Potent Roadside Bombs Slow Marines' Offensive in Afghanistan

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

MIANPOSHTEH, Afghanistan -- In this harsh and unforgiving part of southern Afghanistan, where thousands of U.S. Marines are battling the Taliban this summer, the growing prevalence of roadside bombs means that even a small mishap can have deadly consequences.

Made primarily of large quantities of homemade explosives, the bombs have killed at least a third of the 16 Marines who have died in Helmand since they launched their offensive in early July. The ever-present threat has made the U.S. push in the southern Helmand River valley tougher than U.S. commanders initially anticipated; Marines have seized vital crossroads and population centers, only to discover that Taliban insurgents had filled in the dirt roads behind and around them with bombs.

The bombs have forced Marine commanders to put long stretches of road off-limits, requiring troops to walk instead of drive. Marines on foot patrol must keep a keen eye out for dug-up dirt and "ant trails" that could cover a wire.

All of that has made for delays in supplying the troops -- and, as one Marine company discovered in late July when its mission went badly off track, it has also required a diversion of manpower to the mundane but vital task of watching the roads, hoping to ambush anyone who attempts to plant a bomb.

"The explosion ripped the Humvee in half," whispered Lance Cpl. Jan Friis, 22, of Bethesda, whose best friend, Lance Cpl. Jeremy S. Lasher, was killed when a bomb blew to pieces the vehicle he was driving.

The attack that killed Lasher came on July 23, when a team from 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment had set out to recover a mine-resistant vehicle that had become stuck in a canal.

The Marines' Echo Company outpost is located in Mianposhteh, a cluster of villages deep in the Helmand River valley that is accessible only by two main roads. The roads are little more than dirt paths criss-crossed by a latticework of irrigation canals and ditches, too fragile to support the Marines' heavy armored vehicles, like the one that had become stuck.

Lasher, 27, of Oneida, N.Y., and three other Marines were returning from getting chains to tow the vehicle when the blast went off under their Humvee. Soon the word came over the radio: "Four urgent. Launch the birds."

When Lance Cpl. Kyle Castle arrived to help treat the casualties, the status had changed to "two urgent, two unknown." He asked Lance Cpl. Jeremy Dones where Lasher was, and Dones pointed to the other side of the canal, scattered with pieces of a flak vest and uniform. Castle, 24 of Everett, Wash., started to head across, but Dones just shook his head.

The gunner, Lance Cpl. Dominic Davila, had a shattered lower right leg. Castle and others had to hold Davila down to make sure the tourniquet that had been hastily applied was tight enough. Then, when lifting Davila onto the stretcher, Castle discovered another large hole in his left leg, and stuffed it with bandages to stop the bleeding. The treatment saved Davila's life, officers said later.

When Friis arrived to guard the area, Marines were searching for Lasher's body and loading Davila and two other wounded onto a helicopter. Lance Cpl. Trevor Paar had been blown from the Humvee; he suffered a severe head injury but survived. But vehicle commander Cpl. Nicholas G. Xiarhos, 21, of Yarmouth Port, Mass., died soon afterward.

'Be Aggressive'

A few hours later, at a larger Marine base 15 miles north, 2nd Lt. Brendan J. Murphy was preparing for another precarious run transporting supplies to Mianposhteh. The trip was urgent. Echo Company was almost out of packaged meals known as Meals Ready to Eat, and was rationing food. Fuel was low.

Now Murphy was given an even more dangerous assignment: recover the vehicles at the bomb site.

At 4 the next morning, Murphy, a young officer with a shaved head and a face worn from stress, briefed the Marines in his convoy on what to expect.

"They know we're coming into the area to do the recovery," he said, predicting an attack near the bomb site. "Be aggressive on the weapons systems."

Murphy's plan was to situate part of the convoy on desert high ground in a 360-degree defense, not unlike a wagon train circled on the frontier, while he led a team to recover the destroyed Humvee. As a final caution, he had the Marines repeat in unison how to respond when an unknown vehicle approached. First came a verbal order to halt, followed by warning shots. Finally, at a certain proximity, they were authorized, in their words, to "waste" the driver.

As a pale pink spread across the sky, the convoy rolled out the gates of Forward Operating Base Delhi in a cloud of dust to cover what should have been a 15-mile trip south to the scene of the bombing, near Mianposhteh. But the circuitous journey took more than 16 hours. Forced to detour because of soft sand, the convoy didn't arrive until 9 a.m. After circling the vehicles, Murphy left to carry out the recovery mission half a mile away, while the rest of the Marines waited in the desert as the heat rose to 115 degrees.

