BRITAIN will step up its presence in Afghanistan this week with the deployment of a high-profile new ambassador as concern mounts that the toll of civilians killed in the war is setting back the coalition’s efforts to win Afghan “hearts and minds”.

There is growing alarm over a wave of US bombing raids in which 110 civilians have died in the past two weeks. Twenty-one people were killed last week after US special forces called in airstrikes on the town of Sangin in Helmand province. “Sometimes you wonder whose side the Americans are on,” said a British official.

US officials claimed that Taliban militants had sheltered in villagers’ homes, using women and children as shields. But local anger was so strong that the Afghan Senate passed a draft law calling for a halt to military offensives by international forces unless they were under attack or had consulted with the Afghan government.

“One mishandled bombing raid wipes out the benefits of months of development work,” said Matt Waldman, head of Afghanistan policy for Oxfam.

When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, one of the Foreign Office’s top diplomats and former ambassador to Tel Aviv and Riyadh, flies into Kabul this week to become the new ambassador, one of his first tasks will be to defuse the outcry. He will also need to examine how Britain’s aid contributions have become bogged down in controversy.

In a sign that there is a great deal of catching up to do, the Foreign Office is sending 33 extra diplomats to Afghanistan. A senior official yesterday described the shake-up as an “upgrading” and denied that it was an admission of failure. “Things have moved in a way people didn’t expect in Afghanistan,” he said. “There’s a sense that we need to do more and to do that we need more people.”

Expectations in London remain high that Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is a “winnable” war. “The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office have . . . written off Iraq and all attention is now on Afghanistan,” said a senior diplomat, pointing out that within months Afghanistan will be Britain’s biggest overseas deployment. Gordon Brown emphasised the point yesterday when he said: “Afghanistan is the front line of the war on terrorism.”

Cowper-Coles and his staff have few illusions about the task ahead. Afghanistan is in the grip of an insurgency that cost 4,000 lives last year. About a quarter of the dead were civilians and 170 foreign troops, including 39 British soldiers. At the same time there is widespread disillusion with the government of President Hamid Karzai.

“I’m not optimistic,” said one official. “We’ve left it too late. I see it going the same way as Iraq. Once the suicide bombers move in, basically you’ve lost.”

As a further signal of Britain’s commitment to the country where it has fought three wars, the Foreign Office is negotiating with Pakistan to buy back its historic embassy in Kabul. The beautiful colonial building once boasted a ballroom, rose gardens and famous wine cellar but was abandoned when Britain left the country in 1989.

It was taken over by Pakistan, which wants a price “in the millions” to return it. At present the British embassy is housed in an ugly purpose-built “bunker” rented from the Bulgarians.

There is also concern that aid to the civilian population has become skewed because of military and political agendas. A report by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief states that a “disproportionately high level of aid is being directed towards opium intensive or insecure areas of Afghanistan”.

The belief that too much aid is going to war-torn provinces at the expense of more stable regions is felt by Habiba Sarobi, governor of Bamiyan, and the only woman among Afghanistan’s 34 provincial governors.

“We’re being punished for being peaceful,” she said. “My province has only dirt roads and it takes me 9-10 hours to get from Kabul, when if we had proper roads it would be three. It feels like the international community is encouraging us to be naughty, to burn schools or grow poppies, so that we can get aid.”

Britain has come under fire with the Department for International Development (Dfid) – the second largest donor to Afghanistan – accused of ending funding for projects in the more stable north to divert funds to Helmand. Dfid admits that Helmand will receive at least £20m of its £107m Afghan budget this year, even though the lack of security makes it difficult to carry out development projects there.

A survey by the British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group found that “current aid policy is having a hugely detrimental impact on funding support for vital programmes including water and sanitation, employment generating schemes, TB control and child protection.

“In many provinces, frontline services are being closed due to lack of support from major donors including USAID, the UK government, the EU and the World Bank.”

Funding for British aid organisations from Dfid dropped from £22.5m in 2001-2 to £4.7m in 2005-6. A Dfid spokesman claimed that this was part of a change of policy toward channelling money directly to the Afghan government rather than through aid agencies. “Conflict causes poverty; there’s no point pretending Afghanistan is a peaceful place,” she said. “Tackling the causes of conflict and extending the remit of the Afghan government is important in reconstruction and development.”

- Western and Afghan troops have driven the Taliban from a southern area after a week-long battle in which more than 70 militants were killed, an Afghan security official said on Saturday.

There were no casualties among the Afghan and western troops in the fighting in Nahri Saraj, in Helmand province, the scene of a series of operations in recent weeks. Five Taliban commanders were among those killed, the official added. There were no civilian casualties.

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