In the summer of 2006, a short while before British troops were deployed to Helmand province in southwest Afghanistan, I visited Maulavi Mustafa Barakzai, a member of the country's Supreme Court, along with a group of German and British officers in Kabul. At the time, I was the advisor to the Commander of Psychological Operations at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. The purpose of visiting the influential preacher in adjacent Farah province was to capture some information ahead of the ISAF mission about the challenges that would inevitably be awaiting the troops. When Barakzai dismissed any hope of success held by the coalition forces as unplaced and added that they "might as well soon begin hammering coffins", the British were at once shocked and angered by the harsh forecast. But his intentions were neither to boost nor wreck the troops' morale; this was simply Barakzai's way of being as truthful as possible about what the future held in what has turned out to be one of the toughest battles fought in Afghanistan.
Not long ago this summer, on 2 July, American and British forces launched two large operations in Helmand province, the scene of fierce resistance in what has been called the Taliban heartland. About 4,000 US marines and 640 Afghan soldiers fought in southern Afghanistan's Nawa and Garmsir regions in Operation Khanjar, or 'sword strike', while in the Musa Qala district further north, the British-led assault dubbed Panther's Claw was completed after a five-week mission to clear the Taliban from the area ahead of this month's presidential elections. According to reports, around 100 coalition troops lost their lives in the dual operations. In fact, British commanders had realized early on that the odds that Barakzai's grim prophecy would come true were high, almost as soon as they had stepped foot in Helmand in the summer of 2006. That 9 British soldiers were killed in one deadly day of attacks during the latest offensive has only served to underline the fact. A total of 22 British soldiers have now been killed in Afghanistan last month alone. British troops have suffered military setbacks since 2006 when they were assigned to defend various outposts, with insufficient logistical support, equipment and troop numbers. This issue was raised last month in the British Parliament where Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is under fierce criticism for an underfinanced strategy and dwindling defense budget that has left the troops without adequate equipment and protection. The latest round of British casualties in Helmand province have ignited once again heated debate in the House of Commons led by those who are increasingly frustrated with Brown's handling of the war in Afghanistan.
Since their deployment in 2006, the 9,000 British troops stationed in the region have made little, if any, progress against the resilient Taliban. Even low-level reinforcements supplied by the US have been able to gain little ground in a battle deemed as a dead-end even by American commanders. By the end of 2006, British troops withdrew from the strategic and volatile Musa Qala district in Helmand, after striking a deal with local elders and Afghan officials. This was the first serious blow dealt to the British by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Colonel Christopher Langton of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies distinguishes between the types of operations in Helmand as those with short and long-term goals: The near-term goal is to ensure a climate of increased security for the local population ahead of the 20 August elections. In the long term the aim is to clear the region of the Taliban.
The new point man on the American military strategy in Afghanistan, top US commander General Stanley McChrystal, has been ushered in with the expectation that he would devise a more nuanced counter-insurgency operation in the country. Signs of his tactical approach have become clearer over the course of the Helmand operations, where the air force has been given less responsibility, and UAVs have not been deployed unless seen as a must. American forces are also employing more restraint in using heavy weaponry under a strategy of keeping civilian casualties to a minimum and showing local populations that they are capable of protecting them from attack. So far, it appears to be working. Although it has been over a month since the operations have intensified, there have not been reports in the international media about loss of civilian lives.
Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from April 2003 to August 2008, McChrystal was influential in capturing high-value enemy targets, including Saddam Hüseyin and his sons. As soon as assuming his current position, he heralded a new chapter and unconventional line of thinking on counterinsurgency operations against Taliban militants. The cornerstone of his strategy is viewed to rest with the relative success of the US forces against the resistance in Iraq, the ‘surge', and translating that strategy to Afghan terms.

Operations led by US and coalition forces have time and time again resulted in civilian casualties and showed a lack of cultural sensitivities, significantly undercutting Afghan support and fueling discontent. McChrystal has expressed the importance he attaches to trying to safeguard civilians in operations over the past few months.

