.As Marines Move In, Taliban Fight a Shadowy War
KARARDAR, Afghanistan — The Marine infantry company, accompanied by a squad of Afghan soldiers, set out long before dawn. It walked silently through the dark fields with plans of arriving at a group of mud-walled compounds in Helmand Province at sunrise.
The company had received intelligence reports that 40 to 50 Taliban fighters had moved into this village a few days before, and the battalion had set a cordon around it. The Marines hoped to surprise any insurgents within.
But as the company moved, shepherds whistled in the darkness, passing warning of the Americans’ approach. Dogs barked themselves hoarse. The din rose in every direction, enveloping the column in noise. And then, as the Marines became visible in the bluish twilight, a minivan rumbled out of one compound. Its driver steered ahead of the company, honking the van’s horn, spreading the alarm. Spotters appeared on roofs.
Marine operations like this one in mid-January, along with interviews with dozens of Marines, reveal the insurgents’ evolving means of waging an Afghan brand of war, even as more American troops arrive.
Mixing modern weapons with ancient signaling techniques, the Taliban have developed the habits and tactics to evade capture and to disrupt American and Afghan operations, all while containing risks to their ranks.
Seven months after the Marines began flowing forces into Helmand Province, clearing territory and trying to establish local Afghan government, such tactics have helped the Taliban transform themselves from the primary provincial power to a canny but mostly unseen force.
Until last year Helmand Province had been a zone outside of government influence, where beyond the presence of a few Western outposts the Taliban enjoyed free movement and supremacy. The province served as both a fighters’ safe haven and the center of Afghanistan’s poppy production, providing rich revenue streams for the war against the central government and the Western forces that protect it.
In areas where they have built bases, the Marines have undermined the Taliban’s position. But the insurgents have consolidated and adapted, and remain a persistent and cunning presence.
On the morning of the sweep, made by Weapons Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, a large communications antenna that rose from one compound vanished before the Marines could reach it. The man inside insisted that he had seen nothing. And when the Marines moved within the compounds’ walls, people in nearby houses released white pigeons, revealing the Americans’ locations to anyone watching from afar.
The Taliban and their supporters use other signals besides car horns and pigeons, including kites flown near American movements and dense puffs of smoke released from chimneys near where a unit patrols.
“You’ll go to one place, and for some reason there will be a big plume of smoke ahead of you,” said Capt. Paul D. Stubbs, the Weapons Company commander. “As you go to the next place, there will be another.”
“Our impression,” he added, “is the people are doing it because they are getting paid to do it.”
Late in the morning during the company’s sweep, the insurgents fired a few bursts of automatic rifle fire from outside the cordon. Later still, they lobbed a single mortar round toward the company. It exploded harmlessly in a field.
No one could tell exactly where the fire came from. This showed another side of the Taliban’s local activities. Wary of engaging the Marines while they were ready and massed, fighters risked nothing more than this harassing fire.
The sweep was not entirely fruitless. In several houses, Afghan soldiers found sacks of poppy seeds, which they carried outside, slashed open with knives and set on fire. In a few houses, they found processed opium and heroin. But the Taliban’s fighters had proved elusive again.
Another example of the insurgents’ patience has been their selection of locations for hiding bombs, which the military calls I.E.D.’s, for improvised explosive devices. Many of these bombs are detonated by the weight of a person or vehicle that depresses a pressure plate.
The steppe is vast. The pressure plates are small — often covering not much more surface area than a man’s boot. To emplace the bombs where they are most likely to kill, the Taliban watch the Marines’ habits carefully, including how small units react in the first instants of a firefight.
While the Marines scatter, take cover and maneuver, using walls and small rises as firing positions to bound from, the insurgents take note. “This is what they do: Shoot, and observe where the Marines go,” said Lt. Col. Matthew Baker, the battalion’s commander. “And where the Marines go, that is where they will put an I.E.D.”
On two patrols the battalion made last month, the Taliban’s sense of their enemy’s previous movements seemed well developed.
On one, a Marine stepped on a pressure plate rigged to a bomb that did not explode. The pressure plate was located against a wall on a knoll with a commanding view of surrounding ground. The Marines said units had used the knoll as a firing position many times.
