KHANISHIN: Resurgent Taliban forces have forged an alliance with drug smugglers in the lawless Afghan province of Helmand, underscoring a worrying slide in security just months before thousands of British troops are due to take control in the spring.

Community elders and police officials said the Taliban have flooded remote villages with “night letters” ordering farmers to grow poppies. The notices are pinned to mosque doors or shop windows, said community leader Haji Nazaraullah. “They say ‘cultivate the poppy or we will come and kill you,’” he said in Khanishin, a remote village bordering a vast desert criss-crossed with smuggling tracks. “A lot of people are very scared.”

The intimidation suggests the Taliban, which had condemned opium as un-Islamic, has turned to the billion-pound drugs trade to earn money and undermine the fragile authority of President Hamid’s Karzai’s Kabul-based government.

Last week Nato ministers agreed to deploy an extra 6,000 soldiers to the south, allowing the US to withdraw 4,000 troops. Nato’s exact mandate remains unclear — until now the forces have been purely peacekeepers — and a rise in Taliban attacks has caused jitters among UK allies.

The Dutch have demanded guarantees of US military back-up in the event of any serious attack before committing 1,000 troops to troubled Uruzgan province. In Helmand, a small British team has arrived in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, to prepare for expected deployment. Its members have already witnessed the insecurity.

British officer Major Shawn Pendry was part of a US convoy ambushed twice in an hour on November 30 in northern Helmand. The convoy returned safely. But like other British officers Maj Pendry was under orders not to discuss the mission in the increasingly unstable province.

One of the most critical decisions the UK commander will take is how to tackle the burgeoning narcotics trade. Last year Helmand grew more opium than any other province. Its deserts are the hub of a smuggling network that stretches into Pakistan and Iran. Smugglers and militants have a history of cooperation along the lawless border, said Lt Col Jim Hogberg, the US commander in Helmand.

But the most powerful drug lords are widely believed to include top officials in the provincial government and senior police officers. US forces have so far avoided confrontation. “We’ve adopted a devil-you-know approach,” said one US official. Britain must decide whether to wield a stronger hand. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service