US offensive reflects uneasy run-up to Afghan vote

AFP, Helmand Province

A month before polls in Afghanistan, campaigning has been scarce in the southern Helmand river valley where US Marines are fighting insurgents for control of the key region.
Landmines have closed main roads while frightened villagers have abandoned their homes despite a major US military offensive designed to ensure safe conditions for presidential and provincial council elections on August 20.
The vote comes after the hardline Taliban movement -- driven from power by the US-led invasion eight years ago -- has re-emerged since as a potent insurgency force that increasingly threatens security.
Multi-national efforts to foster stability have struggled to make progress, with the top US military commander Admiral Michael Mullen admitting last week that security had deteriorated progressively over the last three years.
In southern Helmand province, where most of the opium that funds the insurgency is grown, villagers told AFP that they broadly supported the foreign troops' attempts to defeat the Taliban. "The Taliban just walk into our homes and demand food and money," said one village elder speaking through an interpreter employed by the US military.
"They close schools and we can't disobey them as they will torture and kill us. We support what the US troops are doing but they point their guns at our children, who cannot go outside to play." The man said he wanted to vote in the elections but that registration cards had not arrived at his mud-walled village in the Garmsir district of Helmand.
He spoke during a week in which a Marines' unit was hit by a series of deadly IED (improvised explosive devices) planted on the dirt road immediately outside the village. "They are not local people," he said of those behind the bombings, without giving further details.
All residents living close to where the US Marines stopped for the night fled their houses, fearful that the troops' presence would attract violence -- rather than provide security.