KABUL, Nov 19 The US military plans to deploy heavily-armoured battle tanks to Afghanistan for the first time in the war, officers said Friday, the latest sign of an escalation in the fight against insurgents.

A company of 14 Abrams tanks and 115 US Marines have been ordered to the volatile south of the country, where fighting against Taliban militants is at its fiercest, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and US officers said.

A senior ISAF official in Kabul said the tanks would be deployed in Helmand and Kandahar provinces and were “absolutely necessary and useful” for fighting in the hostile desert terrain.

“The capabilities the tanks provide will enable the Marines to isolate insurgent forces from key population centres and provide the ability to project power into insurgent safe havens,” he added in emailed comments.

The mobility, precise firepower and “superior optics” of the M1A1 Abrams will help ISAF forces “operating in still contested areas,” he said.

Canadian and Dutch troops have used tanks in Afghanistan in recent years but the Nato-led force, which includes about 95,000 Americans, has mainly relied on air strikes and artillery for heavy firepower.

The tank company will arrive in Afghanistan sometime in the next two months, the Pentagon said.

For Afghans, the tanks could stir up bad memories of the heavy-handed Soviet occupation in the 1980s. But a US military spokesman said senior officers planned to speak to local leaders to offer reassurance about the new weapons.

“People are aware that Soviet tanks from that era... (are) something that the populace would obviously remember,” Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters in Washington.

“The commander is going to ensure through engagement with the local leaders, through shuras et cetera, to explain to the public what's happening so they're not surprised.”

The American tanks would have a much different role than the Soviet tanks, which he said had been used to “oppress” the Afghans.

The request for the tanks — from Major General Richard Mills, who oversees the Marines in Helmand — went all the way up the chain of command to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, even though his legal authority was not required to approve the request, Lapan said.

The Washington Post, which first reported the development, said the Marines had long wanted to employ tanks but a previous commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, had declined the request in 2009 partly over worries that it could alienate Afghan civilians.

The deployment of the tank company follows a dramatic increase in raids by special operations forces against insurgents and a rise in air strikes under the current commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

Lapan denied the use of tanks did not represent an escalation in the war against the Taliban, saying that aircraft and artillery had greater firepower than the 120mm cannon on the Abrams tank.

The commander in Helmand, Mills, said tanks would be valuable in cutting off supply routes for the Taliban and rejected the idea that the tactic was motivated by desperation.

“Tanks are hardly a weapon of desperation but simply another tool to wage COIN (counter-insurgency) in an effective way that will save Afghan and Coalition lives,” he added in a statement.

The 1,500-horse power M1A1 weighs 57 tonnes, has a top speed of 42 miles per hour and gets 0.6 miles to the gallon, according to the defence web site www.globalsecurity.org

Its main weapon is the 120mm M256 smooth bore cannon, which can fire successfully at targets up to 2.5 miles away.—AFP