Kabul, Afghanistan: Approximately 300 US marines will return this spring to help fight a resurgent Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, the site of a years-long bloody campaign, US officials in Afghanistan said on Saturday.
A US military spokesman in Kabul said the Marines would replace an Army unit stationed in Helmand, and would offer training and advice to members of the Afghan military and the national police.
“The Marine rotation is to replace soldiers currently here conducting the train, advise and assist mission,” said Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan. “We’re very pleased that the Marines will rotate in, as they have tremendous institutional history in the region.”
The Marines were last in Helmand, a hotbed of Taliban fighters and poppy cultivation, in October 2014. Since then, Afghan forces, suffering from leadership woes and plagued by corruption, have struggled to hold territory, with district after district falling to the Taliban. For months now, the insurgents have been at the gates of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
The Afghan military welcomed the news of the marines’ return.
“We have been asking our foreign counterparts in security meetings to increase the level of their troops in Helmand province to help us on the battlefields,” said Shakil Ahmad, an Afghan Army spokesman. Ahmad said the security situation in the region was rapidly deteriorating.
The Taliban appeared unfazed by the news. “Our mujahideen continued their progress in the presence of tens of thousands of Americans and other invading forces,” said Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman. “A few hundred other soldiers won’t become an obstacle on the way of our progress.”
Fewer than 8,400 US troops are in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama declared the US combat mission in Afghanistan over in December 2014. But in the past year, as violence has spread across the country, the line for the US military between consulting and fighting has increasingly blurred.
Unlike in the past, fighting between government troops and the Taliban has not diminished with the coming of this year’s winter. Many fear that when fighting intensifies in the spring, the Taliban will be starting from a position of strength around several provincial capitals.
