LAST week was the bloodiest for the British in Helmand since their mission arrived, with five significant armed contacts in Sangin, Nawzad and Gereshk within three days, writes Christina Lamb.

“We’re now getting as many as eight contacts a day,” said Brigadier Nick Pope, commander of 1 Signal Brigade based in Kabul.

“This is why we need to create zones of security,” said General David Richards, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, who is about to assume command of the south, including Helmand, and is already signalling a clear change of strategy.

“We’ve stretched ourselves too far,” he said last week. “We need to bring ourselves back in and start the psychological battle in places like Lashkar Gah and Gereshk (the province’s principal towns), securing an area where we can start development and let the effects of that stretch out.

“Military operations need to be surgical, intelligence-led that last for a few hours and keep the enemy guessing.”

Even in Gereshk and Lashkar Gah, there has yet to be any development. In Lashkar Gah, the British have achieved nothing beyond a plan for renovating the Friday market and the ordering of some steel girders to reinforce the bridge, though thus far it has not been considered secure enough to install them.

In Gereshk all the British have done is put razor wire around the district administrator’s house, which annoyed the district police chief who said he was more important.

At Camp Price in Gereshk, British paratroop commanders are frustrated that despite being in place two months they are yet to offer any help to the local community. “Our credibility is at stake here,” said Major Paul Blair. “After a while people are going to start saying you came and promised to help us but what have you actually done?” The main problem is that the British mission is led by a “triumvirate” of military, Foreign Office and Department for International Development (DFID) personnel — and the latter is insisting any development must come through its auspices rather than the military.

Major Blair has been prevented from renovating Gereshk hospital or repairing water pumps. Yet most aid agencies are terrified of going south of Kabul, let alone to Helmand.

“The other problem is when I ask locals what they need they don’t come up with projects,” he said. “Either they are very vague or they ask for things like mobile phones, laptops and motorbikes” — in other words, just what the Taliban would like to get their hands on.

Last Sunday I watched the triumvirate in action at a school in Gereshk where Colonel Charlie Knaggs, Susan Cronby from the Foreign Office and Wendy Phillips from DFID had all flown in for a meeting with local elders.

After Knaggs had given his spiel about coming as friends and wanting to help the people of Helmand, the two women made speeches — to the shock of the men in this very conservative society. Several jiggled worry beads noisily while the women spoke, and one cleaned out his ear with a cotton bud.

Afterwards an old man in white with a long white beard got up and accused the women of being spies.

The elders were then shown into another room where a projector had been set up. In a stunning indication of the enormous distance between thinking in London and reality on the ground, someone has come up with the idea of making a film to show locals. It comprises five minutes of the underwater BBC series Blue Planet, followed by a message from the governor of Helmand and the coalition forces, followed by five more minutes of Blue Planet.

The tribal leaders of Gereshk sat in utter bafflement as images of whales and dolphins were projected on the wall.

“Let’s turn this off shall we?” said Major Blair, looking embarrassed.

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