US launches Helmand offensive against Taliban



American marines and Afghan troops poured into southern Afghanistan today in the first major test of Barack Obama's strategy to wrest the initiative from the Taliban.

Daybreak brought the sporadic crackle of gunfire but no immediate heavy fighting as the offensive in Helmand province began shortly after 1am local time near the village of Nawa, about 20 miles south of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Insurgents in Helmand a Taliban stronghold have for years put up stubborn resistance against British troops.

Waves of helicopters landed marines in the valley, a crescent of opium poppy and wheat fields crisscrossed by canals and dotted with mud-brick homes. The marines disembarked and fanned out into the fields as the sun rose. Hundreds more arrived in convoys through a barren area known as the desert of death.

In a simultaneous operation, Pakistan deployed troops on its border to stop militants fleeing into its territory.

As the offensive began the US military said one of its soldiers had been captured in Paktita province, in eastern Afghanistan. He was not involved in the operation. The Ministry of Defence reported the deaths of two British soldiers in Helmand; six other Nato soldiers were injured by the same improvised explosive device (IED).

Today medical helicopters circled over Helmand and landed, indicating possible early casualties among the marines. A roadside bomb early in the mission wounded one marine, but he was able to continue.

The Americans took many insurgents by surprise, dropping behind Taliban lines, Captain Drew Schoenmaker claimed, although this seemed unlikely as the insurgents usually have an idea of impending attacks.

"We are kind of forging new ground here. We are going to a place nobody has been before," said Schoenmaker, 31, from the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine regiment.

Pakistani troops moved to block Taliban fighters crossing the 1,615-mile (2,600km) border. Pakistani officers said the army was preparing for a possible movement of Taliban from Helmand, a major opium producing area. Pakistan has been conducting its own offensive against local Taliban in its north-west in recent months.

The US operation comes ahead of the Afghan presidential elections on 20 August, which will provide a key test for the embattled incumbent, Hamid Karzai, who has been under fire for failing to rein in corruption within his government. Southern Afghanistan is an area in which Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen.

The offensive called Operation Khanjar, or Strike of the Sword was described by officials as the largest and fastest-moving of the war's new phase, involving nearly 4,000 marines and 650 Afghan forces. The marines will be pushing into areas where Nato and Afghan troops have lacked the strength to establish a permanent presence.

"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," said Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, of the Marine Corps.

British forces led similar, but smaller, missions to clear insurgents from Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar province last week.

The Taliban has vowed that its thousands of fighters in the area would fight back, although only minor skirmishes were reported in the early stages.

"Thousands of Taliban mujahideen are ready to fight against US troops in the operation in Helmand province," Mullah Hayat Khan, a senior Afghan Taliban commander, told Reuters in Pakistan.

The Pentagon is deploying 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in time for the elections, and expects the total number of US forces there to reach 68,000 by the end of the year. That is double the number of troops in Afghanistan in 2008, but still half as many as are now in Iraq.

Captain Bill Pelletier, a marines spokesman, said the troops involved in the operation had been sent in by a combination of aircraft and ground transport under the cover of darkness. Once on the ground troops will meet local leaders, hear their needs and act on them, Pelletier said.

"We do not want people of Helmand province to see us as an enemy we want to protect them from the enemy," he said.

The governor of Helmand province, Gulab Mangal, predicted a successful operation: "The security forces will build bases to provide security for the local people so that they can carry out every activity with this favourable background, and take their lives forward in peace."

In March Obama unveiled his plans for Afghanistan, aiming to defeat al-Qaida terrorists there and in Pakistan with a bigger force and a new commander. Obama sacked General David McKiernan, replacing him with General Stanley McChrystal, a former joint special operations command chief and a counter-insurgency expert.

McChrystal, whose forces were credited with tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, was brought in to provide "fresh eyes" and "fresh thinking". He has already moved to lay down tighter limits on the use of air strikes to try to reduce the civilian death toll, one of the reasons given for a swing in support for the Taliban.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/afghanistan-usa

Pakistan re-deploys some forces for U.S. Afghan push

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is redeploying some of its border forces to an area opposite Afghanistan's Helmand province to block any Taliban trying to flee from a U.S. offensive launched there Thursday, a military spokesman said.

Thousands of U.S. Marines stormed into a river valley in the southern Afghan province of Helmand province in an operation seeking to break the Taliban's hold on the opium-growing region and turn the tide of the war in Afghanistan.

