plant a new crop of opium poppies and rest up during the long winter. So no matter how hard the U.S. militaryâs HUMINT collection teams, unmanned drones, and SIGINT teams scoured the countryside looking for their elusive enemy, the fact is that over the winter months it is virtually impossible to find the enemy. Come the spring and the beginning of the fighting season, the U.S. military typically knows very little about the enemy they are facing.
Once the attack on Marjah began, the Taliban refused to engage the superior U.S. and British forces arrayed against them, with the vast majority of the Taliban fighters managing to escape because the U.S. Marines for some reason made no effort to cut off their escape routes. So ninety days after the fall of Marjah, the Taliban had managed to reinfiltrate the town. Sniper fire and IED attacks on marine patrols around Marjah resumed. Local villagers suddenly became uncooperative, with some elders going to extraordinary lengths not to be seen talking with the marines for fear that it would prompt Taliban retaliation against them and their families.
Attempts to get the Afghan government to take over responsibility for administering Marjah stalled because the administrators and police officials who were supposed to restore the Afghan governmentâs presence in the town refused to take up their posts. From the elaborate excuses given by the officials, it was clear that Marjah was seen as a life-ending rather than a career-enhancing assignment.
In a move that shocked American military and intelligence officials, the Afghan government announced that Abdul Rahman Jan, a notoriously corrupt official who formerly served as police chief of Helmand Province from 2003 to 2006, was to be the new police chief in Marjah. Jan was infamous for making his private militia and his police available to guard opium and heroin shipments in return for a cut of the profits, according to CIA and U.S. Army intelligence reports. The announcement brought immediate howls of protest from Marjahâs village elders, who told marine commanders that they would refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Afghan government if Jan was to be their police chief. Under immense pressure from the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Karzai withdrew Janâs name from consideration, but the incident showed U.S. officials that, according to a senior ISAF intelligence officer, âKarzai doesnât get it.â
Panic over Marjah set in at ISAF headquarters in Kabul. Bombarded by negative press reporting, on May 24, 2010, General McChrystal flew down to Marjah to make his own assessment of the situation. With time running out on his mandate to reverse the course of events in Afghanistan, McChrystal did not like hearing that the Taliban were creeping back into Marjah. He wanted results and he wanted them soon. âThis is a bleeding ulcer right now,â McChrystal told his commanders, according to an account of the meeting published in the Miami Herald . âYou donât feel it here, but Iâll tell you, itâs a bleeding ulcer outside.â
The marines quickly staged a photo op three days later for a visiting CBS News film crew to try to demonstrate that all was normal in Marjah by erecting a tent that was to be a new school. Everything about the event bordered on the farcical. Lt. Colonel Brian S. Christmas, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, which was responsible for guarding Marjah, half-dragged the white-turbaned village chief out of the crowd, put a shovel in his hand, and encouraged him to break ground on the foundation for the new school while the CBS crew filmed the scene. The mortified village chief, perhaps thinking that he had just been involuntarily drafted into a work gang, looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
Off to the side, a bemused group of marine intelligence officers videotaped the event, paying special attention to a cluster of black-turbaned men who were
Once the attack on Marjah began, the Taliban refused to engage the superior U.S. and British forces arrayed against them, with the vast majority of the Taliban fighters managing to escape because the U.S. Marines for some reason made no effort to cut off their escape routes. So ninety days after the fall of Marjah, the Taliban had managed to reinfiltrate the town. Sniper fire and IED attacks on marine patrols around Marjah resumed. Local villagers suddenly became uncooperative, with some elders going to extraordinary lengths not to be seen talking with the marines for fear that it would prompt Taliban retaliation against them and their families.
Attempts to get the Afghan government to take over responsibility for administering Marjah stalled because the administrators and police officials who were supposed to restore the Afghan governmentâs presence in the town refused to take up their posts. From the elaborate excuses given by the officials, it was clear that Marjah was seen as a life-ending rather than a career-enhancing assignment.
In a move that shocked American military and intelligence officials, the Afghan government announced that Abdul Rahman Jan, a notoriously corrupt official who formerly served as police chief of Helmand Province from 2003 to 2006, was to be the new police chief in Marjah. Jan was infamous for making his private militia and his police available to guard opium and heroin shipments in return for a cut of the profits, according to CIA and U.S. Army intelligence reports. The announcement brought immediate howls of protest from Marjahâs village elders, who told marine commanders that they would refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Afghan government if Jan was to be their police chief. Under immense pressure from the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Karzai withdrew Janâs name from consideration, but the incident showed U.S. officials that, according to a senior ISAF intelligence officer, âKarzai doesnât get it.â
Panic over Marjah set in at ISAF headquarters in Kabul. Bombarded by negative press reporting, on May 24, 2010, General McChrystal flew down to Marjah to make his own assessment of the situation. With time running out on his mandate to reverse the course of events in Afghanistan, McChrystal did not like hearing that the Taliban were creeping back into Marjah. He wanted results and he wanted them soon. âThis is a bleeding ulcer right now,â McChrystal told his commanders, according to an account of the meeting published in the Miami Herald . âYou donât feel it here, but Iâll tell you, itâs a bleeding ulcer outside.â
The marines quickly staged a photo op three days later for a visiting CBS News film crew to try to demonstrate that all was normal in Marjah by erecting a tent that was to be a new school. Everything about the event bordered on the farcical. Lt. Colonel Brian S. Christmas, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, which was responsible for guarding Marjah, half-dragged the white-turbaned village chief out of the crowd, put a shovel in his hand, and encouraged him to break ground on the foundation for the new school while the CBS crew filmed the scene. The mortified village chief, perhaps thinking that he had just been involuntarily drafted into a work gang, looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
Off to the side, a bemused group of marine intelligence officers videotaped the event, paying special attention to a cluster of black-turbaned men who were
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