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British and US poised to launch ’overwhelming’ offensive in Afghanistan

05 February 2010 04:04 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. British and American forces are poised to launch an ’overwhelming’ assault on the last remaining Taliban stronghold in Helmand, according to the UK commander leading the operation.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Major Gen Nick Carter said it would be the biggest offensive since foreign troops entered Afghanistan eight years ago.

Operation Moshtarak - or Together - will begin with more than 15,000 troops deployed for the attack. In the coming days the aim is to clear out more than 1,000 Taliban from the Marjah and Nad-e-Ali areas of central Helmand where the insurgents rule the "ungoverned space" with their strict interpretation of Sharia law.

In addition to 3,000 British soldiers being used, Special Forces has been pushed into Helmand with troopers from the SAS, SBS and Special Forces Support Group bolstering numbers already on the ground.

"Our expectation has to be that there will be people in Marjah and Nad-e-Ali who are going to stand and fight but we are going to apply a significant amount of combat power to the problem in overwhelming numbers," Major Gen Carter said at his headquarters in Kandahar.

"This operation is bigger than anything that has gone before and yes there will have to be a fight."

It is understood that the air assault will be the biggest since an entire US airborne division was lifted into the Iraqi desert in the 1991 Gulf War and will dwarf last summer’s successful Operation Panther’s Claw that saw 10 British soldiers killed.
For the first time Helmand will have enough troops â€“ what commanders call "force density" â€“ to contain the insurgency, with an average of one soldier per 25 head of population.

The operation has the full support of President Hamid Karzai who has been personally briefed by the British general.

"This particular operation has the full resources of everything we have in Afghanistan behind it in terms of trying to deliver an outcome that will stick." Major Gen Carter, 50, who commanded a British brigade in Basra in 2004, will move his division headquarters from Kandahar to Helmand’s provincial capital Lashkar Gah for the operation.