KABUL – About 300 U.S. Marines will be sent to Afghanistan’s Helmand province to assist Afghan security forces battling Taliban insurgents in intelligence and logistics matters, the unit’s commander said over the weekend.
The deployment to Helmand will be the Marines’ first to the southern province since they left in 2014 as the U.S. declared an end to its combat mission. Since then, Afghan security forces, still backed by Washington in the form of air strikes and hundreds of advisors, have struggled to contain the Taliban advance in Helmand.
