Battle on for Afghan hearts and minds

Shamman Gul, an Afghan commander who oversees a rugged patch of land north of Kabul, sits cross-legged on bright rugs in a shanty and drinks tea with British troops.

The soldiers have just given rare medical treatment to his 700 villagers and the bearded, middle-aged man is grateful.

"We are happy for them to come to this area, every kind of service we will bring to them in return," he said, speaking through a translator employed by coalition forces.

And so goes the latest chapter in the US-led war on terror.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, accused of launching the September 11 attacks on the United States, and the Taliban, ousted from power for protecting the militants, seem to have vanished from the arid plains and rugged hills of Afghanistan.

Many coalition troops, faced with an elusive enemy believed to have slipped across the porous border into Pakistan, are turning their sights to the destitute villages of Afghanistan.

The troops are sweeping into villages, armed with sacks of wheat and military doctors, to cull information for non-governmental aid agencies and glean intelligence on any lingering militants that could pose a threat.

The locals, struggling to emerge from more than two decades of war, are getting much-needed humanitarian aid. The coalition forces are gaining a key ally.

"We are doing really good work," said Captain Chris Haw of the British Royal Marines, as a team of doctors in Dandar hands out medicine and candy to children with illnesses ranging from scabies to ear infections. "If you win over their hearts and minds, then they will work for you."

US-led forces have been hunting for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters for nine months now and last saw large numbers of the Islamic fundamentalists in March.

The British government has said that its troops - on their largest combat mission since the Gulf War - will start pulling out of Afghanistan by early July.

"We are here to deny al Qaeda and the Taliban sanctuary and freedom of activity, deny them a place to carry out their global terrorism," said Major Rich Stephens of Zulu Company, Royal Marines, which has been patrolling southeastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan since the end of May.

"It's intensely frustrating that none of the bastards stayed around to fight."

Stephens divides his mission into three objectives: cutting supply routes used by al Qaeda and Taliban, sweeping the area in search of cave hideouts and providing humanitarian aid.

"I don't think things are black or white," Stephens said. "By being here we are keeping the peace, but by being here we are also ready to get al Qaeda."

The villagers are eager for a helping hand after years of war have frozen time in much of Afghanistan, making running water, electricity and health care a far-fetched dream.

Gul, the Afghan commander in Dandar village north of the capital, knows the struggle of scraping a living from a small crop of grapes and a few scrawny goats and chickens.

"We need their help, their treatment, their clinics," Gul said of the US-led coalition forces. "We are thankful that they come and help the poor people."

Surgeon Lieutenant Roland Woods is another warrior in the latest phase of the war in Afghanistan. The British soldier is about to break the 100 mark in pulling teeth.

"You have to come in and do humanitarian things, because not everybody is bad," said Woods, a 27-year-old dentist who has pulled 98 rotten teeth out of mouths in the past few weeks in villages that have been without medical attention for years.

Woods has just driven into Kuche Kan in a convoy of military trucks after a local translator from the coalition forces alerted the village to the soldiers' arrival.

The hulking vehicles pull up into the middle of Kuche Kan and draw a crowd of curious children. A soldier encircles the trucks with a strip of white tape, creating a safe zone for the troops away from a growing mass of wide-eyed boys and men.

The local women are hidden in dilapidated houses and little girls peek from doorways as the Muslim village draws an unspoken line between the females and the largely male soldiers.

Men and boys duck under the tape one by one, eager to see Woods get rid of a painful, decayed tooth or to talk to the military doctor about mysterious aches, sores and rashes.

"It's very frustrating that I can't do more," said James Hayton, a military doctor who treats a stream of patients from his temporary surgery in the dust at the centre of the cluster of trucks. "I want to set up clinics, offer education, but that's not possible right now."

The translator heads off to find the village elders. Young men place cots made of wooden poles and criss-crossing ropes under the shade of thin trees and bring out a platter of dusty cups and hot, sweet tea.

The village elders shuffle to the cots and sit with US special forces Sergeant Michael France and British officers.

The officers ask them about the condition of their wells, the types of mines found on their land, the location of the nearest school, the number of families in the village, what they think of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and, finally, the existence of any Taliban or al Qaeda fighters.

The old men answer all the questions, assuring the officers there are no militants in the area and putting in a special request for a roof for the village mosque.

France tells them a mosque roof is a hard item to come by and requires a special type of funding, but he promises the village elders that he will pass on the request to aid agencies.

"Tell him we would like to thank him," France said at the end of the meeting, speaking through the interpreter. "This goes a long way to restoring the peace and security of Afghanistan."