The children crowd round the marines, demanding pens, paper. The adults hang back, watching, with resigned suspicion, the latest foreign soldiers to come to Afghanistan.

This is Lwar, a hamlet effectively in the no-man's land between the British and the Taliban in Helmand, the country's most volatile province.

Corporal Phil Morrison of the Royal Marines and Rasmus, a Danish captain whose full name cannot be given for security reasons, have sought out one of the elders, the spingeri, who command respect.

"He speaks English, so we go to him," Corp Morrison said. "There is always somebody in the village you could describe as an elder."

This spingeri seems friendly. Corp Morrison gives him leaflets and a newspaper printed by the British. The stories are designed to show what the British - and the government of Hamid Karzai - are doing.

Its front page has a picture of a woman in uniform: Afghanistan's first policewoman. After years of Taliban oppression, when girls could not go to school, it is designed to show things have changed. Most girls still struggle for education. But the officer, in faraway Kabul, is even teaching policemen how to shoot.

The children try to grab the leaflets but the snag is that they - like nine out of 10 adults - cannot read.

Corp Morrison works for psy-ops, essentially Britain's propaganda war. He is trying to put over simple messages. One is: "Don't go near convoys." A family who did, as reported in The Herald, was shot dead. That didn't do much to win hearts and minds.

Messages, without a hint of irony, also warn Afghans away from "foreign fighters". That refers to the Arabs and Pakistanis believed to be helping the Taliban in their holy war against British and other international troops in the country.

Rasmus, however, is in charge of hands-on efforts to win over Afghans. He and his team helped build a shrine to a Muslim saint in Gereshk. They only rule: that women and children should have the same access as men. And, Rasmus discovered on his patrol, they have. Work is also under way on a hospital.

The Dane, unlike Corp Morrison, cannot speak Pashtu, the common language in Helmand. He has one advantage: a beard. The Afghans, he said, would not have taken him seriously without it.

Afghans, who pride themselves as much on their hospitality as on their code of revenge, always welcome visitors. In Lwar some are wary. The children are not. But the British are under no illusions about the task they have.

Two days after Corp Morrison, Rasmus and the marines walked through in soft hats, there was a massive four-hour battle just two miles from the hamlet. The Talibs, with money raised through tithes on the region's opium farmers, can hire and fire people at will.

Yesterday a suicide bomber struck a two-vehicle convoy carrying foreign police advisers south of Kabul, killing himself and wounding an adviser.

There are huge suspicions of the British and Americans who, especially in outlying areas, are mistaken for Soviet invaders.

"We have only really got this winter to win over the hearts and minds of people, before the spring again when the farmers pick up their weapons," Corp Morrison said. "If they don't see a tangible improvement in their lives, they will go back to shooting."