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CANBERRA - Australian troops have launched a major thrust into Taleban heartland as the spring thaw and the opium harvest signals the new fighting season in Afghanistan.
Infantry, cavalry, engineers and support troops have joined Dutch and other coalition forces driving north from their base at Tarin Kowt in the southern Oruzgan Province, into the valleys of the Baluchi Pass that have already claimed Australian lives.
"This is an area of huge tactical and strategic significance for the Taleban extremists," said Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Yeaman, commander of the 4th Reconstruction Task Force.
"This is the Taleban's backyard and we are right on their main supply route between Helmand Province and their supply bases to the north."
The rugged, mountainous region had previously allowed the Taleban to operate almost without hindrance, but Yeaman said coalition operations in the past few months had produced a "real positive impact" on security.
The past year was the costliest of the seven years coalition troops have been fighting in Afghanistan, with four Australians killed since last October among the total toll of 232.
But Strategic Policy Institute analyst Raspal Khosa said that with coalition forces operating at the request of the country's democratically elected Government, Afghanistan was not an insoluble problem: 67 per cent of Afghans supported the coalition presence, and few backed the Taleban. Most areas were either free of, or suffered little from, insurgent violence.
Last year security incidents were restricted to 10 per cent of Afghanistan's 398 districts, most of them in the south and east, and home to less than 6 per cent of the population.
Khosa also noted the new but as yet untested resolve of last month's Nato summit in Bucharest, Romania, to more closely tie political and economic programmes to military operations - a key marker for Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's future commitment to the coalition.
So far, 2000 schools have been refurbished or built since the ousting of the former Taleban regime, teaching about 6.4 million children - including 1.5 million girls - and joining the spread of basic healthcare that now reaches 80 per cent of the population.
The infant mortality rate has declined by 26 per cent since 2001.
But a long, grim campaign remains ahead. Khosa said the coalition's 47,000 troops - with an additional 13,000 Americans operating under the global anti-terror campaign Operation Enduring Freedom - were spread too sparsely over 650,000sq km of tough country. They also lacked the critical mass needed for a military victory.
New commitments by allied governments have fallen far short of the extra 10,000 troops requested by coalition commanders.
Their troops face a tough and determined enemy, led by well-armed veteran Taleban guerrillas operating from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. They include numbers of al Qaeda fighters from Pakistan, central Asia and the Arab states. They have brought with them lessons learned on the bloody streets of Iraq: deadly improvised explosive devices, suicide bombing against civilian targets, and kidnappings of foreigners and locals. The danger has been brought home to Australians by the reports of military inquiries into the deaths of two diggers and a firefight that killed an Afghan baby and teenage girl.
Despite such continuing tragedies, Khosa said Australia needed to remain in Afghanistan. If the coalition pulled out too soon Afghanistan would become a "badlands" refuge for terrorists and organised crime, and withdrawal would be seen as a Western failure that would give enormous impetus to the world's radical Islamists.
DIGGING IN FOR LONG STRUGGLE
Despite a mounting toll of dead and wounded, Australia remains committed to Afghanistan - although Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned that its patience could be exhausted if other countries do not pull their weight.
Canberra has put its forces there because it sees its own key national interests deeply rooted in the conflict, and Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Raspal Khosa has warned that the nation must be prepared for a long and dangerous deployment.
In a paper analysing Australia's involvement, Khosa said the nation's main strategic interests included:
* Its alliance with the United States.
* The need to strengthen multilateralism to influence events that directly affect Australia's interests but over which it has little control.
* The continuing war on terrorism.
* Border security and the return of waves of boat people.
* The war on drugs. Last year Afghan opium production reached a record 8200 tonnes, accounting for 93 per cent of global supply and prompting warnings of rising supplies of heroin in Australia, with a likely rise in crime.
