The enemy's lunar landscape

This is the battleground on which the Royal Marines are fighting in Afghanistan. The satellite photograph above shows an al Qaeda cave complex, high in the mountains outside Jalalabad, where British commandos are launching an offensive against Osama bin Laden's terrorist fighters and Taliban forces.

The image, from the American Ikonos satellite, reveals in stark detail the forbidding terrain and the near-impregnable location of the caves, guarded by an observation post on a hilltop and surrounded by a range of rocky peaks.

The Marines are taking the battle to the enemy in this grim, lunar landscape and no one is underestimating the difficulties.

The caves are natural fortresses that so far have proved daunting. Last month troops fighting in the US-led Operation Anaconda found themselves struggling in the punishing conditions, often above the snow line at 9,000 feet where the cold and lack of oxygen take a toll even before the shooting starts.

The enemy showed itself to be more formidable than the strategists imagined.

The US-led forces lost two helicopters and eight men in the mountain clashes.

The lessons learned during Operation Anaconda have been passed on to the Marines and as they deploy in the mountains it is significant that they are taking with them 105mm field guns last used in the Falklands.

These guns, light enough to be towed over difficult terrain, will be used to pound the cave entrances and al Qaeda installations. It is brutal, low-tech warfare but the Americans learned to their cost last month that light artillery is essential against guerrilla tactics.

The Afghans the Marines are fighting now have picked up the mantle of the Mujahideen who, after a bloody 10-year war, forced the might of the Soviet military into retreat. The Russian experience is of great value to Britain's field commanders.

Eugene Kruschev, deputy chairman of the Russian Afghan War Veterans Union who saw extensive action during the occupation in the Eighties, warned against the ever-present dangers of minefields and the difficulties of trying to hem in the rebels. He said: "I don't think you can effectively seal them off. Temporarily from one bombing attack to another, they will try to sneak through."

The ability of the Afghans to slip through the lines of advancing forces has already been experienced by US-led troops. Just as they come into reach they disappear into the tribal lands that border Pakistan, where the only law is that of the local chiefs who are, by and large, sympathetic to the Taliban through Pashtun kinship.

The Marines are well-equipped and trained to a peak of fitness, but warfare at high altitude carries the additional risk of mountain sickness.

This condition - hypobaric-hypoxia, is caused by a combination of low oxygen levels and low air pressure which can lead to breathlessness, nausea and headache.

The symptoms can seriously impair physical performance and the Marines have been given specialist mountain warfare training to compensate.