Lala Jan is a hostage in his own home.
In his village in the southern province of Helmand, Taliban gunmen patrol the streets and NATO warplanes scour the skies. Jan fears both, so in recent months the 28-year-old farmer has hardly stepped beyond his front door.
"I don't go out," Jan said in a telephone interview, "because I don't want any problems."
But right now, problems are tough to avoid in Helmand. As the weather improves and Afghanistan enters its traditional fighting season, the province is shaping up as the war's central battlefield in a critical test for a country increasingly teetering under the pressure of a violent insurgency.
With a weak government presence in Helmand, the Taliban has gained more control there than in any other province in the five years since U.S.-led forces ejected the Islamic militia from power, according to foreign and Afghan officials.
In many villages, Taliban gunmen patrol day and night, residents said in telephone interviews. Some government supporters have been beheaded or hanged. Men who shave their beards, in breach of Taliban orders, have faced public whippings.
Meanwhile, NATO forces, now commanded by a four-star U.S. general, are focused on Helmand for their largest Afghan offensive ever. In the past week, NATO planes have carried out frequent airstrikes, trying to loosen the Taliban's grip before troops move in for what is expected to be intense ground combat this spring and summer.
Caught in between are Helmand residents who say they are fed up with both sides.
"Most of the people want the situation to be resolved very soon," said Nematullah Ghaffari, a cleric from the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, who represents the area in parliament. "Whether they want the government to take over or the Taliban, they are stuck in the middle right now, and they are suffering a lot."
But a quick resolution is unlikely, given the degree of instability.
‘Everything in one’
"Helmand is everything in one. Drug trafficking. Weak government. Hard-core Taliban who are spreading fear," said Talatbek Masadykov, chief of political affairs for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan. "The perception of many of the local people is that Helmand is almost lost."
Masadykov said he believes Helmand can still be turned around. The Taliban, he said, is actually fairly weak and enjoys little popular support. But he said that the government is not providing residents adequate protection and that winning the province back would take "immediate, urgent changes within the province. If the government can put in place a strong, qualified, professional team of leaders, with weapons and ammunition for the army and police, there's still an opportunity to reverse the situation."
Central government control in Helmand, about the size of West Virginia, has never been strong. The province's terrain is challenging, dominated in the south by vast deserts and in the north by jagged mountains. Helmand's population of roughly a million people is largely uneducated, and deeply committed to a conservative tribal culture.
Provincial Gov. Asadullah Wafa said four of Helmand's 12 districts have fallen into Taliban hands, including one in which the Taliban overran the district center after earlier agreeing to a peace deal with local elders. In several of the other districts, control is in doubt. Within the past month, he said, 700 al-Qaeda fighters from Pakistan, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Persian Gulf have infiltrated the province and are plotting attacks.
"The situation is out of control," said Haji Mohammed Anwar Isaqzai, a parliament member from the Nowzad district in northern Helmand. "Most of the people have left Nowzad. The only people who are left don't have the money or the resources to go to a safer place."
Isaqzai said the Afghan national police force has alienated the local population by abusing its authority. "During the day, they are policemen. During the night, they are thieves," he said.
By comparison, he said, the Taliban looks appealing because it enforces its laws -- albeit in an extreme way. Several local residents and officials said they had reliable reports that Taliban members were carrying out their own strain of Islamic justice in parts of Helmand -- executing those thought to be collaborating with NATO, and punishing men who have shaved their beards.
In other parts of the province, residents reported that the Taliban was mostly leaving the local people alone. "They are not putting pressure on the people to implement their laws," said Jan, the farmer. "But they do go to people's houses for food and money."
Residents say NATO forces have not helped the situation, carrying out bombing raids that are aimed at Taliban fighters but that often kill civilian noncombatants as well. Within the past week, residents and local officials said a strike had killed four members of a family of nomads.
‘Hopeless’
"They just bomb the whole place whenever they see any Talib," said one resident of the Nowzad district. "Because of the Taliban, our homes are being bombed and destroyed by the coalition. The people were once very hopeful about the coalition forces. But these kinds of things happen, and now they're hopeless."
The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his own house in Nowzad had been destroyed in a NATO bombing raid several months ago.
Spokesmen for NATO forces say they take extraordinary precautions to avoid civilian casualties. In a statement issued Tuesday night, the military reported that it had killed a senior Taliban commander in Helmand, Mullah Jamaluddin, as well as several of his followers in an attack last Wednesday. The statement said that the attack was "followed by Taliban propaganda that innocent women and children had been killed during these strikes," but that a comprehensive assessment had found the claims were untrue.
NATO's offensive is aimed at opening up a key highway, so that reconstruction projects in the area can get back on track. The hope is that economic development, combined with an aggressive anti-Taliban military campaign, will help turn public sentiment back toward the government.
"NATO is claiming they are really committed and this operation will be a success. But they have told us that before," said Ghaffari, the cleric and parliament member. "For now, we are waiting."
Staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.