The district governor of Nad-e-Ali pointed across parched fields toward a line of trees from where the Taliban attacks come. "That's where our enemy is," said Habibullah Shama-lany, 58, standing outside a police fortress, the ground around his feet littered with discarded ammunition cartridge cases from recent battles. "Their shadow government begins over there." Behind him a teenage police recruit wearing jeans and an Adidas shirt squinted down the sight of his machine-gun toward where the governor was pointing. Shamalany is a close ally of British soldiers who patrol the dangerous roads around Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital 30 kilometres away. The Taliban sow fear in the villages, he said, but it is Pakistan that is the true enemy of Afghans like him. "Yes, our Afghan village boys join the Taliban," he conceded. "But only because they are scared by Taliban threats to their families.
"It is Pakistan that trains, funds and leads them. When we capture their fighters they confess that they are trained in Pakistan. The Pakistanis find religious boys, give them weapons, and send them across the border into Afghanistan to kill us, and to kill your British soldiers." Villagers grunted in agreement. "Pakistan is against Afghanistan, they want to destroy us," said Mullah Yar Gul, 29, to approval.
They had gathered to discuss a new "safer fields" scheme, described by the commander of British forces in the district, Lt.-Col. Lincoln Jopp MC, as Neighbourhood Watch, Helmand-style. "The difference is that instead of reporting possible burglars, farmers are encouraged to keep their land free of bombs and landmines by keeping an eye out for suspicious activity," he said.
The colonel arrived with a detachment of 1st Battalion Scots Guards in armoured vehicles to be embraced as an old friend by the governor.
Only a year ago the area was under Taliban control, and it remains frighteningly violent. Last Sunday three Taliban died in a gunfight with police a mile from the fortress, a mud brick construction festooned with razor wire and with an Afghan flag fluttering over it. Days before that, two of Col Jopp's soldiers died when they came under fire trying to rescue an injured comrade.
At dawn British and American soldiers had started Operation Black Prince to push the Taliban out of one of the few pockets of Nad-e-Ali they still controlled, a few miles to the north of the fortress.
Villagers said they were glad the insurgents were being pushed back again. They queued up to denounce the Taliban, who they said had stolen food and press-ganged their young men. They believed that many of the gunmen, who they were forbidden from talking to, were Pakistani fighters, speaking Pashtun with unfamiliar foreign accents.
The governor was delighted to hear David Cameron accuse Pakistan of promoting the "export of terror" and saying that Helmand was one of the places to which it was exported. "I agree with your prime minister," he said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. "I am glad he said this about Pakistan. Almost every day here we see the bloody consequences of their work."
Bismillah Khan, 22, the deputy leader of the Afghan police contingent said he chose to work for the police because the Taliban was against Afghanistan and killed innocent people. "Friends from my village joined the Taliban and there is a lot of trouble now at home. My family has been threatened," he said.
Like other Helmandis, he fears what will happen when the British and other NATO troops finally pull out, a process which is expected to begin next year. "The Afghan security forces are not strong enough by themselves. There will be civil war again," he said.
