DEC. 13, 2015
KABUL, Afghanistan — Alarmed that large stretches of Helmand Province are falling to the Taliban, American Special Operations forces have secretly taken a more central role in the fighting to save crucial areas of the province, as more air power and ground troops have been committed to the battle, according to Western and Afghan officials.
A Western diplomat said last week that United States Special Operations forces had been engaged in combat in Helmand for weeks, and that there were more American forces fighting there than at any time since President Obama last year announced a formal end to combat operations in Afghanistan.
The extent of the American role has been kept largely secret, with senior Afghan officials in the area saying they are under orders not to divulge the level of cooperation, especially by Special Operations forces on the ground. The secrecy reflects the Pentagon’s concern that the involvement may suggest that the American combat role, which was supposed to have ended in December 2014, is still far beyond the official “train, advise and assist” mission.
The elite ground units in Helmand include both Special Operations troops and the United States Air Force’s Special Tactics Squadron, according to the Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering his colleagues.
The American intervention in Helmand is accelerating amid growing reports of demoralized or trapped Afghan security forces and alarm at the amount of territory the Taliban have been able to seize in Helmand this year. If the insurgents are able to sweep away the tenuous government presence in district centers and the capital, Lashkar Gah, it would be a dire setback for the Afghan government, and would give the Taliban a strong foothold in southern Afghanistan.
Asked whether American forces were taking a larger combat role in Helmand, a United States military spokesman, Col. Michael T. Lawhorn, would not reply directly. But he praised the Afghan forces’ efforts so far.
“There’s little question that Helmand is a contested area,” Colonel Lawhorn said. “But the Afghan National Security Forces have conducted no fewer than five major operations there to disrupt insurgent and Taliban activities.”
Afghan officials in Helmand, however, gave more dire assessments about the state of the battle.
“The security situation is really bad,” said Toofan Waziri, a Helmand politician and prominent television commentator. Without more foreign air support, he added, “the entire province would probably fall to the Taliban in three days.”
That message was reinforced on Wednesday by the news that Khanashin District had fallen to the Taliban. Hajji Mohammad Karim Attal, head of the Helmand provincial council, said the district center and the police headquarters had fallen, with 14 police officers killed and 11 wounded, after security forces retreated to an Afghan Army base a mile and a half away.
Afghan commandos are asking NATO forces for help in retaking the district center and expect to receive air support, he said, adding, “Otherwise we will lose the district completely.”
Mr. Waziri, who spent more than a week in Helmand as part of a November fact-finding mission for President Ashraf Ghani, said there had been a very close call last month, when the Taliban had surrounded police forces in the center of Marja District, threatening to take over that town and open the way for an assault on the provincial capital. But in a rescue mission, eight United States Special Operations soldiers led a contingent of Afghan soldiers the 15 miles from Lashkar Gah to Marja, picking their way painstakingly down a mined road to oust the Taliban.
“The appearance of the Americans rallied the local police forces in both Marja and Lashkar Gah,” he said. “I think the province would have been lost without them. And the neighboring provinces would then have come under pressure, too.”
Even so, on Sunday, officials in Marja reported that the district center was once again on the verge of falling to the insurgents. And in the strategic district of Sangin, the only territory remaining to government forces was one half of the government center, with officials worried on Sunday that even that toehold could soon fall. “If our problems are not heard by provincial authorities,” said Hajji Ghulam Jan, head of the district council in Sangin, “we will be surrendering to the Taliban.”
Mr. Attal, the provincial council chief, said that Gen. John F. Campbell, the American commander in Afghanistan, had visited Helmand on Nov. 21 and promised that NATO would provide Afghan security forces in Helmand with both air and ground support as long as operations could be well coordinated.
For the last week, high-ranking officials from the Afghan Interior Ministry have been helping to coordinate operations, with assistance from NATO forces, Mr. Attal said.
