US Marines – Civilians in Crosshairs Slow Troops

Wall Street JournalCivilians in Crosshairs Slow Troops

As Capt. Anthony Zinni monitored a live video feed from a Predator drone circling overhead, he spotted four men planting a booby trap in the middle of the road here.

For Capt. Zinni, one of the officers responsible for approving airstrikes in the nine-day-old battle for Marjah, it seemed like an easy call: The men were digging a hole alongside a road where a Marine supply convoy was scheduled to pass within hours. But just as he was about to give the order to strike, Capt. Zinni spotted even-smaller white figures on the video running along the path south of the canal.

Children. Maybe 50 feet from the men planting the booby trap. “It’s not a good shot,” Capt. Zinni said, ordering the Predator drone to delay the strike. “It’s not a good shot.”

The 45 minutes that followed help illustrate why it is taking coalition forces so long to secure this hotly contested part of Afghanistan.

US Marines – Marines Do Heavy Lifting as Afghan Army Lags in Battle

New York TimesMarines Do Heavy Lifting as Afghan Army Lags in Battle

As American Marines and Afghan soldiers have fought their way into this Taliban stronghold, the performance of the Afghan troops has tested a core premise of the American military effort here: in the not-too-distant future, the security of this country can be turned over to indigenous forces created at the cost of American money and blood.

Royal Navy – Great Britain Gambles With The Royal Navy

US Naval War College ReviewGreat Britain Gambles With The Royal Navy

The news late last year that the Type 23 frigate HMS Northumberland was to be replaced on the Falklands patrol by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Largs Bay in order to join the international counterpiracy effort in the Gulf of Aden raised quite a few eyebrows. This was not because anyone seriously thought that Argentina would seek to profit from the absence of a British warship in these contested waters for the first time since 1982 but more as it seemed to show just how bad things were getting for the once-mighty Royal Navy that its first-line fleet could not apparently cover both commitments at once.

US Marines – Marines plan joint mission to eject insurgents from last Helmand stronghold

Washington PostMarines plan joint mission to eject insurgents from last Helmand stronghold

In the late 1950s, scores of U.S. engineers transformed a swath of uninhabited desert in southern Afghanistan into verdant farmland by constructing a network of irrigation canals fed by the Helmand River. The Afghan government filled the area, which it called Marja, with Pashtun nomads and told them to grow wheat. The wheat fields have since been replaced by tracts of opium-producing poppies. The mud-walled compounds that once housed families now conceal drug-processing labs and roadside-bomb factories. And the canals serve as moats to protect hundreds of Taliban fighters, who use Marja as a staging area for attacks across Helmand province. In the coming days, thousands of U.S. Marines will seek to transform Marja once again. Working in partnership with Afghan soldiers, the Marines are planning a major operation to flush out insurgents and allow the Afghan government to reassert control.