Alongside Afghan Army troops, Marines of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, hold positions east of Marjah, 9 February 2010.
Introduction
Fifteen years ago, in the frigid predawn of 13 February 2010, two Marine infantry battalions, partnered with Afghan army units and supported by International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), launched Operation Moshtarak. Their mission: clear the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Moshtarak served as the proof of concept for "the surge,” a large influx of US combat units tasked with executing ISAF commanding General Stanley McChrystal’s new population-centric counterinsurgency strategy. For the Marines, comprising the bulk of ISAF forces in Marjah, Helmand represented more than a battleground: It was where they could finally find the autonomy, joint integration, and independent mission they had long craved. As the prospect of war with China looms, Moshtarak offers insights into how today's Joint Force should employ the Marine Corps in a future fight in the Pacific.
Operation Moshtarak was the most complex employment of Marine forces in the last fifteen years. It offers key lessons into how, when, and why the Joint Force employs Marines. In the years since Moshtarak, the Marine Corps has undergone significant changes as part of its Force Design and modernization efforts. Focused on fighting in the Pacific, the most recent commandant's planning guidance describes the Marines' evolving role, stating, “Marines will act as the ‘Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC) of the Joint Force’ – sensing, making sense, and communicating to the rest of the Joint Force with an ‘any sensor, any shooter’ mindset.” Additionally, the Corps envisions itself as the Joint Force’s “trip wire" and joint fires enabler while still fulfilling its traditional amphibious and light infantry roles. Today, it remains unclear if the Joint Force fully grasps how to properly employ and support Marines in the Pacific. Revisiting Moshtarak provides an opportunity to clarify these expectations.
The Marines, Helmand, and Kandahar
In early 2010, General McChrystal needed a quick win to validate his new strategy and demonstrate ISAF's renewed resolve to the Afghan people. The Taliban captured Marjah in September 2008, making it the nexus of criminal operations, corruption, and insurgency in Helmand. Senior ISAF leaders understood that leaving Marjah under Taliban rule would undermine the coalition’s broader efforts. Thus, Moshtarak would serve as a proving ground for ISAF's new counterinsurgency strategy and a template for follow-on operations in more populous areas like Kandahar Province, east of Helmand.
With ISAF's decision to take Marjah, the Marines would lead the charge. Volume II of the US Army’s Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 describes why the Corps desired a contiguous battlespace - Helmand Province - and how it would organize and employ its forces for the mission. The Marines would deploy Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan (MEB-A), a Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). This MAGTF, bringing its own aviation, logistics, and ground units under a single commander, would allow the Marines to make rapid decisions at all levels, sustain themselves, and practice combined arms.
This command arrangement gave MEB-A operational control of its forces. Operational control allows commanders to organize and employ units while establishing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations requirements. For McChrystal, the decision tied ISAF's strategic fortunes to Helmand's contested rural terrain. For the Marines, it fulfilled their long-standing desire to operate independently and "run their own show."
The Marines' insistence on operational control came with trade-offs. To concentrate its forces in Helmand, the Corps restricted how and where Marines could be used elsewhere in Afghanistan. This decision mirrored their successful approach in Al Anbar, Iraq, where the Corps’ insistence on unity of effort and unity of command paid off during the famed Anbar Awakening.
However, US senior leaders, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, later questioned such thinking. With much of the US surge forces dedicated to Helmand, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, the top US military headquarters in Afghanistan, could not organize and employ the Marines as it saw fit, namely as a surge force in Kandahar Province. Indeed, Secretary Gates lamented that accommodating the Marines’ desire to retain operational control of its surge forces, thereby trumping the needs of the larger Afghan mission, proved his “biggest mistake in overseeing the war[s] in Iraq and Afghanistan.” (For more on the argument between focusing on Helmand versus Kandahar, see Rajiv Chandrasekaren’s excellent Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan.)
While Secretary Gates' criticisms are valid from a strategic standpoint, they overlook the benefits of the Corps' preferred operational approach and command relationships. Indeed, the rapid deployment of MEB-A in May 2009 gave US policymakers and senior military leaders critical time to reformulate the Afghan war policy. That said, critics of the Marines' approach are correct in that MEB-A's autonomy also constrained ISAF, preventing it from redeploying Marine forces beyond Helmand.
