Road out of Afghanistan: On the ground with US troops in potential final push

The recent battle for the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province, which ended with few casualties and Taliban fighters in flight, may mark the last major operation for US troops in Afghanistan.

Kajaki Valley, Afghanistan

A group of marines huddles around the top enlisted marine in their unit, who had come to visit newly established US patrol bases throughout the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province.

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A week earlier, they had been part of a force of 600 marines and several Afghan Army and police units who flooded the valley. Though US forces have made progress throughout Helmand during the past year, Kajaki had remained one of the last major areas still under Taliban control.

Now, with several US Marine and Afghan military bases established in the valley and little resistance from the Taliban, the Helmand operation appears to have been more successful than many marines had expected.

Looking to inspire a platoon that had three men medevacked during the initial assault and had been living outdoors without tents or cots since the operation began, the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment's Sgt. Maj. Larry Harrington tells the group of assembled marines, "It started for me in Kandahar in 2001, and now I'm seeing the end of it."

While the insurgency continues, the war is indeed nearing its end for the marines in Helmand and for other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) units elsewhere in the nation. With all the surge forces scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer, and troop levels expected to keep falling from there, this operation is quite possibly the last major US Marine offensive designed to gain and hold new ground for the rest of the war.

"From my perspective, it's the last piece of real estate that ISAF forces are going to really clear," says Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the ISAF commander in the southwest region of Afghanistan.

This ending battle echoed many that had come before, with the US overrunning its foe, the Taliban choosing to flee more often than fight. But a big question lingers over the durability of the gains. Marines express optimism that the lessons learned over the decade-long war will help them stabilize the area and hand it over to the Afghan government.

A decade of war in deadliest province

There are some 140,000 international forces in Afghanistan, a little less than 100,000 are American. US and international troops came here more than a decade ago following the Sept. 11 attacks, when the ruling Taliban regime refused to hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Since then the war has grown into a large nation-building effort with the United States alone investing more than $70 billion on development projects designed to strengthen Afghanistan's government and social institutions. Meanwhile, some 1,843 US and 970 international service members have lost their lives here. Another 14,342 have been injured.

Throughout the Afghan war, the south ? Helmand in particular ? has seen the most fighting. More than 795 international troops have been killed in Helmand, more than in any other province and nearly twice as many as in Kandahar, the second-most deadly province.

There are about 30,000 foreign forces in Helmand, equivalent to about one-third of the US force in Afghanistan. The area has been the primary responsibility of US Marines and British troops.

But will the improvements hold?

Although there are numerous indications that international forces have made progress in Helmand, there are just as many questions among locals about how long these improvements will last.

A report released by the New America Foundation in October found that while locals in Helmand say the Taliban are weaker now compared with 12 months ago, 49 percent of the population say they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar say that violence will lead to a civil war after international troops withdraw in 2014.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/world/~3/ImbdA7Mg-bE/Road-out-of-Afghanistan-On-the-ground-with-US-troops-in-potential-final-push

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