Why helmand province

The Province has long suffered from serious infiltration of anti-government forces. The district center was overrun in November of , and a number of other Afghan security force checkpoints have been attacked.

In April of , US Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into Garmser and launched a series of assaults against insurgent and criminal positions.

The Marines initial objective was to secure the roadway that connects Garmser with Pakistan, but after a few days of skirmishes the Marines were tasked to stay longer and help quell insurgent activity throughout the district.

By the following month, the Marines succeeded in restoring security to a large portion of Garmser and residents held the first community shura in years. Scene of intense fighting since , Greshk remains a highly volatile area.

IEDs, suicide bombings, and ambushes continue to plague the district. NATO forces have launched a series of targeted strikes against Greshk insurgent leaders, including two high profile operations in November that killed Mullah Asad and Mulah Mashar. Located in northern Helmand and is one of the most unstable districts in Helmand. Taliban fighters overran the district in retaliation for the series of airstrikes that targeted their leadership in early Salaam has been the target of Taliban assassins who attempted to kill him at least four times since his appointment as district governor.

The capital of Helmand has endured sporadic periods of violence over the last two years. Suicide bombings and IEDs have both infrequently occurred in Lashkargah. During the late hours of October 12 , an estimated insurgents attacked Lashkargah from three sides resulting in widespread fighting that lasted half of a day. NATO airstrikes pounded insurgent positions killing scores of fighters and repulsed the attack.

Sandwiched between Musa Qala, Sangin and Baghran districts, the Kajaki district is home to the legendary Kajaki dam complex. Decades of neglect and warfare has left most of the complex in need of a serious overhaul. At the end of September , NATO forces traveled kilometers by treacherous roadway for five days to deliver a new ton hydroelectric turbine to the Kajaki dam complex.

When complete, the Kajaki dam will provide electricity to a further 1. The Upper Sangin Valley has seen heavy fighting since US and British forces pushed out large numbers of insurgents from the Valley during a three-day operation in April following months of large scale engagements.

Some security improvements in Sangin were visible by the summer of On February 7, over British Royal Marines partook in Operation Diesel in the Sangin Valley, destroying scores of secret drug labs and bomb factories. Helmand Data - Content. Tribal Map - Thumbnail. Helmand - Content. Suleimankhel Part of the Ghilzai confederation, the Suleimankhel is one of the largest sub-tribes. The districts of primary concern are Greshk Scene of intense fighting since , Greshk remains a highly volatile area.

Musa Qala Located in northern Helmand and is one of the most unstable districts in Helmand. Lashkargah The capital of Helmand has endured sporadic periods of violence over the last two years. Sangin The Upper Sangin Valley has seen heavy fighting since Existing force levels have not been able to cope with the size and difficulty of the terrain, which includes wide deserts in the south and mountains in the north.

It borders Pakistan to its south, Kandahar province to its east and Nimroz province to the west, all mainly Pashtun provinces and heavily influenced by the Taliban. In more than , hectares of poppy were cultivated. The drug crop is closely tied to the insurgency and the Taliban are mainly funded by the opium trade. But NATO forces in Afghanistan are not permitted to engage in crop eradication, a policy which limited British tactics in crippling the insurgency.

The United Nations recently released a chilling statistic: U. Though that number has been challenged by both the U. Afghan National Army Major Hedayat Rasouly sits in his office in April of holding the remains of a shaped charge bomb. The bomb was planted by the Taliban and later defused by explosive ordinance disposal specialists from Rasouly's brigade. Rising temperatures have accelerated the melting of snow in northern Afghanistan, and flash floods have killed dozens and displaced over , families in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar Province.

At one point the Taliban asked government forces to help rescue civilians trapped on the roofs of their homes. The Helmand River flooded, and stayed flooded. The topsoil near the river, already struggling to retain water after years of drought and overworked for poppy cultivation, will undoubtedly be damaged for years to come.

Without war, such a disastrous change to the ecology of an intensely agricultural society would be devastating. But the Taliban and the U.

Helmandis cannot wait for foreign hands to bring peace. Some affected by the flooding were able to get government assistance, though it's too late to replant for a harvest this year. Many of those who lost their homes and family members will join the estimated 1. The Afghan National Army soldiers stationed in Helmand cannot wait for peace talks in Doha to end the fighting. Despite ongoing peace negotiations that have notably excluded the Afghan government , there has been no ceasefire nor indication that the American representatives are pressuring the Taliban to implement a break in hostilities.

Three days before our arrival, the Taliban announced their spring offensive. They named it Victory, and a letter sent to local Taliban commanders laid out guidelines for how to wage their annual bloodletting. The biggest change this year is less emphasis on killing Americans and more on killing Afghan soldiers, police, and government workers. The military and police officers with whom I spoke describe this as a ploy to expedite the withdrawal of U.

The letter also said the Taliban will focus on killing "spies," which many journalists have been accused of being before being murdered by the Taliban. Unlike the majority of Afghan soldiers in Helmand, Rasouly was born and raised in a small village about There are attacks in his hometown on a daily basis, and he speaks often over the phone to his family still living there. When we passed the last checkpoint that marked the outer limit of Lashkar Gah, the Afghan journalist driving with us shifted in his seat, his shoulders tensing.

The Taliban controlled territory on either side of the highway. A Taliban flag could be seen about yards to the east, belligerent and piercing as it billowed over a copse of trees. Whenever Afghan government forces attempted to take the flag down, sniper fire would send them running. To the west lay the foothills of mountains completely controlled by the Taliban, undisturbed by Afghan forces.

