Rumsfeld Touches Down As Afghan Violence Escalates

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, touched down in Afghanistan today, just hours after a US-led raid against a Taliban stronghold in the south of the country killed 30 insurgents.

Mr Rumsfeld is in Afghanistan to discuss with the president, Hamid Karzai, the resurgence of anti-government violence, in which more than 600 people, most of them suspected rebels, have died in the past two months.

US-led forces and Afghan troops killed 30 militants in a notoriously volatile district of Helmand province. "Early this morning, a joint Afghan-coalition raid resulted in the death of an estimated 30 extremist fighters," Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence told Reuters.

However, the US bombing raids are not without controversy. This week, villagers said civilians had been killed and injured during an offensive in the southern province of Uruzgan.

The talks will also focus on plans for Nato to take over the command of the international security forces in the south from US forces in the coming weeks. British, Dutch and Canadian troops are already deployed.

The defence secretary, Des Browne, announced yesterday the British force in southern Afghanistan will be increased to about 4,500 soldiers to challenge "the impunity of the Taliban". On his last visit to Kabul in December 2005, Mr Rumsfeld said US troop levels would fall from 19,000 to 16,000 by this summer. There are now 23,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Since leaving the US for the region, Mr Rumsfeld has made it clear that Washington is concerned that large-scale drug trafficking in Afghanistan is helping fuel the resurgence of the Taliban. Not only is the violence destabilising the south, it is also chipping away at the authority of President Karzai. Most attacks have taken place in the south of the country, where the rugged terrain provides cover for Taliban guerrillas seeking refuge across the border in Pakistan.

Many analysts in the region say the Taliban problem in Afghanistan is an external one. Some point the finger at Pakistan, others at Iran. Perhaps most significant is the increasingly frosty relationship between the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan after Mr Karzai accused Islamabad of doing little to stop the insurgents. General Pervez Musharraf said this was "humbug".

Last month the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, shuttled between both capitals to defuse the war of words. "The Pakistani establishment has been unable or unwilling to rein in the new Taliban but left unchecked we risk seeing a new state running along the Pakistani-Afghanistani border which will destabilise the entire region," said TS Sreedhar, a defence analyst based in Delhi.