Some Afghan security better, despite UK troop deaths

By Jonathon Burch

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - British troop casualties and increased Taliban bomb attacks belie some improvements in security in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, a senior British commander said.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan this year with the number of incidents greater in all the last three months than any other month since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Some 2,500 people have been killed in the conflict this year, up to 1,000 of them civilians, aid agencies say.

British troop deaths have also peaked with 16 soldiers killed in combat in Helmand since the beginning of June.

"There is a perception among some local nationals and certainly the perception in Kabul and amongst the international community that security has become worse," acting British commander in Helmand, Colonel Neil Hutton, told Reuters.

"But when you look at where that violence is taking place, by and large, it seems to be taking place in areas outside the main population centers," he said in an interview this week.

Some 3,000 British soldiers moved into the vast largely desert province of Helmand in 2006 and quickly became engaged in some the fiercest fighting seen since the Korean war in the 1950s. Troops at times had to call in air strikes just outside their own perimeter to fend off Taliban attacks.

While U.S. troops in the east complain attacks are up by 40 percent this year due to increased cross-border infiltration from Pakistan, the British appear quietly confident they are making some progress in their counter-insurgency campaign in Helmand.

The British are concentrating their efforts to bring a measure of security to a string of towns on the lush fertile banks of the Helmand River where most of the population lives.

But progress is slow and any improvement in security is relative to the dire state the province was in two years ago.

Now at least though, the Taliban have been largely pushed out of the towns. While town centers are by no means "sanitized" and the "odd bomb" was still going off, Hutton said, major attacks were no longer disrupting daily life.

"I think where we find ourselves now compared to 2006, security has vastly improved in my opinion," Hutton said.

Most British casualties are now from suicide and roadside bombs reflecting a shift in Taliban tactics but also the success of Afghan and foreign forces, he said, as the insurgents were increasingly unable to launch conventional attacks.

"There are still a degree of conventional attacks on us when the conditions suit them but by and large I think they have learnt that when they take us on conventionally they tend to die," Hutton said.

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