MARJAH, Afghanistan - Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top allied military commander in Afghanistan, sat gazing at maps of Marjah as a Marine battalion commander asked him for more time to oust Taliban fighters from a stronghold in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province.
"You've got to be patient," Lt. Col. Brian Christmas told McChrystal. "We've only been here 90 days."
"How many days do you think we have before we run out of support by the international community?" McChrystal replied.
A charged silence settled in the stuffy, crowded chapel tent at the Marine base in the Marjah district.
"I can't tell you, sir," Christmas finally answered.
"I'm telling you," McChrystal said. "We don't have as many days as we'd like."
The operation in Marjah was supposed to be the first blow in a decisive campaign to oust the Taliban from their spiritual homeland in adjacent Kandahar province, one that McChrystal had hoped would bring security and stability to Marjah and begin to convey an "irreversible sense of momentum" in the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan.
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Instead, a tour last week of Marjah and the nearby Nad Ali district drove home the hard fact that President Obama's plan to begin pulling American troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 is colliding with the realities of the war.
There aren't enough U.S. and Afghan troops to provide the security that's needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners, the Afghan government hasn't dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive.
Progress in Marjah has been slow, in part because no one who planned the operation realized how hard it would be to convince residents that they could trust representatives of an Afghan government that had sent them corrupt police and inept leaders before they turned to the Taliban.
A hundred days after U.S.-led forces launched the offensive, Marjah markets are thriving, the local governor has begun to build a skeleton staff, and contractors have begun work on rebuilding schools, canals and bridges.
Yet, Marines are running into more firefights on their patrols, and it will be months before a permanent police force is ready to take control of the streets from the temporary force that's brought some stability to Marjah.
"There was no security," said Haji Mohammed Hassan, a tribal elder whose fear of the Taliban prompted him to leave Marjah two weeks ago for the relative safety of Helmand's nearby provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
"By day there is government," he said. "By night it's the Taliban."
US Toll in Afghanistan
• Deaths: 991
• Wounded: 5,916
Latest identification
• Lance Cpl. Philip P. Clark, 19, of Gainesville, Fla.; assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Source: Department of Defense
