines, they lose,” Col. Peter Petronzio, commander of the 24th MEU, said in a statement issued May 10. “The Marines are gaining ground every day and securing more of the routes through the district. The support we have received from our allied partners has contributed to our many successes thus far.” The Garmser district has been the center of a joint operation of U.S. and British troops designed to put pressure on Taliban insurgents, Agence France-Presse reports. Troops have targeted this region on the Pakistan border that has served as a route for supplies and reinforcements for insurgents since April 28. "Definitely they are putting resistance in the area because Garmser is very important for them," Gen. Carlos Branco, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, told the AFP. "Garmser is a planning, staging and logistics hub. Once lost it will mean a severe defeat for them," he told the agency. "That is why they are reinforcing with insurgents coming from other places, both north and south." Branco told the AFP that the insurgents had suffered "heavy" losses.

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Afghanistan

Marines battle Taliban in Helmand province

2008-05-16

American jarheads are either prudently pacifying a swath of Helmand province or kicking out the doors and ratcheting up the insurgency. Depends on whom you ask. From the distance of the capital, it's impossible to confirm anything firsthand. But the commander of the 24th U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit came all the way to Kabul yesterday, both to proclaim initial combat success and to quash reports of extensive hardship visited upon a fleeing populace. According to Lt.-Col. Kent Hayes, the known scorecard reads thusly: Marine casualties: 0. Civilian casualties: 0. Displaced persons: "Very, very few." Those citizens, Hayes adds, were already on the move when Marines set out to clear key transit routes – for arms and fighters crossing over the border from Pakistan, just to the south – in Garmser district. "I can't even speculate as to the reason why, or where they went. I can tell you that they have not been leaving from any area that we have control over." While Hayes wouldn't give out Taliban body counts from the past fortnight, the provincial governor puts the figure at 150, most of them allegedly foreign fighters. Hayes merely agrees not to quibble with that. "As practice, the Marines don't use that as our way of determining success. We judge our success by what our mission was. The bottom line is, we fight them, we defeat them." British troops, who have charge of Helmand under the International Security Assistance Force – Canadians next door in Kandahar – had not been able to secure that area. The U.S. Marines, 2,400 strong and many of them battle-hardened from combat in Iraq, were recently parachuted in at the urging of NATO, desperate for fighting-capable reinforcement. When asked by the Star, Hayes refused to specify what the Marines have done in the past two weeks to push back and apparently discombobulate Taliban forces. "I can tell you what our partners in the coalition have done. They've done very well. But we were given a mission. We've gone out there and we've succeeded. We are making great ground." Hayes did agree that the Taliban are shoving back hard, which is a rarity since the insurgents avoid conventional confrontations, unable to counter heavy weapons and supporting air strikes. "They are consistently engaging us in small numbers. It's just continual, constant contact. And we're defeating them. What we have set out to do, we have accomplished." No Afghan troops have been involved in this mission. Hayes insists the effectiveness of the aggressive American approach is already evident on the ground. "We have seen that they are starting to have trouble reinforcing and getting arms." Intelligence gathered, some of it from Afghan military authorities, indicates the Taliban are pulling in their own reinforcements from other districts, perhaps other volatile southern provinces, maybe inadvertently easing the threat in places such as Kandahar, though this remains to be seen. "Because we've seen fighters coming in from other areas, the rest of Helmand, rather than from just around Garmser, that is telling us about the success we're having, that we are affecting and disrupting them," said Hayes. "We are defeating the enemy when they oppose us and, when they reinforce, we're defeating them as well." Garmser has long been used as a planning, staging and logistics hub by the neo-Taliban. Choking off Garmser is the Marines' mission, though some diplomatic – even military – observers have questioned the long-term impact of a muscular offensive that alienates the local population. Non-verified reports have painted a picture of extensive civilian displacement, innocent casualties and aggressive Marine tactics, all of it arousing anti-American sentiment. Hayes insists these reports are untrue, saying no civilians have been killed or wounded and Marines aren't busting into households that present no threat. But there is a ... but. "We do not enter a compound or a structure unless we are receiving fire or the enemy is using it as a haven and we have positively identified them as an enemy. We have a very disciplined targeting process that's designed to strike valid military targets and to avoid damage to civilian property and unnecessary loss of life." UNAMA, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, has sent a team to the area to gather quantifiable data. In the present vacuum of information, the guesstimates of displaced people have ranged wildly. The Afghan Red Cross and other aid agencies claim – without supporting evidence – that up to 4,200 families have fled the region since the end of April, some of them living in open desert. British officials in Helmand, meanwhile, report only two families displaced, according to sources. "The range of figures you are hearing should tell you how unreliable figures are at the moment," said Mark Laity, spokesperson for NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan. Added Aleem Siddique, chief spokesperson for UNAMA: "In our experience, early figures are always way overinflated. But we just don't know yet." Further, "displacement" in such circumstances often refers to a brief abandoning of homes, with residents returning after a few days. There is no indication how long this Marine-led operation will last or how far south the Taliban will be chased. "This is the start," said Hayes. "We started in Garmser. As far as ending it, I will tell you that it's not time-driven. We will leave Garmser at the time and place of our choosing."

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