The Marines and Afghan forces are continuing to patrol and have begun engaging with key leaders in the districts in order to better understand the concerns and needs of Afghans in the area. Once security is established, civil affairs personnel and other non-governmental organizations and agencies will begin establishing programs aimed at building long-term governance and development throughout the Helmand River valley.

One Marine has been killed in action, and several others have been injured or wounded since the operation began. Yesterday, south of Garmsir, one Afghan man began to approach a group of Marines and was warned to stop. He did not stop, despite a series of warning indicators being employed. The man continued to walk toward the Marines at a rapid pace without saying anything to them. A warning shot was fired, and when he still did not stop, a Marine fired a single shot, wounding the man. U.S. Navy corpsmen immediately treated the man, and he was evacuated by MEB forces to Bost hospital in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, where he is in stable condition.

Small Wars Journal has a strategic overview of the mission from its commander, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson.

The two State Department and USAID officials now in Helmand have been there for two years, so they’re not starting from scratch in terms of understanding the area, which is a necessary trade-off of a so-called civilian surge into Afghanistan. This weekend, another USAID stabilization expert arrives in Helmand, with three more to follow in the coming weeks, and two other USAID employees will accompany Marine maneuver units this weekend. A USAID development adviser is scheduled to arrive on July 7.  By the end of the month there should be 20 new USAID employees in Helmand and Kandahar, though I don’t have a breakdown of who’s going where or doing what.

These U.S. development experts are supplemented by contract and international partners. Between the British, the Danes and the Estonians, there are about 50 diplomatic and development officials in Helmand. USAID programs also employ what I’m told, according to a fact sheet that was emailed to me, are “30 expatriate technical advisors and 500 Afghan technical staff.”

I have no idea if this is a sufficient civilian complement to the Marines’ efforts in Helmand, but I doubt it. The USAID complement still sounds rather spare — there are, what, 4,000 Marines involved in the operation? –  and the diplomatic component is even slimmer. Brig. Gen. Nicholson talks about Marines drinking tea and eating goat, and that’s a diplomatic burden they shouldn’t have to bear alone.

“Our focus is not the Taliban,” Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet.”

But civilian resources, both Afghan and coalition, are meager. Chandrasekaran reports that there are only two U.S. diplomats along with the 4,000 Marines. That presence is supposed to increase — to a dozen. Does that resourcing sound sensible, given the objective? More importantly, the Afghan civilian resources devoted to the mission are the donut hole in Chandrasekaran’s piece: the local leaders have fled, fearing the Taliban. Nicholson’s very ambitious goal is to hold a local council next week.

He’s also encouraging his Marines to show restraint in order to build local trust:

“We’re not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint,” he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. “You’re going to drink lots of tea. You’re going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That’s the reason why we’re here.”

To the chagrin of Michael Cohen, here’s how Woodward recounts a briefing from a well-respected Marine general named Lawrence Nicholson about why the mission isn’t primarily supported by U.S. troops:

At the briefing for Jones, Nicholson pointed to the mission statement, which said, “killing the enemy is secondary.” His campaign plan states, “Protect the populace by, with and through the ANSF,” the Afghanistan National Security Forces, which makes the absence of the additional Afghans particularly galling to Nicholson.

Whether that Afghan troop/cop shortfall can be overcome isn’t the only worry. The so-called “civilian surge” into Afghanistan isn’t happening. Proposals earlier this year for hundreds of new U.S. civilian officials to deploy to Afghanistan have given way to “triage” attempts at getting smaller amounts of key civilian personnel into advisory capacities to bolster Afghan governance.

Minor point. One of the difficulties in reading a Woodward story is that he tends to construct his pieces around the juiciest information rather than the most coherent narrative or the clearest explanation of some of the stakes. As a result, we get Nicholson “seem[ing] to blanch” at the prospect of not getting any more troops and emphasizing that what he really needs is Afghan troops. And we get Jones talking about how Obama doesn’t want to overmilitarize the Afghanistan mission without explaining what properly militarizing a war actually requires. Nowhere is this more acute than in an anecdote about how Jones tries to personally save the job of the Helmand governor, whom U.S. and U.K. troops respect, while telling Afghan reporters, “We want to make sure Afghans control their own destiny.”

Now, it could be that Jones is being arch or that Woodward is being wry. Or it could also be that Afghanistan policy is disconnected and self-deceiving. It’s difficult to tell from the piece.