Petraeus flies in to Kandahar

General David Petraeus, the new head of Nato forces in Afghanistan, flew to the southern city of Kandahar on Friday for briefings with US officers leading an operation to stop infiltration by insurgents.

Gen Petraeus’ decision to visit Kandahar less than a week after assuming command of international forces in Afghanistan underscores the importance US commanders attach to their campaign to secure the country’s second-biggest city.

Some 700 US troops have fanned out across the city in the past few weeks to set up 13 check-points on major roads which they man jointly with 600 officers from the mobile Afghan National Civil Order Police.

The deployment of US forces into Kandahar over the past few weeks represents a key element in the strategy devised by General Stanley McChrystal, Gen Petraeus’ predecessor, to roll back growing Taliban influence.

Kandahar is regarded as the movement’s centre of physical and spiritual gravity and Nato commanders see ending a campaign of suicide bombings, assassination and intimidation as vital to proving that the insurgency can be contained before US troops start to withdraw in a year’s time.

Gen Petraeus inherited the task of securing Kandahar after Gen McChrystal was forced to resign following the publication of disparaging remarks made by him and his aides about Obama administration officials. Gen Petraeus said at a change-of-command ceremony in Kabul on Sunday that the war was at a “critical moment.”

An escort of four Black Hawk helicopters deposited Gen Petraeus at a US outpost built in the past two weeks on the northern edge of the city. He rode in a convoy of armoured vehicles across a patch of desert to a newly-built check-point made with concrete blast walls and razor wire and manned by US and Afghan forces.

Guarding a pass between rocky outcrops linking Kandahar with the northern district of Arghandab, a centre of Taliban activity, the check-point is among the first to become operational.

The operation has thrust US forces of the 82nd Airborne Division into a highly visible role in the deeply conservative city of some 800,000 people, where the Taliban movement began its ascent to power in the mid-1990s. Taliban leaders have sought to regain their influence over the city by directing attacks from sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, where the security establishment has a long history of support for the movement.

The three-week-old mission into Kandahar forms the vanguard of a wider campaign that is shaping up to be the biggest US operation of the nine-year war. Thousands of US troops deployed under the troop surge ordered by Barack Obama, the US president, in December are due to target insurgent strongholds scattered in rural areas to the north and west of Kandahar later this year.

After concentrating much of the additional forces sent to Afghanistan by Mr Obama in the past year in neighbouring Helmand Province, US commanders hope the Kandahar operation will mark a turning point in the war. An increased sense of security in Kandahar would also provide ammunition for US generals struggling to convince voters in Nato countries that the mounting cost in lives of the campaign can eventually translate into a peaceful future for Afghanistan.

The strategy faces huge challenges in a province where widespread disenchantment with the government of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, has fuelled sympathy for the insurgents among disenfranchised communities.

Although US special forces maintain a significant base on the outskirts of Kandahar, and a unit of American military police are working to train the city’s police, the rise of check-points manned by American troops is a new sight.

Children routinely pelt US armoured vehicles rumbling through the city with rocks, though some residents have extended a cautious welcome to soldiers arriving in their neighbourhoods. Warier residents fear their presence will encourage insurgents to stage suicide bombings or plant explosives nearby, but US officers hope to win the population over by proving they can reduce the number of attacks.