US Marines Continue Fool’s Errand in Challenging Taliban in Marja

Since their battle against the Taliban in Marja, Afghanistan in February, the Marines continue with a likely fool’s errand including flooding Marja with hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. The buy hearts and minds tactic aims to win over wary residents by paying them compensation for property damage or putting to work men who would otherwise look to the Taliban for support.

Just a few short weeks since the start of the operation, the Taliban have “reseized control and the momentum in a lot of ways” in northern Marja, Maj. James Coffman, civil affairs leader for the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, said in an interview in late March. “We have to change tactics to get the locals back on our side.” Actually in Marja the phrase “back on our side” is probably far too optimistic of an assessment.

The Taliban culture and firm control of Marja seems to be so widespread in the poppy growing heartland of southern Afghanistan that the locals were never on the side of the central Afghanistan government or the US Marines. The local population understandably seems to be on the side that they view as the likely long-term winner of the conflict in Afghanistan – and that side is the Taliban, not the US Marines Corps, nor NATO forces, or the United States government or especially the weak and corrupt Karzai government.

The Taliban are so well established in Marja that they seem to know everything. Should a local accept either money or work from the Marines they can soon expect a visit from the Taliban. There had been cases where the Taliban have not only beaten or killed those who have taken money from the Marines but have stolen the money and from those only beaten have even demanded additional money as compensation for defying the Taliban.

Col. Ghulam Sakhi, an Afghan National Police commander, says that at least 30 Taliban have come to one Marine outpost here to take money from the Marines as compensation for property damage or family members killed during the operation in February. “You shake hands with them, but you don’t know they are Taliban,” Colonel Sakhi said. “They have the same clothes, and the same style. And they are using the money against the Marines. They are buying I.E.D.’s and buying ammunition, everything.”

The lightning fast resurgence of the Taliban in Marja is not an encouraging indicator for the Marine and NATO forces push into Kandahar within the next 2 to 3 months. Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan and has long been at the heart of Taliban activity. Once underway the Kandahar offensive is likely to be bloody and brutal and any gains made by the coalition forces are likely to be as short-lived, as they appear to be in Marja.

President Obama will probably face a tremendous amount of rightfully deserved criticism for his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. The results of the Marja and Kandahar campaigns will give an early indication as to how Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan will play out. Deploying an additional 30,000 US troops on a fool’s errand is not likely to bring long-term success. The US Marines are a brave, brilliant, brutal, and effective military offensive force. However, as civil administrators, judges, social workers, and paymasters in a culture that they nor their bosses in Washington, DC seem to understand very well, not so much.

Our Marines and other military forces deserve better treatment and consideration than to be sent on fool’s errands by overly proud, arrogant, foolish politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC.