More than a thousand Marines, backed by artillery and helicopter gunships, stormed into this Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan before dawn yesterday. The operation, mounted by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, opens a new American combat sweep across the region where the Taliban, ousted from power in 2001, have made a strong comeback.As of last night, there were no reported Marine casualties. The assault was launched in stages from a base near Kandahar, where the Sept. 11 attacks were plotted. Thundering in low over the desert in CH-53 and twin-bladed CH-46 helicopters, the battalion's Alpha and Bravo companies landed just before a half moon rose to flood the desert with light. Each of the U.S. troops carried 100 to 150 pounds of weapons, ammunition and other supplies.
Simultaneously, a convoy of Marines in light armored vehicles attacked Taliban fortifications in a former agricultural school that U.S. intelligence officers said was being used as a major Taliban command post. An intense firefight lasted most of the day, until the Marines pushed the insurgents back into one area where an airstrike finished them off, military commanders said. By midmorning, Alpha and Bravo company Marines had seized several mud-walled compounds set amid lush poppy fields.
Outside one compound, Marines were just starting to push through a poppy field on a combat patrol when a rocket-propelled grenade whooshed past and exploded, accompanied by a rattle of small arms fire. Two young men were seen fleeing on a motorbike, but the Marines did not return fire because it was not clear they were the attackers.
Later, two insurgents fired on a pair of Marine scout helicopters. As cheering Marines watched, one of the Kiowa Warrior helicopters wheeled and killed the attackers with rockets.
Military officers said it was possible that the Taliban would simply melt away and return when the Marines are gone. But the Marines were prepared - and some eager - for the Taliban to come out in strength.
The operation is taking place in Afghanistan's rich poppy-growing region along the Helmand River, an area that produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium and is a major source of money for the Taliban. The roughly 8,000 British troops in this part of southern Afghanistan have been unable to extend their reach beyond these fields and south toward the Pakistan border some 75 miles south of Garmsir.
U.S. intelligence officers said the Taliban had seized this area and dug in to protect its smuggling routes for opium going south and for weapons, explosives and Islamist fighters coming north from Pakistan. Estimates of enemy numbers ranged from 150 to 300, with more Taliban reinforcements expected, U.S. officers said. "They know we're coming - but it's at a time and place of our own choosing," said a Marine officer just before the operation.
Facing the Marines were a mixture of what intelligence officers described as hard-core foreign fighters, local Afghans hired to be soldiers and younger trainees at a Taliban training camp. The intelligence officer said there is a "substantial" flow of non-Afghan fighters into Garmsir from Pakistan.
The Marines' operation originally was opposed by some British commanders and reportedly by the Helmand provincial governor. The British officers said local villagers were beginning to resist the Taliban's harsh rule, and they feared that fighting in Garmsir would cause the villagers to flee. The British eventually agreed to the operation, but only after days of delay that underscored the awkward multinational military command and a lack of a clear consensus on strategy.