New peril for British troops in Afghanistan: Taliban have learned modern warfare

For many months, military planners in Afghanistan have been readying themselves – and trying to prepare domestic public opinion – for a bloody summer. In spring, a number of officers – from the then commander of coalition forces, David McKiernan, to commanders patrolling sullen villages – said significant casualties were inevitable in the traditional "fighting season" of July and August.

Nor were casualties likely to be due to greater numbers of troops coming into the country and venturing into new areas. "The Taliban are much, much more stood up. They are much tighter, much more professional, much more together," one intelligence officer in Kabul told the Guardian earlier this year.

A lot has been made of the Taliban's increasing use of "asymmetric tactics", such as booby traps, roadside bombs and suicide attacks. A few hours on an operation with US troops, supported by helicopters, jets and unmanned armed drones, makes it clear why: if the insurgents do not stay out of the way, they will be killed, as thousands have been.

But once coalition troops establish a presence, they become vulnerable. They need supplies, they need to patrol; they are perfect targets for the hit and run tactics of the Taliban. Those tactics have been particularly honed in ambushes.

Soldiers fighting the insurgents say they now show vastly improved ability to co-ordinate fire. So volleys of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) now rain down during engagements. The Taliban have also learned to focus fire on their opponents' heavy weapons or radios .

Pre-prepared fighting positions in karez irrigation ditches are now used, often as part of defensive posts with carefully calculated fields of fire designed to interlock and to trap any counterattack.Nato officers say the Taliban's command has also been improved to co-ordinate fighting with foot soldiers and to allow rapid engagement or disengagement. According to American soldiers who served in Iraq, Afghan fighters compared favourably to the disorganised militants they had faced before.

They say they are often more imaginative, too. In one engagement in Kunar province last year, insurgents got close enough to American positions to throw stones among them, hoping the US troops would mistake them for grenades, panic and expose themselves.

Yet the work done by the Taliban high command – based mainly in Pakistan – goes way beyond tactics. Through the winter, Nato intelligence officers say, the insurgents worked at stiffening internal discipline, weeding out those who were felt to be insufficiently attached, ideologically speaking, to the movement.

According to several Afghan members of parliament interviewed earlier this year, the shadow governors appointed by the Taliban in every province were reshuffled to break up emerging bureaucratic fiefdoms and re-energise the movement.

Junior frontline commanders, many of whom had become more autonomous in last year's fighting and challenged their leadership, were brought in line. Teams organising the bombs that have caused so many of the casualties were trained in new techniques. Spies and double agents were killed.

There was even discussion of reigning in drug dealers whose wealth and weaponry was beginning to beseen as a potential threat by some Taliban leaders.

The tactics of the coalition forces have been studied closely. One preoccupation is air power. As with the conflict with the Soviets, airpower is what insurgents fear most. Helicopters have not yet been attacked successfully in a systematic way.

The insurgents only have only a few old Chinese-made and Rocket propelled grenades RPGs sent into the rotor blades are only effective only from very close range, and come withmean almostimply the almost certain death for the firerattacker.

However, if the Taliban do find a means to target coalition aircraft, this will not simply change tactics but geopolitics – as it did for the Soviets. Within three years of the Afghan mujahideen receiving effective surface-to-air missiles, the Soviets had pulled out.

Jason Burke is the author of On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World