Among those on watch were Lance Cpl. Leo Robinson, 22, of Elyria, Ohio, and Lance Cpl. Michael Barton, 21, of Troy, Pa., both of whom had suffered from heatstroke in the initial days of fighting and were only now returning to their unit.

"I was in a machine-gun bunker. I felt numbness from head to toe, fell backwards, and my muscles seized up," Robinson said. After about three weeks of "light duty," he and Barton were deemed well enough to return to the front lines, but doctors warned that they would be more vulnerable to heatstroke in the future.

"It's killing me. It's too hot," Barton said as he sat in a seven-ton truck, staring out over the monotonous, disorienting expanse. At about 11:30 a.m., the call came to mount up and prepare to leave. Minutes later, a loud explosion rippled over the sand. Murphy's team, approaching the blast site, had been hit by a bomb.

Capt. David Snipes, commander of the battalion's weapons company, was inside the hulking mine-resistant vehicle when it struck the bomb. The impact was like "hitting a brick wall," Snipes recalled later. The vehicle reared up and crashed back down.

Making his way through choking dust to open the rear hatch, Snipes was amazed to see the vehicle's 50-caliber machine gun sitting in the sand. "The 50-cal somehow went from the mount, past [the gunner's] head, and landed behind us," said Snipes. Surprisingly, the gunner was not badly injured. Murphy and his crew soon began the painstaking work of loading the twisted skeleton of the Humvee onto a recovery vehicle, and hooking up the mine-resistant truck -- now useless and missing a front wheel -- to be towed.

Logistical Challenges

Standing by the wreckage the next morning, Murphy explained that while several vehicles have been destroyed this way, the logistical challenges mean that replacements are slowly arriving. Indeed, Castle said Lasher and the other Marines had had to ride in a Humvee because one of their team's mine-resistant vehicles had been disabled. "If they had been in an MRAP, they probably all would have survived," Castle said.

Even as losses from roadside bombs mount, Marine commanders know they can bypass main roads for only so long. It is a matter of time, they say, before insurgents target the desert routes and foot patrols. Ultimately, they know the solution lies in dismantling the networks of Taliban bombmakers, and that, in turn, will come only with help from a wary Afghan population.

For now, if units such as Echo Company want to travel even small stretches of road, they must commit to the manpower-intensive work of keeping watch 24 hours a day. As they scrutinized the moonlit road leading to the desert last week, Friis and the other Marines reflected with some bitterness over the loss of their friends, and questioned whether many Americans appreciate -- or even know of -- their daily grind in the windswept purgatory of Helmand.

"People need to know these guys were heroes. They were fighting so the people living in Potomac and Fairfax in their million-dollar houses don't have to," said Friis, a dark-haired, soft-spoken enlistee who is the dog handler for a bomb-sniffing black lab named Jenny.

Paar and Davila, who had a leg amputated, are recovering at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Xiarhos's wake was recently held in Massachusetts.

As for Lasher, hundreds of mourners lined the streets of Oneida when the motorcade returned his body Thursday, and later filled a church for his funeral on Saturday. "All he wanted in life was to be a good husband and a good father," Friis said of his buddy, who had a 1-year-old son born when Lasher was in Iraq. "He was the best person I've ever known."

U.S. Faces Resentment in Afghan Region

By CARLOTTA GALL

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.

Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.

On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. The Marines are part of a larger deployment of additional troops being ordered by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to concentrate not just on killing Taliban fighters but on protecting the population.

Yet Taliban control of the countryside is so extensive in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand that winning districts back will involve tough fighting and may ignite further tensions, residents and local officials warn. The government has no presence in 5 of Helmand’s 13 districts, and in several others, like Nawa, it holds only the district town, where troops and officials live virtually under siege.

The Taliban’s influence is so strong in rural areas that much of the local population has accepted their rule and is watching the United States troop buildup with trepidation. Villagers interviewed in late June said that they preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces.

“We Muslims don’t like them — they are the source of danger,” said a local villager, Hajji Taj Muhammad, of the foreign forces. His house in Marja, a town west of this provincial capital that has been a major opium trading post and Taliban base, was bombed two months ago, he said.

The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO’s deployment to the region in 2006. Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns.

“Now there are more people siding with the Taliban than with the government,” said Abdul Qadir Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in southern Afghanistan.

