Amid the confusion over the latest US-led mission, body bags provide a sobering certainty.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – At Kandahar Airfield, medics in the trauma ward waited for a helicopter ferrying four soldiers from the 82nd Airborne’s 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, wounded by a mortar round that hit their combat outpost in Arghandab district, just north of here.
These four soldiers survived the attack last week, but another one of the 2-508’s paratroopers who arrived just the day before wasn’t as lucky. Spc. Brendan P. Neenan, 21, of Enterprise, Ala., was killed by an IED. His casket, along with those of three Marines who drowned when their vehicle flipped over into an irrigation ditch on June 6, was carried in an armored vehicle along Kandahar Airfield’s airstrip, draped in an American flag. Marines and paratroopers saluted solemnly as the caskets were loaded onto a C-130 for the flight back to the U.S.
These are some of the first casualties of an "offensive" in southern Afghanistan that the military has suddenly grown reluctant to call an “offensive.” It has begun quietly, with the U.S.-led NATO force here seemingly confused about whether the operation is about bringing “governance” to Kandahar or clearing areas of insurgents. What is clear is that the slow trickle of wounded and the dead back to America has started. Fifty-three NATO troops have died so far this month — if the pace continues, it will be the deadliest month since the Afghan war began.
Thousands of American troops have arrived as part of a build up to secure Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city. It is the epicenter of the country’s Pashtun south and the Taliban’s spiritual home. Officials at U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, or ISAF, say the goal of the troop increase is to stabilize Kandahar and the surrounding area. In terms of security, that means denying the Taliban the ability to assassinate and intimidate Afghans here. The Kandahar operation is more like a “cooperation,” officials say.
The choice of words is presumably intended to calm citizens’ nerves about a violent onslaught like the offensive in Marjah. And officials are very quick to point out that this operation is not Marjah.
Although the “cooperation” was planned to be in full swing by this month, Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said the offensive will take longer than planned, and will last into the fall. That may stem from lessons learned in trying to fill governmental void after the counterinsurgency clearing operations in Marjah. It has proven harder than expected to set up a meaningful governmental structure there, and the Taliban continues to harass Marjahs’s residents and to attack U.S. troops, according to news reports and analysts.
Whatever the spin put on the operation in Kandahar, the bottom line is that about 25,000 U.S. troops are flooding into this area over the next few months, and they will be settled and ready to go in about four to six weeks.
The goal, says Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, commander of ISAF’s Regional Command South, is to connect the people with their government. There will be times of more “kinetic” activity, to use the military parlance, but commanders play down reporters query's about the “clearing” phase of counterinsurgency operations. That’s another code word for the point in a campaign when most of the killing is done.
But there will inevitably be more American and Afghan blood than the slow trickle that started last week in Kandahar; already the numbers of wounded and dead are increasing on both sides. And there may perhaps be much more of it in this “offensive” that dare not say its name.
The plan to secure Kandahar involves two complimentary rings, according to military briefings provided to reporters here.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/100618/kandahar-afghanistan-ied-marines-isaf
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