'After the opium harvest, it's jihad'

"Would the British let us send soldiers to take over their country?" The mood among the group of men on the banks of the Helmand River was menacing. All claimed to be Taleban fighters.

"If one Talib is in a village, the infidels bomb the whole village and kill innocent people," their leader went on.

"The British should come and fight us face to face and stop using their planes. They have been here three times and been nicely beaten three times," he added, referring to ill-fated British imperial adventures of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

"If there were two million foreign soldiers, we would defeat them if they fought us face to face."

British forces officially took over the volatile Taleban stronghold of Helmand yesterday for what the commander in charge admitted would be a "challenging mission".

The American Stars and Stripes was lowered at the main base in Lashkar Gar and the Union flag raised alongside the Afghan flag on another day of violence in south Afghanistan.

There are already frequent clashes: this week Afghan security forces said they had attacked Taleban militants in a cave complex north of Lashkar Gar, capital of the anarchic province of Helmand, where the deployment of 3500 British soldiers is gathering pace. Two Taleban fighters were said to have been killed and weapons seized.

The British-led Nato command structure known as the ARRC (Allied Rapid Reaction Corps) also started operating from Kabul on Monday. It is the first phase in a gradual integration of the entire foreign military presence in Afghanistan under Nato leadership.

By early next year, 14,000 United States soldiers will have been incorporated into the Nato force. A British lieutenant-general, David Richards, will command, the first time American forces have served under the theatre-wide leadership of a foreign general since World War II.

With a resurgent Taleban making inroads in the south, and growing disillusionment with the Western-backed Government of Hamid Karzai, Nato's Supreme Commander in Europe, US General James Jones, has called Afghanistan "the most important mission that Nato has undertaken" in its 58-year history.

What that might mean for ordinary British troops was evident in the lawless badlands of Helmand last week.

In the bazaar at Grishk, an area of noted Taleban sympathy in the north of the province, British Paras were patrolling the streets last week. In early February, close to the town, 200 Taleban fought Afghan forces backed by British Harrier jets.

Violence against British deployment has so far been limited to two suicide bomb attacks on successive Fridays this month, targeting the British base in Lashkar Gar.

On Friday, British squaddies guarding the gates of the headquarters did not appear unduly worried by their mission, although a lance-corporal who declined to be named admitted: "Everyone's parents are pretty worried."

But a greater concern appeared to be the extreme sunburn afflicting various pale British soldiers and the possibility that the England football team might acquire a Brazilian manager, or not as the case may be.

Many Afghan suicide bombings have so far proved ineffective, usually killing only the bomber. But the Taleban have shown an increasing aptitude for another tactic imported from Iraq, the roadside bomb. The only such attack on British forces injured three soldiers, two of them seriously.

A massive bomb in neighbouring Kandahar last week obliterated a Canadian armoured vehicle, killing four occupants.

In the Grishk bazaar, the mood was a mixture of frustration and hostility.

"I am an enemy of the Government and a friend of the Taleban," said Mohammed Zahir, 48, a storekeeper. His views were widely echoed. "This Karzai Government is a disaster. Under the Taleban we had good law and order; under this Government all the police are corrupt.

"Why should we trust foreigners when they are working side by side with a corrupt Government?"

The "good law and order" of the Taleban included chopping off the limbs of robbers in front of packed stadiums and bulldozing walls on to homosexuals for acts of "sodomy".

But, four years on, many people in Afghanistan's deep south have fond memories of the Taleban's tough stance and relative lack of corruption. Helmand has had little development, and the provincial government is riddled with corruption and tribal nepotism and is heavily involved in the drugs trade.

British and US pressure produced the removal of Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the old governor, last December. A powerful tribal leader, he was "promoted" by President Karzai to a seat in the upper house of the new Afghan Parliament.

No Western official will deny Akhundzada was deeply embroiled in the drug trade, and although his replacement is seen as honest, nobody is prepared to say the same of the old governor's brother, who remains deputy governor, or the provincial police chief.

Helmand remains an area of grinding poverty where the only source of wealth is opium production. The British deployment is an effort to alleviate the poverty and rampant corruption of the province using a huge civilian component from the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development.

The opium harvest is in full swing in Helmand, where swaying poppy fields press right up to the main roads.

One US official said that with good weather and a minimum 50 per cent rise in the area under cultivation, a record crop was expected. Eradication efforts by the Government were, Western officials say, hampered by bribery of the eradication teams.

But General Richards has said: "Nato will not be involved in poppy eradication, because we are deeply cautious that if we get it wrong and create the wrong environment, we will tip otherwise perfectly law-abiding and co-operative people into the opposition camp." Whether such a clear distinction can be drawn between the war on drugs and the war on the Taleban is debatable.

Poppy farmers across Helmand say the Taleban have cut a deal with the drugs lords to reduce their operations until after the poppy harvest ends, several weeks from now, so as not to disrupt opium collection and transport by attracting Government and foreign troops to the area.

The Taleban also have a financial interest: they tax all farmers one kilogram of opium, and 4.5kg from those producing 45kg or more.

As the sun set over the 1000-year-old ruins that dot the country round Lashkar Gar, the Taleban broke off to pray, warning: "When the opium harvest is finished, the jihad begins."

The Nato mission

* Two thousand British troops are in Afghanistan, with the number due to rise to 5700 over the coming months.

* The British Army's 3500 deployment to Helmand, will be completed by July and based in the capital of Lashkar Gah.

* 14,000 American soldiers will come under command of a British lieutenant-general, the first time US forces have fallen under theatre-wide foreign command since 1945.

* Soldiers from Canada will also form a bulk of the force.

* United States General James Jones said Afghanistan was "the most important mission that Nato has undertaken" in its 58-year history.

- INDEPENDENT