In many places, people have never seen or felt the presence of the Afghan government, or foreign forces, except through violence, but the Taliban are a known quantity, community leaders said.

“People are hostages of the Taliban, but they look at the coalition also as the enemy, because they have not seen anything good from them in seven or eight years,” said Hajji Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a district council leader from Nadali in Helmand Province.

Foreign troops continue to make mistakes that enrage whole sections of this deeply tribal society, like the killing of a tribal elder’s son and his wife as they were driving to their home in Helmand two months ago. Only their baby daughter survived. The tribal elder, Reis-e-Baghran, a former member of the Taliban who reconciled with the government, is one of the most influential figures in Helmand.

The infusion of more American troops into southern Afghanistan is aimed at ending a stalemate between NATO and Taliban forces. The governor of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, said extra forces were needed since the Taliban were now so entrenched in the region that they had permanent bases.

Last year an American Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,400 men secured a small but critical area in the district of Garmser in southern Helmand, choking off Taliban supply routes from the Pakistani border while reopening the town for commerce. The operation had a crippling effect on Taliban forces operating farther north in neighboring Oruzgan Province, according to Jelani Popal, who oversees local affairs for President Hamid Karzai’s government.

This year military officials hope to replicate that operation in more places, according to Lt. Gen. James Dutton, the British deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The extra forces will be critical to create confidence among the locals and persuade insurgents to give up the fight, said Mr. Mangal, the Helmand governor. Yet he and others warn that there will be more bloodshed and that the large influx of foreign forces could prompt a backlash.

In parts of Helmand and Kandahar, resentment and frustration are rampant. People who traveled to Lashkar Gah from the districts complained of continued civilian suffering and questioned American intentions. “They come here just to fight, not to bring peace,” said Allah Nazad, a farmer.

People from Marja said that foreign troops carrying out counternarcotics operations conducted nighttime raids on houses, sometimes killed people inside their homes, and used dogs that bit the occupants.

“The people are very scared of the night raids,” said Spin Gul, a local farmer. “When they have night raids, the people join the Taliban and fight.”

“Who are the Taliban? They are local people,” interjected another man, who did not give his name. One man, Hamza, said he would fight if foreigners raided his house. “I will not allow them,” he said. “I will fight them to the last drop of blood.”

Many do not side with the Taliban out of choice, however, and could be won over, community leaders said.

Fazel Muhammad, a member of the district council of Panjwai, an area west of Kandahar, said he knew people who were laying mines for the Taliban in order to feed their families. He estimated that 80 percent of insurgents were local people driven to fight out of poverty and despair. Offered another way out, only 2 percent would support the Taliban, he said.

Yet mistrust of the government remains so strong that even if the Taliban were defeated militarily, the government and the American-led coalition would find the population reluctant to cooperate, said Hajji Abdullah Jan, the leader of the provincial council of Helmand. “These people will still not trust the government,” he said. “Even if security is 100 percent, it will take time because the government did not keep its promises in the past.”

U.S. Troops Move Deeper Into Afghanistan's Helmand Province; One Marine Killed

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 3, 2009

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Columns of U.S. Marines in eight-wheeled armored vehicles pushed deep into southern Afghanistan on Thursday in an attempt to cut off Taliban supply lines from Pakistan and restore order in areas long neglected by short-handed NATO forces.

The movement of the Marines to the town of Khan Neshin in the lower Helmand River valley is the most significant deployment of U.S. forces in areas near the Pakistani border with southern Afghanistan, and it reflects a growing concern among U.S. military and intelligence officials that much of the violence that has plagued the south is linked to a flow of fighters and munitions from Pakistan's Baluchistan region.

The troops encountered roadside bombs and small-arms attacks, which resulted in the death of one Marine, but commanders opted to mute their return fire. In the first 24 hours of the operation, the Marines did not lob artillery or call for fighter planes to drop bombs.

The drive to Khan Neshin is part of a Marine campaign to root out Taliban insurgents by restoring the authority of local officials and police departments in the Helmand River valley. The 4,000-strong operation -- one of the largest conducted by the U.S. military in Afghanistan -- is intended to demonstrate new strategies advocated by the Obama administration to turn around a struggling, seven-year-old war effort.

As units from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade fanned out on foot in other parts of the valley Thursday, their principal focus was to meet local leaders -- and to set about winning their confidence -- not to hunt down Taliban fighters. Marine officers distributed handbills explaining their presence and talked to residents with the help of interpreters. Some Marine companies, which had arrived by helicopter early Thursday, bedded down for the night in empty homes instead of constructing bases with razor wire and sand-filled barriers.

