Operation Moshtarak was an ISAF pacification offensive in Helmand Province, Afghanistan which involved 15,000 ISAF and Afghan National Army troops, making it the largest joint operation of the Afghanistan War. The offensive was the largest in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and, while the Coalition and Afghan government succeeded in capturing Marjah from the Taliban, they failed to set up a working government in the town.
Background[]
In 2009, new ISAF commander and US Army General Stanley McChrystal was assigned to tour Afghanistan and create an assessment for President Barack Obama on how best to defeat the Taliban and win the Afghanistan War. Before embarking on the tour, McChrystal was warned by State Department official Ray Canucci not to request the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan, as President Obama sought to gradually withdraw the United States troops from the country. One of the stops on McChrystal's tour was Helmand Province, where the British Army Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Groom advised him to "cut Helmand loose" and focus his attention on the parts of the country which were more sympathetic to the ISAF's mission; he furthermore added that Helmand made up just 4% of Afghanistan's population and was strategically insignificant, but McChrystal grew fascinated by the concentration of the Taliban in Marjah and quickly wrote up an assessment which favored taking Helmand Province from the Taliban. McChrystal believed that, if the ISAF was going to win the trust of the country, the coalition couldn't be seen to accept that there was a whole chunk of the country that they couldn't handle. He then planned to follow up the capture of Helmand Province with the taking of Kandahar. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke was astonished when McChrystal demanded 40,000 more troops to secure Helmand, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed McChrystal that the Obama administration would have to sit on the report until after the 2009 Afghan presidential election, as "nobody want(ed) its smooth running to be muddied by a big new American offensive." To McChrystal's dismay, Canucci stated that a runoff election would be necessary to deal with fears of electoral fraud; for instance, at the polling station near McChrystal's base, 1,200 votes were counted, while there were only 367 registered voters in the precinct. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry agreed with the need for a runoff, saying that Karzai was not a legitimate partner, as he eliminated his main opponent in the presidential election by spreading a homosexual rumor, and his brother appeared to be a "criminal warlord". This meant that McChrystal's planned offensive would have to be delayed until 2010, as his report would not be read by Obama until after the presidential election was over. McChrystal responded by secretly leaking his report to The Washington Post, and using the increased press coverage to land a 60 Minutes interview in which he revealed that President Obama had only met with him once in the seventy days he had been ISAF commander thus far. The ensuing political pressure against Obama forced Obama to announce the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and he said that, after 18 months, America would begin to withdraw its troops. McChrystal proceeded to head to Paris, France to meet with the other coalition nations and negotiate the dispatch of 10,000 European soldiers to take part in his planned offensive in Helmand. The French agreed to provide troops for the operation, but, at a conference in Berlin, McChrystal was criticized by a German official who accused him of seeking to fight an unwinnable war for the purpose of winning glory for himself. It eventually turned out that the German official was a voice in the wilderness, and that the Bundeswehr agreed to provide troops for McChrystal's operation, although the Germans stipulated that their troops would not leave their base.
Operation[]

US troops being briefed about Operation Moshtarak
Operation Moshtarak, the campaign to subdue Helmand Province, began on 13 February 2010. British Army Brigadier James Cowan, the commander of British troops in Helmand, believed that the offensive would mark the start of the end of the Taliban insurgency. The operation was endorsed by President Hamid Karzai, who was called for approval by McChrystal, after which the offensive began at Marjah. At 3:00 AM on 13 February 2021, 90 Chinook and Cobra helicopters carried a force of British, Afghan, and French troops to Marjah, and they supported American special forces as they captured Marjah in the face of heavy resistance. British forces proceeded to clean up stay-behind resistance in the area, securing Marjah for the government and coalition forces.

Sergeant Ricky Ortega's squad moving towards Marjah
On 14 February, Coalition forces encountered sporadic but fierce resistance while engaging in house-to-house searches in Marjah, and the British captured large quantities of bomb-making equipment and heroin after capturing Showal. On 15 February, McChrystal visited Marjah as the insurgents put up a final stand. On 16 February, in defiance of media reports of the town's capture, the Taliban initiated a wave of suicide bombings and other bomb attacks. The operation soon attracted controversy after the Afghan Red Crescent Society reported 35 civilian deaths, 37 civilian injuries, and the destruction of 55 civilian houses on 16 March 2010. In addition, the Afghan government failed to set up a working government in the town, and, by June, Marjah was afflicted by daily gun battles, with insurgents undermining a return to normal life and ruining McChrystal's plans to use the media spotlight on Moshtarak to highlight an innovative and successful winning strategy for the Afghanistan War. On 7 December 2010, the operation was declared over and Marjah secured, but the fighting in Marjah would continue until 2013.