Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 122

The provincial reconstruction team and 25th
Infantry Division team made frequent trips to the
district center and the village of Chenartu, and through
projects such as a new district center, a traffic circle,
and smaller scale projects such as wells, the population
received some development assistance. However, when
the fighting season began in early 2006, this tranquil spot
of Uruzgan, whose residents supported GIRoA, was
overrun by the Taliban, with the district center falling to
Taliban control.
The Taliban’s offensive was not a limited operation
consisting of a small number of fighters; instead, it was
a conventional assault with the goal of holding the area
and repulsing any subsequent GIRoA effort to take it
back. The departure of the 25th Infantry Division in
the summer of 2005, in part due to a perception the
province was largely secured, facilitated the resurgence
of the Taliban in the area. Gone were the days of limited
Taliban attacks on the margins of the province; the province was now effectively split into two halves.
As a result, the insurgents poured into Chora from
Uruzgan’s western district of Shahid-e-Hasas, which
bordered the then insurgent-controlled province of
Helmand, and used the cultivated fields of the river
basins to mask their movements. While a determined offensive of U.S., coalition, and Afghan forces retook Chora
not