Fersovich said the Soviet Army never did clearing operations like this one Helmund in the late 1980s and could only recall one similar operation.  "There were Soviet Army battalions on the left and right flanks to prevent the enemy from escaping and the Afghan army pushed down the middle searching the compounds.  The Soviet soldiers did not search the compounds."

The main driver of instability in Trek Nawa, Marja and the entire Helmund river valley is opium and the disruption of age old tribal settlement patterns. 

Before the massive irrigation system was created by the American led Helmund Valley Development Authority, the valley was sparsly populated, with villages clustered along the river.  As the canal water flowed into the flood plain, people moved away from their traditional family lands, intermixing with new tribes and ethnic groups who moved into the greater Marja area.  The traditional power structure of land owning Khans and tribal leaders called Maliks began to break down and the new arrivals saw the potential for wealth and began to position for control of the poppy trade creating competition between them and the fractured legacy tribes of the valley.

Further complicating the situation was the imposition of communism in the late 1970s and early 1980s which sought to deminish the power of the Khans and Maliks.  The outbreak of the Soviet Afghan war tipped the combustive mix into chaos as local tribes formed complex alliances Mujahideen groups seeking to gain access to the revenue stream produced by the vast poppy fields.

An unclassified report prepared for the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity details how tribes in Helmund joined Mujahideen groups from the eastern mountains near the Pakistan border and even Tajik dominated Mujahideen groups based in the far north east.  

"Into this power vacuum stepped opportunist clerics convincing the rural population that communist, modernist – and secular – forces were not only attacking their tribal structure, but they were also threatening Islam, itself," the Marine report states.  "Local loyalties were complicated by competition for control of the opium trade in this volatile, unstable mix of minority tribes, clans and families having no direct ties to the traditional ruling tribes."

The "opportunist clerics" of the Akhundzada family spread their influence to the central Helmund region of Marja consolidating their power during the brief period of the Mujahideen government before the Taliban and fighting a winning war against Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami Mujahideen group for control of the opium trade.

When the Taliban took power in the late 1990s they gave large land grants to their allies, further disrupting the loyalties and power structure.

Much of the current Afghan on Afghan violence and Taliban on Afghan violence is a drug war between rival tribal and ethnic criminal groups.   The capital 'T' Taliban of Mullah Omar and theQuetta Shura is just one player in Trek Nawa and the greater Marja area.  Many other others, especially the opportunistic clerics could lumped together as competing small 't' talibans.

The Helmund Valley Development Authority's irrigation canals represent another case of American and Western development aid blowback--aid that was supposed to bring stability, 50 years later drives instability.

"What do they want?" Lt. Colonel Fersovich asked rhetorically about the enemy.  "It is all economics, no?."  Fersovich says that in his time the greater Marja/Nawa area was dominated by four or five criminal gangs.  Even to this day he does not call them Mujahideen.

The average poppy farmer wants to farm and make a living.  The local strong man wants to make a bigger living so he can leave Trek Nawa and maybe build a poppy palace in the suburbs of Kabul.  The drug lords of Kabul want to move to villas in Dubai.  It is a war driven by ambitions fueled by funds from opium.

Exactly how planting land mines and shooting at Marines increases the profit margin is difficult to understand until you calculate the overall competition for the poppy profits.  The Afghan government does poppy irradication, not the Marines, But without the Marines providing support, the feable government around Marja would collapse.  Given the notoriously corrupt nature of the Afghan government, it is easy to believe that the much of the irradication is directed at rival groups making the Marines play a peripheral role in the drug wars. 

Operation Harvest Moon was the first incursion deeper into the canal country, but not the last.  It has been only a little over a year since the Marines moved in the Marja area and when Golf Company arrived in Trek Nawa the Marines controlled little beyond the main supply road.  In three months they have set up the first set of outposts and plan to push further south establishing more patrol bases with their Afghan counterparts this summer.

"Where we stayed the second night, that is the frontier, there hasn't been an American or Westerner down there maybe in decades," said Captain Frank Mease, commanding officer of Golf Company.  More will be coming soon.  The next Marine unit will push deeper south, as will the unit after that until the interlocking network of patrol bases suffocate the ability of enemy groups to operate.

The Marines are taking on a mission even the Soviet army with its free-wheeling use of fire-power declined.  "The Soviet Army never went to Marja.  We were told it was too dangerous," Fersovich said.

As the old WWII recruiting poster says, try telling that to the Marines.

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Opium poppies

A scored opium poppy, black tar sap seeping through

Captain Frank Mease, Commanding Officer of Golf Company, pauses to talk to a local wheat and poppy farmer

Lt. Colonel Vadim Fersovich, Russian Army retired.  Fersovich served in Helmund province from 1986 to 1989 during the Soviet/Afghan war.  (photo by Roman Genn)

A typical canal to be jumped.  It would be a lot easier to jump them without all the gear and body armor

Another typical canal

The Marines settling in for the night after the first day of Operation Harvest Moon

Marines cutting across a wheat field.  The Marines cut cross country to avoid land mines buried on the roads, trails and other easy places to walk

JD Johannes walking through a poppy field in the Trek Nawa area of Helmund province, Afghanistan.  (photo by Roman Genn)

Roman Genn, contributing editor at National Review Magazine and JD Johannes at the end of the push south during Operation Harvest Moon.

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