housands of U.S. Marines stormed into an Afghan river valley by
helicopter and land on Thursday, launching the biggest military
offensive of Barack Obama's presidency with an assault deep in Taliban
territory.

U.S. Marines launch major assault in Afghan valley
Reuters July 2, 2009, 1:24 pm

GARMSIR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Thousands of U.S. Marines stormed into
an Afghan river valley by helicopter and land on Thursday, launching the
biggest military offensive of Barack Obama's presidency with an assault
deep in Taliban territory.

Operation River Liberty, which the Marines call simply "the decisive
op," is intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand River
valley, heartland of the Taliban insurgency and the world's biggest
heroin producing region.

In swiftly seizing the valley, commanders hope to accomplish within
hours what NATO troops had failed to achieve over several years, and by
doing so turn the tide of a stalemated war in time for an Afghan
presidential election in August.

"The intent is to go big, go strong and go fast, and by doing so we are
going to save lives on both sides," Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson,
commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan, told his staff before
the operation.

Wave upon wave of helicopters landed Marines in the early morning
darkness at locations throughout the valley, a crescent of opium and
wheat fields criss-crossed by canals and dotted with mud-brick homes,
where firmly entrenched fighters defied NATO forces for years.

A Reuters reporting team drove in by land in an armored convoy with
third platoon of Fox Company, 2nd Batallion, 8th Marines. The Marines
dismounted before dawn and fanned out into the fields alongside the
river as the sun rose.

DESERT OF DEATH

Hundreds more Marines raced by ground in convoys through a barren area
known as the Desert of Death.

In all, about 4,000 Marines surged forward and thousands more were
mobilized to assist them, an operation by foreign ground troops on a
scale unseen in Afghanistan since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

The Marines hope by appearing suddenly and in overwhelming numbers, they
can capture some of the Taliban's firmest strongholds with little
resistance.

"Towns that were the Taliban heartland will fall. They will fall
quickly. And hopefully they will fall without a shot. That's our
intent," Nicholson said.

The 10,000 Marines in Helmand Province, 8,500 of whom arrived in the
last two months, form the biggest wave of an escalation ordered by Obama.

The new U.S. president has declared the Taliban insurgency in
Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to be America's main foreign
threat. Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan are at their highest since the
militants were toppled in 2001.

Under Obama, the U.S. force in Afghanistan is more than doubling this
year, from 32,000 at the start of 2009 to an anticipated 68,000 troops
by year's end, many of them diverted from Iraq. Other Western countries
have about 33,000 troops in Afghanistan.

The arrival of the Marines doubles the international force in Helmand,
where an overstretched British-led NATO contingent has in the past
lacked the manpower to hold onto territory it cleared, and instead
mainly defended a few scattered outposts in heavy fighting.

Most of the province has remained outside government control, and
produced by far the largest share of Afghanistan's opium crop, which
accounts for 90 percent of the world's heroin.

Launching such a bold operation carries great risk. A protracted, bloody
fight could erode support for the war in the United States, among its
NATO allies and among Afghans.

Taliban fighters have had years to reinforce positions among the
valley's irrigation ditches and canals. They have fiercely resisted past
advances.

But U.S. and NATO commanders hope a rapid and decisive victory in the
Helmand Valley will prove the tipping point that will turn the course of
the war once and for all.

Addressing Marine commanders days before the assault, Dutch
Major-General Mart de Kruif compared it to the D-Day invasion that
changed the course of World War Two.

"We have people out there who do not realize that progress is about to
come to them," he said. "We have enemies out there who do not yet
realize that they are going to lose."