Dam Holds Back Force of the Taliban

High in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, above a plunging gorge ringed by sharp, bleached peaks, is a dam. On a spur overlooking its sparkling blue reservoir are the Royal Marines. 'Could be quite a nice area, this,' says Rob Case, from Taunton, Somerset, standing next to his mortar. 'I might come back for a holiday. In about 50 years.'

Many hope progress in Afghanistan might come more rapidly - and Kajaki dam, a Cold War creation built in 1955 by the Russians and upgraded to a major hydroelectric plant by the Americans in 1973, is key. Few have heard of the vast project, but they soon will. The bid to secure the area around Kajaki dam so that reconstruction can start is becoming a symbol of the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, of its strengths... and of its weaknesses.

There was an strange quiet at Kajaki yesterday, broken only by the sounds of shells and missiles. Heavy fighting has cleared the surrounding villages of life. When The Observer flew in, Apache helicopters and mortars were blasting a suspected Taliban position near by.

'The Taliban are all over the place,' said Captain Anthony Forshaw, acting commander of the Marines, while one of his soldiers added: 'We've got a security perimeter that we have pushed out two or so miles. Beyond that it's bandit country.'

A short engagement on Friday demonstrated the overwhelming firepower and technology the British can deploy. A group of armed men had been spotted on the hill. Followed through heat-detecting sights to a building, they were hit by an anti-tank missile fired from more than a mile away, mortars and then finally a 1,000lb bomb dropped from the air. Captain Forshaw said that he could be certain that two of them were killed.

'To tell the truth, the Taliban will probably reoccupy the position,' he said. 'I do not know if they are resilient or just plain stupid, but they tend to come back.'

That's the problem. The British are in Kajaki to clear the area of Taliban so that the multi-million-pound, three-year project of rehabilitating the dam's existing turbine and bringing in a second from Pakistan can go ahead. Apart from employing thousands of local people and rebuilding a key road, the American-funded project will eventually improve irrigation of hundreds of square miles and, most importantly, bring power to more than three million people. The boost to coalition efforts to win 'hearts and minds' in the key areas of the south of Afghanistan, where the progress of the Taliban is barely being contained, would be massive.

'The Kajaki dam is without any doubt an immensely important project,' said Nicholas Kay, UK's aid co-ordinator for southern Afghanistan. But despite regular fierce engagements the Taliban hold on the area, though diminished, is still strong. British commanders talk of a complex and evolving enemy. Brigadier Jerry Thomas, commander of the Helmand task force, distinguishes between the 'village Taliban... who have been coerced, bought in or persuaded to join' and the hardcore. The former can be prised away from violence, Thomas said, while the latter are 'irreconcilable'.

Fighting alongside the Taliban are the 'narcos', major drug traffickers who have a vested interest in keeping Afghan government authority to a minimum in the area so they can organise the production and processing of opium poppy. Such men, said Thomas, are 'fighting for their very survival, and fighting very hard'. There are also militias 'who do not like us being here', a small number of international Islamic militants and a selection of 'common or garden bandits.' But together they are effective. All British soldiers interviewed spoke admiringly of the Taliban as an enemy.

The city of Lashkar Gah itself, the centre of the British effort, remains relatively secure, although a suicide bomber, the eighth in nine months, attacked the site of dozens of reconstruction projects on Friday. Work being undertaken in the area included the construction of a midwives' centre and new police stations.

In the busy Friday market on the outskirts of the Lashkar Gah last week it was clear that most local people had heard the words of the British, but remained unconvinced. One spoke of how the Taliban had guaranteed 'security' when they had been in control. 'I don't know about the Taliban now, but when they ruled before there were no suicide bombings and no thieves,' he told The Observer. Many were simply weary of continuing conflict. 'I am not angry with anyone,' said Mohammed Hashim, a farmer whose sister and cousin died in recent fighting. 'I just want the war to stop.'

Despite impressive efforts, there are still huge obstacles to progress. One is the complexity of the reconstruction effort, which mirrors the diversity of the military effort, with major donors spending their own money in ways which differ considerably from the British approach: few other governments, for example, place such an emphasis on building the long-term capability of the Afghan government to run the country, preferring short-term solutions and 'sexier' high-profile projects. And there is still a significant lack of knowledge of local culture among new arrivals. 'The best thing we could have had before coming out here would have been six months' language training,' said one Royal Marine sergeant involved in training the new Afghan National Army. 'But we got nothing at all.'