With a surface area of almost 60,000 square kilometers, opium-rich Helmand province is at once both Afghanistan's largest province and the Taliban's second largest base after Kandahar. Pashtuns are the majority in this region that shares a 209 kilometer border with Pakistan to the south. On the other side of the border lies Pakistan's Balochistan province.
Helmand is also one of the world's largest opium-producing regions. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 90% of global production is sourced by Afghanistan, with half of the opium produced in the country coming from Helmand. This essentially means that half of global opium supply is produced in Helmand. UN statistics show that in 2008, 103 hectares of opium were cultivated there.
As has been increasingly evident, the Taliban finances its armed resistance against coalition forces through the opium trade. In the past few years, an agreement was made between Taliban fighters and local drug lords, according to which the Taliban would protect the interests of the drug lords against the Karzai government and coalition forces in exchange for a guarantee of cash flow. It has long been argued that if the Taliban is deprived of the income it receives from the drug trade, it could no longer continue its armed resistance. But NATO forces are not permitted to participate in operations to eliminate poppy fields. This in turn, deeply undermines the coalition forces' ability to combat the Taliban.
Last month's heightened military campaigns in Helmand are important from several perspectives. Firstly, this is clearly the first large-scale offensive signed on to by the Obama administration to change the course of a war that has plagued Afghanistan for 8 years with little to show for in terms of a diminished Taliban insurgency or that the war on drugs has reduced poppy cultivation. Secondly, this is a perhaps desperate attempt to gain traction in one of the Taliban's main strongholds, in the hopes of rallying public support for an unpopular war at a time when it is rapidly sinking in the West, mainly in the US and Britain. The third goal is to slash the Taliban's source of income by capturing and securing the profitable opium producing Helmand province. Up until now, military operations aimed at destroying poppy fields have not had the desired effect, pushing angered Afghan farmers into the arms of the Taliban.

That American marines have so far been able to secure two volatile districts in Helmand should not prematurely placate coalition forces into thinking an easy victory is in sight. The Taliban is notorious for retreating from their positions only to come back more forcefully in a guerrilla battle. The limited success of the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan over 8 treacherous years explains why this war is seen by many alarmist observers as America's Vietnam. The same was said for the quagmire that was Iraq at the height of the war. Helmand's strategic position poses a major and seemingly insurmountable challenge to both Pakistan and the coalition forces. The ultimate fate of Helmand province is of existential importance to Pakistan, which shares a long and difficult border area. Official statements from Pakistan confirming that thousands of troops have been stationed to secure the border have done little to change the reality on the ground or assuage concern over Pakistan's ability to control the area. Even though Pakistan has periodically reiterated its commitment to the trilateral commission established with Afghanistan and coalition forces for years, the lack of confidence in Pakistan and a series of false starts have stymied efforts to achieve any real progress through the mechanism. American and Afghan officials suspect that covert support for the Taliban has not been irrevocably uprooted from within Pakistan's military and intelligence ranks.

Perhaps ironically, perhaps not, but the province of Helmand, the scene recently of a major US and British led assault, used to be known as Amrika-i Kuçek or ‘Little America'. The reason being that between 1950 and 1980 during Cold War era successive US administrations lent support to several important development projects in the area. For example, in the mid-1950s, Washington constructed today's Kajaki dam in addition to a 480 kilometer irrigation canal and reconstructed the regional capital of Lashkar Gah. The city centre once sported American-style houses, schools, health clinics, and sport facilities. In parallel to this, American engineers working on the dam and irrigation canal moved to Lashkar Gar in the 1960s, much of the time taking their families with them, making the city reminiscent of a semi-typical American town.

A good number of local Afghan technicians and engineers were educated in the vocational school established by the Americans in Lashkar Gah, who would later assume important roles in the construction works uplifting the region. A member of the Helmand provincial council, 49 year old Fevziye Ulumi was among the Western-style school's first graduates. When I spoke with Ms. Ulumi a while earlier, after getting through to her with great difficulty, she spoke of the clean streets, schools and well-kept gardens that dotted what was once a modern city, adding that, "I didn't know it at the time, but those years were the happiest of my life."

The period of calm in Helmand was shortlived however, and the communist coup in 1978 hauled the region, along with the entire country, into downwards spiraling chaos and confusion. Helmand spent the 1980s amidst violent clashes between Soviet forces and Afghan mujahedeen fighters, and by the 1990s, the once pristine streets were taken over by kidnappers and common criminals, the new base of war lords and drug traffickers. When women were forbidden from leaving their homes under the Taliban rule, it was simply a period of dread and catastrophe for Ms. Ulumi and other residents of Helmand.

