Mission: Difficult

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An Afghan farmer and Dutch soldiers in Tarin Kowt

Rory Callinan for TIME

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Faiz Mohammed slept through the first gunshots, but the second series of blasts, coming from a neighbor's house, sent him running outside in time to see the gate of his compound blown off its hinges. Australian soldiers seized the 50-year-old farmer, pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him. After two hours they photographed him and let him go. "I was freezing cold, I was terrified," he says.

He went immediately to his neighbor's house. "There was blood everywhere, Faiz recalls. "There were dead bodies." He says six members of the Daad family had been killed — three men, two women and a young girl. Australian Defence officials say the house, in Chenartu village in southern Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, was raided by Australian troops of the Internatonal Security Assistance Force (ISAF) because it was an "extremist Taliban compound." They said several of the people inside — including one of the women killed — were armed and that they initiated a fierce firefight. Australian commando Luke Worsley was shot dead as he entered the house.

Local residents confirm that Taliban members were meeting in the house that night. Mullah Baz Mohammed, the Taliban-designated "governor" of Uruzgan, was also expected for dinner but failed to appear. "Some of the men in the house were Taliban," says district chief Malim Faiz Mohammed (no relation). "But people like the Daad family do not have the resources or backing to tell the Taliban to stay away. They have a problem from both sides: they are frightened of the ISAF and of the Taliban," who intimidate villagers into helping them and kill those who refuse.

The Australian and Dutch troops responsible for security in Uruzgan are using an "ink blot" counterinsurgency strategy, securing small areas and steadily expanding them. Outside the secure zones, they aim to disrupt the enemy with regular attacks and win people's trust with aid projects. The Taliban are reading from the same playbook, even installing governors and Sharia judges in areas they control. But while the ISAF operates under strict rules of engagement, the Taliban visit savage retribution on anyone they suspect of collaborating with the ISAF or Afghan government forces. Thousands of families face an impossible choice: cooperate with the Taliban and risk being targeted by the ISAF — or cooperate with the government and risk torture or death from the Taliban. The ISAF must walk an equally fine line: they need to win the support of civilians, but Taliban fighters move among those civilians and look just like them. And when civilians are killed in attacks on the Taliban, says Afghan Senator Hanif Hanafi, "it makes the gap between the local people and the government and ISAF wider."

In 2001, the Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan by U.S.-led special forces and local irregulars. But in the past two years the Taliban have redoubled their efforts to get back their former power bases in southern provinces like Uruzgan. That has brought the ISAF into the area in force and increased the number of clashes — and casualties. In the past year, three Australians, nine Dutch troops and a U.S. soldier have been killed in Uruzgan. More than 100 Afghan civilians have died in the fighting, and some 1,600 families have fled their homes.

Uruzgan is a longtime Taliban stronghold. "[Taliban leader] Mullah Omar grew up here," says former Dutch battlegroup commander Jelte Groen. "It was the first province to fall to the Taliban in 1994." With its rugged terrain, long history of opium growing, and network of smugglers' trails, Uruzgan "provides a safe haven for drug transport and moving troops," Groen adds. "So it is a very crucial area."

From Tarin Kowt, the provincial capital, it's easy to see why. To the north, three brown mountains rise steeply like the ramparts of a giant castle. Beyond them lies a sprawl of steep ridges and peaks riddled with caves and crisscrossed with narrow trails. Camp Holland, the ISAF's main base in the province, squats in the desert on the town's outskirts. It is home to 1,400 Dutch troops and about 700 Australians. The Dutch forces include a Provincial Reconstruction Team, an armored battle group, and special forces. The Australians have a 370-man Reconstruction Task Force and a Special Operations Group made up of about 300 Special Air Service troops and Army commandos. The ISAF work alongside a steadily growing Afghan National Army unit whose base sits beside Camp Holland. As well as ferreting out and fighting the Taliban, the coalition forces — which also include U.S. soldiers serving under Operation Enduring Freedom — train local soldiers and police and undertake civic improvement projects.

Tarin Kowt has the sleepy air of a small country town. Women in burqas shepherd gawking children through the bazaar, and grizzled farmers in battered four-wheel-drives jostle for road space with flocks of sheep and motorbikes decked with flowers and bright seat rugs. But "it's dangerous going out" of town, says an Australian soldier at the governor's compound who asked not to be named. "You'll go somewhere once, twice — and the third time you're dead.'' The compound, with its neatly tended rose garden, is ringed by high walls, double checkpoints, machine-gun emplacements and blast barriers, and guarded by 50 men. The Taliban mostly avoid face-to-face battles with ISAF and Afghan forces, preferring ambushes and stealth attacks with suicide bombs and roadside mines. So the troops patrol in heavily armored vehicles or in jeeps bristling with machine guns.