^[1] KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN: When I arrived home the other night, I saw someone was sitting in the guest room. I asked my nephew whether we had a visitor and he nodded, so I walked into the guest room and saw that the visitor was a very tall man.

We hugged and greeted each other because that’s part of our culture. Then I admitted to the man that I honestly could not recognize him.

He laughed and said that in fact we had never met before and that this was his first visit to my house. He told me he was the son of L.A. (I cannot reveal the actual name for security reasons, but I understood that this man was a cousin of mine who lives in the Nadali district of Helmand).

I asked him what he was up to and he replied that he was heading to Quetta, Pakistan, in order to visit a doctor because he was very sick.

As I said, my cousin was really tall but I also noticed that he was very skinny too. He told me he had been having chest pains and that he had trouble lifting heavy things, even though as a farmer he always had to lift one thing or another.

My cousin told me he had just arrived from Helmand, and that 4,000 U.S. troops had been operating in Nadali district and in the surrounding areas, including Marja, Disho, Gramsir and Khanisheen. He told me that there were 15 U.S. checkpoints in Nadali alone.

Not knowing about the structure of the U.S. military or of the differences between the Army and Marines Corps, he called them all Americans. He claimed that in spite of the presence of so many American soldiers and Afghan National Army troops, 70% of Nadali district remained under Taliban control. He said that when the Taliban come under pressure, they just hide their weapons somewhere in the ground and walk away as if they were farmers, but as soon as they see an opportunity to attack they dig up their weapons and are ready to fight.

According to my cousin, the overall Taliban strategy has changed, because they have learned that if they engage directly with American troops, the Americans will quickly call for air support, and sometimes in a matter of a few minutes there will be fighter jets and helicopter gun-ships overhead.

My cousin went on to explain that there are approximately 10 to 15 bomb-making teams in Nadali district. The Taliban know that bombs are very effective against U.S. troops. If the Taliban are able to get to the site of a blast immediately after an explosion, they collect body parts of American soldiers, which they then hang over their motorbikes and cars to show to local residents that they have killed foreign troops.

As a resident of Nadali, my cousin said that he knows that if he ever hears an explosion or fighting, he must immediately run into his house or into someone else’s house because when the Americans come under attack they start shooting everyone close to them, including farmers, shopkeepers, and young boys.

He described how on the 27th of July 2009, U.S. troops killed two farmers while they were irrigating their fields in Nisar Ahmad Charahi, north of Nadali’s district center.

People of the area were very angry about this incident, particularly because the Americans boast about their satellite technology that enables them to see even small objects from several kilometers away. Why then were they unable to see that the two farmers were just watering their land?

I asked my cousin why he and his family have not left Nadali district for a safer part of Afghanistan, at least for a while. He answered that in the end, people do not flee their villages because they believe that the war is not going to last a few days but several years and so they do not want to abandon their family homes.