Advance of troops in Taliban-held Marjah slowed by mines

AFP - Thousands of US-led troops fighting to capture a key Taliban bastion in Afghanistan risked becoming bogged down Tuesday, running into resistance from mortars and scores of buried bombs.
   
The slowing progress in what military officials have billed as the biggest operation in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion coincided with reports that a senior Taliban commander had been arrested in neighbouring Pakistan.
   
"We are advancing slowly because areas have been mined," Afghan army chief of staff Besmillah Khan said on the fourth day of the massive offensive on Marjah, in the opium heartland of the southern province of Helmand.
   
The assault on the militant stronghold is the first major test of US President Barack Obama's strategy to crush an eight-year insurgency launched after the Taliban were ousted from power.
   
A massive force of 15,000 Afghan, US and NATO troops are taking part in Operation Mushtarak ("Together" in Dari), seeking to drive out militants and allow the Western-backed Afghan government to re-establish control.
   
Thousands of people from at least 1,240 families have fled the area around Marjah, a cluster of villages with a population of about 80,000, and are sheltering with friends and relatives, said the provincial government.
   
While death tolls are impossible to confirm independently, officials have said that 30 Taliban, two NATO soldiers and at least 12 Afghan civilians have been killed in the Marjah battle.
   
Limiting civilian casualties is key to winning hearts and minds in the operation against a Taliban force estimated at up to 1,000 fighters.
   
Remote-controlled bombs have hampered the progress of the assault in an area controlled for years by militants and drug lords.
   
"Hundreds of mines have been discovered in different areas," Khan said, referring to improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which are the principal killer of foreign troops in Afghanistan.
   
"We are definitely finding more than we expected," said Lieutenant Josh Diddams, of Taskforce Leatherneck, adding: "It's a slow process."
   
Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, who commands the Marines in southern Afghanistan, expected the operation to last for 30 days, Diddams said.
   
An Afghan army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that troops were meeting "more than a little resistance" inside Marjah from Taliban armed with anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades and 82mm mortars.
   
The Red Cross said IEDs planted on roads were preventing casualties from getting to hospital in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from Marjah.
   
A NATO air strike elsewhere in Helmand killed a Taliban commander known as Sarraj-Uddin, said to have coordinated foreigners fighting for the militia, and four Arab fighters, the provincial government said.
   
But the Taliban sought to compete with the Western and Afghan militaries who have journalists "embedded" in units, inviting journalists on Tuesday to tour the battle lines to witness the assault "with their own eyes".
   
Reversing the insurgency is an enormous challenge in Afghanistan, where the hardline militia is said to be present in most of the country and central government control is weak.
   
"In general, it takes between one and two decades to become a functioning state and this process is often accompanied by internal power struggles and violent debate over the right model for society," Volker Wieker, the head of the German army, warned in an article published in the Die Welt daily.
   
Obama has ordered more than 50,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan since taking office in January 2009, with the final reinforcements due to bring to 150,000 the total number of US and NATO-led troops in the country by August.
   
Despite Taliban denials, the New York Times and other US media reported that US and Pakistani spies had recently captured the Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the Pakistani city of Karachi.
   
In Kandahar province, which is next to Helmand, a roadside bomb attack Tuesday killed three policemen and wounded five, provincial police chief General Shair Mohammad Zazai said.