Here are some stories on Afghanistan and Marjah from the past weekend...
Marjah is just the first step in the surge
The current offensive in Marjah is a critical stepping stone for what is likely the most important fight of the Afghan surge in the coming months: securing Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban and the most important city in southern Afghanistan, according to defense officials and analysts.
The military is using the Marjah offensive to destroy an important Taliban haven, but also to test a strategy that emphasizes strong partnership with Afghan security forces and security for Afghan civilians. And some of the same techniques will be used in future operations, such as securing Kandahar.
Defense officials are understandably reluctant to speak in much depth about their plans, but there is no doubt that Kandahar will be the military's primary objective this year.
"Kandahar remains the prize for the Taliban," a senior military official said. "So if we do anything in the future, clearly this southern capital has to be in our plans somewhere."
Military officials argue they need to wrest Kandahar from the influence of the Taliban - or more precisely, help the Afghan government take control.
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The insurgents are fighting back in Marjah, as expected.
U.S. Marines pummeled insurgents with mortars, sniper fire and missiles as fighting intensified Thursday in two areas of the Taliban southern stronghold of Marjah, where U.S. and Afghan forces are facing stubborn resistance in an operation now in its sixth day.
Marines traded machine-gun fire after coming under attack by insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades. One Marine company attacked Taliban positions surrounding them at dawn.
Marines and Afghan troops continued to battle "stiff resistance" in different parts of town, a Marine spokesman said Thursday
"We're seeing more fortified positions. They're standing their ground, essentially," Lt. Josh Diddams said. "You don't know where you're going to get a little pop up of insurgents who are going to stay and fight."
The fighting in Marjah has followed a similar pattern over the past few days: relatively light in the morning with sniper fire intensifying through midday before subsiding at nightfall.
But there were also pockets of calm. Families trickled back and shops reopened in a northern part of town as a small measure of normalcy returned to parts of Marjah that are under Afghan and NATO control.
Their donkeys laden down with their belongings, several families could be seen coming back to their homes in a sign that some civilians believed the fighting is over in zones secured by NATO troops.
Several storekeepers reopened their shops in the bullet-riddled northern bazaar in the northern part of town, as customers lined up to buy goods for the first time in nearly a week.
This is the biggest offensive since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and a test of President Barack Obama's strategy for reversing the rise of the Taliban while protecting civilians.
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One of the key threats? Snipers.
In five days of fighting, the Taliban have shown a side not often seen in nearly a decade of American military action in Afghanistan: the use of snipers, both working alone and integrated into guerrilla-style ambushes.
Five Marines and two Afghan soldiers have been struck here in recent days by bullets fired at long range. That includes one Marine fatally shot and two others wounded in the opening hour of a four-hour clash on Wednesday, when a platoon with Company K of the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, was ambushed while moving on foot across a barren expanse of flat ground between the clusters of low-slung mud buildings.
Almost every American and Afghan infantryman present has had frightening close calls. Some of the shooting has apparently been from Kalashnikov machine guns, the Marines say, mixed with sniper fire.
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As they flee Marjah, the Taliban are trying to return to towns from which they'd previously been forced.
Intelligence reports and a new flurry of roadside bombs suggest that Taliban fighters pushed from their sanctuary of Marja are trying to return to communities they fled last year, Marine commanders said Saturday.
As the Marja offensive continued, Marine Lt. Col. Matt Baker, commander of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, said that in recent days more roadside bombs have been found in the "green zone" of Nawa near the bazaar and the district government center.
Before Marines descended on sprawling Helmand province in southern Afghanistan last summer, Taliban fighters controlled Nawa, extorting money from merchants, closing its school and clinic and killing anyone who opposed them. They fled to nearby Marja after several weeks of sporadic gunfire aimed at the Marines.
At a community meeting Saturday in an outlying neighborhood of Nawa, Baker urged a group of more than 200 Afghan men to help the Marines keep the Taliban from reasserting its dominance in this agricultural area.
"The people need to be brave," Baker said. "The reality is that many of the insurgents from Marja will try to come to Nawa. We have to be a strong team and force them out."
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As a few Taliban pockets are mopped up, the transition to civilian work is beginning.
"We're still pushing through the city," said Lt. Josh Diddams, a Marine spokesman. Some of the remaining pockets of insurgents consist of only a handful of fighters, but at least 40 -- a relatively large concentration -- were thought to be holed up in the town's northwestern quarter, the Associated Press reported.
NATO said Sunday that another service member was killed in connection with the offensive, bringing the number of Western troop fatalities to 13. At least eight were Marines.
The battle of Marja is the largest coalition assault since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban. NATO commanders want to break the insurgents' grip on the town and its environs as part of a larger effort to establish government authority for the first time in years in a strategic swath of troubled Helmand province.
NATO said the operation remained "on track," although commanders acknowledged last week that clearing operations will take a month or more, somewhat longer than originally envisioned.
In coming days, however, the coalition expects the town will be secure enough to bring in a newly appointed Afghan governor, marking a symbolic shift away from the military confrontation and toward job creation, school openings and the setting up of other long-absent public services.
The military said in a statement that route clearance -- ridding the roads of one buried bomb after another -- was improving freedom of movement for local people. Many Marja residents have been pinned down in their homes for days by the fighting or have fled to other parts of the province.
Shops are slowly reopening as well, field commanders and local officials said.
Although the Marja offensive is concentrated in the district of Nad Ali, where the town is located, related operations are taking place across Helmand, the insurgency's traditional heartland.
NATO forces on Sunday reported the capture of a Taliban commander and another insurgent in a shootout in Kajaki district, in the east of Helmand, which left one of the suspects wounded. Both of the men arrested Friday were thought to have helped plant bombs and plan attacks.
By: Brant
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