Word: talibans
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...opening moments of the offensive, it is too early to tell whether this counter-insurgency strategy will succeed. Recapturing Marja is the cornerstone of the Obama Administration's new "surge" of troops and civilian experts aimed to claw back towns and cities from the Taliban...
...months, NATO officers were signaling a major assault on Marja, hoping that that this tactic would draw the Taliban out of the heavily populated areas around the Helmand River - a major opium poppy growing area and a source of Taliban funds - and enable coalition and Afghan forces to re-capture and establish government control over this major Taliban bastion without causing too many civilian casualties...
However, Army sources say that the Taliban ringed Marja and its surrounding network of canals, fields and roads with thousands of hidden mines and booby-traps. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, Marine commander for southern Afghanistan told newsmen, "This may be the biggest improvised explosive device (IED) threat and largest minefield that NATO has ever faced." A British officer in Nad el-Ali reported that in one 50-m stretch of lane, his men found and disabled "dozens" of IEDs...
...weeks before Saturday's assault, NATO aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets urging civilians to leave Marja until the fighting was over and the town had been re-captured. Over 100,000 Pashtuns live around Marja, but only several thousand fled. Fleeing families told journalists on the road that the Taliban had ordered Marja's people to stay behind, giving them a human shield to hide behind as the NATO forces closed in. Others said their relatives could not leave because the roads outside their homes were too heavily mined...
With such a huge juggernaut, it may be easy for coalition forces to conquer Marja, but winning over its inhabitants may be another matter. The areas's residents are Pashtuns, who share tribal links with the Taliban. Anywhere between 400 to 1,000 Taliban fighters are said to be holed up in Marja's dusty maze of lanes and high, mud-walled homes. Now the coalition forces face the difficult task of threading through minefields, and a dense warren of houses, to hunt down the Taliban fighters...