Britain 'will need more troops' for success in Afghanistan

www.timesonline.co.uk
Britain may need to send more troops to Afghanistan despite the success of Operation Panther’s Claw, military chiefs admit.


The scale of the challenge was revealed yesterday as it emerged that British soldiers have faced nearly 1,000 roadside bombs in the past three months. Although 3,000 troops managed to drive out about 500 Taleban during the five-week offensive, they will be fully deployed holding an area in Helmand province about the size of the Isle of Wight, their commanding officer admitted.

Brigadier Tim Radford, commander of Task Force Helmand, said that the existing troops could not be expected to mount further significant operations without reinforcements. Gordon Brown hailed the offensive as an “heroic” military success, saying it had made Britain safer and “pushed back the Taleban”. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, however, called for renewed efforts to engage the Taleban politically.

Efforts to bolster faltering public support for British involvement in Afghanistan were undermined further when the Ministry of Defence announced that two more soldiers had been killed. Brigadier Radford said that although 23 soldiers have died since the operation began on June 19, only 10 directly related to the offensive in central Helmand.

Details emerged of the “industrial” scale of the Taleban’s production of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Brigadier Radford, speaking by video link from his headquarters at Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, said there had been 153 IEDs encountered during Panther’s Claw – and 994 since April.

The release of details of Panther’s Claw gave Mr Brown an opportunity to wrest back the political initiative over Afghanistan after the controversy over troop levels and helicopters.But Mr Miliband caught Downing Street by surprise, using a speech to Nato leaders in Brussels to deliver an uncompromising message aimed at President Karzai of Afghanistan. Mr Miliband called for a programme of “reintegration and reconciliation” for moderate Taleban. He rejected talks with insurgents who were fighting British troops in Helmand, telling Channel 4 News: “If they [the Taleban] carry on trying to kill British troops, then of course we can’t reconcile them into the system, because they will be making a choice of violence.”

The two deaths announced yesterday take the total losses to 191 since 2001. Neither was linked to Panther’s Claw. A soldier from The Light Dragoons was killed by an explosion while he was on a vehicle patrol in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand. A soldier from the 5th Regiment Royal Artillery was killed by an explosion during a foot patrol in Sangin, in northern Helmand.