TERIN KOWT, Afghanistan - NATO will not sit idly by and allow militants to launch their own wave of bombings and suicide attacks in southern Afghanistan, the alliance's southern commander declared this weekend.
"A spring offensive (by the Taliban) will not happen because we are going to take the initiative," Dutch Maj.-Gen Ton Van Loon told reporters during a visit to this isolated mountainous region.
The international community, "the government of Afghanistan, the Afghan army, the Afghan police - we'll make sure we go into as many areas as we possibly can to make sure the Taliban cannot go back and bully the population."
For weeks U.S. commanders have been warning that extremists, most of them based in neighbouring Pakistan, were preparing to unleash a bloody offensive aimed at driving NATO out of the southern region and capturing the crown jewel of the fundamentalist movement, Kandahar city.
The Taliban warned Friday that its "war preparations" were complete and thousands of militant fighters had crossed the border - statements that caused a flurry of panicked, unsubstantiated rumours in Kandahar that aid organizations and foreigners were being targeted.
"We haven't seen anything to indicate they're massing," said Van Loon.
While simultaneously pressing the alarm and calling for more troops, western commanders have also tried to downplay the possible threat, saying the Taliban do not pose a strategic risk to the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and that extremists are capable of only launching guerrilla-style raids.
The militants challenged those predictions two weeks ago when they overran the town of Musa Qula, in northern Helmand province, where the governor had negotiated a controversial ceasefire.
The call for more soldiers and fewer restrictions on those already operating in Afghanistan has divided the nearly 60-year-old military alliance because the bulk of the hard fighting in the south has been carried by Canada, the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands.
In a speech Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush said NATO member countries need to send more troops.
But Van Loon said the number of combat soldiers in the region was "sufficient" and he would like to see extra forces go towards reconstruction.
With the influx of thousands of additional troops, the majority of them from the United States and Britain, speculation has been building that the military alliance would launch its own ground offensive in order to check an expected militant drive.
Indeed, Canadian Col. Mike Kampman, the principal adviser to Van Loon, said in an interview that NATO's strategy for 2007 is to marginalize the militants by pushing them up into the mountains.
In what must surely be a sign of things to come, NATO announced Sunday that it conducted a major operation in Garmsir, south of the Helmand capital of Lashkargah.
More than 150 British soldiers, supported for the first time by Afghan artillery units, attacked what was believed to be a major Taliban headquarters.
The operation began late Saturday and continued throughout Sunday. It was centred on three major compounds, where a significant tunnel complex linking the strongholds was discovered also destroyed.
There were no NATO or Afghan army casualties.
Canadian troops on the ground will readily tell you they expect to be fighting this spring and summer in Helmand province, along the river which has for years been a thoroughfare for the drug smugglers who partially fund the extremists. But they will also tell you that if the battles are in Kandahar province, in Panjwaii and Zhari districts - places already paid for with Canadian blood - then NATO's war is in trouble.
