It is often expressed in typically Afghan fashion, as a grumbled undercurrent of quips and brooding pronouncements: “It is an American kite,” or “Afghans and Americans are up there.” (They are not; there is no one in the balloons.) “It shows us that, sure, the Americans are still here,” and, “It is not effective because there are still these suicide attacks and car bombs.”

For others, the cameras are an outrageous intrusion into private lives, putting women and children on display for foreigners whom they see as immoral.

“We cannot sleep on our rooftops anymore,” said Mohammadullah, who goes by one name, a resident of Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province, where families regularly sleep on their roofs during the summer’s sweltering heat, and who was voicing a common concern. “Whenever our female family members walk in the yard during the day, or whenever we want to say ‘hi’ to our wife when we sleep on rooftops, we feel someone is watching us.”

First used in Iraq in 2004, the helium balloons were introduced to Afghanistan in 2007, and the military has been shipping them here ever since.

American commanders love them, for giving them a perpetual full-color view of important thoroughfares and helping to catch insurgents planting roadside bombs. They cost less than the multimillion-dollar drones that get headlines.

“It has been a game changer,” said Ray Gutierrez, who trains the civilian crews, all Americans, who operate the cameras, and the military units who use them. One recent afternoon, he stood in the small control room beneath the old fort where two men with joysticks scanned close-up views of the hillsides several miles away, practically as if they could reach out and touch them. “It lets us see the battlefield as we have never been able to see it before.”

For the Taliban, the blimps have become things to fear.

In Kandahar Province — where there are at least eight in the city of Kandahar alone and more in the districts — residents say the insurgents call them “frogs” because their big eyes are ever watchful, or “shameless” because there is nothing they will not peer into. (The residents in Helmand have their own name for them: “milk fish” because of their fins and milky color.)