He said that earlier in December, NATO forces had carried out heavy airstrikes in several districts of Helmand, including Marja, Sangin and Babaji. In another joint operation, in Nawzad, NATO and Afghan forces last week conducted a rescue operation in which they freed 62 hostages of the Taliban, including police officers and civilians who had been taken as hostages two months ago.
The Afghan National Police and the border police declined to comment about the situation in Helmand now.
Helmand, which borders Pakistan, is one of the world’s most important opium-growing areas, and parts of it have remained a Taliban stronghold even through the years of the heaviest American troop presence.
The official end of American combat operations in Afghanistan left Afghan forces to defend the province, but corruption, incessant attacks and an ineffectual government response have sapped the security forces’ fighting spirit, according to accounts by local soldiers and officials. Many Afghan soldiers and police officers have laid down their weapons and left the battle.
Mr. Waziri said police units in the province were mysteriously understaffed, and that he had seen evidence of widespread selling of weapons and military equipment on the black market — material that was likely to end up with the Taliban or drug traffickers. Communications and coordination between army and police units is a shambles, he said.
“Seventy-five percent of the problems in Helmand are the same as in Kunduz,” he said, referring to the September debacle in which the demoralized defenders of Afghanistan’s fifth-largest city melted away in the face of a vastly inferior Taliban foe. The city was retaken only after American forces joined with the Afghan Army to drive out the insurgents.
President Obama’s orders to the military allowed the American-led NATO mission to go beyond “train, advise and assist” operations in cases of extreme peril to Afghan forces, and in some other limited circumstances, such as counterterrorism missions against Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Increasingly, though, the United States military appears to be taking a liberal interpretation of the mission statement to target the Taliban, according to accounts by Western and Afghan officials.
Al Qaeda “is the only organization that can be targeted solely because of affiliation,” said Colonel Lawhorn, the spokesman for the United States-led NATO mission in Afghanistan, which has been named Resolute Support. He added, “Others can be targeted because of their behavior, i.e., whether they present a threat to the force.”
One European diplomat said that, whatever the official rules of engagement for American forces, the international community was relieved to see the United States battling the Taliban, given the risk to the government amid the insurgent offensive this year.
“The Taliban have to know that fighting hurts,” the diplomat said, adding that the best hope was still for a negotiated peace — something that would probably prove impossible if the insurgents were to enjoy major success on the battlefield.
Even with the American intervention, the situation in Helmand remains tenuous. Fighting has been intense around Marja, like Sangin a town of symbolic importance that was once rated a success story after United States Marines cleared the area in a costly 2010 victory at the beginning of a major increase of American troops. That increase brought American and NATO troop strength to a peak in 2011 of about 140,000. Today there are but 13,100 NATO troops from 42 nations, the majority of them trainers. Other nations’ ground forces do not, as a rule, participate in combat operations.
“NATO forces are now helping Afghan security forces,” Shah Mohammad Ashna, a police spokesman in Lashkar Gah, confirmed. Government operations in Marja and Khanashin Districts have been backed by NATO airstrikes, he said, and operations are continuing in Sangin District, where there have been three battles over the past week.
In addition to the air power, “We have also got NATO ground support,” said Omar Zwak, spokesman for the Helmand governor. “Not in large numbers, but they are supporting our Afghan forces in urgent matters.” Mr. Zwak said NATO forces were acting to coordinate and carry out air attacks against enemy strongholds across the region.
Most of northern Helmand is already in the hands of the insurgents; only the Kajaki and Sangin Districts are still held by the government. The Taliban this year took back control of Musa Qala and Nawzad Districts, regions that had been turned back over to the government by American and British forces. Baghran District, in the far north of the province, has been under Taliban rule for a decade.
Asad Ali, Asia-Pacific analyst for IHS, which monitors risks in countries, said Helmand’s role in the lucrative opium trade made it crucial to the insurgents’ economic designs, while defeating the government there “would crown any Taliban commander as the one who achieved the first decisive victory of the insurgency.”
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