Photos: Troops ramp up presence in Kandahar

U.S. Army Spc. Phillip Singleton, right, hands out toys to children during a KLE, or key leader engagement, with the village elder in Kuhat.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

1st Lt. Jordan Ritenour drinks chai with Haji Beardad, left, and his brother Kharu Jan, center, in a pomegranate orchard under decades-old grape vines in Kuhat. Ritenour has built a relationship with Beardad, a village elder, in hopes of fostering greater cooperation with the local populace as the military tries to rid the area of Taliban influence.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A boy jokingly sticks his tongue out at U.S. Army Spec. Phillip Singleton, second from left, as he walks with other soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division through the village of Kuhat. Singleton frequently walks the village and had befriended the boy.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A girl steps into an alley to watch as an American patrol passes by her house, an occasion that usually draws the attention in the rural villages of Kandahar province.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Members of the U.S. Army‘s 82nd Airborne Division inspect a bomb from the year of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in hopes of being able to remove it from a cemetery. The bomb, a longtime concern for local residents, was too big to be removed with the equipment they had, so the task was left to be done on another day.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Dried blood on facial lacerations can be seen on Sadullah, 50. He was riding in a shared taxi when he was injured by a roadside bomb. Three men and two children were killed. Sadullah came to the U.S. base in Kuhat afterward to be checked out by a medic.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Sadullah is treated by U.S. Army Spec. Phillip Singleton. Sadullah was in the taxi on his way to the district governor’s office to plea for the release of his son who was arrested a week earlier on suspicion of working with the Taliban.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Matt Miller, 23, of Harrison, Mich., shoots over the top of another player during a game of 21 at Combat Outpost Winkleman in the Arghandab Valley, Afghanistan. Miller works as a joint tactical air controller.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Army Sgt. Robert Hernandez, 23, right, of Phoenix pauses between sets during a workout at Combat Outpost Winkleman. The base is one of several small ones in Kandahar province put in with the aim of quelling a Taliban uprising.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Army Spc. Victor Smyrnow and Spc. Jacob Lind of the 82nd Airborne Divsion are framed by camouflage netting that helps obscure their position on top of a hill as they watch over the Arghandab Valley and their Observation Post Kuhat. Both the U.S. Army and the Afghan army man positions in this volatile area of Kandahar province. Shifts rotate every few days and the soldiers eat, sleep, pull overnight watch and occasionally take fire from the valley below.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Army Spc. Jacob Lind watches over the Arghandab Valley at sunrise from a hilltop observation post.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Army specialists Victor Smyrnow and Jacob Lind at their hilltop post above the Arghandab Valley.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

The village of Kuhat lies below the U.S. Army observation post above the Arghandab Valley. Residents were originally unhappy about the Army post but many have since warmed to the soldiers.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Army sergeants Benjamin Salinas and Jacob Wells get some time for recreation at Combat Outpost Kuhat.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Army Spc. Andrew Kimbell, 25, of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, center, braces against a cloud of dust as a Chinook helicopter takes off after returning him to Forward Operating Base Jalawar after a 15-day r&r leave. Kimbell spent his leave in his hometown of Spencer, Iowa where he grew up. With him are Pfc. Ben Hoffmeister and Sgt. Benjamin Amato, who came to pick him up from the landing zone. The 82nd is deployed in Arghandab, a region of Kandahar plagued by Taliban insurgents.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Airman 1st Class Sean J. Vazquez, 20, of Fitchburg, Mass., holds a wreath dedicated to those who have died in the Afghanistan war during a ceremony at Kandahar airfield, where thousands of American troops are stationed. In the background, members of the Air Force’s 451st Expeditionary Wing stand at attention.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Afghan national police officers check their targets during shooting practice at Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

