Taliban Resistance Slows Coalition Progress in Marja, Afghanistan

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2/17/2010
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Associated Press

MARJA, Afghanistan- Lt. Col. Cal Worth, who commands one of two Marine battalions leading the offensive against Taliban fighters here, set off at 7 a.m. Wednesday for the return journey to his battalion headquarters from a combat outpost less than four miles away.

___ Worth's Sisyphean challenge of moving about in Marja suggests that Taliban bombmakers, and those who burrow the devices into the dirt roads here, have not been cowed by the presence of the Marines and a large contingent of Afghan soldiers. Nor have scores of other insurgent fighters, who kept up a steady pace of attacks on coalition forces Wednesday, firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at their bases and patrols.

___ U.S. and NATO commanders were not certain that the insurgents who have lorded over Marja for the past three years would stand and fight or flee to parts of Afghanistan with fewer international security forces. It now appears clear that many Taliban members here have opted to stay-at least for now.

That may mean many more weeks of arduous house-to-house clearing operations for Marines and Afghan forces in this 155-square-mile area, making this a far more complex and dangerous mission than initially envisaged, and it could delay some efforts to deliver government services and reconstruction projects to the 80,000 people who live here.

"It's early days yet," said British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the overall commander of international forces in southern Afghanistan . . .

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