LAKOKHEL, Afghanistan - South of this tiny Afghan village west of Kandahar city, the throaty twin-engine roar of Sea King and Chinook helicopters echoed through the air as they disgorged the first wave of what would turn out to be an entire battalion of British Royal Marines.
Not far away, bathed in the light of a brilliant Afghan moon, Canadian soldiers and armoured vehicles from the Royal Canadian Regiment began to move, buttressed to the west by a phalanx of U.S. troops.
Another operation was underway in Afghanistan's perilous Zhari district.
Hours earlier, Afghan National Army soldiers moved stealthily from compound to compound on a rare night mission, alongside their Canadian mentors.
"It's riskier in the dark, but should pay off," one of the Canadians said as he checked his gear and night vision goggles.
"We don't want them to think we are getting in a rut," he chuckled.
Hours later, as they were clearing a second compound, an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded, injuring six young Afghan soldiers. Their Canadian compatriots narrowly avoided injury.
"I could hear the shrapnel whizzing by my head," Capt. Ray Corby muttered.
The Afghan troops frantically rushed their injured comrades back to the local base for treatment. Those that were hurt lay quietly, blood running from shrapnel wounds to their face and eyes, while the Canadian soldiers administered first aid and quiet reassurances.
The mission was considered a "disruption operation," where the troops, under the command of Task Force Kandahar, move into a location with a show of force in an effort to disrupt the local command and control of the Taliban and uncover any caches of weapons or explosives.
It's also the sort of operation that usually yields valuable intelligence, said Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, the commander of Task Force Kandahar.
"Because it's being squeezed from three sides, it's quite likely it will generate other intelligence and point to an area that we've already got designated as a future operation, because we're relatively certain that's where the actual command and control node is," Thompson explained.
"I am certain this will have generated a whole lot of intelligence from the Taliban and indicate to us where their weaknesses are and where we need to go next."
The Zhari district, littered with hundreds of mud-walled compounds, grape orchards and uneven terrain, has been an ongoing battleground for several years. The Taliban presence is strong, hiding places are plentiful and every coalition outing is fraught with danger.
Several of these tiny walled enclaves, deemed "compounds of interest," were targeted during the operation. British forces found what was described as "an extremely large" cache of explosives and weapons.
"By constantly conducting operations here, in the end-game we want to hold this ground and make sure it is garrisoned by police, but at this point in time those forces don't exist," Thompson said.
"We need to keep the initiative and not make it easy for them to use this as a base for operations because we're too damn close to Kandahar city to permit that."
While there are areas in the volatile Zhari and Panjwaii districts that are secure and largely under Afghan government control, this isn't one of them. Previous efforts to flush out the Taliban presence have resulted in enemy fighters staying put or simply coming back later.
"We can come and go as we please in here, providing we have sufficient force, but we don't control it -- and I would argue that they don't control it either," Thompson said.
"This is the piece of Kandahar province that is justifiably described as contested, and we have to continue to contest it in order to protect the pieces that we hold."
A shortage of Afghan Uniformed Police in the area has been a setback to the plan to bring security to the region. Without enough sufficiently trained officers, it's impossible to clear out the region and establish a significant police presence.
Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif, the new Dutch commander of Regional Command South, the southern subset of the International Security Assistance Force, arrived by helicopter for an operational briefing.
The Zhari-Panjwaii districts west of Kandahar city, along with central Helmand province, are the two key regions that need to be settled in Afghanistan's volatile south, de Kruif said.
"I think Kandahar and its surrounding districts (are) essential for the perception of the people of Afghanistan about the security situation," he said, dismissing suggestions that NATO forces are fighting the same battle over and over again.
"This is a difficult region, but in Afghanistan, we have to accept we go three steps forward and one backward. That is the way it goes."
Thompson said one of the key goals of the operation was to find weapons -- in particular, caches of IEDs, which are used to "kill and maim" Afghan forces and Canadian soldiers. The constant operations seem to be paying off, he said.
"You're taking away their scarce resources because they really are in a pinch now ... we've even noticed in the types of explosives that they use that they're being forced to improvise even more," Thompson said.
"They can make homemade explosives until the cows come home and there's nothing we can do to prevent that, other than to continue to disrupt them."