On another, an antitank land mine had been placed in the dirt on a turnaround loop beside one of the province’s main roads — exactly where an Afghan police unit often parks its cars.
Part of the Taliban’s enduring tactical position, the Marines say, is related to their control of Marja, a well-defended de facto capital just outside the Marines’ current area of operations. At least hundreds of Taliban fighters have taken refuge. The town is protected by elaborate defenses and by a network of irrigation canals built by a United States development program a half-century ago.
From within Marja, the Marines also say, the Taliban manufacture improvised explosives and send fighters and suicide bombers on attacks throughout the province, including the suicide raid last week into Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.
When Marine units approach Marja, the dangers rise. The insurgents run an active picket network, some of the workings of which were visible late last week on a Bravo Company security patrol that left Observation Post ManBearPig at Treekha Nawa.
After picking their way westward, searching for hidden bombs as they moved, the lead Marines crept toward the top of a low, rocky bluff. They peered over the opposite side at a group of mud-walled compounds several hundred yards ahead.
This was the outer perimeter of Marja, which was about eight miles away.
The Taliban’s spotters went to work. A man on a motorcycle sped down the road and entered one of the compounds. Heads appeared over the walls, above small holes from which Taliban fighters might fire assault rifles and machine guns. (The Marines call these “murder holes.”)
The civilians who had been outside disappeared. Both sides quietly eyed each other from just outside of rifle range.
The Bravo Company commander, Capt. Thomas J. Grace, had ordered patrols not to become decisively engaged with the Taliban’s fighters in this no man’s land. The company is the forward line of Marine presence, and has limited manpower to consolidate on new ground after a fight.
“There is absolutely no reason to go out there and kick in doors and get in a big fight,” he said. “Because you can’t hold it.”
Several thousand more Marines are expected in the province later this year, Marine officers say, which will allow the Afghans and Americans to clear and hold a larger area than they control now, and ultimately to displace the Taliban from Marja.
In the interim, at the Marines’ most forward positions, the two sides probe each other with patrols. On this day, the patrol leader, First Lt. Ryan P. Richter, could see the trap.
His platoon had been in many firefights here. If the patrol continued over the bluff and into the open, it would be enveloped by fire from three sides. In the contest of Helmand Province, he said, this remained for the moment Taliban turf.
NYT
The company had received intelligence reports that 40 to 50 Taliban fighters had moved into this village a few days before, and the battalion had set a cordon around it. The Marines hoped to surprise any insurgents within.
But as the company moved, shepherds whistled in the darkness, passing warning of the Americans’ approach. Dogs barked themselves hoarse. The din rose in every direction, enveloping the column in noise. And then, as the Marines became visible in the bluish twilight, a minivan rumbled out of one compound. Its driver steered ahead of the company, honking the van’s horn, spreading the alarm. Spotters appeared on roofs.
Marine operations like this one in mid-January, along with interviews with dozens of Marines, reveal the insurgents’ evolving means of waging an Afghan brand of war, even as more American troops arrive.
Mixing modern weapons with ancient signaling techniques, the Taliban have developed the habits and tactics to evade capture and to disrupt American and Afghan operations, all while containing risks to their ranks.
Seven months after the Marines began flowing forces into Helmand Province, clearing territory and trying to establish local Afghan government, such tactics have helped the Taliban transform themselves from the primary provincial power to a canny but mostly unseen force.
Until last year Helmand Province had been a zone outside of government influence, where beyond the presence of a few Western outposts the Taliban enjoyed free movement and supremacy. The province served as both a fighters’ safe haven and the center of Afghanistan’s poppy production, providing rich revenue streams for the war against the central government and the Western forces that protect it.
In areas where they have built bases, the Marines have undermined the Taliban’s position. But the insurgents have consolidated and adapted, and remain a persistent and cunning presence.
On the morning of the sweep, made by Weapons Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, a large communications antenna that rose from one compound vanished before the Marines could reach it. The man inside insisted that he had seen nothing. And when the Marines moved within the compounds’ walls, people in nearby houses released white pigeons, revealing the Americans’ locations to anyone watching from afar.
The Taliban and their supporters use other signals besides car horns and pigeons, including kites flown near American movements and dense puffs of smoke released from chimneys near where a unit patrols.
