Afghanistan war: Marjah battle as tough as Fallujah, say US troops

G_j

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Sun Feb-14-10 12:13 PM
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Afghanistan war: Marjah battle as tough as Fallujah, say US troops

Edited on Sun Feb-14-10 12:54 PM by G_j

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2010/0214/Afghanistan-war-Marjah-battle-as-tough-as-Fallujah-say-US-troops

Afghanistan war: Marjah battle as tough as Fallujah, say US troops
US and Afghan troops moved towards the center of the Taliban stronghold of Marjah today despite encountering fierce sniper fire and mine fields. Sixty percent of the front-line forces are Afghan troops.

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

By Julius Cavendish Correspondent / February 14, 2010

Kabul, Afghanistan
Thousands of US and Afghan troops ground their way towards the center of the Taliban stronghold of Marjah today despite encountering fierce sniper fire and even greater numbers of home-made bombs, booby traps, and minefields than anticipated.

US Marines raised an Afghan flag inside the town limits but pockets of Taliban militants dug in, with some veterans comparing the intensity of the fighting to that encountered when they stormed the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2005.

"In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south. In Marjah, we're coming in from different locations and working toward the centre, so we're taking fire from all angles," Captain Ryan Sparks told Reuters.

The operation to clear Taliban insurgency from their biggest stronghold in Helmand province looks increasingly like an acid test of Western military and political strategy in Afghanistan, with the outcome likely to deal a powerful propaganda blow one way or the other.

With US General Stanley McChrystal�s reinvigorated counter-insurgency campaign placing the emphasis on protecting communities rather than killing militants, the first measure of success for the thousands of US, NATO, and Afghan troops involved in Operation Moshtarak (the Dari word for �together�) will be avoiding civilian casualties.

The vast majority of Marjah�s civilian inhabitants, of whom there are somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000, have stayed put after a NATO information campaign entreated them to �keep your heads down� and the Taliban mined all approaches to the town.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/14/nato-strike-misses-target_n_461872.html

NATO Strike Misses Target, Kills 12 Afghan Civilians
Posted: 02-14-10 11:24 AM

AOL News:

A major anti-Taliban assault by thousands of NATO-led troops in southern Afghanistan entered its second day Sunday with fierce fighting, strong resistance from militants and civilian casualties.

Twelve Afghan civilians died when two rockets fired by coalition forces missed their intended target in the Nad Ali district of Helmand Province, where the offensive is taking place, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/22/usa.iraq1

Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes
We now know the US also used thermobaric weapons in its assault on Falluja, where up to 50,000 civilians remained

George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday 22 November 2005

The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So, before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones. There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called Falluja: the Hidden Massacre. It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human-rights advocate who, it said, possessed "a biology degree".

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http://www.alternet.org/story/82338/

Five Years Later, Fallujah is Still in Tatters
The city remains sealed. Many residents refer to it as a big jail.
April 16, 2008 |

FALLUJAH, Apr 14 (IPS) -- Fallujah remains a crippled city more than two years after the November 2004 U.S.-led assault.

Unemployment, and lack of medical care and safe drinking water in the city 60 km west of Baghdad remain a continuous problem. Freedom of movement is still curtailed.

The city suffered two devastating U.S. military attacks during 2004. Many of the buildings were destroyed, or heavily damaged. Several collapsed under the heavy bombing, and were never rebuilt. The heaps of concrete slabs and piles of rubble remain where they were.

"We wonder why we have been targeted by Americans since the first days of the occupation," Dr. Mohammad Abed from al-Anbar University told IPS. "This city sacrificed thousands of its citizens through five years of occupation just because they said 'no' to a project that threatens their country's future."

Now a less visible form of destruction is being spread, he said. "The new wave of destruction is represented by tearing the social tissue apart. The Americans are paying tremendous amounts of money to get people of Fallujah to fight each other."

The road into Fallujah from the main Amman-Baghdad highway is safer today, but nobody is allowed into Fallujah who is not from the city and can prove it by providing elaborate identity documentation. That can only be obtained by undergoing biometric identification by the U.S. military -- a process which includes retina scans, body searches and finger-printing before issuance of a bar-coded ID badge.

The city remains sealed. Many residents refer to it as a big jail.

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