Washington D.C. — Now 12 days into the offensive in Marjah, a senior military official at the Pentagon gave Fox a detailed update on the operation. This official, who did not want to be identified, is intimately familiar with the day to day progress of the fight.
He told us NATO and US forces are still in the process of clearing out the hundreds of Taliban fighters from Marjah, and that so far the fight has been has been slow, but successful. “This is war and it’s uncertain. The focus is on securing the population; that is how we are measuring progress and we are seeing positive signs there.”
Making inroads with the population not only satisfies the new strategy to this war, but it help keep U.S. and NATO troops safe. Locals, after all, know where the bombs are hidden. “When they help us detect and turn in and find these IED’s [Improvised Explosive Devices] that in fact protects our guys but is also an indicator to us of a connection with the population.”
As expected, IEDs are the most real danger in Marjah. For every two IEDs detected and dismantled, one goes off, this official said. In many cases those makeshift bombs kill and wound Afghans. Just today there were reports from the region of a young boy who lost his hand because he was playing with a roadside bomb, thinking it was a toy. This official said the threat has proven to be extremely adaptive. He called the enemy “clever” and said the bombs have increased size and power since the military has brought in more mine resistant vehicles, known as MRAPS. “Southern Afghanistan is the worst place in the country for IED’s, we’ve seen a 75 percent increase in the last year”, this official said.
This official described the Taliban fighters as an “indigenous group”, not willing to let go of the relative wealth they’ve earned through Marjah’s lush poppy fields and booming drug trade.
He defended the idea of making this an Afghan-led operation. Although the Afghans aren’t the ones firing large rounds of artillery or calling in air strikes, their knowledge of the culture and the enemy is invaluable. Without their cooperation in planning this attack, this official said, the offensive would not be working.