Only slightly safer

Only slightly safer

As Noel Coward once observed, mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

I've just been walking down a road in Afghanistan where a few weeks ago I'd have been shot on sight by the Taliban. Or worse.

Passing a pylon still smeared in dried blood, I was told it was where a government worker had been decapitated by the insurgents.

Normally this would have quickened my pace. But my companion was reassuring.

He was after all, no less a figure than the chief of police of Herat, a man whose substantial frame would challenge even Friar Tuck or Little John from that other haunt of insurgents – Sherwood Forest.

It also helped that we'd gone for our little drive into the country with about 50 of his merry men - all of them heavily-armed. The front line of the Taliban is being rolled back from the outskirts of this city in western Afghanistan.

General Ali Shah told me the area used to be controlled by one of their most feared commanders, who sheltered his fighters behind the civilian population. 

American and government forces didn't dare attack because of the inevitable cost in innocent blood, he said.

But Ghulam Yayah Akbari wasn't as untouchable as he thought. He was killed in a raid by American and Afghan special forces when he ventured into the mountains south of Herat without any human shields.

The general was keen to show me the benefits the villagers were now getting after being released from Akbari's yoke.

"People couldn't bear to live here like they did before. It was inhuman, illegal and un-Islamic. Now we are building them a school, a road and bridges, things that were all destroyed before."

But not everyone we spoke to shared the general's optimistic assessment. The Taliban may have gone but fear still remained as one of the villagers, Ghal Agah, told me.

"We're actually very concerned because the police have now fortified this whole area. If the Taliban come back there will be fighting. Houses will be destroyed and the people will suffer."

It is also sobering to reflect on the fact that thousands of mourners attended the funeral of the Taliban commander. A former mayor of the city of Herat known to have close links to Al Qaeda, Akbari was buried to shouts that have a familiar ring: "Death to America!"