US bombs failed to eradicate Afghan militia; Nato hopes to make them irrelevant
Standing on a ridge in a remote province in south-central Afghanistan, a Dutch platoon commander surveys a cluster of mud buildings through his field glasses.
Because of an alert about a possible ambush, it has taken the heavily armed convoy of mechanised infantry and engineers nearly five hours to cover the few kilometres from a Netherlands-led military base to Khaneqah village in Uruzgan province. But after getting there, the mission to inspect a school in need of reconstruction is quickly aborted.
This is Taleban country. Were foreign soldiers to enter the village, the commander decides, they would trigger a firefight with insurgents concealed in homes enclosed within high mud walls.
As the US, British and Canadian soldiers fighting the Taleban in neighbouring Helmand and Kandahar provinces have found, a battle in an inhabited area would inevitably have caused innocent villagers to die.
But the Dutch in Uruzgan are following a different strategy. Better to withdraw from Khaneqah and try another time, they reason.