The commander of 1,000 Hawai'i Marines who returned about a month ago from fighting in southern Afghanistan yesterday said he is equally optimistic about the country's future and the task of more Marines heading there to bring stability to it under President Obama's new plan.

"With the forces we had, we did great things," said Lt. Col. Patrick Cashman. "With more forces, I can only imagine us doing much more — expanding into areas where we don't have a presence right now."

Cashman is in charge of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, which had responsibility for a Vermont-sized region in parts of Helmand, Nimroz and Farah provinces.

Another 1,000 Hawai'i Marines and sailors with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines are now in and around Nawa farther south in Helmand province, while another unit — the 3rd Battalion — is training to eventually replace them.

So far, none of the 30,000 extra troops tapped by Obama to head to Afghanistan by next summer are based in Hawai'i, Marine Corps and Army officials said.

Previously scheduled troop rotations from the Islands — mainly by the Marines — are part of the current core group of 68,000 Americans in Afghanistan.

The majority of the additional 30,000 troops are expected to be sent to Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south, where the Taliban maintains a series of strongholds.

The deployment of the 2nd Battalion at Käne'ohe Bay to Helmand province in May represented the unit's first combat tour to Afghanistan since 2005 and a shift in emphasis for Hawai'i Marines from Iraq to Afghanistan.

The unit was part of a previous surge of 21,000 extra troops ordered to an increasingly restive Afghani-stan by Obama in March.

Cashman, the battalion commander, spoke yesterday before the new strategy was unveiled. He largely kept his comments confined to his recent deployment, but the tour provides a glimpse into what new forces to be sent to the region are likely to encounter.

2ND BATTALION

In Now Zad in Helmand, the 2nd Battalion Marines faced an entrenched enemy who had forced the evacuation of the district center.

Eight Marines and a sailor based out of Hawai'i were killed over the six-month deployment and more than 85 were wounded and evacuated to receive higher levels of care. Several Marines lost both legs in roadside bomb blasts.

Now Zad "was a safe area for the enemy — that was kind of where they went for R&R in planning," Cashman said.

Enemy fighters, who could be hard-core Taliban, criminals or villagers who didn't like outsiders, never mounted any large-scale attacks on the six bases the Hawai'i Marines used, Cashman said.

Instead, they targeted patrols. "Start off with a (roadside bomb). Ramp it up to small arms," Cashman said. Those fighters could be a three-man cell, or up to 30 enemy in a bunkered position in Now Zad.

On earlier deployments to Afghanistan, Hawai'i Marines had been assigned to mountainous Kunar province in the east, but the U.S. is pulling out of some remote bases in the region that were hard to protect, and is refocusing on the south.

Cashman said poppies grown in the south "serve as the enemy's checking account." Helmand province also has travel routes to Iran and Pakistan.

"Going into Helmand and going into Nimroz and Farah, we disrupted a lot of those connectors, basically getting the enemy on the move," Cashman said. "It's not so much how much of their leadership that you kill, a lot of it is how much of their leadership you disrupt."

Cashman said his battalion oversaw aid projects that included building wells and roads and providing medical and veterinary visits. But he added that success depends on adding to local security force capacity.

'EXPAND THE EFFORT'

He's optimistic that with the central government's assistance, corruption can be reduced and Afghan security forces can be built up in the short term.

"We absolutely can develop them (security forces)," Cashman said. "If I was to give a timeline, it is measured in multiple years, probably."

Individual patrolmen and their superiors need more training. "All of those things are begun," Cashman said. "We just need to expand that effort."

The Marines have the largest presence in Afghanistan from Hawai'i, but in 2004, 5,800 Schofield Barracks soldiers and the 25th Infantry Division headquarters deployed to the country.

A squadron of about 10 CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters from Käne'ohe Bay is in Afghanistan, a group of about 300 Schofield soldiers with the 45th Sustainment Brigade is now returning from a deployment to the country, and about 180 Hawai'i National Guard soldiers with the 230th Engineer Company will leave for Afghanistan around February.