Marines arriving at Kandahar

Welcome help. Marines were the first US ground unit to establish a presence in Afstan, at Kandahar in November 2001.

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -A forward party of 3,200 U.S. Marines is already on the ground preparing to begin combat operations next month. It is not the first time that there have been jarheads at the Kandahar Airfield.

As the Marines are fond of saying, they were the tip of the spear when the province of Kandahar became the last Taliban and al-Qaeda redoubt to fall to U.S. forces, 11 weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Choppering 650 kilometres from assault ships in the Arabian Sea to Kandahar, the Marines routed forces loyal to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

After holding the area for about one month, the jarheads handed over what was then thought to have been the last gasps of the Afghan war to elements of the U.S. army's 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division and a 845-man strong battle group built from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry led by then-Lieut. Col. Pat Stogran...

Now, six years after the Taliban and al-Qaeda were thought to have been crushed, Marines and the Patricias, who have just arrived for another tour, are once again taking up arms against exactly the same enemy in roughly the same place. An infantry battalion out of southern California is on its ways to Kandahar to devote itself to mentor Afghan police.

More interesting, from a Canadian point of view, is the deployment to Kandahar from North Carolina of the 24th MEU, or Marine Expeditionary Unit [more here], which has at its centre a reinforced infantry battalion.

Officially, everyone here remains tight-lipped about how many of the Marines will be deployed alongside the Canadians here.

However, that has not stopped rampant speculation about this or about how robust the storied Marines' rules of engagement will be.

Given the Marines fierce fighting doctrine and the fact that the first of nearly 30 Marine aircraft -- Harrier attack jets, Cobra attack helicopters and troop helicopters [these or these?] -- have begun to arrive, as well as recent hawkish comments from political and military leaders in the U.S. about what their mission was expected to achieve, wherever the Marines end up, it is clear that they will add a more aggressive dimension to the war against the Taliban...

The Marines streaming into Afghanistan today are coming for only seven months.

However, encouraged by comments by Marine Corps commandant General James Conway, who has publicly lobbied to move most or all of the more than 20,000 Marines in Iraq to Afghanistan, the buzz around Marine bases in the United States these days has shifted from Iraq's Anbar province to Kandahar.

Some stateside Marine units have already been told to develop counter-insurgency training cycles designed to put them in the Afghan theatre next year.

Whether other NATO countries chose to answer Canada's plea for more boots on the ground in Kandahar, the Manley Panel's intentionally low demand that 1,000 combat troops be sent to the province will undoubtedly [a bit strong at this point but likely true - MC] be met by the Marines.

I think the story unfairly--playing to Canadian prejudices--torques the "aggressive dimension" of (developing) Marine counterinsurgency practice. See this excerpt from an article by a Marine officer returned from Iraq:

...
Commanders, from the small-unit level to the general ranks, increasingly understand that population security, political reconciliation and economic development create legitimate government, which saps insurgents' strength. As a result, conventional forces are now performing counterinsurgency missions at a level that many experts thought impossible.

My old unit returned from Iraq last spring after serving in a city in Anbar Province. As a mechanized reconnaissance company, its traditional mission focused on scouting for Soviet-style armored forces. The unit's performance in Iraq more closely resembled that of the Green Berets.

Soon after occupying its forward outpost, the company met heavy insurgent attacks. But it did not over-react with mass detentions and other alienating tactics. Instead, the Marines took a patient approach to win the support of the population and eject the extremists hiding among them. They partnered with Iraqi police, established a pervasive security presence throughout the city, and worked with local leaders to improve basic services, governance and the economy. Such tactics used to be rare, but are now increasingly the norm, thanks to Gen. David Petraeus's dogged emphasis on seeing counterinsurgency conducted by all units.

The Sunni tribal uprising that's driven al Qaeda from Anbar Province and Baghdad wouldn't have occurred without U.S. forces grasping the complexities of irregular warfare. Iraqi Sunnis rejected the oppressive version of Islam that al Qaeda imposed -- but feared the consequences of resisting. By showing a willingness to help, U.S. troops presented a more trustworthy and less-threatening partner than al Qaeda, a remarkable achievement considering the vast religious and cultural differences between Americans and Iraqis...