NATO forces and their Afghan allies hope to hold territory seized from the Taliban in an imminent major operation “forever”, the commander of British forces in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province said. British and US forces are poised to take the town of Marjah, the last major bastion of Taliban control in the province, in what will be one of the biggest operations of the eight-year-old war. Troops have raided Marjah in the past, but lacked the forces necessary to hold it. The commander of the nearly 10,000-strong British contingent in Helmand said this time they were coming to stay, under a “clear, hold, build” counter-insurgency strategy. “What's the counter-insurgency? It is not about defeating the enemy in old fashioned victory; it is about winning the people,” Brigadier James Cowan told Reuters television on Monday at his headquarters in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah. “I am not going to speculate about how long it will take to clear, but I will be very precise about the hold. The whole point of the hold is for it to last forever,” he said The NATO-led force in Afghanistan now numbers more than 114,000 and is due to rise to nearly 150,000 this year under an escalation ordered in December by US President Barack Obama. The assault on Marjah will be the first operation to take advantage of those extra troops, which commanders say will give them the force they need to finally impose a lasting Afghan government presence over formerly Taliban-held areas. Showing progress on the battlefield this year is critical. Obama has pledged to start reducing the number of US troops by mid-2011, and other NATO allies such as Canada are also pulling out next year. The military strategy calls for taking control of districts in opium-rich Helmand and neighboring Kandahar provinces from fighters who seized them over the last several years. Commanders have flagged their intention to seize Marjah for months in the hope of persuading less-committed Taliban fighters to flee or lay down arms rather than stand and fight.
