The spring offensive is well launched – by NATO. Or, put another way, pre-emptively provoked by the U.S. Marines Expeditionary Force.If the best defence is a good offence, American troops recently arrived in the southern provinces have wasted no time taking the battle to the Taliban, putting an entirely different complexion on combat tactics in the heartland of the insurgency.
Joining forces with British troops who have responsibility for NATO operations in Helmand province, these battle-hardened Marines – many of them veterans of fierce combat in the Iraqi city of Ramadi two years ago – hurled themselves into the insurgency cauldron last week, with the objective of dislodging Taliban fighters from strongholds north of the border with Pakistan.
Although the British have a base in the town of Garmser, NATO's most southerly outpost, and have battled strenuously to maintain it against encroachment, the vast surrounding district, much of it inhospitable desert, has been essentially free movement territory for the neo-Taliban.
Garmser is a main assembly and staging point for jihadists as they enter Afghan soil. It is also a key transit route for smuggling in arms and smuggling out opium – the vascular network that pumps blood into the insurgency.
The claims and counterclaims – success versus failure – have been fast and furious. While American authorities claimed on the weekend to have killed nine militants, Taliban spokesperson Qari Yosuf asserted it was the insurgents who had killed nine Americans.
There have been no official reports of U.S. casualties from the fighting. But provincial government sources, along with aid workers in the region, accuse the Marines of conducting aggressive door-to-door searches, rousting civilians from their homes, arresting innocents and forcing upward of 15,000 Afghans to flee into the hot desert for safety.
None of these claims has been confirmed. However, the U.S. propensity for using air strikes and artillery and mortar barrages in support of their ground troops has much of the domestic media here caterwauling about a suddenly "Americanized war" in Afghanistan.
NATO had begged for these reinforcements – 2,300 Marines started arriving seven weeks ago – and clearly will not criticize their performance now, particularly since it appears to have achieved the initial goal in Helmand, clawing back turf and pushing back Taliban elements in one of the few regions with a clearly defined front line.
"Several reports tried to overshadow the success of the Marines, accusing them of excessive use of force resulting in civilian casualties and excessive damage to civilian infrastructure," Brig.-Gen. Carlos Branco, chief spokesperson for International Security Assistance Force, told reporters yesterday. "These allegations are very far from the truth. The United States Marines forces have responded to all hostile acts and intents with proportional force, strictly in accordance with the law of armed combat."
Yet Branco couldn't say if American troops are bound by the same rules of engagement – never specifically spelled out for public dissemination – as their NATO colleagues. "I don't actually know the answer to that question," Branco told the Toronto Star.
Civilian casualties are the primary cause of embitterment towards foreign troops, even among the majority of Afghans who support NATO's presence. As propaganda fodder, dead innocents have been heavily exploited by the Taliban, though their fighters routinely take cover among civilians and shred Afghan bodies in suicide attacks.
"We do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties,'' Branco said, reaching for a clutch of statistics: Of more than 16,000 aircraft sorties in 2007, only 0.1 per cent resulted in civilian deaths. "But 100 per cent of suicide bombing events resulted in civilian casualties."
So far this year, insurgents have killed six times as many civilians compared to the same period in 2007, Branco said. Yet only 1 per cent of deaths caused by suicide bombers have been ISAF personnel. "The facts coincide with our words,'' said Branco. "They are the ones who don't have any consideration for the value of human life."