UK troops spearhead operations for major Afghan drive

Published on Friday 5 February 2010 20:59

BRITISH troops have launched helicopter advances in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province to prepare the way for a major Nato operation.

The move, confirmed yesterday, is the first military activity ahead of an expected massive assault on the town of Marjah, a maze of desert canals that US marines say they intend to seize soon. That assault is expected to be one of the biggest of the eight-year war and a decisive test of President Barack Obama's new strategy of dispatching 30,000 extra troops to turn the tide on the battlefield.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield said British troops had been conducting "shaping operations" for a few weeks in the district as part of an initial phase of Operation Moshtarak. Fresh helicopter and ground advances were launched in the past two days.

"The operations which have been taking place in the British area of Nad Ali District over the last 36 hours have been part of that same series of 'shaping operations', all part of Op (operation] Moshtarak," he said. "They have been commanded jointly by Afghan and British commanders and have involved insertions by helicopter and ground of Afghan and British troops to locations to the west of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah."

Marjah sits near the dividing line between the northern part of the province, patrolled by a nearly 10,000-strong British-led Nato contingent, and the southern areas patrolled by the US marines, who mainly arrived last year and now number some 15,000.

US commanders say the operation to seize Marjah will be backed by a larger Afghan contingent than ever before in an effort to demonstrate the Afghan government's ability to take part in enforcing its own security.

Nad Ali includes Marjah, which the US marines describe as the last major Taleban-held bastion in the centre of the province, Afghanistan's most violent region, which produces most of its opium crops, which help fund the insurgency.