But while the province’s name has become largely synonymous with the disastrous 2008 US air strike which killed 90 civilians, the region has enjoyed relative calm since, according to the Italian troops in charge. That calm could be coming to an end.

The Adraskan National Training Center, the center of Afghan police training operations in Western Afghanistan, has begun to come under attack for the first time in over a year, and other bases in the region are also seeing rocket fire.

Though so far there has been little of consequence to come out of these attacks, officials warn that the small scale rocket strikes could be efforts to test the range of the rockets and could portend larger scale attacks in the future.

The exact reason for the sudden increase in attacks in Herat is unclear, as the Taliban seems largely interested in escalating in the northeast, not the far west. But the recent offensives in Helmand and Kandahar may be pushing the Taliban to simply relocate farther to the north and could be bringing more seasoned insurgents into the province.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Rick Helmer said in a statement that “we take all reports of non-combatant casualties very seriously and investigate these claims with the assistance of our Afghan forces counterparts.”

Herat was the site of a US air strike in August of last year which killed at least 90 civilians, the vast majority of whom were women and children, and anti-US sentiment in the area has remained high ever since. Repeated US denials only made matters worse, and the announcement of a quick investigation in this incident is likely aimed at avoiding a repeat.

2008 saw the highest rate of civilian killings in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. While violence traditionally rises dramatically in summer, the situation so far this year looks no better, as there have been a number of major incidents.

The ICOS defines a permanent presence as an average of at least one insurgent attack per week over the entire year. The Afghan government feels this unfairly includes “sporadic, terrorizing activities” by the Taliban. NATO insists “the Taliban are only present in the south and east which is already less than 50 percent of the country.”

Exactly how NATO reached this determination is unclear, but the US air strike in Herat Province was ostensibly targeted at the Taliban, and Herat Province is in the northwestern corner of the nation. Likewise, reports of police defections to the Taliban also place Taliban forces in the area along the Iranian border of Herat.

The ICOS report also says that the Taliban are “closing a noose” around the Afghan capital of Kabul. The report says that Kabul was virtually Taliban-free a year ago, but the well-documented growth of Taliban influence in the area is leading to an increase in attacks. The US is reportedly planning to deploy much of a combat brigade into the region in an attempt to regain control of the area.