Forward Operating Base Ripley, established a few kilometers (miles) outside Tirin Kot, the provincial capital of troubled Uruzgan province, is the base for 2,200 marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit fully deployed to Afghanistan from earlier this month, officials told AFP Thursday.

Working under Taskforce Linebacker, in reference to defensive players in American football, the marines will conduct patrols and cordon and searches from the base to improve security in the restive province where US-led coalition forces have come under regular attack.

"This is an area which hasn't had a lot of attention in the past," the camp's commanding officer Colonel Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said.

"It's an area which has asked for help" and would benefit from more boots on the ground, he added.

Citing operational security, McKenzie said he was unable to comment on whether the marines would be used to hunt fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

However, the province is in the Taliban heartland and is said to be the birthplace of Omar. The US military in Kabul has previously said the 22nd MEU would be brought in deal with Taliban and Al-Qaeda remnants.

The move to central Uruzgan comes as Afghan and coalition troops have boosted surveillance along the border with Pakistan, believed to be the hiding place of senior Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership including Osama bin Laden.

Moving into the centre of the country could clamp down further on the movement of militants, McKenzie said.

"Uruzgan sits central to Afghanistan... it's a natural transit point for people to move from east and west. It's sort of a keystone to the rest of the country," he said.

His marines would capture or kill any Taliban remnants they encountered but stressed that most locals wanted to disassociate themselves from the Islamic fundamentalist militia, McKenzie said.

He voiced the hope that the new camp would help "set the conditions for successful elections" which Afghanistan is due to hold in September. "Our mission here is to improve the general security environment and that will lead to successful elections," he said.

The new camp is part of a long-term strategy adopted by the Americans in Afghanistan to build relationships with local people and stay for longer periods of time in villages in towns rather than concentrating solely on military offensives.

"We believe for us to be successful, civil and military operations have to go hand and hand. It's more than a marine with a rifle."

After completing training in the main southern city of Kandahar, where the coalition has a major firebase, the marines came to the dusty camp on the skirts of Tirin Kot last week, Public Affairs Officer Captain Eric Dent said.

As of now the conditions are basic -- no permanent buildings, no showers and no hot meals.

But already the base has a landing strip which can accommodate aircraft as large as C130s and some 1,000 marines are out in the field, conducting patrols and cordon and searches and mixing with the locals.

Working with the marines is a contingent of Afghan National Army troops but McKenzie would not say how many.

McKenzie said the new base's area of operations was the Tirin Kot Basin and while there was some overlap with the coalition base in Deh Rahoud (50 km west of Tirin Kot), the geography was so different they could be considered two different areas.

The deployment of the marines brings to 15,500 the number of troops in the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, now at its highest level since the start of the operation in late 2001.

WAR.WIRE