Soldier captured, Taliban says, as US offensive begins (3rd Lead)

Kabul - The US military on Thursday began a large-scale offensive against the Taliban in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan as a local militant commander said the Taliban had captured a US soldier. A night vision handout picture released by the United States Marines, shows Marines from 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 3, Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, boarding a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter during the launching of Operation Khanjar, at Camp Bastion in Helmand province Afghanistan, in the early hours of 02 July 2009. EPA/US MARINES

A night vision handout picture released by the United States Marines, shows Marines from 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 3, Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, boarding a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter during the launching of Operation Khanjar, at Camp Bastion in Helmand province Afghanistan, in the early hours of 02 July 2009. EPA/US MARINESThe US military said the Taliban was believed to have captured the soldier, who has been missing since Tuesday, in the south-eastern Afghan province of Paktika. Mullah Sangon, a local Taliban commander, said that besides the US soldier, the militants had also captured three Afghan troops. Meanwhile, the offensive in Helmand marked the beginning of the implementation of US President Barack Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan, which aims to step up the fight against the militants. About 4,000 US marines and 650 Afghan soldiers were taking part in Operation Khanjar, a US military spokesman said. Helmand is a stronghold of the Taliban, which has large swaths of the province under its control. The US and Afghan militaries had made no comment about casualties in the offensive, but Taliban spokesman Kari Jussif Ahmadi said the militants had killed 'more than a dozen' foreign troops and suffered no casualties themselves. The Taliban's casualty reports, however, are widely considered to be exaggerated. Ahmadi also claimed that 'the foreign troops bombed civilian sites instead of hideouts of the Taliban.' The Islamist fighters had taken cover in secure sites, he said. Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand's governor, said 1,000 Afghan security personnel were fighting alongside the 4,000 Americans. He added that civilian reconstruction would follow on the heels of the military operations. The aim of the Helmand offensive is to drive the Taliban out of Helmand, media reports said, citing US military spokesmen. The US soldiers are attempting to set up a series of bases and to stay in Helmand. The aim is to improve the security situation in the province long term and create stability, Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said. Meanwhile, Pakistan's military said it had deployed troops on its side of the border to stop any Taliban fighters fleeing the Helmand offensive. 'It's a reorganization of our troops deployed along the Afghan border,' said an army spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas. 'Our soldiers will guard the mountain treks the Taliban can use to infiltrate Balochistan province' in south-western Pakistan. The United States has reportedly deployed about 8,500 marines to Helmand in the past two months. As part of Obama's new strategy, the US contingent in Afghanistan would be strengthened by an extra 21,000 soldiers and there would be a new emphasis on civil and economic aid. Obama is prioritizing the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and in neighbouring Pakistan over the war in Iraq, where US troops withdrew from cities and towns Tuesday. General Stanley McChrystal, a specialist in covert operations, replaced David McKiernan as the US commander in Afghanistan in mid-June after the security situation there noticeably deteriorated. Militants carried out more than 400 attacks in the first week of June, according to the US commander in the Middle East and Central Asia, General David Petraeus. That was the highest figure since the US-led military overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. In June last year, there were fewer than 250 Taliban attacks per week, and in January 2004, there were fewer than 50 per week, a spokesman for the four-star general said.

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SP4:InterestingJul 2nd, 2009 - 17:37:16

..how the press is painting this war as the war of rightousness. The Taliban, on the other hand, is pretty impressive, sliding out while troops roll in, then just waiting for them to leave and go back to business as usual, ignoring the Al Qaeda push to harrass them. You know, I do not think we'll find any WMD's here...what do you think?

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TruebritJul 2nd, 2009 - 23:39:15

I think they've had about two and a half millennia of practice, SP.

As usual, Kipling wrote about it all, over a century ago!

'No proposition Euclid wrote
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow.
Strike hard who cares -shoot straight who can-
The odds are on the cheaper man...

...With home-bred hoards the hillsides teem.
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run,
The 'captives of our bow and spear'
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.'

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sp'sassJul 3rd, 2009 - 14:23:17

Wait a moment. What the hell is going on now? Since 9/11, and even before that, osama bin laden and the al qaeda terrorists have been in residence in their safe havens in Iraq. Afghanistan has nothing to do with all this war on terror. I never understood why the past commander in chief had the boots go to Afghanistan 8 years ago, only to find nothing, and then leave to go off and fight the real wat on terror. But I will stand by my man because he was in charge, and is so much smarter than everyone about all this stuff.
But sorry to say, this new guy is on the dark side, and even pals with the very terrorists who seek to destroy the US. We all know that if Palin was president right now everything would be so much better. We would have found osama bin laden in Iraq, continued collecting more of the tonnes of WMD stockpiled there, and of course be still winning the war on terror. No thanks to the defeatist cowards controlling the demonrats and biassed MSM who just love to side with the terrorists. And, with the true patriot, and rising star Palin in power, our own country would not have been taken over by the bunch of socialst, communist terrorists who control it now.

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