Outposts Under Siege
The initial mission of the Helmand Task Force was to carry out reconstruction and hearts and minds projects in the relatively safe area known as "the triangle", centered around Lashkar Gah and Gereshk. However, the intensification of Taliban attacks led to a dramatic change in this strategy. In early spring 2006, Baghran District fell temporarily under insurgent control, and on May 18, a Taliban raid in Musa Qala killed some twenty Afghan policemen.
The possibility of a Taliban offensive sweeping over the entire province was taken seriously by the provincial governor, Mohammad Daoud, a personal ally and appointee of President Hamid Karzai. Daoud insisted that ISAF troops be deployed in the districts that were under immediate threat of Taliban attack: Sangin, Now Zad, Musa Qala and the strategic hydroelectric installations at Kajaki. This was the beginning of the controversial "platoon house" strategy, that saw NATO troops, mostly British, tied down in remote outstations across northern Helmand. All posts attracted sustained and intensive Taliban attacks, and remained under siege for long periods. The Task Force's limited assets became dangerously stretched, leading to difficult situations in several cases.
Read more about this topic: Helmand Province Campaign
Famous quotes containing the words outposts and/or siege:
“So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)