US-led forces are winding down one of their biggest offensives in Afghanistan, but an
official says it's a prelude to a larger assault on the Taliban bastion of Kandahar.
Authorities have hoisted the Afghan flag in Marjah, a poppy-growing southern area that had eluded government control for years, in a display attempting to show the end of Taliban cxontrol of the area.
But a US commander in Kandahar admitted that although most combat operations have "subsided", US, British and Afghan troops will still need several weeks to exert control over more remote villages in the targeted area in Helmand province.
"There will be some sporadic fighting, I believe, some tough areas where there are still a few holdouts," Brigadier General Ben Hodges told the PBS Newshour on US public television.
The Taliban have repeatedly called the attempts to subdue their actitivties in the area as futile.
Helmand government spokesman Daud Ahmadi said Marjah is returning to "normal", but authorities are reluctant to return thousands of displaced villagers to their homes because of the innumerable mines left by the Taliban.
"At the moment the situation is normal in Marjah," he told AFP.
But "the improvised bombs... are and have been a major problem. The troops are busy clearing the mines but the threat remains as big," he said.
No programme for displaced people
"At the moment we do not have any particular program to return the displaced people, mainly because of the mines," he said.
More than 4,000 families left Marjah to escape the violence, authorities and humanitarian organisations say.
Ahmadi said shops are reopening and other commercial activity is resuming in Marjah.
The assault has been billed as the biggest military operation since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime, and is a major test of President Barack Obama's troop surge, which aims to turn the tide in Afghanistan.
In a vivid reminder of the Taliban's reach, suicide bombers on Friday targeted guesthouses in the heart of Kabul, killing 16 people including Westerners and Indians.
The new US-led counter-insurgency strategy, designed to allow Western troops to be drawn down by mid-2011, entails carrying out military operations prior to establishing civilian security and
supposedly then services such as hospitals and schools.
Washington: Operation is just a prelude
In Washington, a senior Obama administration official said Operation Mushtarak was just a preview of a wider campaign under preparation to exert control in Kandahar, the second largest Taliban stronghold after Helmand.
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary confirmed Kandahar is the next step in an anti-Taliban campaign "which will last 18 months".
At the same time, The head of Britain's army says conflict in Afghanistan will decrease next year. General David Richards, a former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that an offensive in southern Aghanistan involving US, Afghan and British forces is putting the Taliban under "relentless pressure.'
Richards was quoted as telling the newspaper: "We expect the military conflict to trail off in 2011."
Kandahar is a cultural home to the Pashtun people and was the birthplace of the Taliban movement, which imposed an austere brand of Islam over the country from 1996 to 2001.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has launched offensives in its 'lawless' tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, where much of the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership is believed to be based.
The British embassy in Kabul said Afghan forces taking part in Mushtarak had seized more than 7,533kg of opium and heroin in two separate operations on February 14 and 15 in southern Helmand.
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