The officers in this course train for 6 weeks and learn about firearms, criminal law, human rights and the Afghan Constitution.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Canadian soldiers keep watch as a shepherd crosses a bridge in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. U.S. and Afghan forces have stepped up operations in and around the city that is the spiritual capital of the Taliban movement.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan National Police officer pats down a motorcycle rider at an impromptu checkpoint in Kandahar. In the past, Taliban insurgents have caused numerous casualities by driving explosives-laden motorcycles into crowded areas.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan National Police officer keeps watch as a Canadian military convoy passes over a dirt road in Kandahar. Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs -- one of the biggest worries for coalition troops -- are often buried along dirt roads.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Afghan workers in Kandahar prepare a field for grapevines. Almost 1,000 civilians labor for roughly $6 a day as they participate in the USAID-led effort to revive the country’s once-vibrant grape industry.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan National Police officer suits up for duty inside a fortified post on the western edge of Kandahar, a city in southern Afghanistan. A red-laced curtain hangs in the doorway to keep out flies and mosquitos.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Pock marks from past battles are seen on walls in a neighborhood in western Kandahar. U.S. troops and Afghan forces have been heavy patrolling the city in an effort to root out Taliban militants.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. and Afghan forces patrol a neighborhood in western Kandahar. The Taliban has long pumped fighters, weapons and bomb-making materials into the city.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Children in a village on the western edge of Kandahar watch as U.S. troops and Afghan forces make their way through the area in search of Taliban activity.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A convoy of American troops drives past a row of shops during a patrol of a neighborhood in western Kandahar.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Army Capt. Michael Thurman, center, listens as Kokaran village elder Haji Fadi Mohammed complains about the raid carried out a day earlier by coalition forces in western Kandahar.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Kokaran village elders left frustated by the raid carried out by coalition forces talk with U.S. military officials as well as Canadian and American civil affairs representatives. About a dozen elders were invited to the meeting following Saturday’s sweep of a Kandahar district that is known to be a Taliban stronghold.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

The bulletproof glass of an armored vehicle remains damaged months after shots were fired during a patrol in western Kandahar. Previous sweeps of the area failed to dislodge insurgents because there weren’t enough troops and little aid to elicit local support.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan National Army soldier shoulders a machin gun while on joint patrol with the Afghan National Police and U.S. military police in Kokaran, a neighborhood in western Kandahar.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan youth goes about his routine of cleansing in the river as U.S. and Afghan forces patrol his neighborhood in western Kandahar.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A girl is seen in a village in western Kandahar, a known Taliban stronghold. U.S. and Afghan forces stormed the area Saturday, conducting door-to-door searches in Kandahar’s District 8, which is home to about 75,000 people.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A U.S. military police officer walks past a humvee at the start of Operation Kokaran. With a surge of troops and civilian aid and reconstruction specialists, the U.S. and its allies are attempting to wrest control of Kandahar from the Taliban this year -- before U.S. forces begin a staged withdrawal in summer 2011.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Afghan national police commanders and U.S. military police sort out a plan to patrol Kandahar’s District 8. Operation Kokaran was named for the neighborhood where the Taliban has assassinated government officials and built infiltration routes.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A suspected Taliban sympathizer is led away in handcuffs by the Afghan National Police. The man was carrying a letter allegedly written by a Taliban commander authorizing him to carry a weapon. Kandahar’s provincial security chief, Col. Fazal Ahmad Shirzad, twice slapped the man in the face during a brief questioning period.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A man closes the doors to his compound, which was inspected during Saturday’s sweep of Kahdahar’s District 8. No U.S. soldiers entered homes. Afghan female police officers, their faces covered by scarves, searched compounds while male officers questioned residents and confiscated guns from men who failed to produce permits.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A U.S. soldier shakes hands with a boy in the Kokaran neighborhood of Kandahar’s District 8. Residents of Kokaran and much of the rest of the district have few modern facilities. Raw sewage and garbage flow through open channels carved into rutted dirt pathways.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Afghan and U.S. forces patrol a neighborhood in Kandahar’s District 8. A U.S. government official said Saturday’s sweep was “an early snapshot” of a planned summer campaign to control the Taliban stronghold.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan National Police member smokes a cigarette before the start of a sweep in western Kandahar’s District 8. U.S. commanders say the Taliban exercises more autonomy in the district than anywhere in the city.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

An Afghan National Police member jumps over an irrigation ditch while on patrol with U.S. military police in Kandahar’s District 8. The goal of the operation is to clear out insurgents, build up local governance and bring in reconstruction projects.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Mohammed Shah Farooqi, chief of the the Criminal Investigation Division for the Afghan National Police, exits one of several compounds searched during the sweep in Kandahar’s District 8.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

A Black Hawk lifts off from a NATO base in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, carrying a wounded U.S. soldier whose hand was crushed by an armored vehicle’s heavy door during the sweep.  (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)