Taliban Captures 18 Afghan Villages; U.S. and Afghan Officials Downplay

According to AP News, the Taliban have taken control of 18 villages west of the Argandab River and started digging trenches and mines.

NATO and Afghan forces maneuvered troops into the region and dropped leaflets from the air warning civilians to stay inside their homes if fighting erupted in their area.

A tribal elder said he felt that the Tabliban's surge into the area was almost certainly connected to the prison break last Friday, in which some 400 Taliban prisoners escaped from a jail in Kandahar.

However, Afghan officials and some within the U.S. military have been playing suggestions that this entrenchment is a prelude to an attack on the district center or even on the city of Kandahar, the capital of the south.

"Still the Taliban are not in Argandab," said the provincial governor, Asadullah Khaled, in a telephone interview. "They are in some places. It does not mean they took it all."

"They will have some fighting, but they are not that strong," he said of the Taliban. In the past, the governor has raised the alarm when Taliban forces have appeared close to the city, and in spite of his frequent call for tougher action from NATO forces in his region, this time he said the threat was not great. "I am not worried."