US progress in Afghanistan

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post correspondent embedded with the Marines, for the latest on the US operation launched yesterday in southern Afghanistan.
Listen

Read more about the Taliban insurgency

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World. US marines and coalition forces continue their push into South Western Afghanistan today. It’s day two of a major military operation aimed at clearing out the Taliban, and winning and over local residence. There have been sporadic clashes, Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post is embedded with marines, and is now back at Camp Leatherneck. Rajiv, paint a picture for us. What’s going on where you aren’t what you’ve seen today?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Yeah, we have going on today, marine unties standing out across the Helmand River Valley in southern Afghanistan. Their mission, as you know is to try to win over, essentially, the allegiances of the local population by promising to protect them from the Taliban. In some areas the marines have been able to begin that process of engagement with local elders and other residents. But in other parts of the region, the marines have found themselves under some pretty stiff resistance, particularly around the town of [INDISCERNIBLE]. The marines have been engaged in hours-long firefights, and in one case actually had to call in an air strike kinda building. It’s worth noting that the marines took it as a kind of pride that in the first day of the operation they didn’t have to rely on artillery or air strikes. But some of the fighting today proved to be sufficiently intense that they had to take that step. Now, marine officials noted and taken great pains to note that they actually serveilled the building that they were hitting with the bomb for many hours to conclude that there were no civilians inside recognizing that killing civilians here could well fundamentally jeopardize their heir efforts to lean over the local population?

MARCO WERMAN: How are the marines being received by the local population?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, it’s still very early days. One point worth noting is that the marines have pushed very far south in Kalman province, the town in district of (PH) Keneshan, had hoped to conduct some meetings with village elders down there. And it turned out today that nobody really wanted to come out and meet [INDISCERNIBLE] that residents of southern Afghanistan have at times encountered NATO security forces. But because those forces [INDISCERNIBLE] British here in Helmand province, haven’t been of sufficient strength to sort of hold these areas and to maintain a permanent presence, the come and they go. And so, a lot of residents here just don’t yet believe it that the marines are here to stay. And so are hanging back a little unwilling as yet, just in these first few days of the operation, to come out decisively on one side.

MARCO WERMAN: Is it too early to say, to  you think Rajiv, whether the kind of new parts and mind strategy that the Obama administration wants to apply in Afghanistan is working?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: I think it still is too earl, it’s gonna take some weeks, if not months. And the really measure here probably will not be in the number of Talibans we got killed, but whether the towns and villages across this river [INDISCERNIBLE] start to come back to life. Whether shops open up, whether schools restart, whether the local police forces are able to go out of control, and whether the local district governors are able to get back to their offices, and that’s still a long way off.

MARCO WERMAN: One of the daily, kind of mundane problems, if you will, the marines face right now is the heat there. What’s it like and how are the marines, and how are you, Rajiv, handling it?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, I can tell you that the heat is oppressive, in fact it’s more than that. It’s incredibly dangerous out here. The outdoor, the only temperatures in the middle of the day are similar north of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. And when the marines are wearing their body armor, they’re wearing their helmets, they’re carrying packs with, in some cases, 70 or 80 pounds of gear, it can lead to heat exhaustion and heat stroke very quickly. There’ve been several marines who’ve been medically evacuated because of heat related injuries. And a acute challenge for the marines is, we’re supplying the units in the fields with additional bottled water, and so they’re nightly helicopter runs across this are where the helicopter’s just hovering over the ground and pushing out big pallets of water to the forces in the field.

MARCO WERMAN: Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post embedded with marines who are fighting in the Helmand River Valley in Afghanistan. He’s been speaking with us from Camp Leatherneck. Thank you so much for your time.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: A pleasure to talk to you today.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.