Whitehall sources have conceded for the first time that extra British troops could be deployed to Afghanistan but would only do so if other members of the NATO alliance fail to supply the reinforcements of troops and materiel demanded by its military chief, Whitehall sources indicate.
Despite concerns that the army is already stretched too far, British defense officials have identified additional troops and equipment available for deployment to southern Afghanistan.
But senior defense officials insist it remains too early to discuss potential numbers.
General James Jones, the US head of NATO in Europe, has said he wants at least 2,000 more soldiers to quash the Taliban before winter.
The failure of key members of the 26-nation alliance to provide the required reinforcements has caused consternation among London defense strategists who are keenly aware that sending more troops to Helmand risks increased political damage.
London is understood to have volunteered more troops during talks in Warsaw on Saturday between NATO defense chiefs, but only on condition that other countries remain reluctant to send service personnel to Helmand.
"If they [NATO partners] don't send, then we will. We have soldiers and helicopters we can send to Afghanistan," said a senior defense source.
Talks on Saturday attempted to persuade NATO members such as Germany and Spain to send their troops to Helmand.
Both countries presently operate only in the relatively safe northern and western regions and so far have been reluctant to send soldiers into the riskiest areas of Afghanistan.
Although NATO commanders have criticized the reluctance of some countries to send combat soldiers to what was originally billed as a reconstruction mission, British officials have resisted condemning fellow NATO members.
Privately, however, British commanders share concerns that their country is carrying too great a burden over NATO's Afghanistan operation.
They nevertheless believe that the deployment of an extra mobile fighting force is required to help accelerate the tempo of operations and avoid becoming bogged down in a bloody foreign conflict.
Defense Secretary Des Brown is believed to have raised his concerns over troop numbers in Helmand with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Sheffer on a number of occasions.
Not only is the future stability of Afghanistan at stake, but Ministry of Defense officials admit that the credibility of NATO itself rests with the success of the mission.
The cost of the intervention remains a pressing concern for Britain as fresh questions over the mission are being raised following the deaths of 19 British servicemen in the past nine days, 14 of whom died when a Royal Air Force Nimrod reconnaissance plane crashed earlier this month.
Britain currently has 4,500 service personnel deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in Helmand Province.
Meanwhile, an officer has resigned from the British army in protest for its "grotesquely clumsy" campaign against the Taliban, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Captain Leo Docherty, an aide-de-camp to a senior commander in the British task force operating in southern Afghanistan, quit last month after becoming disillusioned with its strategy in Helmand Province, The Sunday Times reported.
The approach is "a textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency," Docherty was quoted as saying.
"All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British," he said.
"We've been grotesquely clumsy. We've said we'll be different [from] the [US] who were bombing and strafing villages, then behaved exactly like them," he said. "We've deviated spectacularly from the original plan."
According to Docherty, the plan had been to secure the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah and initiate development and governance projects there.
The entire plan "fell by the wayside," Docherty said.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS