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Major military operation fails to find Taliban targets

It was the single-biggest Coalition operation in Afghanistan in three years.


Canadian Forces soldiers prepare to enter a room in the Zjarey district, west of Kandahar, searching for evidence of Taliban activity one week ago. (CP)

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Globe and Mail Update
POSTED AT 5:54 AM EDT ON 15/07/06

KANDAHAR — Six hundred Canadian soldiers, working with U.S. infantry, early this morning put the squeeze on a Taliban stronghold in the badlands of Helmand Province so that British paratroopers could storm several compounds.

The raid took place about 150 kilometres northwest of Kandahar in two pockets of the volatile Sangin area, not far from where earlier this spring Canadian Private Robert Costall was killed at remote Forward Operating Base Robinson.

Before dawn, Alpha and Charlie Companies of the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry moved into the area from the south, with U.S. troops of the 10th Mountain Division doing the same from the north, as the Coalition converged most of its military assets in southern Afghanistan on a handful of mud-walled compounds for what a senior Canadian army official called "one brief, shining moment."

With the Canadians providing a block at the north end of Sangin district and the Americans doing the same from the north, 300 paratroopers from the British 3rd Battalion of The Parachute Regiment were dumped from helicopters onto key rooftops of the compounds.

Intelligence considered highly reliable led Coalition forces to suspect there may be have been as many as 300 insurgents, including some mid-level Taliban leaders, holed up in the area.

But early reports, Coalition spokesman Major Scott Lundy said today, suggest that against all predictions, insurgents may have opted not to make a stand this time, but rather melt away into surrounding districts, lending credence to the description offered by the senior Canadian official about the difficulty of fighting an insurgency moving on its home turf — "Like punching flies."

Ten Taliban fighters were killed in the battle, Maj. Lundy said, with Coaltion forces suffering no casualties.

The Taliban, as did the mujahedeen before them, recognize the value of a strategic retreat. It is one of the frustrations of a counter-insurgency that it is the insurgents who usually dictate the where and when of battle.

Helmand is Afghanistan's largest producer of lucrative poppy, which drives the local and national economy both, and the Sangin area is the transit zone for moving the finished product — bricks of opium paste — out of the country.

As a result, the area is teeming with not only the fundamentalist Islamist ideologues of the Taliban, but also with narcotics dealers and various local warlords — all of them armed to the teeth and determined to protect the drug which respectively funds war or livelihood and to undermine the fledgling Afghan government.

The arrangement between drug lords and Islamist extremists is believed to be so close that the Taliban formally "tithes" with local narcotics dealers in order to protect the poppy as it moves north.

As the Canadian official described the raid, "Once the pinchers are in place, we'll try to crack the nut. And once we've done that, 3 Para will come in choppers for the air assault."

The operation is the culmination of the months-old operation called Mountain Thrust, designed to quell the heaviest pockets of insurgency in four Afghan provinces.

With 2,500 Coalition soldiers now on the ground in the Sangin area, as well as 1,000 each from the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, this is the single-biggest Coalition operation in Afghanistan in three years.

There have been daily battles in the area between British troops and insurgents for some time, with the British running so low on supplies that soldiers were forced to drink from the Helmand River, their situation dire enough that late last night, a chopper left the main Coalition base at Kandahar Air Field to drop off emergency rations of bottled water to them.

"They're the besieged soldiers waiting for the cavalry," is how the Canadian officer described the British.

The raid was considered daring for a number of reasons — chiefly because putting helicopters and men over known enemy compounds is very high-risk, because of the possibility of civilian casualties and because even in the absence of civilian deaths, the propaganda arm of the Taliban is expected to claim that innocent lives were lost.

The area is normally home to an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Afghans, though many are believed to have fled in recent weeks as the resurgent Taliban flexed its muscles and though often, just before a battle, the remaining villagers are often spotted running to safety.

"Civilians are a huge concern," the Canadian official said. "From a philosophical point of view, no one on the Coalition side wants one innocent civilian killed. It's contrary to why we're here. That's why we're focusing our intelligence assets to know which two, three or four compounds the Taliban is using targeting."

He said it is standard practice that the Taliban may also try to hold locals hostage in the village, or move their own families in, to use as human shields in the attack./

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. (emphasis added)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060715.wblatch0715/BNStory/Afghanistan/

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