Vol. 73/No. 27      July 20, 2009

In addition to the stepped-up surveillance, the U.S. military continues to carry out its deadly missile strikes. Missiles launched from an unmanned drone aircraft killed 50 people June 23 in the border region of South Waziristan, and another nearby attack on July 3 killed at least six.

Operation Khanjar—“strike of the sword” in English—is one of the largest operations yet in the nearly eight-year-long U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. The 4,000 troops are from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. The U.S. military overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

The operation targets the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, major sections of which have been controlled by Taliban forces for many years. The Helmand River Valley is the world’s largest opium poppy-producing region, representing more than half of Afghanistan’s opium crop, which accounts for 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

Operation Khanjar is the first to utilize the additional troops the Obama administration has sent to the Afghan war front. Some 21,000 troops have been ordered to that country so far this year, and the Pentagon says its goal is to have 68,000 there by the end of the year. The total number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan combined are nearing the level they were at around the height of the “surge” in Iraq in 2007.

The operation comes on the heels of a shift in the command structure in order to more effectively prosecute what has become a cross-border war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On June 10, the Senate unanimously approved the nomination of Gen. Stanley McChrystal to head U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan. Since then, the Pentagon has given McChrystal unprecedented authority to handpick some 400 officers to serve under the new Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell.

On June 24, Obama signed a bill that provides an additional $106 billion for the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The bill passed through the U.S. Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support, with only five senators voting against it. The final version of the bill did not include $80 million earmarked for closing the notorious U.S. prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which was originally projected.

Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, described the operation to American Forces Press Service. “What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert, and the fact that where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold.”

The U.S. military has said the surveillance obtained from renewed spy flights will go to the Pakistani military, in an attempt to get Islamabad to take on a greater role in neutralizing the Taliban.

In an agreement between the two governments, the Pakistani military can request that U.S. spy planes fly surveillance missions where it suspects “militant activity,” according to the New York Times. The video would be reviewed by Pakistani military personnel at a joint coordination center near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the Khyber Pass region.
 
 
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