EARLIER this month a British advance party in Helmand held a series of meetings with locals, asking them about their lives in Afghanistan’s largest and most lawless province. When they asked, “What’s good about life in Helmand?” nobody had any answer. When they asked, “What’s bad?” the people did not know where to start.

Their main complaint is lack of security but even that is not straightforward. Dust-swept Helmand, where 3,300 British troops will be deployed in May, is the heartland of the Taliban. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, fled there when his regime fell in 2001.

It is also the world’s biggest opium-producing region, responsible for 22% of the total last year. Many of the mud-walled houses have gun turrets, for this is tribal feud territory where brother kills brother over land and girls as young as 11 are seized as booty.

Even by day, central government writ extends for barely a mile outside the main towns of Lashkar Gar and Grishk. Only the foolhardy venture out after sunset when Helmand becomes the preserve of bandits, Taliban and drug smugglers who sneak back and forth across the borders with Pakistan and Iran.

“Coming to a province where there has been no military presence at all and with so many problems, we are bound to draw fire,” said Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley of the Royal Green Jackets, who has been in Afghanistan since October. “It really is like poking a stick in the hornets’ nest.

“I don’t accept reports of Falklands-scale casualties. But the Taliban are a major threat. We’re under no illusions at all that they’ll have a go at us.

“I don’t single out the Taliban. There is such a blurring at the edges of drugs, gangsters, tribal spats. This is not a place where the enemy wears a uniform.”

Suicide bombers have recently been thrown into the mix. One got into the governor’s compound last month while a meeting with the local US commander was under way. The intruder was shot by American soldiers before he could blow himself up. His car, too, was packed with explosives.

The Taliban claim to have 200 suicide bombers to target foreign troops. “Of course there’s fear,” said Worsley. “Because no troops have been here our intelligence is weak and it’s a hidden presence.”

The official line is that suicide bombs are the last throes of a decimated organisation. Others point out that almost 1,600 Afghans were killed last year — more than in any year since 2001 — along with 66 American soldiers.

“The Taliban are not just regrouping in the south; they are winning,” said a western intelligence source. “Two years ago they were wintering in Pakistan. Last year they stayed in Helmand all year but wintered in remote hills. This year they have remained in the villages.”

When I told Afghan friends I was planning to go to Helmand, most tried to dissuade me, even though I have been travelling in Afghanistan since 1988. One described it as “the Falluja of Afghanistan, only bigger”.

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