Britain said yesterday that the war in Afghanistan was “winnable,” despite its military death toll there passing 200, and as an opinion poll showed a majority of Britons oppose the fight against the Taliban.
After a weekend when five new deaths took the toll to 204, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said British forces could be scaled back in coming years, dismissing as “ridiculous” a suggestion they could be there for 40 years.
But amid questions over that claim, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government faced growing calls from the public, press and anti-war campaigners either to pull troops out of Afghanistan altogether or support them better.
A poll released yesterday said 82 percent of Britons believe the government is not doing enough to support troops in Afghanistan, compared to 12 percent who said support is sufficient.
Fifty-seven percent said troops should not be fighting in Afghanistan and only 13 percent said it was “very clear” why troops were there.
The YouGov poll commissioned by Sky News television surveyed 2,127 Britons.
Ainsworth defended Britain’s mission and talked up the possibility of British troops playing a lower-key role in the coming years, even though the US is widely expected to ask Britain to send more troops after Afghanistan’s presidential elections on Thursday.
“The troops know that we’ve made progress in the last few months, and I still firmly believe that Afghanistan is winnable,” he told BBC radio.
“Over the next couple of years, there is a very real prospect that we can make substantial progress on the security side in Afghanistan,” he said.
“We can see increasingly the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police taking up front-line positions and our people increasingly involved in training and mentoring that force,” he said.
Ainsworth also responded to what he said was the “misrepresentation” of comments by David Richards, the incoming head of the British army, who was quoted this month as saying Britain could be in Afghanistan for up to 40 years.
“I genuinely believe it is ridiculous for people to suggest ... that our military effort would be going on for 40 years”, saying he thought Richards was referring to capacity building and financial support.
British troop levels in Afghanistan are at their highest yet — 9,150, up from 8,300 in April. Overall there are more than 100,000 international soldiers in Afghanistan, nearly two-thirds of them American.
British newspapers mostly led on the passing of the 200 deaths milestone yesterday — the Daily Telegraph’s front page was made up of photographs of every soldier killed so far.
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