The Helmand Province campaign was a British-led series of ISAF military operations conducted against Taliban insurgents in Helmand Province, Afghanistan from 2006 to 2014 during the Afghanistan War. Helmand Province was home to just 4% of the country's population, but it was a major stronghold of the Taliban insurgency, and it was calculated that British Army troops in Afghanistan had a higher risk of being killed than American troops as a result of their regular patrol duties in the restive province.
Background[]
Following the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the overthrow of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan regime, the United States and its allies formed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition to help administer the newly-liberated country until a democratic government could take power in Afghanistan and assume responsibility for security, infrastructure, and other day-to-day affairs. However, the outbreak of the Taliban insurgency following the opium harvest of 2002 led to a resurgence of militant activity across the country, and, in 2006, the Taliban launched a new series of offensives across the country. In Helmand Province, the Afghan government only had a tenuous hold outside the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, and, at the time, only 130 American soldiers were stationed in Helmand to take part in punctual anti-terrorist missions. Through April 2006, the British "Task Force Helmand" was deployed in order to counter the Taliban, with the 3,300 British Army troops being stationed at Camp Bastion.
Campaign[]
The purpose of Task Force Helmand was initially to win hearts and minds and carry out reconstruction projects in "the Triangle" centered around Lashkar Gah and Gereshk, but the intensification of Taliban attacks, the fall of the Baghran district to insurgents that spring, and the killing of 20 Afghan National Police officers in a Taliban raid on Musa Qala on 18 May 2006 led to an alteration in the ISAF's strategy. The situation was further complicated by the participation of Helmand governor Sher Mohammed Akhundzada in opium dealing, and, while the British succeeded in convincing President Hamid Karzai to replace Akhundzada with a governor of their choosing, Akhundzada encouraged 3,000 of his fighters to join the Taliban, as he had no way to pay them now that he was jobless. Akhundzada would not be the first Governor of Helmand to be removed as the result of political intrigues, and Helmand soon experienced a revolving door of governors, with the United States and the United Kingdom occasionally backing rival candidates.
In June 2006, the murder of a drug lord in the major opium market of Sangin led to the deployment of ISAF troops to Sangin, and, in July, the Taliban placed Sangin under siege, taking part in nightly small arms, RPG, and rocket attacks on Sangin, while the British responded with machine-guns, mortars, Javelin airstrikes, and artillery and air bombardments. At the same time, in the town of Musa Qala, a force of ISAF soldiers and unpopular Afghan policemen were forced to hold out against another Taliban siege. The ISAF responded to the Siege of Sangin with Operation Mountain Thrust, an armored offensive which lifted the Taliban siege. After 14 September, the fighting died down in Sangin, and the Siege of Musa Qala had become a stalemate. By the end of September, the ISAF and the town elders of Musa Qala agreed that the British would withdraw from the city in exchange for the locals denying sanctuary to the Taliban. However, the killing of local Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghafour's brother in an American airstrike 143 days later led to another Taliban attack on 1 February 2007. The Taliban executed the elder who had brokered the truce, and the Coalition retaliated by killing Abdul Ghafour himself in an airstrike. Nonetheless, the Taliban were successful in capturing Musa Qala, where they implemented their fundamentalist intepretation of Islamic sharia law, closed down schools, restricted women's movements, levied heavy taxes, and hanged local inhabitants suspected of spying for the coalition.
In response to the fall of Musa Qala, the United Kingdom increased the number of its troops in Helmand from 3,300 to 5,800 troops in April 2007. The Coalition also began a wave of offensives against the Taliban, starting with Operation Kryptonite, in which 4,500 British-led ISAF troops and 1,000 Afghan National Army troops attacked all of Helmand's towns and attempted to secure the Kajaki Dam. Mullah Dadullah was killed in a Special Boat Service raid in Gereshk on 12 May 2007, and the nine-month siege of Sangin was also lifted. The Coalition established permanent bases in areas where the Taliban had been expelled, and, on the same day that Achilles ended (30 May 2007), Operation Pickaxe-Handle was launched near Kajaki. The ISAF cleared Sangin and Gereshk of the Taliban, but, as soon as NATO and ANA troops left, the Taliban returned. In November 2007, in the Battle of Musa Qala, Royal Marines attempted to destabilize the Taliban's supply routes, assaulting the town on 6 December 2007. The town was held by 2,000 Taliban fighters who were in high spirits and were protected by hundreds of landmines, and the Taliban ultimately chose to abandon the town as the ISAF forces - suffering casualties from the Taliban landmines - advanced; the town fell to ISAF on 12 December 2007. By then, the situation in Helmand was a stalemate, as the Taliban were receiving reinforcements from Pakistan and came to outnumber the British.
In April 2008, a US Marine Corps battalion was sent to reinforce the NATO forces in Helmand, and the ISAF coalition launched a new offensive in the Battle of Garmsir. From April to July 2008, the ISAF killed 400 militants, and the coalition forces occupied the town and launched a new civil mission to replace their combat operation. At the beginning of June, however, the Taliban launched a spring offensive in southern Afghanistan. In August, NATO launched Operation Eagle's Summit to bring electricity to the region. In October 2008, the Taliban attacked Lashkar Gah, but they were repelled by Afghan troops with gunship support. In December 2008, the British were victorious against the Taliban in Operation Sond Chara, capturing four Taliban strongholds after engaging in trench warfare. In the spring of 2009, the ISAF coalition launched its own spring offensive, Operation Panther's Claw, hoping to establish a lasting coalition presence in a Taliban territorial stronghold ahead of the 2009 Afghan elections. The offensive claimed the lives of 15 British troops in the bloodiest week yet for the British in Afghanistan, and, while the operation was advertised as a success, only 150 people from Babaji voted in the ensuing elections. At the same time, the Americans retook the town of Dahaneh from the Taliban in Operation Khanjar.
In 2010, General Stanley A. McChrystal launched Operation Moshtarak against the Taliban in Helmand Province, aiming to showcase his own, innovative counter-insurgency strategy. The ISAF captured the town of Marjah from the Taliban and drug traffickers, and the Americans immediately installed a "government in a box" of Afghan administrators and security forces in the town. At around the same time, however, most ISAF nations had begun to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, and, in 2013, the headquarters of Task Force Helmand was moved from MOB Lashkar Gah to Camp Bastion. On 1 April 2014, Task Force Helmand was disbanded, and, that same year, the Regional Command Southwest was also disbanded, unofficially ending the Helmand Province campaign.