US soldiers begin push into Zherai district

ZHERAI, Kandahar — The mission started in the moonlight.

A rocket launched an explosive rope (called a MICLIC) hundreds of meters into the green zone of Zherai district where soldiers of the 2-101st have been skirmishing with Taliban for the past four months.

We felt the shock wave from an explosion of almost 2,000 pounds of C4, which was designed to wipe out a swath of potential IEDs along a narrow strip of up to a hundred meters long. Then soldiers of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta Companies of 1-502nd Battalion trudged into the dense vegetation and mud walls separating alternating rows of grapes, pomegranates, corn and marijuana.

The sun had yet to rise.

This operation was part of a brigade-sized push by 2-101st and a roughly equivalent number of Afghan soldiers. The operation, meant to cut off Taliban routes and safe havens around Kandahar, has been downplayed by coalition forces following the hype surrounding the Marjah offensive caused a public backlash in neighboring Helmand Province and President Hamid Karzai publically denounced it early this summer.

The now soft-pedaled offensive, dubbed “Dragonstrike” by the brigade, is actually a big deal. Over the coming weeks, thousands of U.S. and Afghan soldiers will push into the most difficult areas of Zherai, home for about 80,000 Afghans and where the Taliban movement began.

They hope to clear, then hold the green zone along the Arghandab River, establishing small outposts in the most volatile areas, and using Afghan forces to help occupy them.

“This is going to make history,” said Capt. Lorne Grier, whose Delta company led the push into the tangled groves and towns that have never been held by U.S. or Afghan forces, and in some cases have never entered.

Soldiers slept in pomegranate orchards They set up strong points in abandoned, bombed-out compounds and worked off maps shot from overhead. And they methodically checked residences, huts and hovels for weapons or signs of elusive fighters.

From early morning until late in the night soldiers stepped carefully, searched out thick mud huts with little more than straw inside. Engineers blew up small caches of weapons and poured out jugs of ammonium nitrate. But the enemy they wanted so badly too encounter, had mostly fled the suicidal odds, some so quickly they hadn’t had time to engage the batteries of their pressure plated IEDs.

Spc. Sarabia, of 101st Sapper Company, found one when he stepped on it at an intersecting pathway in the maze-like village the soldiers call “J Town.”

“You would have known if you stepped on it,” Sarabia said. “You felt like you were wearing Nike shoes.”

Fortunately the IED pressure plate wasn’t connected to the usual nine-volt battery pack

The one attack in the four days of clearing — a grenade thrown over the wall in J Town — proved the Taliban wouldn’t leave the area permanently. Shrapnel wounded two U.S. soldiers and several civilians. I spotted a young boy wounded in both legs being interrogated by a U.S. police trainer.

The boy said he was following the Americans and was hit by the Taliban grenade thrown into the courtyard where a U.S. and ANA patrol was meeting with a local mullah.

A young boy injured by a grenade he claims was thrown by the Taliban. U.S. soldiers, however, suspect the boy might be responsible. (Photo by James Foley for GlobalPost)

Soldiers on the scene said the boy had been following them, but was definitely not among those wounded by the Taliban grenade. They thought he was a spotter for the Taliban. When he later showed up wounded, they were suspicious.

The Taliban is known for paying children to throw grenades at U.S. soldiers, causing numerous American casualties in and around nearby Sanjeray. The 1-502nd Battalion reported tracking a suspected thrower towards a house in the Arghandab Valley where they detained at least seven adults.

It seems that, even when a coalition force this size gets down into enemy territory, it will always be difficult to determine out who is on their side and who is only pretending to be.

A depressing in the ground where a soldier had stepped on a pressure-plated IED. Fortunately, the Taliban left in such a hurry, the nine-volt battery pack was never connected. (Photo by James Foley for GlobalPost)