The US assault [Operation Khanjar] against the Taliban in Helmand Province has begun. 4,000 US marines supported by 650 Afghans are involved in the largest US-led operation since Falluja in Iraq. The aim is to clear up pockets where NATO’s writ fails to run.

The insurgents appear to have adopted their standard technique of melting into the background as troops advance up the southern Helmand valley. The US plans to hold ground and then ‘drink lots of tea … eat lots of goat’ to win over the community.

The importance of Helmand, which the British have failed to subdue and which saw the death on July 2nd of the highest-ranking officer, alongside a trooper, yet to be lost in a roadside bombing, is that it presents a supply route between the Afghan Taliban and the increasingly bitter bush wars in Pakistan.

A subsidiary aim is to put the Afghan Army under fire and to test its mettle, engaging it in direct conflict with the Taliban and so try to bring to an end certain ambiguities about local attitudes to NATO.

The Afghans and the US are often at loggerheads. The US has had to back down over airpower-based policies that have led to many civilian deaths. The Afghans have, meanwhile, been defending their ‘field eradication’ and ‘bribery’ strategies for dealing with the narcotics trade.

The US is not pleased that these policies seem to be having no effect on the revenue streams available to the Taliban. We presume that such policies reduce the amount of the crop but that they also raise the price from scarcity and that monetary incentives drift, in part, back to the insurgents.

Meanwhile, the Police Chief of Kandahar and eight other officers were killed in clashes with US-trained Afghan Special Forces, suggesting that the local police were somewhat ambiguous in their loyalties.

Countering local ambiguity over its mission has become central to NATO strategy. It needs its own sea of support in which to swim. Very many Afghans are still standing back, assuming that one day the West will be defeated and that they will have to live with the consequences.

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