Forward base for US marines

Hundreds not thousands of troops have arrived

		By Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent

The Pentagon clearly believes that Kandahar represents the last bastion of the Taleban.

The US assessment is that Taleban forces are likely to dig in around the city and fight.

But the job of the US marines that have landed at Dolangi airfield near Kandahar is not to assault the city.

According to Mr Rumsfeld they number in the hundreds rather than the thousands. And their mission is to establish and hold what is described as a "forward operating base".

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Kandahar sits astride an important crossroads.

We're smoking them out, they're running and now we're going to bring them to justice

George W Bush

US special forces are engaged in efforts to attack Taleban targets on these routes and the head of the US Central Command, General Tommy Franks, believes that a base inside Afghanistan could be useful to assist in this effort.

Whether additional US special forces troops will be moved into the country is not clear.

Emerging targets

The US air campaign is continuing - focused largely on targets around Kandahar and Jalalabad.

Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taleban

Some 90% of the air strikes are said to be against emerging targets - Taleban units or elements that have moved or betrayed their position in some other way.

All the indications are that the Americans are hoping local Pashtun leaders will take control of territory from the Taleban, though quite what will happen in Kandahar itself is unclear.

More dangerous

The destruction of the Taleban remains a means to an end - the hunt for al-Qaeda's leaders.

But the campaign is entering a more dangerous phase for the Americans.

Five US servicemen have already been injured by a US bomb near Mazar-e-Sharif.

But the deployment of ground troops underlines Washington's insistence that it will take whatever military measures are needed to prosecute this campaign.

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