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US, NATO and Afghan forces are now in the sixth day of their offensive against Taliban forces in Helmand Province. NATO officials say that militants battling coalition troops are running out of ammunition. An Afghan general said Taliban fighters were increasingly using civilians as “human shields.” We speak with The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow in Kabul.
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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. The military offensive against the Taliban in the southern Afghan district of Marjah could last another 30 days. That’s according to the British General who’s directing the operation. Today the General said that U.S. and Afghan troops on the front lines in Marjah are facing stiff resistance from the Taliban. That resistance takes many forms, from intense small arms fire and deadly sniper attacks, to the ever present danger of land mines and improved explosive devices. Joshua Parlow is in Kabul for the Washington Post. Thirty days seems like a long time, Joshua, considering that there thought to be only a few hundred Taliban in Marjah when the operation began and dozens have since been killed. Shouldn’t the Marines be able to wrap this up a little bit sooner?
JOSHUA PARLOW: Well I think what you see often in these types of operations is the first few days are often, you know, have the least resistance as the Taliban often try to gauge you know, what the U.S. or Afghan troops are going to do and then the resistance actually builds as time goes on so you know, no, I think everyone has expected that this would take a while. What has been interesting in this is you might argue that there’s been more resistance initially than a lot of people expected because I spent some time in Southern Afghanistan and [SOUNDS LIKE] Homans in January and you know, even then the U.S. military was reporting the people, insurgents had already been leaving Marjah and that their biggest concern was the roadside bombs and the mines and you know, a lot of people predicted that they might not really have a lot of gun battles, which they’ve been having it seems like in the last few days.
CLARK: And one of the things that’s also slowing things down it seems for the Marines anyway are these rules of engagement under which the Marines are said to be operating or are forced to be operating. Can you tell us what those rules are and why they’ve been put into place?
PARLOW: Yeah, this is one of the, you know, the main tenants of General McCrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy is to really try to take pains to reduce the civilian casualties that they’ve had earlier in the war and they still continue to have and they’ve had in this Marjah operation, I think about fifteen civilians at least confirmed have been killed so far. But you know, they take steps like having to positively identify that someone’s shooting at them before they can, they can shoot. They’ve really restricted the amount of air strikes and you know, bombings on compounds which is something they used to do a lot in the past, in the war. You know, the human rights groups that I talk to in Afghanistan have really actually praised how they’ve conducted this operation so far because they think for the scope of the operation, there’ve been relatively few civilian casualties but at the same time, the soldiers on the ground will often tell you that it’s difficult and more time consuming to fight in this manner.
CLARK: And we are seeing lots of reports as well that the Taliban are using snipers for the first time. What are you hearing about that?
PARTLOW: Yeah, that’s a good question. Yeah, something we’ve also been hearing as well but I haven’t been one of the embedded reporters on the operation so I haven’t seen that firsthand. It’s something that’s not very common here. You don’t hear about it a lot. You know, you often hear the Taliban uses AK-47’s and the marksmanship is not very good and it’s kind of spraying gunfire but it seems like there have been some instances in Marjah where they’ve had you know, they’ve used snipers and have had more accurate gunfire from long distances so it’s potentially a troubling development, I think for the soldiers taking part in this.
CLARK: Joshua Parlow of the Washington Post in Kabul. Thanks for your time.
PARLOW: Thanks very much.
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