WASHINGTON D.C (SW): Some 300 Marines will deploy in the spring to troubled Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan to support the NATO-led mission to train Afghan security forces in their continuing fight with the Taliban.
According to the Stars and Stripes, troops from II Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, will train and advise the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps and the nation’s 505th Zone National Police.
The U.S. Central Command requested the deployment, said 1st Lt. Katie Kochert, a spokeswoman for the Marine unit.
For the Marine Corps, it will be a return to an area where it has operated through much of the past decade. Marines first entered Helmand at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. The unit returned in mass in early 2008 and remained in the province through October 2014, when they handed over control of their main base, Camp Leatherneck, to the Afghan army.
Helmand was the site of some of the most brutal fighting between Taliban insurgents and U.S.-led coalition forces throughout Operation Enduring Freedom. Nearly 1,000 NATO troops, including hundreds of Marines, died in the province.
The report added since 2015, the Taliban have made successive inroads in Helmand, where they have captured several districts. Afghan security forces have suffered some of their most significant casualties in the province.
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