When the governor of Kandahar province came to this town, freshly liberated Sunday from the Taliban, his armed entourage appeared to outnumber what was left of the population. 'Don't worry,' Gov. Tooryalai Wesa told the few elders who ventured out of their homes. 'The Taliban are gone. Our security forces will not leave you alone. You're safe now.' For the moment, this farming community of about 60,000 people on the edge of Kandahar City looked more like a ghost town, doors closed and windows barred, with hardly anyone on the streets. Laced with booby-traps and hidden bombs, the wheat and corn fields nearby were empty of workers. The tempo of operations throughout the districts surrounding Kandahar has been steadily increasing in recent weeks, but nowhere more suddenly than in this town and the surrounding Dand district. While many operations in Afghanistan are now joint ones between NATO and Afghan forces, in most of them, the phrase 'Afghan-led' is little more than a fiction. This was an exception. While American commanders said the operation pointed the way to Afghanistan's future, the outcome -- a town filled with bombs and booby traps but devoid of most residents or fighters -- showed just how difficult it would be to secure the area and win over residents. A Taliban commander, contacted by telephone, confirmed that some Taliban fighters had been captured while trying to flee, but he said most had gotten away. He said the Taliban had made a decision not to defend the area but to pull out and resort to hit-and-run attacks. Wesa's visit was an appeal to the residents to come back, though few emerged to hear that. He addressed three elderly men who had cautiously come out to listen. 'The area is now cleared of Taliban, and those families who have left their homes because of fear and insecurity can come back,' the governor said. The governor promised that an American mine-clearing team would come soon, to hunt for roadside bombs and booby traps; there are so many planted on the roads and lanes that farming has come to an almost complete stop. In Kandahar, residents who had fled Mehlajat said they would bide their time before returning. 'The Taliban were everywhere but when the operation began, they just disappeared,' said Fazli Ahmad, 35, a farmer who left with his wife and three children. 'They just planted more mines and left.' 