Approximately 300 US marines deploy to Helmand key southern Afghan province

(April 19)About 300 U.S. marines are already en route to Afghanistan to help Afghan troops keep more Afghan territory from falling under the control of the Taliban in Helmand province in the south of the country.

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The II Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Lejeune North Carolina will travel to Afghanistan. This will be the largest Marine deployment to the country since 2014 when the U.S. combat mission known as Operation Enduring Freedom wound down and officially ended. The Marines will be in Helmand province by the end of April, as Task Force Southwest. They will be replacing the Army's Task Force Forge. The Marines will be charged with training the Afghan National Army's 215th Corps as well as the 505th zone National Police. They will train them in marksmanship, indirect fire, small-unit tactics as well as other skills according to officials.

As more U.S. troops become involved in Afghanistan, US casualties are bound to increase. In an apparent insider attack, three U.S. soldiers were shot in March and in February a special forces soldier suffered severe injuries in battle. Colonel Matthew Reid noted in January: “Make no mistake, though we are no longer in a combat role in Afghanistan, it is still a combat environment. As Marines, we train and deploy with a combat mindset.” Although the mission is advisory it is quite possible that the group will find themselves involved in combat situations.General David Petraeus who led U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 told the Marine Corps Times that the 300 Marines could make a difference in the province and could reverse the momentum in the battle with the Taliban. The province is astride the key Ring Road that connect the south and west of the country to the capital Kabbul.

The marines are returning to the province as security has become worse according to Peter Bergen, a military analyst and vice-president of the New America think tank. Bergen said that U.S. military commanders claim that the Taliban control or contest a third of the population of about ten million people. The Afghan troops have had soaring casualty rates as they engage with the Taliban. Bergen said that the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan should be open-ended with no arbitrary dates to withdraw troops:“I think that was one of the problems the Obama administration had: announcing withdrawals that came and went and really made no sense from any kind of point of view. They tended to undercut the government. They also, obviously, were really helpful to the morale of the Taliban.”

Much of the area that US troops captured three years ago including Sangin have been captured by the Taliban. Nearly 50 U.S. marines died fighting to capture Sangin. Caitline Forrest, an Afghan expert with the Institute for the Study of War said that the Taliban are now able to launch offensives against strategic cities such as Kandahar, Lashkar Gah and Tirin Kot.

Forest said that given the current strength of Afghan security forces and U.S. support it is unlikely that the Taliban will be militarily defeated and they will be unwilling to seek a political solution while they have the upper hand. The Taliban also demand that foreign troops leave Afghanistan before they will agree to a peace treaty. Forrest said: “They’re winning the war. They’re winning actual terrain and population control. They have no incentive to actually go to the table, especially as they are getting additional support from other malign regional actors, such as Russia and Iran.”

The U.S. has been stepping up its involvement in Afghanistan and recently dropped the huge Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) on a series of caves and tunnels used by the Islamic State. The bombing was condemned by former Afghan president Hamid Karzai who called it an "an immense atrocity against the Afghan people." He claimed that the US is using Afghanistan as a testing ground for new weapons. Back in late March General Nicholson said that up to 5,000 more troops were needed in Afghanistan to break the stalemate with the Taliban. As shown on the appended video the first announcement about the Marine contingent was announced back in January.

Afghan and coalition forces kill at nine civilians as they destroy arms cache

Afghan officials said that they were investigating claims that at least nine civilians including six children had been killed during an operation by Afghan and coalition forces that blew up a Taliban weapons depot in southern Helmand Provice.

A spokesperson for the governor of Helmand, Omar Zwak, said that troops on a joint military operation just outside the capital Lashkar Gah, found the munitions cache late Saturday: “They set up explosives to detonate the cache, and it damaged the house where the civilians were staying.” Captain Bill Salvin a spokesperson for the Afghan coalition said that the coalition had seen the reports of civilian casualties and would continue an inquiry into the allegations. General Dawiat Wazirr, a spokesperson for the Afghan Defense Ministry said that investigators had been sent to Helmand to investigate the claims. The concrete building next door had been a clinic until the Taliban moved in.

