LONDON: A British government review of the Afghan conflict is to warn that there are “significant risks” of civil war or a Taliban takeover of the south and east of the country after Nato withdraws its combat troops at the end of the 2014.

On the 10th anniversary of the start of the war, military progress is patchy with fighting still intense in the east and in parts of Helmand province. Over the past few days, British troops have been sent in to the thick of a bloody, drawn-out struggle along the Helmand river valley, taking over a fiercely contested area from US marines a few kilometres south of Sangin town, the site of the UK’s heaviest losses since its forces moved into the province in 2006.

With three years to go until Afghan security forces are supposed to fight the insurgency without the help of foreign combat troops, the Afghanistan review will portray a country in turmoil. Last year’s 30,000-strong US troop surge and new counterinsurgency tactics have pushed the Taliban out of much of the territory it controlled a year ago, but with the widespread use of improvised mines and roadside bombs, as well as a campaign of assassinations, the insurgents have sought to paralyse the Kabul government and hinder western-backed development.

Retired US general Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), said the force was only “50% of the way” to achieving its goals in the country.

President Hamid Karzai’s administration remains weak and corrupt, reliant on a loose coalition of warlords. The country’s biggest bank has been crippled by rampant embezzlement, and there have been a string of assassinations of high-profile Karzai allies, culminating last month in the killing of the government top peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The British government review, ordered by the prime minister David Cameron earlier this year and due to be delivered in mid-November, will warn of significant risks of the recent, hard-won progress unravelling and the very real threat of a multi-dimensional civil war between insurgent factions, regional and tribal groups, fuelled by neighbouring powers jockeying for position.

Talibanisation of the Pakhtun belt Another possible outcome is referred to as the “Talibanisation of the Pakhtun belt”, in which the Pakhtun areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border slip permanently under the control of ultra-conservative militants, further destabilising Pakistan, an already fragile state armed with nuclear weapons.

The report, as described by officials, will make clear that these remain worst-case scenarios which can be avoided. But even the outcome judged by the report to be most likely after the 2014 transition, a precarious Afghan state with pockets of chronic violence, would leave the terrorist threat from the region as potent as it is today.

A senior British diplomat would not comment on the specifics of the review as it is classified and has yet to be finalised, but confirmed that “those sorts of scenarios are being studied”. “It is going to be a cold-eyed realistic appraisal,” the diplomat said.

The 20 September killing of Rabbani by a suicide bomber with explosives concealed in his turban, has set back hopes of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. While senior Nato officials believe the evidence leads back to the Taliban’s Pakistan haven in Quetta, they do not think the assassination was specifically ordered by the top leadership, but rather was the work of an over-zealous second-tier commander. That leaves open the possibility that informal US contacts, begun last year, could resume.

But levels of distrust, both between Nato and the Taliban, and between Rabbani’s northern kinsmen and rebel Pakhtun tribes in the south, are now higher than ever.

“Anyone who is following the situation in Afghanistan is worried. A civil war is a real possibility,” said Martine van Bijlert of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

“There is a real feeling of instability, that the future is unsure. People don’t know who are their friends and enemies. So they try to make themselves ready for any eventuality, positioning themselves politically and worrying about how strong they are. People are falling back on old networks and old loyalties.”

In Helmand, last year’s influx of 11,000 of US marines has suppressed the insurgency in several districts and reduced the pressure on British troops garrisoned in the province. But Barack Obama is now drawing down the surge, and the troops are going home or redploying to the eastern provinces to counter the threat of splinter jihadist groups.

Three hundred British soldiers are currently being deployed with Afghan troops along a particularly volatile stretch of the Helmand river south of Sangin, replacing a US marine battalion that was unable to make progress against the local insurgents and found itself under daily attack, suffering five deaths over six months and more than 80 wounded.

Danish forces stationed further south towards the town of Gereshk were forced to withdraw earlier this year from a forward base known as Armadillo as a result of an insurgent onslaught, dismantling the fortifications stone by stone and shipping part of it back to a military museum in Denmark.

Not a lot has changed The newly-arrived British troops and their Afghan counterparts will be patrolling an area known as Qal Yeh Gaz, just 12kms south of Sangin town. One of the departing US marines, Captain Andrew Terrell told the BBC that “not a lot has changed” since he was deployed nearby with British commandos four years ago. “The situation is no better. The people here are not fed up with the fighting, they’ve not reached the limit of what they’re willing to accept from the Taliban,” Terrell said. “It’s easier for them to move out of the area and hope it settles down, but they don’t look much further than tomorrow.”

A coalition of Afghan and western aid agencies has published research suggesting that despite the influx of $57bn in foreign aid since 2001, progress in health, education and a public sense of security has been patchy and tenuous.

Farhana Faruqi Stocker, the director of Afghanaid said: “Investments have been made where there is the greatest insurgency rather than where there is the greatest need. Impoverished regions have been ignored because they are ‘secure’.” She added: “Afghan lives have improved but the gains are fragile and reversible.”—Dawn/Guardian News Service