The U.S. Marine Corps has returned to Helmand, the restive province in southern Afghanistan where it fought years of bloody battles with the Taliban, to help train Afghan forces struggling to contain the insurgency.
Publish dateSunday 30 April 2017 - 13:51
Story Code : 141937
Afghan Voice Agency(AVA), Many of the 300 Marines coming to Helmand as part of the NATO-led Resolute Support training mission are veterans of previous tours in the province, where almost 1,000 coalition troops, mostly U.S. and British, were killed fighting the Taliban.
When they left in 2014, handing over the sprawling desert base they knew as Camp Leatherneck to the Afghan army, the Marines never expected to return. The fact that they are back underlines the problems Afghan forces have faced since being left to fight alone.
Despite a warning from U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis last week that 2017 would be a tough year, though, the tone as the deployment began was positive.
“I was excited to come back,” said Staff Sergeant George Caldwell, who had previously spent eight months in the far south of Helmand that mixed combat operations with training the Afghan border police.
“I have a lot of time invested in Helmand province. We have many, many years of combat operations and we’d hate to see the region become unstable,” he said at the margins of a ceremony marking the Transfer of Authority for the training assignment.
Source : Afghan Voice Agency(AVA)
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