Haji Sadiq, who owned the house that collapsed said it was being occupied by a family that had been looking after his farm after he had moved to the capital Lashkar Gar to escape the fighting. Sadiq said: “Last night, Afghan forces, along with foreign forces, raided the clinic around 11:30 p.m., and arrested some 40 to 50 villagers, and took them to the desert, and only left women and children in the houses. They put explosives over the clinic and detonated it, and the mud house next to the clinic collapsed.”

Saidq said he rushed to the scene next morning, but at first the police would not let any civilians near the collapsed house. When they finally were allowed in, he said they pulled nine bodies from the wreckage, including two older adults, their daughter-in-law and six grandchildren. One child was unaccounted for. One son had gone to Herat province to work and so escaped the carnage. The deaths of civilians in the ongoing civil war at the hands of Afghan and coalition forces as well as the Taliban has always been a problem.

In February, local residents US bombings in the Sangin district killed at least 22 civilians. The NATO mission in Afghanistan has claimed that it is investigating the deaths. The Taliban now hold seven of 14 districts in Helmand province which is Afghan's largest province in area. Of the other seven, five are contested, with the Afghan government fully in control of only two areas and the provincial capital.

At first, Afghan officials claimed their own commandos detonated the weapons cache. Later this report was revised to claim that members of the U.S.-led coalition detonated the weapons but the nationality of those responsible was not disclosed. Often official reports are unreliable and official investigations often come up with accounts of what happened that contradict that of locals and eyewitnesses. The detonation of the explosives without ensuring that nearby civilians were evacuated is surely inexcusable.

At present, there are 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan along with 5,000 from other NATO countries. The U.S. general in charge of operations has requested that 5,000 more troops be sent to help defeat the Taliban. The U.S. has said it will defeat the Islamic State in Afghanistan in 2017 which is operating there as well as the Taliban. The combat mission of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan ended in January of 2015 but there is no sign of an end to the civil war and under Trump it appears that the U.S. involvement may increase as it has in Yemen and Somalia. as well as Iraq and Syria.

Taliban surround capital city of Helmand :Province in Afghanistan

The Taliban are surrounding Lashkar Gah the capital of Helmand Province. While military commanders claim the situation has stabilized, city officials are more pessimistic.

Provincial council chief Karim Atal said: "If we don’t receive support from the central government, the province will collapse soon". While Atal said that the Afghan security forces were capable, he complained there was a lack of attention to the situation by leaders in Kabul. The past month much attention has been paid to a campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants in eastern Afghanistan. Atal said that if the government does not show support for Helmand the people would be asked to take up weapons and fight the Taliban. However, Atal said that forces had been brought back from checkpoints further afield to reinforce those in Lashkar Gah.

Lashkar Gah itself is being deluged with civilians fleeing fighting in the outlying areas creating a humanitarian crisis. Omar Zawak, spokesperson for the provincial governor said: "Around 30,000 people have been displaced in Helmand in the past several weeks. Most of them are coming to Lashkar Gah. Its difficult for the city to contain all of them. Families, children, women, all have to sleep on the streets. There is a shortage of food and clean water. We need urgent support."

The Taliban have already seized areas just a few kilometers from the city center. A major highway linking Lashkar Gar with Kandahar has been closed on and off for days both by roadside bombs and Taliban checkpoints. Residents say that only extensive bombing by the US has prevented the Taliban from taking over the entire province. In the past two weeks the US has mounted 25 strikes while hundreds of coalition advisers are helping out Afghan troops.

South of Lashkar Gah, the Taliban are making gains. District police chief Ahmad Salem sad: "Contact has been lost with police in some places. The Taliban have conquered some of our checkpoints. So far we haven’t received reinforcements, as well as food and ammunition. If we do not receive reinforcement soon, the district will collapse." Reinforcements were expected soon according to provincial police chief Brigadier General Aqa Kenotz

A huge opium harvest has helped fund the Taliban. Residents of Lashkar Gah fear that the city will fall. Resident Haji Qayum said: "The Taliban are in control of all the roads leading to Lashkar Gah. The police checkposts are falling one by one. There is a great fear the capital may fall to the Taliban." The Taliban are already said to control 10 of 14 districts in Helmand.