But the road was open, and Afghans could move relatively freely between Helmand and Kandahar. Twice a day, Rasouly sends his counter-IED teams to clear the road of explosives, finding as many as 18 newly planted bombs in a single day. The ANA base was quiet when we arrived. Most of the soldiers stationed at the base were on patrol, some sweeping the road for IEDs, others resupplying the dozens of small checkpoints manned by Afghan soldiers that ostensibly prevent the Taliban from moving freely through the area.

The tactic is similar to the U. Marine approach to keeping Helmand secure: flooding the area with small patrol bases with 20 or so Marines, sending out patrols constantly to keep the Taliban from being able to amass their forces anywhere undetected.

But the ANA has famously suffered from a lack of personnel, and its effects are exacerbated to an extreme in Helmand Province. In an area that would have been secured by two Marine companies—about Marines—Rasouly has soldiers.

The day before we visited Rasouly's base, he took his first casualties since assuming command of the brigade seven months ago. A former soldier who'd left the Afghan army in after his brother was killed returned to the th Corps a month ago. Though the ANA is desperate for more men, new recruits and returning veterans are treated with extreme suspicion and are vetted by the Afghan government's intelligence wing, the National Directorate of Security, before being allowed to rejoin their unit.

This soldier was cleared, and the day before we arrived, he helped Taliban fighters sneak into his small outpost, where they killed three sleeping Afghan soldiers before slipping away. Insider attacks have become more frequent against government forces in Helmand. Marine base. Before this insider attack, Rasouly had remarkable success as commander of his brigade. When he first arrived, the unit was in shambles.

Most of the checkpoints had no radio to communicate with other outposts. Soldiers rarely patrolled, and Rasouly quickly began increasing the number of operations, even beginning ambushes against the Taliban.

No military success goes unpunished: Because Rasouly has been able to hold his area so effectively, supplies and new soldiers are instead sent to commanders who are struggling. Ammunition cans, emptied during previous battles, lay discarded at an Afghan National Army camp in Helmand Province in April of Rasouly believes the Taliban are weaker than in previous years and suggests the emphasis on insider attacks are a sign of desperation, not strength.

However weakened the Taliban may be, Rasouly is quick to point out that the Afghan forces have not been able to hold out alone: The U. Marines stationed at a small patrol base in Lashkar Gah and the more remote Camp Leatherneck facilitate airstrikes that have helped the Afghan forces hold the line. I asked him if the reports were true that U.

Rasouly acknowledged that civilian casualties do happen, but he argued that the numbers are grossly inflated by the Taliban and U. When I asked him what would happen if the Marines left again, taking their air support with them, he shrugged and gestured to the surrounding area.

I will never stop fighting them. In Nad Ali, a town just across the Helmand River from Lashkar Gah that was one of the last to fall during the Taliban's offensive, the Afghan Local Police headquarters feels surrounded: In a few directions, it's impossible to see more than a few feet before the view is obscured by overgrowth. Along the road from Lashkar Gah, crumbled mud wall foundations are garnished with barbed wire coils, the remnants of British patrol bases destroyed by the Taliban when the insurgents retook the city.

About a quarter mile from the headquarters, I'm told that what I thought was a pond is actually the crater from a single U. The town now is "controlled" by the Afghan government. Daily reports of attacks against police checkpoints show how tenuous that control really is. Left: A government official prepares to share lunch with the author and other journalists in Lashkar Gah.

Right: A pair of night vision goggles, purchased by Major Rasouly, hang from a peg in his office at his brigade camp. At the Afghan National Police headquarters in town, I sat down with the acting deputy commander of the post.

Acting, because the appointed deputy commander is afraid to leave Lashkar Gah to join his men in Nad Ali. In his stead Asmadullah, a year-old former teacher with kind eyes, leads the police force of this town. His calculus is simple: "If the U. If not, no peace. Talks don't change anything.

The fighting has only increased. I asked Asmadullah about what lessons government forces learned from their defeat in , and he quickly interjected with very Marine rebuttal. Left: An Afghan National Army soldier on patrol with the author's squad in Marjah during the spring of Right: An Afghan National Army soldier standing guard duty at his brigade's headquarters in April of Fighting in Helmand requires one to become accustomed to being surrounded.

The Taliban have the benefit of numbers, IEDs, and extremely powerful drug lords who supply the Taliban with fighters and a source of income.

Even when more than 20, U. Marines were deployed across the province, firefights were often in two or more directions. It's a disturbing feeling when the bullets come from another direction, and an entire tree line to your left or right erupts with gunfire. As Marines, we brought enough "ass"—shorthand for guns, grenades, helicopters, everything we needed to kill those brave and stupid enough to fight us—to fight through ambushes.

When a Marine squad was pinned down by enemy fighters, we'd call in attack helicopters, Fs, and C gunships. The darkest days of a combat deployment to Helmand were those when air support and vehicles weren't available, and the Taliban often tried to draw Marines into fights where the planes and trucks couldn't come to help. If Afghan government troops are faced with holding off the Taliban alone again, there will only be dark days. America seems unanimous in its desire to let this happen.

Survey after poll after opinion piece over the last year has shown that Americans—regardless of political affiliation, age, and military experience—desire a full withdrawal of U. The desire is justified by counting American lives lost and American dollars spent.