Friend and foe merge in bandit territory

MUSA QALA, HELMAND - In Musa Qala, on the front line of the Taleban insurgency against British troops in southern Afghanistan, a pick-up truck packed with heavily armed men roared up the main street.

They were just 45 metres from the local district governor's house, a building pitted by bullet and rocket-propelled-grenade strikes, where British commanders were meeting tribal elders.

The gunmen in the pick-up were wearing black robes and large black or white turbans, common tribal dress in Helmand - but also the uniform of the Taleban. Who were they? A terrified local shopkeeper replied: "They could be the governor's militia, or they could be Taleban. We can't tell the difference. But you should leave right now."

One week before, hundreds of Taleban fighters had spent eight hours rampaging through the town, and shot up the governor's house. The movement is everywhere in Helmand, a dusty nightmare of a place lashed by scorching winds in summer, when temperatures hit 50C.

One British soldier told how his unit had come under intense fire from the Afghan police, who are supposed to be their allies. "They fired and manoeuvred straight past our vehicle," said the soldier, from the Parachute Regiment Pathfinder Unit. "They could clearly see that we weren't the Taleban, but they still kept firing, and we have intelligence that they had Taleban fighters with them." The gun battle lasted two hours, and the British had to abandon a vehicle.

British troops are now so dubious about the Afghan police in the town of Gereshk that they are given no advance warning of joint patrols, for fear they will tip off the Taleban.

Half the translators hired by the British at Camp Bastion, their main base in Helmand, have left in fear of their lives.

Nor does the Afghan National Army inspire much more confidence. When the first unit was dispatched south to work with British troops, a quarter disappeared in transit from their training camp in Kabul. Their fears may be understandable: some weeks ago the severed heads of two Afghan soldiers were left outside a Canadian base in neighbouring Kandahar, with their severed penises in their mouths.

British troops in Helmand are entitled to feel that there are hostile forces on every side. Pro-Taleban music cassettes are openly on sale, and are highly popular. The songs include lyrics such as "The deserts are stained red with the blood of martyrs" and "Hey Mullah Omar, we will kill your enemies, and we are your Taleban [students]."

"It is as bad as we have ever seen it," a Western security source told the Independent on Sunday. "The Taleban has a sophistication and co-ordination that has not been there before. They are often staying and fighting, rather than breaking contact, as used to happen. Sometimes their tactics are almost suicidal. They will stand on the roofs of houses and shoot at helicopter gunships.

"They have a lot of ammunition and a lot more man-portable heavy weaponry - mortars, RPGs, heavy machine guns."

The Taleban claim to have "completely occupied" several districts in the south. "Helmand is a haven for us," Mohammed Hanif, a Taleban spokesman, boasted by telephone yesterday. "Every time the British come to Afghanistan, they have been defeated very badly, and very few escaped with their lives."

The Taleban, he said, had a centre to recruit suicide bombers in Helmand. "They are coming from all over Afghanistan, and they number 1500 so far," he claimed.

The impunity with which the Taleban are able to operate in much of southern Afghanistan is due in large part to the fact that it has a secure base of operations in neighbouring Pakistan, supposedly an ally with Britain and the US in the "war on terror".

In May, Colonel Chris Vernon, a British officer openly said the Taleban were running the insurgency from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The Pakistani Government was livid. But it is an open secret that members of the Taleban and their former commanders are living in Quetta.

Pakistan has launched operations against alleged al Qaeda fighters and their allies in Waziristan, which borders east Afghanistan. But there have been no operations around Quetta.

- INDEPENDENT