KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Worried Afghan villagers are packing up their belongings and fleeing unstable districts around Kandahar city as Canadian, U.S., and Afghan forces intensify a long-planned campaign against insurgents in the area, local sources have told Postmedia News.

About 1,700 U.S. soldiers and Afghan army and police officers are sweeping through a semi-rural corridor directly west of Kandahar city and have detained 116 suspected Taliban insurgents since Wednesday, said Col. Ghulam Farooq Parwani, deputy commander of the Afghan National Civil Police in Kandahar.

“We have blocked all the exits and entrances to the area,” he added. “We have information that the Taliban are fleeing the area and are hiding their weapons, but we will pursue them until we (capture or) drive them away completely.”

Further west, villagers in Panjwaii district are watching Canadian troops try to clear walled residential compounds and fields, and say the soldiers are meeting stiff resistance from the Taliban.

“The foreign and Afghan troops are coming (up to) the villages, sometimes coming down to the fields where they briefly engage with Taliban and then retreat back,” said Muhammad Nazer, a farmer from Chalghowr, an insurgent-heavy community in Panjwaii some 20 kilometres west of Kandahar airfield.

“They cannot stay or engage for longer, because of heavy improvised explosive devices in the fields and gardens. The Taliban have planted countless IEDs on main roads,” he said. “Many people have left the area.”

This matches accounts from others in the area, including reporters.

Last weekend, a pair of Canadian Griffon helicopters flew overhead and fired a hailstorm of bullets on top of insurgents. An American aircraft then dropped a bomb near the same location. Canadian soldiers watching and listening from a nearby combat outpost cheered.

Nazer left the district and is seeking shelter in Kandahar city.

“Life is terrible,” he said on Thursday. “The Taliban want everything from us, food, money and help, and we cannot reject them (out of fear).”

Villagers in Panjwaii feel pinched between the two warring sides, he added. “The foreign troops distributed a letter that you have to fill in with your name, your father’s name (and your) village name. They said when you carry the letter they won’t arrest you. But we did not accept the letter due to the Taliban. If they see the letter which is provided by foreigners they would treat you as spying for (foreigners).”

A Canadian Forces spokesman based at Kandahar Airfield said Canadian troops were behind no such initiative, and could not confirm if one even exists.

But fear of Taliban retribution is certainly legitimate. In the past two weeks, locals say, two men were hanged in different locations just south of Kandahar city. A third man was found mutilated in Mehlajat village, Dand district, the same place that American and Afghan forces are now clearing.

Panjwaii district is the last remaining area of operations for Canadian troops in Kandahar. Senior officers acknowledge insurgents move about some district areas with impunity, and villagers say they’re tired of the situation.

“Every person is thirsty for peace and now everyone lost his hope, because we don’t believe the current administration will ever restore it,” said Sharafat Khan, a taxi driver from Nakhonay village in Panjwaii.

The village has a large Canadian presence, with soldiers from Bravo Company, 1st Royal Canadian Regiment, holding down a number of combat outposts.

Oscar Co., 1RCR, is positioned just to the north and to the west, around villages such as Chalghowr.

“Security is getting worse day by day,” Khan complained. “We have to be at home before 6 o’clock. If not we will be arrested by the Taliban or picked up by some one else. We are not able to see our land because of IEDs and fighting. We are just alive. Our children cannot sleep due to the sounds of aircrafts and fighting. Its terrible being out there.”

But more help is coming. Up to 10 Afghan National Army companies will soon join coalition soldiers in a large, co-ordinated effort to finally rid Panjwaii and Zhari districts of the Taliban, according to British Maj.-Gen. Nick Carter, who directs ISAF’s Regional Command (South) in Afghanistan.

The push west, deeper into Panjwaii and Zhari, represents the third phase of a coalition operation dubbed Hamkari, the Dari word for co-operation.

Phase One, launched earlier this year, involved improving security and governance in and around Kandahar city, the Taliban’s former seat of power and a place they clearly covet. Insurgents have directed dozens of suicide attacks in the city and they continue to target and kill government workers there, sometimes at a rate of one per day.

Phase Two was launched in July.

It focused on clearing Arghandab district, another Taliban hotbed, and opening its fertile agrarian belt so farmers can move their produce south to markets in Kandahar City.

On August 15, Carter, the ISAF regional commander, told reporters embedded here that Phase Two was four-fifths complete.

He set no firm timetable for Phase Three, offering only that it would require the Afghan National Army companies, which had yet to join Canadian and American troops already massed forward.

“The intent is to secure Zhari and Panjwai districts so that the majority of residents feel safe enough to go about their daily lives and demonstrate enough confidence in the durability of security and good governance to plan for the future,” read a statement prepared this week by the Canadian-led Task Force Kandahar, based at Kandahar Airfield.

“In Zhari and Panjwai, the Afghan National Security Forces, in co-operation with coalition forces, will conduct clearing operations in order to protect the population. The operations will be conducted in support of the district leadership to protect the people from Taliban interference, intimidation and violence. The purpose is to provide the people with greater freedom of movement by day and by night.”

Canada’s battle group is already staged as far west in Panjwaii as Sperwan Ghar, about 40 kilometres from Kandahar Airfield. Canadians took and held territory further to the west in 2006 and 2007, into the so-called Horn of Panjwaii, but troops were withdrawn and the area was ceded to the Taliban starting in late 2008.

Carter told reporters that coalition forces “will be going all the way (through) western Panjwaii” during Hamkari’s third phase.

Word of the final phase has already spread.

“We’ve heard that the operation is on the way,” a farmer named Jilani Khan said on Thursday as he was loading a truck with his family’s possessions. “We are leaving our home and going to Kandahar city. Taliban are all around planting mines, and the government and foreign troops are now taking action against them, so we are afraid of losing our family members. This is very difficult for us in the month of Ramadan. We have left everything behind, and we don’t have shelter in the city.”

bhutchinson@nationalpost.com