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Islamic Republic of Afghanistan |combatant2= Taliban Quetta Shura |commander1=25px ISAF * Major General John A. Toolan Islamic Republic of Afghanistan * Mohammad Gulab Mangal |commander2= Taliban *Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar *Mullah Dadullah *Mullah Bakht Mohammed *Mullah Akhtar Osmani *Mullah Abdul Qassim *Mullah Abdul Ghafour *Mullah Abdullah Zakir |strength1=25px ISAF 27,000 (July 2010)〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Placemats/100706%20Placemat%286%29.pdf )〕 Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 8,000 (ANA) |strength2= Taliban 8,000-9,000 (Taliban claim) 3,000 (independent estimate) |casualties1= 25px ISAF 800 killed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Unknown |casualties2= Taliban 7,000 killed (NATO claim) }} The Helmand province campaign is a series of military operations conducted by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces against Taliban insurgents in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Their objective has been to control a province that is known to be a Taliban stronghold, and a center of opium production. The deployment of international, mostly British, forces was part of the stage three expansion of the ISAF mandate, to cover the southern regions of Afghanistan. Until then Helmand province had seen only a limited coalition presence. In the spring of 2008, a battalion of U.S. Marines arrived to reinforce the British presence. In the spring of 2009, 11,000 additional Marines poured into the province, the first wave of President Obama's 21,000 troop surge into Afghanistan. On June 19, 2009, the British Army (with ISAF and ANA forces) launched Operation Panther's Claw and on July 2, 2009, US Marines launched Operation Khanjar, both major offensives into the province in hopes of securing the region before the Afghanistan presidential elections and turning the tide of the insurgency there. ==Prelude== In 2006, a revitalised Taliban conducted a number of large-scale military offensives against coalition troops in Helmand, Kandahar and other provinces on the border with Pakistan. In Helmand, the Afghan government only had a tenuous hold outside the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. The NATO presence in the province was sparse, limited to 130 American soldiers undertaking punctual anti-terrorist missions, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Through the month of April, a new British unit, the Helmand Task Force, was deployed in order to counter the Taliban. The core of the fighting force was drawn from the 16th Air Assault Brigade, and in particular from the 3rd battalion, of the Parachute Regiment. Based at Camp Bastion, then under construction, the task force numbered 3,300 men, though only a third of these were combat troops. During the first four months of its presence in Afghanistan, the Helmand Task Force was expected to take part in Operation Enduring Freedom, and help track down Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists. It was thus placed under the command of U.S. Major General Benjamin Freakley, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force 76. But being part of ISAF, it was also answerable to the ISAF Regional Command South, then led by a Canadian, Brigadier General David Fraser.〔Bishop p.45〕 This tangled chain of command was accompanied by a certain difficulty in defining the priority between two different and sometimes contradictory missions: either to win the support of the local population, or to fight and eliminate the Taliban. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Helmand province campaign」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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