“You’ll go to one place, and for some reason there will be a big plume of smoke ahead of you,” said Capt. Paul D. Stubbs, the Weapons Company commander. “As you go to the next place, there will be another.”
“Our impression,” he added, “is the people are doing it because they are getting paid to do it.”
Late in the morning during the company’s sweep, the insurgents fired a few bursts of automatic rifle fire from outside the cordon. Later still, they lobbed a single mortar round toward the company. It exploded harmlessly in a field.
No one could tell exactly where the fire came from. This showed another side of the Taliban’s local activities. Wary of engaging the Marines while they were ready and massed, fighters risked nothing more than this harassing fire.
The sweep was not entirely fruitless. In several houses, Afghan soldiers found sacks of poppy seeds, which they carried outside, slashed open with knives and set on fire. In a few houses, they found processed opium and heroin. But the Taliban’s fighters had proved elusive again.
Another example of the insurgents’ patience has been their selection of locations for hiding bombs, which the military calls I.E.D.’s, for improvised explosive devices. Many of these bombs are detonated by the weight of a person or vehicle that depresses a pressure plate.
The steppe is vast. The pressure plates are small — often covering not much more surface area than a man’s boot. To emplace the bombs where they are most likely to kill, the Taliban watch the Marines’ habits carefully, including how small units react in the first instants of a firefight.
While the Marines scatter, take cover and maneuver, using walls and small rises as firing positions to bound from, the insurgents take note. “This is what they do: Shoot, and observe where the Marines go,” said Lt. Col. Matthew Baker, the battalion’s commander. “And where the Marines go, that is where they will put an I.E.D.”
On two patrols the battalion made last month, the Taliban’s sense of their enemy’s previous movements seemed well developed.
On one, a Marine stepped on a pressure plate rigged to a bomb that did not explode. The pressure plate was located against a wall on a knoll with a commanding view of surrounding ground. The Marines said units had used the knoll as a firing position many times.
On another, an antitank land mine had been placed in the dirt on a turnaround loop beside one of the province’s main roads — exactly where an Afghan police unit often parks its cars.
Part of the Taliban’s enduring tactical position, the Marines say, is related to their control of Marja, a well-defended de facto capital just outside the Marines’ current area of operations. At least hundreds of Taliban fighters have taken refuge. The town is protected by elaborate defenses and by a network of irrigation canals built by a United States development program a half-century ago.
From within Marja, the Marines also say, the Taliban manufacture improvised explosives and send fighters and suicide bombers on attacks throughout the province, including the suicide raid last week into Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.
When Marine units approach Marja, the dangers rise. The insurgents run an active picket network, some of the workings of which were visible late last week on a Bravo Company security patrol that left Observation Post ManBearPig at Treekha Nawa.
After picking their way westward, searching for hidden bombs as they moved, the lead Marines crept toward the top of a low, rocky bluff. They peered over the opposite side at a group of mud-walled compounds several hundred yards ahead.
This was the outer perimeter of Marja, which was about eight miles away.
The Taliban’s spotters went to work. A man on a motorcycle sped down the road and entered one of the compounds. Heads appeared over the walls, above small holes from which Taliban fighters might fire assault rifles and machine guns. (The Marines call these “murder holes.”)
The civilians who had been outside disappeared. Both sides quietly eyed each other from just outside of rifle range.
The Bravo Company commander, Capt. Thomas J. Grace, had ordered patrols not to become decisively engaged with the Taliban’s fighters in this no man’s land. The company is the forward line of Marine presence, and has limited manpower to consolidate on new ground after a fight.
“There is absolutely no reason to go out there and kick in doors and get in a big fight,” he said. “Because you can’t hold it.”
Several thousand more Marines are expected in the province later this year, Marine officers say, which will allow the Afghans and Americans to clear and hold a larger area than they control now, and ultimately to displace the Taliban from Marja.
In the interim, at the Marines’ most forward positions, the two sides probe each other with patrols. On this day, the patrol leader, First Lt. Ryan P. Richter, could see the trap.
His platoon had been in many firefights here. If the patrol continued over the bluff and into the open, it would be enveloped by fire from three sides. In the contest of Helmand Province, he said, this remained for the moment Taliban turf.
NYT
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