LONDON, June 6: A state of war is gripping southern Afghanistan and may spread as Taliban fighters learn the bombing skills of guerillas in Iraq and gain public support, a security think tank warned on Tuesday.

Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, also noted that violence in the country could be rising towards levels in Iraq.

In a report on southern Afghanistan, the Senlis Council said the province of Helmand ‘is in a state of war, once again. The nature of instability in Helmand has shifted from random insurgency to a state of prolonged and organised violence that threatens the very foundations of the new Afghanistan’.

In a worrying development, Taliban fighters have learned how to carry out suicide bombings and beheadings from the deadly campaign against US-led forces in Iraq and the new Iraqi government, Mr Reinert added.

“There is definitely a transfer of technology from the guerillas in Iraq and what is happening in Helmand and Kandahar (in southern Afghanistan),” he told a news conference in London to launch the council’s report.

There had been some 21 suicide bombings so-far this year, compared with just 17 in the whole of 2005 and five in 2004, he noted.

“This suicide bombing technique has been directly imported from Iraq. Same thing for the beheading which is not part of Afghan culture,” Mr Reinert said.

Portrayed as a success story following the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban, Afghanistan was growing increasingly hostile to foreign troops as promises of improved livelihood came to nothing, Mr Reinert said.

“The Taliban — seen as oppressors four years ago — are now seen as protectors and sometimes freedom fighters, while the foreign troops, which were seen as liberators from those very oppressors four years ago, are more and more seen as invaders if not crusaders,” he said.

Hardline military tactics used by US troops, who were in charge of security in the south following the Oct 2001 invasion, have left the local population fearful of foreign soldiers, the council said.

Its report, ‘Helmand at war — the changing nature of insurgency in southern Afghanistan and its effect on the future of the country’, found that 80 per cent of the people in the province support guerilla groups.

Britain, which took command of the Nato-led forces in the south last month and is deploying in Helmand, must regain control. “Otherwise the whole of southern Afghanistan will be lost to the Taliban insurgents,” Mr Reinert said.

“For this they will need to take a dramatically new approach this summer, one which is close to the people and which listens and responds to their needs and takes into account the real and desperate poverty of the provinces.”

Poverty in Afghanistan had worsened over the past four years and Afghans were growing increasingly tired of the international community making promises and then breaking them, Mr Reinert said.

A crackdown on illegal opium harvesting had robbed many farmers of their livelihood, and substitution crop programmes championed by the new Afghan government had failed to meet their economic needs, fuelling resentment.

In addition there was a perception among the public of corruption within their local administration.

“It seems that the insurgents have won the battle for heart and minds,” Mr Reinert said.

He warned: “Helmand is an early warning of what the whole of Afghanistan could become if a different approach is not taken in the next months.”

The Senlis Council, which has offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Kabul based its report on interviews with local Afghan people, the international military and aid agencies. —AFP