Commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson attended a handover ceremony marking the return of the prestigious force, the first Marines in Afghanistan since 2014, an AFP photographer said. Part of a regular troop rotation announced in January under the Obama administration, they will arrive in stages, eventually numbering some 300 who will take part in Nato's train, assist and advise mission. Helmand for years was the centrepiece of the US and British military intervention in Afghanistan - only for it to slip deeper into a quagmire of instability.
The Taliban effectively control or contest 10 of Helmand's 14 districts, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency. Around 30,000 people fled fighting in the province in 2016, mostly seeking refuge in provincial capital Lashkar Gah, with the city at times practically besieged. The US has some 8,400 troops in Afghanistan with about another 5,000 from Nato allies, mostly taking part in the training mission. Pentagon chief Jim Mattis warned of "another tough year" in Afghanistan when he visited Kabul this week as part of the Trump administration's review of Afghan policy. Nicholson has called for a few thousand more troops to help break the "stalemate". Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, a retired Afghan general based in Kabul, was optimistic.
"If the Afghan forces and the US Marines jointly fight the phenomenon of the terrorism in southern Helmand, we will have tangible results," he told AFP. The Helmand ceremony came as one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, ex-prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, returned to public life Saturday after more than 20 years in exile.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017