Resurgent insurgents By engineering a bold jailbreak and taking control of villages in a key Afghan district,The Tiliban flaunts its strength

It took all of 30 minutes.On June 13,Taliba forces sent two suicide bombers into a prison in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar,they were followed by 30 motocycle-riding militants,who systematically broke down every cell door in the jail.The audacious raid freed an estimated 400 Taliba fighters,and many of them appear to have gone ,right to work.Within three days,hundreds of insurgents swarmed through the key district of Arghandab and escaped prisoners were among them.As the Taliban gained a footing in the villages,Nato and Afghan army troops launched a counter operation aimed at stopping the insurgents before they could mass for a major assault for their own.The battle is being joined in a storied and auspicious place.Arghandab,just 10 miles northwest of Kandahar,is famous for its lush vineyards amd pomegranate orchards.It is also a key symbol for the insurgency.Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979,but were never fully able to conquer the Arghandab district,which remained an outpost of mujahedin defiance.It's shade groves,rasin-drying barns and deep irrigation canals provide excellent cover for fighters.Kandahar residents worry that the militant could use the Arghandab district as a base for an attack on the city itself,in a attempt to regain their former power base.Arghandab is a strategic district,which the Taliban can use to threaten Kandaharm.The Taliban have taken every village in the area except for the main town of Arghandab,and there are now 40 to 50 Taliban fighter in each village.He worries that the jailbreak was a precursor to an attack on the town of Arghandab itself.The Taliban have gained a lot of power with those who have been freed from the prison.Mark Laity spokeman for the international Security Assistance Force,Nato's millitary arm in Afghanistan,concurs.In the wake of the jailbreak we obviously have a different and more difficult security situation in Kandahar.He says.While ISAF officals are skeptical about reports of high numbers of Tiliban forces fighting together,on June 18 Afghan National Army (ANA) and ISAF troops launched an offensive,assisted by helicopter gunships,to drive the Taliban from the villages.Later that day,the Afghan Ministry of Defense said that dozens of Taliban fighters-including foreign militants-had died in the confrontation,as had two ANA soliders.