The brigade's operations officer, Col. Eric Mellenger, said the absence of opposition in Khan Neshin represented a "major political and security success" and would allow the Marines to meet with town elders over the next few days. In other areas, he said, "people have been coming up to us with information about the Taliban."

U.S. military and diplomatic officials say the vast majority of Afghans, even those in violence-racked places such as Helmand province, do not want to be ruled by the Taliban and its extremist ideology. The officials contend that if Afghans are provided security and basic services, they will switch allegiances and support the local government.

Reactions to the Marine operation varied across the valley. In Khan Neshin, residents largely stayed off the streets, wary of being caught in the crossfire of possible Taliban attacks on the troops. In the northern areas, around the Nawa district, several residents approached Marines with information about where roadside bombs had been planted. Farther south, in Garmser district, a Marine company was attacked by a group of insurgents, who eventually retreated to a housing compound.

A gun battle at the house was the day's most significant combat engagement, resulting in the Marine fatality and the deaths of at least three insurgents. As the sun set, it appeared that the standoff would continue through the night.

Another challenge for the Marines was the 110-degree weather. Loaded down with backpacks and ammunition, and insulated by flak vests and Kevlar helmets, several fell ill from heatstroke, and five had to be evacuated for further medical attention. Helicopters had to be summoned to replenish units with extra water.

"All in all, it's been a pretty good day, considering we have 4,000 Marines involved in this operation," said Maj. Tom Clinton, the senior watch officer in the brigade's combat operations center here.

Commanders expressed surprise that the Marine battalion that moved south to Khan Neshin -- an imposing collection of 70 armored vehicles, each weighing 17 tons -- did not encounter more resistance. The battalion reported an incident of gunfire directed at one of the vehicles, but little else.

The experience in Khan Neshin, a hardscrabble riverfront town that sits north of a vast desert stretching into Pakistan, suggests that Taliban fighters there, and elsewhere in the Helmand River valley, may be lying low to observe the Marines before trying to retaliate with roadside bombs and suicide attacks. But the Marine presence may also lead some of the fighters to move to other parts of the country or seek other infiltration paths from Pakistan.

Either way, U.S. military and civilian officials say they have an opportunity to impede the Taliban's ability to operate with impunity by building local government institutions and reconstituting police units. In Khan Neshin, there is no district governor, and although the Afghan government has 59 police officers on the payroll for the area, none show up for work.

Marine officers and representatives from a British-U.S. reconstruction team in Helmand have held meetings in the provincial capital with elders from Khan Neshin in recent weeks. The elders have urged the Marines to move into the area, which has become a key transit point for Taliban fighters coming from Pakistan, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Although most fighters have crossed into Afghanistan through the eastern provinces that abut Pakistan, increasing patrols in that area and the relative strength of the Taliban in the south have led increasing numbers of Pakistani fighters to infiltrate into Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province, according to U.S. officials.

"There's no doubt that the community doesn't want the Taliban there," said Rory Donohoe, a U.S. Agency for International Development officer who will serve on a reconstruction team for Khan Neshin. It will be the first U.S. district-level stabilization program in the south.

But getting residents to engage with the Americans could prove challenging at first. Marine commanders had hoped the officers with the Light Armored Reconnaissance battalion that moved into the town would convene a meeting with community leaders Thursday. But no such gathering occurred.

It was not immediately clear why. Although Marines walked through the town soon after they arrived, most residents stayed indoors. "We first have to figure out what they want," Donohoe said. "Our goal is to work in partnership with them."

Marines Launch Mission in Afghanistan's South Focused on Security and Governance

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."

Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.

The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.

Traveling through swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces poured into the valley during the pre-dawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift but lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have planted along the roads.

The initial Marine units did not face resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces would probably increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.

Officers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines' largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, Iraq. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines boarded a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward towns along the river valley.

The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.

In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces. Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras -- meetings of elders in the community -- in the next week.

"Our focus is not the Taliban," Nicholson told his officers. "Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet."

But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO's Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.

"A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we're going to be staying here to help them -- that we're not driving in and driving out," said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade's operations officer.

With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.

The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability."

"They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country, and they know it better than we do."

Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.

To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.

Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.

In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on "reining in the pit bulls."

"We're not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint," he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. "You're going to drink lots of tea. You're going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That's the reason why we're here."