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Since 2006 the insurgency of the Taliban has been intensifying, especially in the southern Pashtun parts of the country, areas that were the Taliban’s original power base in the mid‑1990s. ISAF took over command of the south on 31 July 2006, British, Dutch, Canadian and Danish ISAF soldiers in the provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, and Kandahar have come under almost daily attack.