Marja - Day 2

NATO [...] reported its forces had accidentally killed 12 Afghan civilians in a misdirected rocket strike [by US Marines] in Nad Ali, the district in which Marja lies -- the first major episode of civilian casualties since the start of the offensive on Saturday. The alliance expressed deep regret and said it was immediately suspending use of the weapons system involved.

  LA Times

President Hamid Karzai's office said the president had ordered an investigation into the civilian deaths, which happened less than 24 hours after he warned troops to take all precautions to protect residents of the region.

[...]

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the deaths of two soldiers -- one British and one American -- in the assault. It later announced a third ISAF death in southern Afghanistan but did not say if it was related to the operation.

  Google/AFP

Let's see. The major aim was supposed to be to avoid killing civilians. Now we have a report that nearly half as many civilians as insurgents were killed in the second day of the raid by a poorly aimed rocket that landed on their house (which they were told to stay in for safety's sake). Ooops?

SAF said one Afghan national army soldier and one ISAF service member were injured by the insurgents in the incident leading to the rocket attack.

[...]

Although NATO officers have said they were refraining from air strikes except where necessary, residents in nearby communities said they saw numerous incidents of air raids on the first day of the action, but not on Sunday.

  NYT

I guess those were necessary. Much has been made of the risk of failure if the Afghan civilians are not protected and do not trust the foreign troops. We're off to a good start then.

Western commanders still do not have a solid estimate of how many militants remain in the farming town and its environs, which for years had served as a Taliban sanctuary.

[...]

For the advancing Marines, it was a rough, dirty slog -- and a slow one. Companies of U.S. and Afghan troops moved through the streets, carefully detonating improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in their path. Plumes of dusty smoke arose from the blast sites.

Commanders acknowledge that such "clearing" could go on for days or weeks.

[...]

In Marja's center, vanguard coalition forces laid claim to more key sites, including some strategically located walled compounds. Marines guarding one such makeshift outpost came under insurgent fire when Afghan troops inside the compound raised their national flag, the Reuters news agency reported.

By nightfall [of the first day], it was claimed by ISAF sources that marines "appeared to be in control" of the centre of Marjah.

Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, said it was "the most successful operation we have ever carried out", but warned that the complete military operation could take a month.

[...]

Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Rezaq Akhund was quoted describing the operation as a public relations stunt: "Their main objective from all this propaganda is to give some prestige to the defeated and failed military commander General Stanley McChrystal, even if it is the short-term capture of a small village, and shown on Western television."

[...]

The tactic, thought up by U.S. General Stanley McChrystal and British Lieutenant General Nick Parker, requires soldiers to "use brain-power rather than fire-power"

  Wiki

Uh-oh.

The following searching door to door for weapons and insurgents is expected to last at least five days, with possibly hundreds of bombs and booby-traps in houses and on roads and foothpaths as the biggest concern.

The old house-to-house hunt for insurgents. Nothing can go badly there.

Afghan and international forces had dropped leaflets in and around the city of Marjah hours before the offensive began, warning people not to give shelter to the Taleban.

“Do not allow the Taleban to enter your home,” the leaflet said, a clear warning to the Taleban and civilians that the offensive was imminent.

Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Bazeley, the Commander of the British Engineer Group in Afghanistan, told soldiers at Camp Bastion: “We are going into the heart of darkness.”

  UK Times

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander who persuaded Mr. Gates, and ultimately Mr. Obama, to try his form of counterinsurgency, insisted last week that the “transfer” element of the strategy had been prepared and would kick in as soon as the Taliban fled or were defeated.

"We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in,” General McChrystal said.

The gamble here is that once Afghans see the semblance of a state taking hold in Marja, rank-and-file Taliban will begin to take more seriously the offers that Mr. Karzai and the West are dangling to buy them off. Enticed by the offer of some political role in Afghan society — and a regular paycheck — they will think twice about trying to recapture the town. “We think many of the foot soldiers are in it for the money, not the ideology,” one British official said recently. “We need to test the proposition that it’s cheaper to enrich them a little than to fight them every spring and summer.”

  NYT

Indeed. As Butch Cassidy said to the Sundance Kid (in the movie, anyway), "If he'd just pay me as much as he's paying Pinkerton to stop me from robbing him, I'd stop robbing him!"

It seems to me this whole thing about the government in a box and bribing Taliban to work within the government will essentially be the same as having the Taliban be the effective government, which it is now. And even if the Taliban were not permitted to play, how long would an imported government in a box last?

Perhaps Obama and his people have realized there's no winning in Afghanistan, and so they have come up with this elaborate plan to rearrange the country's personnel a little, claim a victory, and get out. If they're smart, that is. Americans won't realize that, just as in Iraq, we spent trillions of dollars and destroyed millions of lives just to leave the country in a different bad position.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.