American Soldier Feared Captured in Afghanistan

YOCHI J. DREAZEN

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U.S. Marines took part in an operation Thursday to take areas in the Southern Helmand Province that Taliban fighters are using as a resupply route.

An American soldier, who disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts, is believed captured, officials said Thursday.

Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier disappeared Tuesday.

"We understand him to be have been captured by militant forces. We have all available resources out there looking for him and hopefully providing for his safe return," Capt. Mathias said.

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U.S. Lt. Col. Christian Cabaniss speaks to his Marines at Camp Dwyer on Wednesday in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.The Marines are part of a stepped up effort by American troops fighting Taliban fighters in Southern Afghanistan.

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Capt. Mathias didn't provide details on the soldier, the location where he was captured or the circumstances.

The soldier wasn't taking part in the major military operation launched in the southern Taliban stronghold of the Helmand River Valley. The new operation is an early test of the Obama administration's new strategy for beating back the resurgent Taliban and stabilizing the country in advance of this summer's presidential elections.

Operation Khanjar, or "strike of the sword," began shortly after 1 a.m. local time when close to 4,000 Marines, backed by about 700 Afghan security personnel, moved by air and ground into villages in Helmand, a major opium-producing region.

U.S. commanders said the forces would build an array of small patrol bases designed to forge closer ties with local people and better protect them from militants, borrowing an approach used in Iraq that is central to the administration's new counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan.

The troops hope to root out pockets of Taliban fighters and find and destroy insurgent weapons caches, a U.S. officer in Kabul said. The troops will also seek to interdict opium shipments and persuade local farmers to plant alternative crops, such as wheat, he said.

U.S. Troops Begin Major Afghanistan Offensive

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Thousands of troops poured from helicopters and armored vehicles in operation "Strike of the Sword" in an attempt to reclaim Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan. Video courtesy of Fox News.

The push is the first significant operation since President Barack Obama reshaped the foundering U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan by ousting the top American commander there and replacing him with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, an officer with significant expertise in counterinsurgency and irregular warfare.

The administration has also signed off on the deployments of 21,000 American reinforcements, which will push U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to 68,000 -- their highest point since 2001 -- by year end. Operation Khanjar is being carried out by Marines sent to Afghanistan as part of that surge.

What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that came 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," said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the top Marine commander in southern Afghanistan.

The operation has no guarantee of success. U.S. commanders have telegraphed for months that they planned to flush the Helmand River Valley with American troops, so Taliban fighters had ample time to move to other parts of the country.

In Iraq, similar operations generally failed to have much of an impact on the war effort, because fighters typically melted away into surrounding areas rather than taking on the large, well-armed American force. Successive U.S. operations in volatile Diyala Province, for instance, failed to find or kill many Sunni fighters there.

"We know were chasing ghosts, and that we may not find them," the American officer in Kabul said.

While the operation is being billed as an attempt to oust Taliban fighters from the south, its real objective is to push into villages that haven't yet had any U.S. presence and establish new bases there. Since his confirmation by the Senate last month, Gen. McChrystal has spoken publicly about the need to better protect the Afghan populace from Taliban attacks and made clear that he sees such bases as an integral part of a so-called population-centric model of counterinsurgency.

Not all officers support such an approach. The small, remote U.S. outposts that currently exist across Afghanistan are regularly attacked by Taliban forces, and some commanders fear new bases like the ones now being established will also come under fire.