Afghans insecure despite more security

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP):

Schoolteacher Abdul Rahman drops his voice to a whisper as he watches US troops guard a street where insurgents attacked a police headquarters a day earlier in this capital of the province that was the birthplace of the Taliban.

"The foreign forces are everywhere, but they are not helping us," Rahman said as he sat in a cracked plastic lawn chair with his friends outside a photo shop.

Residents of the impoverished city of 800,000 people live in fear, even as they see heavily armed NATO troops patrolling the streets in armoured vehicles every day and snarling traffic. There are 1,600 Afghan policemen in Kandahar - 800 more than last year. The Afghan police are partnered with 850 US military police - up from 170 last summer. Still most Afghans are deeply suspicious of their police, they often see as corrupt.

In a brazen daytime suicide attack, Taliban militants wearing explosives-filled vests hit the police station with an arsenal of car bombs, automatic rifle fire and rocket-propelled grenades over the weekend. At least 18 people, many of them police, died and dozens were wounded. Earlier this month, the deputy governor of the province was killed by a suicide bomber.