Taliban fighters are encroaching on Kajaki district in Helmand, threatening a prestige aid project built to power southern Afghanistan and holding huge symbolic importance for the international coalition.
Local officials say foreign engineers working at the hydroelectric power Kajaki dam, including a number of Britons, have been evacuated to Kandahar, as Taliban have captured at least one police precinct from government forces.
The US military conducted three airstrikes in Kajaki on 15 and 16 September, “to eliminate threats to the force”, according to Col Brian Tribus, spokesman for the international forces in Afghanistan. He said Nato personnel were operating out of the Bastion and Leatherneck complex to “train, advise and assist” the Afghan troops.
“Other than that the Afghan security forces have full responsibility for security, and for planning and leading their own operations,” Tribus said.
Kajaki, which claimed the lives of more than a dozen British soldiers, has been heavily contested since the early days of the war and was the subject of a 2014 film about a unit of British paratroopers stranded in a minefield.
Having been part of US aid ambitions for over half a century, the dam became a centrepiece of the British army’s attempts to win “hearts and minds” in southern Afghanistan, the spiritual home of the Taliban.
In 2008, 2,000 British troops hauled a 220-tonne generator across the Helmand desert. The five-day effort was touted as one of the most heroic British army operations since the second world war.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/18/british-engineers-evacuated-key-afghan-dam-taliban-approach-kajaki
