US Lieutenant Colonel Clay Padgett says he is proud that his troops in Afghanistan have succeeded where the Soviets failed in ousting insurgents from a key district near Kandahar. "The Soviets were never able to conquer Mahalajat," the rural area stretching south-west from the edge of the city, he said.
"The fact that the Afghans and the US Army were able to come in here is a tremendous confidence builder." But he admitted the hardest part of the US counter-insurgency plan has yet to come - turning the local population away from the Taliban by installing civil services, including a police force, that they trust.
Padgett commands the 1-22 battalion of the Fourth Infantry Division and his "battlespace" takes in the areas west of Kandahar, the main city of southern Afghanistan and the heartland of the Taliban movement. US and Afghan soldiers have spent the past two months taking control of Taliban strongholds here, and in the nearby districts of Arghandab, Zhari and Panjwayi.
The insurgents had ruled the districts for years and although the US military says they mostly melted away without much of a fight, they continue to launch attacks and plant bombs that kill Afghan and US soldiers. The attacks have fallen off since the US-led surge and now the army is hoping to focus its energy on civil affairs.
"We are reorganising the battlespace to focus on governance," said Padgett. Last weekend the colonel attended a meeting in an army base with officials from USAID, the US government's international aid agency, and with commanders he has posted in heavily-fortified small bases.
The commanders gave power point presentations showing pictures of influential local figures who might be cultivated, gave updates on security issues and outlined how to develop "cash for work" schemes. "I'm convinced that there are a lot of accidental insurgents," said Padgett. "Anything I can do to get those guys doing an honest day's work as opposed to joining the insurgency, that's where we're at."
US money is flooding in across Afghanistan to build roads, dig wells, collect rubbish and renovate mosques. In Kandahar city, a new health clinic and a secure housing complex for judges who might be targeted by the Taliban are two of the many projects that USAID has spent several hundred million dollars on over the last year.
A similar figure is to be spent over the next 12 months. The Americans are ploughing ahead with their plans, despite many Afghans, particularly in Kandahar, being afraid to take government jobs because of the Taliban's campaign of intimidation and assassination of government workers. Captain Ethan Olberding, who reports to Padgett, is one of the men at the forefront of the US "clear-hold-build" strategy.
His troops have set up bases in the fields of Mahalajat, where during the 1980s Soviet occupation Russian tanks got bogged down. In recent years the area was used by the Taliban to stage attacks on Kandahar city. On a foot patrol at the weekend through the fields - avoiding paths where bombs might be planted - he and his soldiers stopped to chat with locals to find out their concerns.
One man took him to see a wall he said US vehicles had damaged. Olberding promised him compensation. At a new police station the Americans helped build he chatted with the police chief about US-funded work projects in the area and insisted that the workers must come from the local village.
The captain says people are far more open now than when the surge began and are starting to trust the troops because they are seen to be helping develop the district. Local Afghans agree that the situation is improving and talk of a new sense of optimism because of better co-ordination and increased co-operation with foreign forces in areas from jobs to development projects.
"After years of Taliban rule, we are breathing more freely and easily now, because we feel free," said Haji Idris, 39, who lives in Zhari. "The Taliban are gone. You might see some here and there, but they don't have the power they had before this operation and aren't any threat to us. "Reconstruction work has already begun. They (ISAF) have started building a road for us here. I hope the situation continues as it is now."
Top US and Nato commanders are closely watching how men like Captain Olberding fare in their remote outposts. They are being much more low-key about their Kandahar offensive than they were about a similar "clear-hold-build" operation in Marjah in neighbouring Helmand province early this year, which was not the success they had hoped for. But their expectations are higher now, with US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders hoping to start pulling out their troops starting next year.
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