The USMC in Helmand (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

Excellent article and a good find. Whether it will work is a moot point. May return with comments another time. Did the defecting local Taliban leader bring any fighters with him or later? What national / international aid for the locals has arrived since?

Note the role of the Danish and (tiny) Estonian contingents alongside those normally in the foreground.

davidbfpo

[Danny]

At least during the battle for Musa Qala, no fighters materialized. In my post:

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2008/...-abdul-salaam/

I linked this from the Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3174835.ece

Saying:

There was no uprising. When Afghan, British and US units closed in on Musa Qala last month, Mullah Salaam stayed in his compound in Shakahraz, ten miles east, with a small cortège of fighters, where he made increasingly desperate pleas for help.

“He said that he would bring all the tribes with him but they never materialised,” recalled one British officer at the forefront of the operation. “Instead, all that happened was a series of increasingly fraught and frantic calls from him for help to Karzai.”

So there you have it. One of my major problems with this whole deal. It is a pitiful substitute for the awakening, and if you cannot bring fighters with you, then you're nothing more than a shyster.

[davidbfpo]

Just out and not seen yet, a book on the battle for Musa Qala by an embedded journalist with the UK forces and a review piece: http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.co...snakebite.html

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

Missed this UK Channel 4 Dispatches programme, where Stephen Grey is the reporter and includes several interviews with UK Army officers - mainly those at the top: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/d...es-6/episode-4

Hopefully this link to the TV programme will work outside the UK, as Rex and a few others have found links don't: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/catch-up

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

With a sub-title:

Three years after he first travelled to Musa Qala, Nick Meo returns to Afghanistan and finds a town fearful that Nato's war is not going well, and dreading what may happen when they leave.

A lengthy article and some key phrases:

Insurgent control begins just a few miles from the town centre...Many of the attacks are thought to be paid for by drugs barons who flourish in the opium-rich region. Their business thrives when it is lawless and they want the foreign soldiers out.

Corporal Vincent Song, who is based next to the governor's compound, was appalled at the semi-secret meetings taking place there, as ex-Taliban fighters drink tea with the governor. "I don't agree with it at all. These are people who are trying to kill me," said Cpl Song, 21, from Washington, who joined up two years ago to fight terrorism. "So many of my brothers have died here. I hate the thought that the governor is meeting the Taliban."

A man identified to The Sunday Telegraph as a Taliban sympathiser, a mullah who attends meetings called shuras to find out what the marines are saying to the Afghans, insisted that the war would get worse before it got better.
"The police arrest the wrong men when bombs go off, and the foreigners kill innocent civilians," he said. "Then their cousins and friends want revenge and join the insurgency. "More clashes create more war, and the Taliban will not do deals to end the war. They want power again in all of Afghanistan. They have tasted its delights before and they want them again."

Says it all IMHO.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...war-again.html

[jcustis]

"They have tasted its delights before and they want them again."

...and is important that we take heed as we try to move forward. If the carrot does not produce the results desired, the answer is not always more carrots.

[tequila]

New America Foundation report on Helmand province. Some really interesting stuff on local power dynamics in here. Not an optimistic report at all.

Another one on Zabul and Uruzgan.