Southern Helmand shares a 200-km (130-mile) desert border with the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan and troops were being moved there to "challenge any crossing," said a Pakistani military spokesman.

"It's a reorganisation of the deployed troops on the border," said the spokesman, Major-General Athar Abbas.

"The area which is not under stress at the moment, we can pull out troops from those areas and beef-up the area which is coming under effect," he said.

He did not say how many soldiers were involved.

The U.S. offensive in Afghanistan comes as Pakistani soldiers are battling Pakistani Taliban in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and in South Waziristan, a militant enclave opposite eastern Afghanistan.

Abbas said there was no question of Pakistani soldiers crossing the border to help U.S. forces.

"We're only strengthening our border posts, we're not moving into Afghanistan," he said

For now, the U.S. offensive is centred on the Helmand river valley, in an area a long way from the Pakistani border and there have been no reports of fighting near the border.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE56123F20090702?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

I would stick to the BBC or the Telegraph. The Guardian is a worthless paper.




"Korea has not been the only battle ground since the end of the Second World War. Men have fought and died in Malaya, in Greece, in the Philippines, in Algeria and Cuba, and Cyprus and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired. No massive nuclear retaliation has been considered appropriate. This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin--war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called 'wars of liberation,' to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It requires in those situations where we must counter it, and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training."-President Kennedy's Address at Graduation Exercises of the U.S. Military Academy, 1962
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"The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
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"Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It'll shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars."-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
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50 planes taking part in this operation from USAF. Biggest operation after vietnam war....Lets see.....

PEACE

there seems better cooperation this time around. hope the clean up the talis once and for all.

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Pakistan Airforce: The largest distributor of Indian airforce parts in Asia



Pathankot Strike
8 F-86Fs of No 19 Squadron led by Squadron Leader Sajjad Haider struck Pathankot airfield. With carefully positioned dives and selecting each individual aircraft in their protected pens for their strafing attacks, the strike elements completed a textbook operation against Pathankot. Wing Commander M G Tawab, flying one of the two Sabres as tied escorts overhead, counted 14 wrecks burning on the airfield. Among the aircraft destroyed on the ground were nearly all of the IAFs Soviet-supplied Mig-21s till then received, none of which were seen again during the War.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFHlzP69n9c

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Russians killed half a million Pashtuns, even if you kill tell million the remaining 5 million will carry on fighting.


Afghanistan is a graveyard for invaders, Pashtuns never accept foreign rule. Learn from history






The warlike Pathans [or Pathan, Pukhtun or Pushtun] form one of the world's largest tribal societies (about 16 million) and are divided into numerous sub-tribes and clans.... The Pathan hill tribes all have a passion for freedom and independence, and defend their territory and honor against all invaders. They are fearless guerilla fighters who know the hills and valleys intimately, are crack shots and wear clothes that blend with their surroundings (khaki is a local word meaning 'dusty, and it was as a result of the wars in this region that the British army abandoned its bright red uniforms for the inconspicuous dust-colored khaki). No one has ever managed to subdue or unite them: the Mughals, Sikhs, British and Russians have all suffered defeat at their hands."

"The Pukhtunwali (the Way of the Pukhtuns) is an inflexible ethical code by which all true Pathans traditionally abide. Pukhtunwali requires that every insult be revenged and, conversely, every guest protected. To safeguard his honor, o the honor of his family or clan, a Pathan will sacrifice everything, including his money and his life. He will return even t he slightest insult with interest. According to a Pathan proverb, 'He is not a Pathan who does not give a blow for a pinch.'"

"The Pathans are notorious for the family feuds, often the result of disputes over zar, zan or zamin - gold, women or land."

"In Lords of the Khyber (1984), Andre Singer illustrates this by recounting the story of a man he interviewed 'who proudly declared that he had killed seven male members of a Mahsud family for having insulted his wife, and so far only his brother had been killed in the revenge.'"

"Tales of the dangers of the Khyber Pass and the legendary ferocity of the Pathans stirred the English imagination and evoked scenes of gallant soldier defending the might of the Raj against the equally gallant but merciless Pahatns.... Nonetheless, if the British exacted revenge by razing whole villages to the ground, the Pathans retaliated with ambushes and slaughter, and even mutilated wounded enemies.

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains

An' the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your right an' blow our your brains.

An' go to your Gawd like a solider."

Rudyard Kipling, Barrack-room Ballads, 1892