By Matt Robinson
ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Like the farmers, U.S. soldiers in this fertile river valley of southern Afghanistan are preparing for spring, and the surge in militant violence it usually brings, with the recent killing of a top public official signalling a hard fight ahead.
Between rocky outcrops, a network of combat outposts manned by U.S. and Afghan soldiers has emerged as winter draws to a close at the northern gateway to Kandahar City, to defend gains they say they made in late 2010.
Long a feature of the war, the traditional "winter lull" before the insurgents come out fighting again in the warmer months has been less obvious in the past couple of years.
Kandahar province, the heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency and the focus of a major NATO-led offensive last year, remains one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan, and progress is relative.
As a helicopter carrying visiting U.S. congressmen kicked up dust at Arghandab on Saturday, word spread that Kandahar province&${esc.hash}39;s deputy governor had been killed by a suicide bomber.
The assassination of Abdul Latif Ashna was the latest in a campaign of insurgent attacks against Kandahar&${esc.hash}39;s public officials, frustrating efforts to extend the reach of President Hamid Karzai&${esc.hash}39;s central government to areas under the sway of a parallel Taliban authority.
At least 30 NATO soldiers have been killed in January, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.org, challenging the notion of the seasonal break in fighting.
On Friday, a suicide bomber killed at least nine people at a supermarket frequented by Westerners in the capital&${esc.hash}39;s embassy district. Ashna and two foreign soldiers were killed in the south on Saturday.
The U.S. military maintains it has the upper hand.
"Six months ago, the enemy had sanctuary on both sides of the valley. The Taliban were using the orchards to hide," Lieutenant Colonel Rodger Lemons of Task Force 1-66 said.
"Now, we&${esc.hash}39;ve seized the initiative," he told the delegation from the U.S. Congress.
It&${esc.hash}39;s a narrative of progress that supports a pledge by U.S. President Barack Obama to start bringing home some of the 100,000 U.S. troops from July this year under a strategy to hand control to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014.
The Western alliance says it has driven back insurgents in Kandahar and by spring 2011, U.S. troops will hold the Arghandab valley and its pomegranate groves "so tightly that the Taliban can&${esc.hash}39;t get back in", Lemons said.
SPREADING INSURGENCY
Critics say inroads are being made by insurgents in other areas of the country, spreading rapidly from the southern Taliban strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand to previously peaceful areas in the north and west.
Soldiers and civilians are being killed at record rates. But the assassination of public officials could exact an even greater toll on a government struggling to extend its reach beyond Kabul.
The United Nations says that, between mid-June and mid-September last year, 21 public officials were reported to have been assassinated each week across Afghanistan, up from seven a week for the previous three months.
Most killings took place in the south and east. The real figure could be even higher.
"It&${esc.hash}39;s hard for me to recall, how many were injured, how many were killed," Kandahar provincial governor Toorlyalai Wesa told Reuters in Arghandab when asked how many of his colleagues had been killed. "This is a war, this is Kandahar," he said, before bidding farewell to the congressmen to attend Ashna&${esc.hash}39;s funeral.
In Arghandab, district governor Haji Shah Mohammad lives in a bungalow at a fortified NATO compound. Lemons said it was a mark of Mohammad&${esc.hash}39;s dedication but it might have more to do with the fate of his predecessor, killed by a car bomb last June.
(Editing by Paul Tait and Miral Fahmy) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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