A NATO statement was relatively optimistic: "The situation down there remains tense and somewhat contested. It remains an ongoing security concern and there has been fighting down there for the last several weeks. We remain confident that the Afghan forces are fighting effectively and that they will continue to secure Lashkar Gah." Guilhem Molinie of Doctors Without Borders(MSF) said the charity had reduced its staff in Lashakar Gah but was maintaining emergency and surgical services. MSF has a 300-bed hospital in the city with 25 international staff.

Islamic State recruiting in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Kabul - General John Campbell, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan reports that the Islamic State is recruiting fighters in Afghanistan and next door in Pakistan as well.

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Campbell claims that recruiters have funds for recruiting. While he does not believe the Islamic State is fully operational in either country, in Afghanistan some Taliban have split off and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Campbell see this as an attempt for some Taliban to "rebrand" and as a way of bringing attention and resources to themselves. In other areas, this same type of change has led to a significant rise in Islamic State presence. In Libya, some members of Ansar al Sharia, an Al Qaeda-linked group, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Subsequently their strength grew and they now control two coastal cities.

In Afghanistan's Helmand province, Mullah Abdul Rauf has pledged allegiance to the Ilamic State. He is a former senior Taliban commander and former Guantanamo inmate. An elder from the area told the BBC there had been a fight between the new group and the Taliban after they had replaced the Taliban white flags with the black flag of the Islamic State. The elder said about 20 people from both sides had been killed or injured in the clash. The governor of Nimruz province, Amir Mohammed, said the IS tried to recruit people in the south-western province of Farah but were driven out by local people with the help of the police. However, he said the group still had the same program, though they were changing their name.

The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, has not been seen in public since 2001.There now appears to be a challenge to his leadership from the Islamic State not just in Afghanistan but in Pakistan too. In Pakistan an online video appeared in which several commanders claimed they had pledged allegiance to Abu Al-Baghdadi, the IS leader.

One Afghan news agency reported IS militants already were in control of most of the province of Nangahar in the north-east of Afghanistan, but General Campbell dismissed the report saying:"We are not seeing it operationalized to the point of like what you are seeing in Syria. But I think, given time, that is where they want to go, so I think we have to squash that out now while we can."

He did not deny the reports of Taliban and Islamic State fighters had fought with each other.

A suicide attack in the Afghan eastern city of Jalalabad killed 33 people and injured over a hundred last March. The Taliban condemned the attack but a former spokesperson for the Pakistan Taliban claimed the attack as the work of the Islamic State in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In a visit to Washington last month Afghan president Ghani claimed that the Islamic State posed a "terrible threat" to Afghanistan

Bomb kills two US soldiers in Afghanistan

Kabul - According to Interior Ministry spokesperson Sediq Sediqqi the vehicle being driven by the two soldiers was hit by the bomb. The international military coalition (ISAF) provided less detail saying only that two of its members had been killed.

Seddiqi said: "It was a magnetic bomb. It was either attached to the vehicle belonging to the foreigners or it was planted and detonated remotely." Another source said at least three civilians had also been killed in the attack Fox News reported a spate of attacks in which at least 19 Afghans were killed along with the two American soldiers. The Washington Post says that the attack that killed the two Americans was on an ISAF convoy north of Kabul, near the Bagram military base. Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahi claimed that they were responsible for the attack.

 Another attack on Saturday morning killed 12 Afghan civilians while they were clearing mines in Helmand province, according to Omar Zwak, a spokesperson for the provincial governor. The Taliban said they were responsible for that attack but claim that the targets were not civilians but were actually soldiers. Three militants were killed as well and four arrested according to authorities. The attack was near the former UK base Camp Bastion.

  Another attack Saturday morning by unknown gunmen killed Atiquallah Raufi, head of the Afghan Supreme Court secretariat, according to a spokesperson for the Kabul chief of police. In the afternoon a suicide bomber in Kabul targeted an army bus killing six members of the army and wounding 18 other people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack as well.

 At the end of this year the US combat role in Afghanistan is set to end and most troops withdrawn. However, nearly 11,000 troops are to remain to train, advise, and assist in Afghan missions. They will also have a limited combat role in counter terrorist missions. In 2016 the number of US forces is scheduled to drop to 5,500. However, there is a partnership agreement that lasts until at least 2024 in which the US makes pledges to support Afghanistan in a number of ways. Recently Afghanistan and the US also signed a bilateral security agreement that former president Karzai refused to sign.