Marjah offensive: Afghanistan civilians aren't taking the hint

Mohammad Anwar, the head of the provincial council for Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital near Marjah, told McClatchy by phone that the council had registered 244 families from Marjah, 60 of them in a newly established camp. He estimated that another 100 families had gone to the nearby district of Nawa, and more had trekked to the towns of Garmsir and Gereshk.

"They're still coming; every day they're coming," Anwar said. "They come by tractor, Toyota station wagon, some with blankets and other possessions, some with just their children."

Marjah is the last town in the central Helmand river valley under insurgent control, and it houses a large number of heroin production labs, which the Taliban tolerate — and tax.

"I don't know what NATO is talking about, 50 families came out (of Marjah) just today," tribal leader Juma Gul said by phone from Lashkar Gah. "There are just poor people left there, those who don't have money to come to Lashkar Gah."

In a separate development, more evidence emerged in neighboring Pakistan of the death of the leader of that country's Taliban movement, Hakimullah Mehsud. Unnamed Taliban commanders told reporters that Mehsud, who apparently had been injured in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's tribal belt in mid-January, had died on his way for medical treatment. According to some accounts, he'd been taken close to the central Pakistani city of Multan, on his way for treatment in the southern port of Karachi, when he died.

The Pakistani Taliban continued to deny Mehsud's death, but there are signs that a power struggle has developed to succeed Mehsud, with a new contender, Noor Jamal, alias Toofan, emerging to challenge several more established Pakistani Taliban chiefs.

(Saeed Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent. McClatchy special correspondent Nooruddin Bakhshi contributed to this article.)

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