US Marines returned to Afghanistan's volatile Helmand Saturday, where American troops faced heated fighting until NATO's combat mission ended in 2014, in the latest sign foreign forces are being increasingly drawn back into the conflict. Helmand for years was the centrepiece of the US and British military intervention in Afghanistan -- only for it to slip deeper into a quagmire of instability. "If the Afghan forces and the US Marines jointly fight the phenomenon of the terrorism in southern Helmand, we will have tangible results," he told AFP. The Marines were among the first US forces sent to Afghanistan after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States. Several thousand were deployed in Helmand, where they engaged in bitter combat with the Taliban insurgency.

Source: Egypt Independent April 29, 2017 07:52 UTC