The Battle for Marjah

by Stephen Brown

After promising every spring to drive foreign troops out of Afghanistan and capture Kabul, the Taliban are now facing a powerful spring offensive of their own.

In a massive assault launched last Saturday – the biggest since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 – about 15,000 American, British and Afghan troops successfully breached Taliban defenses around Marjah in turbulent southern Afghanistan’s central Helmand province. With about 80,000 inhabitants, Marjah is the last Taliban-held city on Afghan soil and the center for 90 percent of the world’s heroin trade, a major source of insurgent funds.

Read the whole thing at FrontPage Magazine.