First published by Channel 4 News / 16 May 2010

Author Stephen Grey writes about how “warlords” control the Afghan city of Kandahar, a population centre deemed by Nato to be its number one target in its battle with the Taliban.

Declared by President Obama as this yar’s top priority in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Kandahar is the country’s second city and the heartland of the Taliban rebel movement.

It is the centre of Nato operations this summer. I spent much of the last two months in and around the city, embedded first with Nato troops and then stepping “outside the wire” to operate independently, trying to read the temperature of a place that is frequently described in news reports as the Taliban’s greatest “stronghold” in the country.

A switch in strategy ordered last year by General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato and US commander in Afghanistan, has turned attention from heavy fighting in rural areas like northern Helmand where most British troops are based, to the main centres of population, which McChrystal now declares to be “the centre of gravity” of the military campaign.

The theory goes that if the bulk of the population are made to feel secure, they will resist the temptation to support the Taliban.

Real development can then take place, and the people may start to support the Afghan government, and the insurgency will wither away. But how do things seem on the ground?

The first thing to realise is that any kind of Nato offensive has as much potential to make things worse as it does to make things better. (more…)