Taking Marjah and Conflicting Visions of Success
Months before the Marines attacked Marjah, ISAF forces shaped the battlefield for Marjah’s clearing. Airstrikes, reconnaissance missions, and psychological operations paved the way for the ground assault. Then, on 13 February 2010, Marines from First Battalion, Sixth Marines; Third Battalion, Sixth Marines (3/6); and their Afghan National Army partners began the slow and dangerous process of clearing improvised explosive device belts and dislodging well entrenched Taliban fighters. Within weeks, Afghan forces raised the Afghan flag over Marjah, signaling tactical success. Yet, this victory failed to deliver the larger economic, political, and social changes promised by ISAF. For instance, the much-hyped Afghan “Government in a Box” took shallow root, yielding few tangible long-term results for the people of Marjah.
Marines of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, fight in Marjah, 22 February 2010.
Three months later, in May 2010, General McChrystal met with Lieutenant Colonel Brian Christmas, the commanding officer of 3/6, to discuss progress in Marjah. In a tense exchange mirroring differing visions of success among ISAF leaders and the Marines, Christmas told the general, "You've got to be patient...We've...been here 90 days." McChrystal shot back, "I'm telling you…We don't have as many days as we'd like." McChrystal, wanting much faster progress in Marjah, would later famously describe the city as “a bleeding ulcer.” These remarks and exchanges exposed the disconnect between ISAF and MEB-A’s expectations for victory in Marjah.
Furthermore, in June 2010, President Obama’s relief of McChrystal overshadowed the Marines' progress in the city and the underlying competing visions of success. In his memoirs, McChrystal claimed that he had sought to temper the expectations of American and European policymakers before Moshtarak. However, McChrystal and ISAF communicated different expectations to MEB-A during his May visit to Marjah. To complicate matters, MEB-A was not alone in its views of success in Marjah. In late April 2010, one month before McChrystal's visit, Marine Major General Richard Mills, commander of Regional Command-Southwest, the military formation responsible for Helmand, stated in an interview with National Public Radio that Marjah stood out as an example of progress within the Helmand campaign.
If you go to Marjah today, you will find a city that is free of the Taliban, that has schools that are open, a marketplace, a bazaar. I think the other thing that would strike you would be the relative security of the streets. It’s certainly not a totally safe place now, but overall, security has improved. So far, I think things have gone very well.
Ten years later, disagreement over what success in Marjah looked like still reigned. During an anniversary reunion of Marjah Marine veterans, Colonel Randy Newman, the former commanding officer of Regimental Combat Team-7, stated, “We were in briefings hearing, ‘Why were we so far behind?’ And we thought we were ahead,” he recalled. “I’ll take the bust for that. I did a lousy job of building appropriate expectations.”
Learning from the Past, Preparing for the Future
Clearly, Marine Corps and ISAF leaders held very different expectations of victory in Marjah and the larger fight for Helmand. This lack of shared understanding poses a challenge again, this time between the Corps and the Joint Force in the Pacific. With this in mind, here are three concrete steps the Marine Corps can take to avoid repeating Operation Moshtarak's mistakes and misunderstandings.
1) As the Marine Corps continues to implement Force Design, it must articulate the support required from the Joint Force for its proper employment in the Pacific. In future Force Design updates, the commandant can explain the Corps' capabilities and the support needed from the Joint Force to employ and integrate those capabilities.
2) The Marine Corps must work within a joint operational framework with clearly defined success metrics agreed upon by all stakeholders. These metrics should include benchmarks for economic, political, and social progress that align with local needs and expectations.
3) As the Stand-in Force within the First Island Chain, the Marine Corps must balance its own autonomy with the need for integration with the Joint Force and regional partners. The Marine Corps must not advocate for autonomy if it is inappropriate for the mission.
Conclusion
As the Marine Corps adapts to meet the demands of modern warfare, the lessons of Moshtarak remain highly relevant. The operation underscored the importance of clearly defined missions, realistic expectations, and effective integration within ISAF. In the evolving security landscape of the Indo-Pacific, the Marine Corps has shifted toward distributed operations, prioritizing reconnaissance, joint fires, and rapid response over traditional large-scale assaults. For this new approach to succeed, the Joint Force must refine how it employs Marine forces, ensuring alignment between strategic objectives and operational realities. The conditions in Helmand that allowed Marines to operate autonomously may not be feasible in future conflicts, requiring a more flexible and integrated approach. By studying the successes and missteps of Moshtarak, the Marine Corps and Joint Force can better position themselves to deter, and if necessary, decisively respond to China in the Pacific. The key to future success lies in adapting past lessons to meet emerging challenges—an opportunity we must not overlook.
Author Bio: Major Benjamin Vanhorrick is the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade's current logistics operations officer. From July 2010 to Feb 2011, he served with Second Battalion, Ninth Marines, as part of an advisor team to 2nd Kandak, 2nd Brigade, 215th Corps, Afghan National Army.