Western generals rethink Taliban onslaught

Until recently, Western generals in Afghanistan spoke frequently of Taliban "remnants," suggesting the scrappy remains of a vanquished army. The former Taliban minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil chimed in, writing off the militants as a "spent force."

Today such talk has evaporated. A series of firefights in the past six months has refashioned the militants' image as a force that is motivated, organized, armed and unafraid to die. More than 3,300 British troops have barely arrived in Helmand and already five have been killed. Two soldiers died on Saturday in Sangin, a rebel-infested district, after their camp was strafed with rockets and gunfire.

The emboldened tactics seem near-suicidal. Taliban fighters account for most of the 1,100 Afghan combat deaths this year, many crushed by 1,100kg bombs or strafed by warplanes that can fire 3,900 bullets a minute.

The Taliban regularly lose 20 men for every one Afghan or Western casualty, according to unconfirmed coalition death tolls. Yet they keep on coming.

`Mountain thrust'

In an effort to flush the militants from their mountain and desert hideouts, US commanders recently launched Operation Mountain Thrust, a four-province sweep involving more than 10,000 soldiers. They predict a bloody summer but eventual victory.

"I am confident the situation will improve by the end of this year," Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry told Pentagon reporters last week.

But Mountain Thrust is mixed news for British officers, who had vowed to differentiate themselves from the Americans through a softer approach to win hearts and minds. Now they find themselves swept along in an aggressive operation that may crush the insurgency, but could also inflame a new generation of anti-foreign fighters.

The Taliban have also taken their campaign to Kandahar, a city the fundamentalists consider their spiritual capital. Iraq-style roadside bombings have killed Canadian soldiers and driven most Westerners off the streets.

Taliban officials stroll openly through the market and the handful of remaining Western aid workers rarely venture beyond the city limits in their bullet-proof vehicles. Local staff of international organizations are intimidated by "night letters" -- threatening tracts pinned to their doors under cover of darkness.

"It's the worst I've seen it here," said one Western official with four years' experience in Kandahar. "We see people growing their beards longer and moving their families back to Pakistan."

Faced with the withering firepower of Western warplanes, the Taliban have little chance of controlling urban centers. But in the countryside they are making progress towards wider goals -- destabilization of the south and erosion of President Hamid Karzai's fragile authority.

Hopeless

Frightened and frustrated southerners blame Karzai for woeful leadership over the past four years. Scandals about Karzai-appointed police chiefs and governors with links to drugs, corruption and pedophilia have turned some villagers towards the Taliban, which has set up some Islamic courts.

The militants have curried favor with poppy farmers by offering to protect their lucrative crops from eradication. Many communities have abandoned hopes of outside help -- the UN operates in just six out of 50 districts, says regional director Talatbek Masadykov.

The militants shelter and resupply in neighboring Pakistan, where the role of local authorities remains a vexed question. Some diplomats say Pakistani intelligence secretly colludes with the Taliban; others believe Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's assurances of doing his best. But it is the role of Iran's Shiite-dominated government, previously a bitter rival of the Sunni-led Taliban, that is quietly coming under increased scrutiny.

A senior Afghan defense ministry official and two western officials said they had "credible reports" of Iranian agents offering support to insurgents in Helmand and Nimroz. But most funding comes from wealthy Pakistani and Middle Eastern businessmen, analysts and diplomats believe.