As the biggest anti-Taliban offensive in Afghanistan since 2001 continues, the challenge of how to hold on to and rebuild areas previously held by insurgents remains.
Fotini Christia, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has recently spent time in Afghanistan, sets out the latest ideas on how to measure the success of such operations.
Artwork by Thalia Chantziara who accompanied Fotini Christia in Afghanistan
The number of dead Taliban fighters or a decline in poppy production used to be typical ways of gauging the success of an operation. But these can be misleading when trying to measure the long-term success of a military offensive and the rebuilding that follows.
Militants readily label their dead as civilian casualties and a decrease in poppy production gives no sense of what has replaced opium or whether the cultivation has simply moved on elsewhere.
Now that Nato commander Gen Stanley McChrystal has shifted the focus in Afghanistan from defeating insurgents to protecting civilians, new benchmarks will have to be created. These will form an important test of his new counter-insurgency strategy.
District officials living in the district
Several local government officials have been unable to live in their assigned districts because of security concerns. If they were able to do so it would indicate increased security. In Nad Ali, one Helmand district where the current coalition offensive is taking place, there are 60 government officials but most of them are not in the district, according to a spokesman for Helmand's governor.
Across Helmand there are 980 government officials, but not all of these are able to live in their post. But a new centrally run initiative has selected Nad Ali as a district in which to prioritise recruitment, promising much higher salaries to new district officials here.
Cost of transporting goods
The cost of transporting goods is increased by violence and the chances of being attacked on the roads. If transport costs on a route were to fall it would be a positive sign. In 2007 Afghanistan's lorry drivers' union estimated that each vehicle pays more than $6,500 (4,216) annually in taxes and bribes extorted on Afghanistan's roads.
Such costs are an important measure of the security situation.
Number of stores open
Legal market activity is a sign that the situation is returning to normal and stores opening in local bazaars show that there is increasing confidence in security and the local economy.
Reports of explosive devices
If the proportion of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) accurately reported to the authorities by the local population were to rise it would suggest a decline in support for the insurgents.
Local officials in Marjah and Nad Ali say it is difficult for residents to report the location of IEDs. But Helmand's governor says that meetings with tribal elders have been fruitful over the issue of sharing information.
Children going to school
Functioning schools are a sign of effective government and parents sending their children to school suggests confidence in the government and in the security of the local area.
There are 95 schools closed out of 235 in total in Helmand, the local education authority says. In districts such as Nad Ali and Deshi, school attendance is particularly difficult owing to the security situation.
Helmand's literacy rate was put at just 5% in 2007 by the ministry of rural rehabilitation and development.
These figures are certainly not very encouraging after so many years and the loss of so many lives, What to do?? who knows but as Canada prepares for the Spring Offensive we must be concerned for the safety of our troops. The taliban are using Human Shields to protect themselves from the firepower of the allies.
Afghanistan Taliban 'using human shields' - general
US Marines have come under heavy fire in Marjah
Taliban militants are increasingly using civilians as human shields as they battle against a joint Afghan-Nato offensive, an Afghan general has said.
Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them.
The joint offensive in southern Helmand province has entered its fifth day.
US Marines fighting to take the Taliban haven of Marjah have had to call in air support as they come under heavy fire.
They have faced sustained machine-gun fire from fighters hiding in bunkers and in buildings including homes and mosques.
They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians
Gen Moheedin Ghori Afghan National Army
Moshtarak diary: Day five
Gen Ghori, the senior commander for Afghan troops in the area, accused the Taliban of taking civilians hostage in Marjah and putting them in the line of fire.
Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third-floor window, he is quoted by Associated Press as saying.
They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians.
As a result, his forces were having to make the choice either not to return fire, he said, or to advance much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians.
Day-by-day report and map
Civilians die in Kandahar strike
Nato has stressed that the safety of civilians in the areas targeted in the joint Nato and Afghan Operation Moshtarak is its highest priority.
Journalist Jawad Dawari, based in Lashkar Gah, told BBC Pashto that Taliban fighters remained in many residential areas of Marjah and were defending their positions with heavy weapons.
It is difficult for the Afghan army and Nato to storm Taliban-held areas because to do so may inflict heavy civilian casualties and there are still a lot of civilians in Marjah.
Whenever they launch an attack, the Taliban take refuge in civilians' homes.
He had spoken to many local people in Marjah, he said, and they had all said the Nato offensive had made little progress since the first day.
An Afghan military official had told reporters that the backbone of the resistance came from foreign fighters - Pakistani and Arab - and that it was feared they might resort to suicide attacks, he added.
ANALYSIS
By Frank Gardner, BBC News, Kandahar
There's a lot of fighting going on in the Marjah area - the estimation of the number of insurgents there varies between 100 and 300. They are not all hardcore Taliban by any means. The US commander there, Brig Gen Larry Nicholson, said he thought about 80% were probably less committed local fighters hired to do this, as opposed to being hardcore, ideological jihadists.
The operation has taken a long time for a number of reasons - it's a big area, 200sq km, and they are having to cope with an unexpectedly large number of these IEDs. A lot of locals are telling the soldiers where the devices are but other IEDs are having to be defused very slowly.
The most senior US general in the south, Brig Gen Ben Hodges, gave the BBC a more upbeat assessment of Marjah, saying locals were coming out to give information on insurgents now that they were confident the forces involved in Operation Moshtarak were not leaving.
He said Afghan units would be staying for at least 30 days and the Marine battalions for several months.
Speaking to the BBC after visiting Marjah, the commander of British forces in southern Afghanistan, Maj Gen Nick Carter, said the situation was dangerous, but that progress was being made.
He told the BBC's Frank Gardner it could take up to 30 days to clear the insurgents out, depending on when they lost the will to fight.
Troops taking part in the offensive have been having to deal with large numbers of improvised bombs.
American forces have found a so-called daisy chain - a long bomb rigged up from mortar bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and a motorbike, our correspondent says.
Nato has said that safeguarding civilians is its top priority
And British engineers have deployed a device called a python - a length of explosives designed to set off mines and clear a safe path through them, he says.
Afghan army chief of staff Besmillah Khan told the AFP news agency the threat from improvised bombs meant gains were coming slowly.
Meanwhile, to the north, British forces have discovered an insurgent cache of stolen Afghan army and police uniforms.
The find suggests the Taliban could have been planning attacks disguised as Afghan security personnel, our correspondent says.
Nato says discussions with the local population on how to bring lasting security to the area are continuing, our correspondent adds.
Gen Hodges said several hundred police had been trained and would go into central Helmand once the situation was deemed appropriate.
British and Afghan troops are reported to be advancing more swiftly in the nearby district of Nad Ali than are their US and Afghan counterparts in Marjah.
Missiles 'on target'
Gen Carter confirmed on Tuesday a missile that struck a house outside Marjah on Sunday killing 12 people, including six children, had hit its intended target.
Afghan troops raise the national flag at a bazaar in Marjah
Gen Carter said the rocket had not malfunctioned and the US system responsible for firing it was back in use. Officials say three Taliban, as well as civilians, were in the house but the Nato soldiers did not know the civilians were there.
Initial Nato reports said the missile had landed about 300m (984ft) off its intended target. Gen Carter blamed these conflicting reports on the fog of war.
Speaking on Tuesday, Dawud Ahmadi - a spokesman for Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal - said that 1,240 families had been displaced and evacuated from Marjah - and all had received aid in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
Operation Moshtarak, meaning together in the Dari language, is the biggest coalition attack since the Taliban fell in 2001.
To earlier readers my apologies for the over printing of this article. I have no idea why it appeared a 1/2 doz times. Hopefully it is now rectified.
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