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Troops face gunfights and minefields in offensive against Taliban in Afghanistan

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Sunday, February 14, 2010

MARJA, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers encountered pockets of stiff resistance and extensive minefields as they sought to press into this Taliban sanctuary in southern Afghanistan on Saturday.

Numerous gunfights with insurgents and painstaking efforts to clear roads of makeshift bombs slowed the advance of many coalition units and delayed them from reaching some key destinations in this farming area of 80,000 people. The operation was further complicated by the challenge of fording irrigation canals that ring the area and traversing a landscape covered in knee-deep mud.

"We've had some pretty tough fights," said Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. "It's been a tough slog for some of our companies."

The effort to flush the Taliban out of Marja, which involves 5,000 Marines and Afghan security forces, is part of the largest coalition operation since the start of the Afghanistan war to combat the insurgency and assert government control over lawless areas of the country. British and Afghan troops are conducting a related operation in Nad Ali, a Taliban stronghold 30 miles to the northeast.

One Marine from the brigade was killed Saturday and several suffered injuries, most of them minor. It was not clear how many insurgents were killed by Marine ground units and by a series of Hellfire missile strikes from unmanned Predator and Reaper aircraft that commanders employed to pursue fighters shooting at coalition forces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who U.S. officials said had authorized the operation, issued a statement Saturday calling on "all Afghan and international troops to exercise absolute caution to avoid harming civilians." He also urged the Taliban "to renounce violence and reintegrate into civilian life."

The danger and complexity of the mission became evident as soon as Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, approached the southeastern border of Marja at sunrise. To clear a path from the battalion command post to the outer canal, the Marines employed a tank equipped with metal fangs and a plow -- it looked like something from a post-apocalyptic science-fiction movie -- to lead the way.

The Marines also sought to detonate any bombs by firing rockets that lay a ribbon of explosives ahead of them. But even with those measures, the troops encountered 15 roadside bombs on a three-quarter-mile route from the command post to the canal. Each had to be defused or destroyed.

"It's painstaking," said Lt. Col. Cal Worth, the battalion commander.

U.S. military officials deem Marja the most-mined part of Afghanistan. Taliban operatives set up numerous laboratories in the area over the past three years to manufacture makeshift explosives, which they have placed in plastic jugs -- to avoid U.S. metal detection gear -- and buried underground. The bombs are equipped with detonators that are set off in a variety of ways: simple pressure plates, remote-control devices or wires connected to switches that are triggered by insurgents lying in wait.

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