The school that Ms. Ulumi secretly established was shut down by the Taliban's religious police, while frustrated by the restrictions imposed by the Taliban, her husband escaped to Russia, never to return. Having had the right to choose the man she would marry at the age of 25, she could do nothing to prevent her 13 year old daughter from forcefully being married off to a cousin by her husband's elder brother.

When in October 2001, the US air force began bombing Taliban bases in Afghanistan, Ms. Ulumi and her friends dared to hope of a return to the American dominance in the region akin to the 1960s. But it was not long before hopes were dashed, and disappointment took over. In the first 18 months of the occupation, Helmand was left to fend for itself, abandoned to violent warlords and tribal leaders to determine its destiny, while coalition forces failed to send a single officer beyond Kabul. A State Department official, Richard Haas, has empathetically acknowledged that neglecting Helmand from a security perspective should not have been an option during the first years of the war, and that this historical mistake is causing the current US administration to think twice about their real chances of overcoming the insurgency in Afghanistan today. A regrouped and resurgent Taliban has been slipping through the porous border with Pakistan since 2002 to fill the power vacuum in Helmand and the adjoining areas.
Today, Helmand's local population treats the operations underwritten by the coalition forces with caution and seasoned skepticism. They suspect that the military assault will do more harm than good. Not far from the truth, a powerful tribal leader in Helmand, Abdullah Han, told Agence France-Presse in an interview that despite successive operations conducted by coalition forces in the region, they have failed to wipe out the Taliban, adding that, "On the contrary, the war has escalated and I doubt the latest operations will be successful."
Han has argued that the foreign forces that came into Helmand post-2001 have instigated instability and chaos, garnering the loathing of an already weary population through unnecessary airstrikes, arrests and house searches, causing them to become Taliban sympathizers instead of coalition fans. He insists that coalition troops may claim to secure and control Helmand by day, but it is the Taliban that roams the streets freely by night. He describes local Afghans as being stuck in a life-or-death squeeze between both sides, "no matter which side we are on, the other beats us, and there's nothing we can do to defend ourselves. We are the ones who ultimately pay the price."
Assessing the situation, Hacı Nazir, a 56 year old local farmer, in the Garmsir district of Helmand, where the 4,000-strong US marine assault was launched last month, says that there is no other option but the foreign forces to pull out, stressing that the "Taliban must be seen as political movement." He adds that "we don't want the current government or the Taliban; both their hands are bloody."
The Karzai government, expected to hold on to the presidency in the August nationwide vote, has virtually failed to claim a presence in 5 of Helmand's 13 districts, meaning that these areas are Taliban held territories. In the other 8 districts, the central government has a limited showing restricted to district centers, and even they are ultimately under the sway of the Taliban.
What has bothered the Helmand villagers the most about US and British military operations has been the night raids, causing locals to shudder even at the thought. Spin Gül, a local farmer, says that should the raids continue, he and his family will join the Taliban, while Hamza, another farmer, adds "if foreign soldiers raid my home, I will fight them until my last drop of blood."
Fazıl Muhammed, a member of Kandahar's Panjwayi district council, says that claims of local support for the Taliban are exaggerated. Trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, 80% of locals feel they have no other choice but side with the Taliban, with only the remaining 20% voluntarily offering support. Muhammed, whom we were able to reach by telephone in Kabul, says he knows of men who lay road bombs just to earn some much needed cash. Head of the Helmand provincial council, Hacı Abdullah Can, who also spoke to us by phone, says that the absence of trust in the central government is at an ultimate high in the region, and that even if the Afghan army and coalition forces are able to wrest control away from the Taliban for good, it will still be difficult for them to claim victory in the region: "It will be difficult to restore the faith of the Helmand people in the central government, even if complete security can be eventually guaranteed for the region. Regaining the trust of the local population will be an uphill climb. Many hearts were broken over the past few years, and many promises forgotten."

Esedullah Oguz is a regional expert on Central Asia and Afghanistan. He has conducted extensive research and published books and dozens of articles on the region.