By Paul Tait
KABUL (Reuters) - The deadliest month of the Afghanistan war neared an end Thursday, with growing violence threatening to overshadow crucial presidential elections next month which the Taliban have vowed to disrupt.
The United States and Britain in July have suffered by far their worst losses of the war, the total of at least 69 foreign soldiers killed in the month exceeding or equalling total losses for each of the first four years of the war.
U.S. losses stood at 39 killed in July, easily passing the previous high of 26 in September 2008. Britain has suffered its worst battlefield casualties since the 1980s Falklands War, the 22 troops killed in the month taking its total losses in Afghanistan to 191, 10 more than were killed in the Iraq war.
Casualties spiked after thousands of U.S. and British troops launched two major operations in southern Helmand province -- Strike of the Sword and Panther's Claw -- long a Taliban stronghold and the centre of Afghanistan's opium production.
"We must ensure that we succeed in the current campaign. Success in Afghanistan is not discretionary and will set the agenda for the future," British army chief General Richard Dannatt told London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The operations are the first under U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and its Islamist militant allies and stabilise Afghanistan.
The August 20 presidential elections are a crucial test of Washington's new strategy and of Kabul's ability to stage a credible, legitimate and secure poll, analysts say.
Thursday, the Taliban issued its first formal promise to disrupt the poll, calling on Afghans to shun it..
It labelled the poll a U.S. "invention" and a farce, accusing Afghan President Hamid Karzai of not having the courage to stand up to U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan and telling its fighters to attack election-related targets and stop people from voting.
"All Afghans, due to their Islamic and national sentiments, need to totally boycott this seductive U.S. process and ... join the trenches of jihad," the Taliban's leadership council posted on a website it uses (www.alemarah1.net).
ATTACKS ON CANDIDATES
There have been three attacks against candidates or campaign officials in the past week, including Karzai's vice presidential running mate Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the leader of U.S.-backed Afghan forces that ousted the Taliban.
Violence across Afghanistan this year had already reached its worst level since the Taliban's ouster and has escalated further since the launch of the Helmand operations.
Britain this week wrapped up Panther's Claw after five weeks clearing the Taliban out of population centres before the poll, with the U.S. still pushing further south through a province that provides most of the opium funding the insurgency.
While the high death tolls have been within expectations for operations of that size, the first phase of the "clear, hold and build" operations focussed attention on strategies, whether troops are adequately equipped or if they should be there at all.
Kabul-based political analyst Haroun Mir said explaining the sacrifices made on the battlefield would be difficult in London and Washington but the operations were vital after the perceived lack of a clear strategy earlier in the war.
Washington analyst Anthony Cordesman, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the operations were not perfect and warned that the British and American publics should gird themselves for long campaigns.
"We may not have the perfect approach to shape clear, hold and build in Helmand, but it is a major initiative against a very real enemy where we will hold and we will eventually build," Cordesman told reporters in Washington Wednesday.
"And at worst, it will be a learning experience, which we can fix over time and use in other areas. Wars take time, they take strategic patience, they take, basically, as long as they take."
The high military casualty tolls and the new operations follow soon after the arrival last month of General Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces who has switched strategy from conventional combat to counter-insurgency.
McChrystal this month also imposed a new tactical directive designed to reduce civilian casualties, a point of great tension between Karzai's government and his western backers.
Karzai is a clear front-runner to win the poll ahead of a field of 36 challengers -- four have withdrawn from the original list -- with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-finance minister Ashraf Ghani among few serious contenders.
Poor security, especially in Karzai's traditional powerbase in the ethnic Pashtun south, is probably his biggest concern, with low voter turnout potentially limiting his vote and increasing the likelihood of a second-round runoff vote.
(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Golnar Motevalli in Kabul, Andrew Gray in Washington and Luke Baker in London; Editing by Matthew Jones)
