U.S. and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of the insurgency's base of Kandahar province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters to flee strongholds they have held for years in the face of the buildup of U.S. forces, NATO commanders and local Afghan officials said.
A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 U.S. and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled for years.
Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy - like a small cruise missile - and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said.
NATO commanders are careful not to overstate their successes - they acknowledge they made that mistake earlier in the year when they undertook a high-profile operation against Marjah that did not produce lasting gains. But they say they are making "deliberate progress" and have seized the initiative from the insurgents.
Western and Afghan civilian officials are more outspoken, saying that heavy losses for the Taliban have sapped the momentum the insurgency had in the area. Unlike the Marjah operation, they say, the one in Kandahar is a comprehensive civil and military effort that is changing the public mood as well as improving security.
"We now have the initiative. We have created momentum," said Major-General Nick Carter, the British commander of the NATO coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, who has overseen the Kandahar operation for the past year. "It is everything put together in terms of the effort that has gone in over the last 18 months, and it is undoubtedly having an impact."
NATO forces have experienced setbacks in other parts of Afghanistan, and some military officials say the advances in Kandahar may not represent a turning point in the overall war effort. The Taliban, for example, have surprised the Americans by asserting control over some areas in the northern part of Afghanistan, from which they had once been almost entirely eliminated.
But Kandahar represents the heartland of the Taliban insurgency and is the main focus of the large influx of U.S. troops and Afghan government forces.
"Afghans will tell you, if you have a peaceful Kandahar, you will have a peaceful Afghanistan," Maj.-Gen. Carter said. "I think only time will tell."
The civilian and military effort in Kandahar has been 18 months in the planning. Only after thousands of extra troops were in place at the end of August - part of the surge of 30,000 troops President Barack Obama ordered last year - did the operations finally begin producing results. The combined strength of 12,000 U.S. and NATO troops and some 7,000 Afghan security forces in the province has meant that for the first time they are able to mount operations simultaneously in all of the most critical areas of the province.
Lieutenant-Colonel Rodger Lemons, commanding Task Force 1-66 in Arghandab, said he had seen insurgent attacks drop from 50 a week in August to 15 a week two months later. That may be because of the onset of colder weather, when fighting tends to drop off, but Lt.-Col. Lemons said he felt the Taliban was losing heart.
"A lot are getting killed," he said. "They are not receiving support from the local population, they are complaining that the local people are not burying their dead, and they are saying: 'We are losing so many we want to go back home.' "
New York Times News Service