(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-27 17:10

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- US Marines are crossing the sands of southern Afghanistan for the first time in years, providing a boost to a NATO coalition that is growing but still short on manpower.

British troops from 13th Air Assault Regiment and a US Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, forth from right, watch as palettes of water bottles drift to the ground on parachutes as NATO planes make a resupply airdrop to a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Saturday, April 26, 2008. [Agencies]

Some of the 2,300 Marines that make up the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit helped to tame a thriving insurgency in western Iraq.

The Marines are working alongside British forces in Helmand province — the world's largest opium-poppy region and site of the fiercest Taliban resistance over the last two years. The director of US intelligence has said the Taliban controls 10 percent of Afghanistan — much of that in Helmand.

"Our mission is to come here and essentially set the conditions, make Afghanistan a better place, provide some security, allow for the expansion of governance in those same areas," said Col. Peter Petronzio, the unit's commander.

Thirteen of the 19 Marines in the platoon of 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, served in 2006 and 2007 in Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province in western Iraq. The vast region was once al-Qaida in Iraq's stronghold before the militants were pushed out in early 2007.

Lynch expects the Marines, who arrived last month on a seven-month deployment, will help calm Helmand as well.

"If you flood a city with Marines, it's going to quiet down," Lynch said in between sets of push-ups on Helmand province's sandy ground. "We know for seven months we're not here to occupy, we're just here to set conditions for whoever comes in after us."

Taliban fighters have largely shunned head-on battles since losing hundreds of fighters in the Panjwayi region of Kandahar province in fall 2006, and it's not clear that Taliban fighters will stay to face the Marines in regions they operate.

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