Gates Visit Highlights Marines’ Success in Sangin

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SABIT QADAM, Afghanistan, March 9, 2011 – When Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited this small base in Afghanistan’s Helmand province yesterday, he noted that Marines have brought nearly unprecedented security to the part of Afghanistan where the Taliban wielded the most power.

The base and surrounding outposts are home to Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. With 29 Marines killed and 150 wounded, the regiment has suffered more casualties than any other U.S. unit in Afghanistan, fighting to drive the Taliban from their former heartland.

Marine Corps Lt. Col. Morris, battalion commander, and operations officer Capt. Richard Barclay told reporters traveling with Gates about the Marines’ fight to bring security to the province’s Sangin district.

Barclay said Sangin is a small but strategic area that was the Taliban’s main poppy-growing and drug-production area for years. The district is near the province’s main north-south road, Route 611, and Sangin wadi, or dry riverbed, which runs east to west.

Combined, those two terrain features historically have allowed insurgents coming through the mountains between Kandahar and Helmand provinces nearly unlimited access to all of Helmand, Barclay said.

“Looking at it ‘large picture,’ Sangin is definitely a narcotics, weapons and insurgent personnel superhighway and crossroads,” Barclay said. “This is definitely an area [the Taliban] want to hold on to.”

Since the Taliban largely have been driven from the area, Barclay said, the district government has re-established control, and the Sangin bazaar has become a “commercial hive” of 900 shops. Meanwhile, coalition and Afghan forces have moved onto more small bases in and among the population centers, and cleared Route 611. Formerly, large stretches of the road were impassable because of insurgent mines, he said.

Morris said his Marines moved into Sangin with “no misconceptions about how difficult it was going to be,” and fought hard to drive the Taliban out of the area. The Sangin area was “a sea of insurgency for a long time,” he added.

“The insurgents had absolute sanctuary everywhere to process their drugs, and to do research on their [roadside bombs],” Morris said. “They’ve had three or four years of refinement and practice up here.”

While Helmand produces a lot of poppy, much more raw opium comes in to the area’s 30 to 35 major drug-processing labs, Morris said.

“Then it gets moved through the … pass, down to Kandahar, down to Qetta,” he said. “This area, this wadi … has provided, historically, about 50 percent of the funding for the Taliban senior leadership in Qetta.”

Morris said when the Marines arrived, their patrol bases “were literally ringed by Taliban flags.” The Marines took most of their losses in the first two months of their deployment, but in the past three months they’ve pushed the Taliban back.

“We’ve been very successful in killing a lot of Taliban, capturing a lot of Taliban, and driving those low- and mid-level insurgent leaders out of the area,” he said.

The Afghan people like the security the Marines and Afghan forces provide, he said, adding that they “are definitely starting to feed us more information.”

Morris said in the next few weeks, the Marines expect to see more violence in the area, as spring weather will make the Taliban will feel more confident moving in close to Sangin to try to reassert their authority.

“They’re going to have a real hard time doing that,” he said. “Patrol bases, combat outposts, and patrols of partnered ISAF and ANSF forces are going to meet them at every turn.” He noted that indicators suggest the Taliban and insurgents have started trying to move forces and bomb-making materials into the area.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces have expanded and deepened their presence in the area over the last three months, the Marine commander said.

During his visit, Gates said the Marines have made a major contribution to the overall counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Securing Sangin provides a link among northern Helmand, Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces, he added, allowing commerce routes and the reach of government in an area formerly inaccessible from other parts of the country.

The secretary termed the Marines’ actions in Sangin “a major strategic breakthrough.”

Gates Visits Marines in Eastern Afghanistan

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SABIT QADAM, Afghanistan, March 8, 2011 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today visited with Marines fighting here in what the secretary said was one of the most dangerous places in the world before they arrived.

On the second day of his 13th trip to Afghanistan as defense secretary, Gates flew to Sangin district in eastern Helmand province for his visit here at a base formerly known as Forward Operating Base Jackson.

The base and its surrounding outposts are home to Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, whose unit symbol and call sign is “Dark Horse.”

“It’s an honor to be here in Dark Horse country and to see for myself the dramatic turnaround that you all have brought about here in Sangin,” Gates said. “Before you arrived here, the Taliban were dug in deep, and as the British before you can attest, this district was one of the most dangerous –- not just in Afghanistan, but maybe in the whole world.”

The secretary said in the five months since the Marines arrived, they’ve killed, captured or driven away most of the Taliban who used to call Sangin home.

“In doing so, you’ve linked northern Helmand, Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces, a major strategic breakthrough,” he said.

Their success has come at a heavy price, Gates said.

“Since October, the 3/5 has suffered the heaviest losses of any battalion in this 10-year-long war,” he said. “Every day I monitor how you’re doing, and every day you return to your [base] without a loss, I say a little prayer. I say a prayer on the other days, as well.”

Defense officials say 29 Marines in the battalion have been killed, and 150 others have been wounded.

The battalion and its partnered Afghan forces have written, in sweat and blood, a new chapter in the Marine Corps’ roll of honor, the secretary said.

“I visit your wounded brothers at Bethesda,” the secretary said, referring to the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. “I write the condolence letters to the families of your fallen.”

Gates said he feels their hardship and their sacrifice, and those of their families.

“I also relish your victories, take pride in your achievements, and take satisfaction as you strike fear into the heart of the Taliban,” he added.

During the question-and-answer period the secretary conducts during troop visits, a Marine captain stepped forward to thank Gates for increasing the use of surveillance balloons and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment at the battalion’s outposts.

The surveillance capability allows him to track his troops on mission, to observe patterns of behavior among the local population, and to identify insurgent activity, the captain said.

“That balloon up above my forward operating base has been a game-changer for me,” the captain told the secretary.

“We’ve gone from about a dozen of those aerostats five or six months ago to … 60 or 65 throughout the country,” Gates replied. “I want to put a bunch more in. I’m just waiting on the Congress to reprogram the money so I can do it.”

Gates, dressed in khaki pants, a blue and white striped shirt and a baseball cap emblazoned, “Maneuver Center, Fort Benning,” gave a commemorative coin and had a photo taken with every troop who’d gathered to see him.

Marines paced toward him one by one, many in muddy boots and all carrying what appeared to be well-broken-in weapons.

The secretary shook each one’s hand, passing a coin with the handshake, then placed his other hand on each one’s shoulder as they turned to face the camera. All got a pat on the shoulder from the secretary as they stepped away.

Gates ended his visit with a request to the troops.

“You couldn’t be here if it weren’t for the support of your families back home,” he said. “So I hope that the next time you’re in contact with them, that you will tell them how much I, personally, thank them for the contribution they make to the contribution you make.

“You couldn’t do this without them, and we couldn’t do this without you,” Gates said.