Times Online : Troops die as UK holds back Afghan reinforcements

Troops die as UK holds back Afghan reinforcements

Nato reveals that Britain withdrew an offer of 800 extra troops, reports Michael Smith in Kabul

The Sunday Times | September 10, 2006

BRITAIN agreed to provide an extra 800 troops to allied forces fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan but later withdrew the offer, Nato officials disclosed last week.

Lieutenant General David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, planned to use the 800-man force as troubleshooters, sending them into any area where fighting broke out.

However, John Reid, then the defence secretary, was so angry at the reluctance of other Nato countries to supply troops that the offer was retracted.

Reid, who famously said that he hoped British troops would leave Afghanistan without firing a single shot, indicated that the UK would send no more troops other than the 3,300 men to be based in Helmand province.

Last week the US general in charge of Nato made the obvious link between the shortage of troops and the casualties faced by the allied forces in southern Afghanistan.

Appealing to Nato countries to send more soldiers, General James Jones, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said: “It will help us to reduce casualties and bring this to a successful conclusion in a short period of time.”

A total of 33 British servicemen have died since UK troops deployed to Helmand province, which has seen the bulk of the recent fighting in southern Afghanistan. Another Nato soldier died yesterday and more than 40 Taliban militants were killed in fierce fighting in an area patrolled by Canadian troops. A photograph was released of Lance Corporal Luke McCulloch, 21, of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, who was among those killed last week.

Ministers have repeatedly insisted that they have provided all the troops that the commanders on the ground wanted. But Nato officials said the men they desperately needed were the 800 originally promised by Britain.

The presence of a “tactical theatre reserve battalion”, the quick reaction force which the British had offered to provide, was factored into all the computer generated exercises during which Richards and his commanders prepared to fight the Taliban. The need for the quick reaction force was driven home by Jones in a series of interviews last week. The Ministry of Defence has complained that it was other Nato countries that were not pulling their weight. Asked which countries needed to do more, Jones replied: “All of them.”

During a visit to London in July, just a week before he took over, Richards told the Royal United Services Institute that Nato forces in Afghanistan were short of equipment and time and implied that he needed more troops.

Two weeks earlier Des Browne, the defence secretary, had announced that Britain was sending 900 more troops to Helmand, giving the impression that this was a substantial reinforcement. But last week, in response to a written parliamentary question, he admitted that just 260 of them would be “dedicated to force protection or security tasks”. The remainder would be engineers to help with reconstruction and medics to tend to the wounded.

This cut the ground from under Richards’s feet so he called in Nato’s heavy guns. Jones, a hard-talking US marine, was briefed by Richards during a three-day visit to Kabul last week. He flew back to Brussels and demanded that every one of the countries taking part in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force “make good” on their promises. “It is not that we are making new demands,” he added. “I am asking for the forces we asked for 18 months ago.”

That was hammered home at a meeting of defence chiefs from all the Nato countries in Warsaw yesterday.

Yet it has been the British forces who are based in Helmand, the centre of the Taliban insurgency, who would have benefited most from the quick reaction force which their own government decided not to provide.

According to Nato officials, the British made an ill-advised decision to place small numbers of troops in the centres of the two districts of northern Helmand where the Taliban were strongest. The officials made it clear that the creation of the controversial “platoon houses” at Sangin, Musa Qala and Nawzad was never part of their original plan.