Combat· Afghanistan War (Op ENDURING FREEDOM)
Operation Whalers
Operation Whalers was a Marine operation in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, part of the effort to disrupt insurgent forces and deny them sanctuary in the rugged border regions where they sheltered and moved across from Pakistan.
The Marines pushed into the high and difficult terrain to engage enemy fighters, clear contested ground, and protect the population centers from insurgent intimidation in an area that had seen hard fighting. The operation followed earlier sweeps in the region and aimed to keep pressure on an enemy who relied on the mountains and the porous frontier to evade coalition forces. Whalers was one of the named operations of the middle period of the Afghan war, before the surge concentrated Marine strength in Helmand, when Marine units operated in the eastern provinces against a resilient insurgency. It reflected the grinding, terrain-dictated character of the fighting in Afghanistan's remote and forbidding mountain country.
Record no. 123