The death of the first British servicewoman in Afghanistan has highlighted the enhanced role of women in the armed forces and the changing tactics of the Taleban.

The use of female soldiers is particularly sensitive in Afghanistan, where conservative Muslim values place many restrictions on women including, in many parts of the country, forbidding them from talking to men who are not their relatives.

The British Armed Forces include 17,670 women and allow them to serve in all areas except where the primary duty is “to close with and kill the enemy face-to-face”, according to the Ministry of Defence.

They are thus excluded from the Royal Marines General Service, the Household Cavalry and Royal Armoured Corps, the Infantry and the Royal Air Force Regiment. There are no other restrictions unless they are pregnant.

According to MoD figures, only 1 per cent of women in the Army play an active combat role and they are all in the Army Air Corps. The remaining 99 per cent work in combat support or combat service support.

However, women in those two categories, which include everything from driving and dog-handling to the Army Medical Corps, now routinely operate on the frontline — and often under fire — in Helmand.

Female soldiers are used to search Afghan women as local custom forbids men from doing the job, and women military police often oversee house searches to ensure that women’s rights are respected.

The only restriction specific to women soldiers in Helmand is that they are generally unable to lead patrols or take roles that involve direct communication with Afghan men.

While some Afghans in Helmand accept that women play a different role in Western society, most would be offended by a female officer addressing a tribal elder, for example.

“It’s a delicate issue,” said one officer who recently served in Helmand. “They often have to take a backseat in negotiations.”

The Intelligence Corps also technically falls under combat support but is given even greater flexibility to move around because of its remit to gather information on the ground.

In April last year, Second Lieutenant Joanna Dyer, of the Intelligence Corps, and Private Eleanor Dlugosz, from the Royal Army Medical Corps, were among four British soldiers killed in a roadside bomb attack outside Basra in southern Iraq.

The British servicewoman killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday was on a joint patrol with the Afghan National Police when a mine blew up the Land Rover carrying her and three SAS reservists.

Training the Afghan police — who are renowned for their incompetence and corruption — is one of the most important challenges for British Forces as they try to strengthen President Karzai’s Government and rebuild a nation shattered by three decades of war.

The Taleban have drawn their own lessons from the bloody head-on fighting of 2006 and 2007 that cost them so dearly. Senior insurgent figures have admitted that last year alone they lost up to 50 per cent of their provincial commanders in operations against Nato.

They have evolved their tactics accordingly and this year have used large groups of fighters only on rare occasions when a show of force is required to make a symbolic statement. Instead they have instructed their lieutenants to rely on smaller ambush and bomb teams, typically of four to eight men, who carry and plant devices inside Afghanistan from across the border with Pakistan.

The strategy remains the same as it was during the era of Soviet occupation. Unable to beat their opponent in open warfare, they aim to outlast him while bleeding the resolve of contributing Nato member states with a steady drip-drip of fatalities. Thus the mine and bomb have become the Taleban weapons of choice.

Whatever the advances in electronic warfare that allow Nato patrols to jam the frequencies used by insurgents to initiate some devices, there is still little the technologically superior forces can do to prevent their vehicles from detonating double-stacked anti-tank mines or other pressure-initiated devices.

The casualty statistics have changed along with this revision in tactics. Last year bombs accounted for 44 per cent of Nato casualties. This year, though, the overall level of fighting has dramatically reduced and bombs account for 80 per cent of casualties.

There are fewer wounded and although the overall trend of fatalities remains more or less the same, the ratio suggests that more Nato troops are now dying in fewer incidents than in previous years. The Taleban are thus succeeding in sustaining their hit rate against Nato, while reducing losses among their own soldiers.

Gordon Brown expressed his deepest condolences yesterday to the families of the four soldiers killed. He said that British Forces had made great progress against the Taleban, noting that the insurgents were increasingly using mines and roadside bombs.

“[The Taleban] are no longer fighting as an army. They are fighting as an insurgency,” the Prime Minister said. “That’s why we are seeing mines and roadside bombs . . . and we are seeing Iraqi-style tactics practised by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

“That is why we are reordering the way our forces work in Afghanistan and that is why we are taking new equipment to Afghanistan.”

David Cameron, the Tory leader, joined in paying tribute to servicemen killed in Afghanistan during the past few days. “When people ask why are we sending our young men and women to fight, and possibly die, in the heat and dust of Afghanistan, let us be absolutely united in saying that their fight is our fight,” he said.

Speaking after a memorial service in Edinburgh to remember 24 soldiers who died during the deployment of the 52 Infantry Brigade in Helmand from October 2007 until April this year, Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, rejected suggestions that British troops in Afghanistan could start losing heart after the recent surge in casualties. “We just have to convince everybody that these sacrifices, these losses, are necessary for the safety of the world and I think there’s a general acceptance that that is the case,” he said.

Earlier this month Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of British forces in Helmand, said that the fight was at a tipping point. “The Taleban are much weaker,” he said. “The tide is clearly ebbing, not flowing, for them.”

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