Afghan surge poses logistical headache for US military

THE STANS

Up to 16 militants die in joint Afghan offensive: officials
Kandahar, Afghanistan (AFP) Dec 6, 2009 - US, British and Afghan troops on Sunday pressed a major offensive for a third day in southern Afghanistan which has killed up to 16 militants, officials said. More than 1,000 forces continued sweeping through part of Helmand province to eject the Taliban from a key battleground, in the first major offensive in Afghanistan since US President Barack Obama unveiled a new war strategy. Four insurgents were killed Sunday as part of the military push, bringing to 16 the overall number of Taliban killed since the offensive began, a spokesman for the provincial governor told AFP "The operation in Nad Ali continues. Four enemy were killed today and their bodies were recovered from the battlefield," the spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. Troops had impounded weapons, captured five suspects and killed around a dozen but suffered no casualties, US Marine spokesman Major Bill Pelletier said. "We've had some resistance from insurgents but by and large the Marines and Afghans are doing deliberate searches of the compounds," he told AFP. The aim of the operation was "to disrupt enemy operations, to interdict supplies and destroy supplies of IED (bomb)-making materials and other illicit materials," Pelletier said.

Helmand produces about 50 percent of the world's opium. Its largely unguarded southern border with Pakistan is both a route for the illicit drug trade and for a steady supply of Taliban recruits and supplies. Around 900 US Marines, British troops and 150 Afghan forces launched Operation Cobra's Anger on Friday as NATO nations pledged at least 7,000 troops to back the new US-led drive against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda The operation is concentrated around Now Zad, one of the most troubled districts in Helmand and described as a key communication and insurgent supply route across southwest Afghanistan, heading north and south, east and west. Ground troops were advancing in vehicles and Marines on foot, searching villages and compounds, Taliban meeting places and sites used to store weapons, Pelletier said. Southern Afghan military corp commander General Shaer Mohammad Zazai told AFP that a dozen rebels have been killed since the start of the offensive. Under Obama's troop build-up, the Marine Corps is expected to deploy up to 9,000 forces in Helmand, where British troops have struggled for years to rein in an increasingly virulent Taliban insurgency. The United States has been stepping up appeals for further allied troop reinforcements since Obama announced Tuesday that he was sending 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan over the coming months.

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Dec 6, 2009
President Barack Obama's order to surge 30,000 troops into Afghanistan presents the US military with a giant logistical challenge as it faces some of the most forbidding terrain in the world.

With few paved roads and a vast, rugged landscape, moving soldiers and equipment into Afghanistan "is a bigger challenge than certainly was the case in Iraq," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month.

Fulfilling Obama's vow to send troops at the "fastest pace possible," the first units of the buildup are due to arrive within two to three weeks, and the military plans to have all the reinforcements in place by the end of next summer.

The Pentagon carried out a similar surge two years ago in Iraq, where it could take advantage of a port, an excellent road network and vast US base in neighboring Kuwait.

"We don't have that in Afghanistan, clearly, and we don't have the infrastructure in Afghanistan," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told reporters last month.

The Pentagon was able to deploy a brigade -- an army unit of up to 5,000 soldiers -- a month during the troop buildup in Iraq and Mullen said the pace will have to be slower in Afghanistan.

The NATO-led mission has to rely more on supplying troops by air in Afghanistan and in the east, steep mountains make soldiers heavily dependent on helicopters.

An estimated 80 percent of military supplies come in through Pakistan, much of it via a single, vulnerable road that threads through the Khyber Pass and has been attacked repeatedly by armed insurgents.

From tanks to armored vehicles to helicopters and warplanes, the Afghan operation consumes huge amounts of fuel, with the military guzzling up to 83 liters or 22 gallons of gasoline per soldier every day.

More troops will require more truck convoys to ferry fuel to remote bases, raising the prospect of more casualties as fuel trucks are coveted targets for Taliban insurgents planting roadside bombs.

To protect soldiers from the lethal homemade bombs, the Pentagon is rushing to deliver a new armored M-ATV vehicle to Afghanistan made to withstand explosions while allowing for off-road driving.

The all-terrain vehicles were commissioned after commanders found that mine-resistant M-RAPs designed for Iraq were too big and cumbersome for Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has delivered at least 41 of the vehicles to Afghanistan and plans to have 5,000 there by March next year, with Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Corporation on track to churn out a thousand a month. And Gates has said it was possible double that number could be ordered if needed.

With tens of thousands of troops on the way in the next several months, engineering teams are ramping up construction work to handle the new arrivals.

The soldiers will find conditions sparse and austere.

At the NATO base in Kandahar, soldiers in a US Army Stryker brigade were still constructing their quarters in October and waiting for some of their vehicles to arrive, three months after deploying.

Despite the difficulties, the head of the logistics operation was optimistic supplies would get to the troops on time.

"Looking across our full line of support, I'm confident that we're on track to supply warfighters with everything they need, whether it's fuel, spare parts for weapons systems or troop-support items," Vice Admiral Alan Thompson, director of the Defense Logistics Agency, said this week.

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