British forces are to be pulled out of the Sangin district of Afghanistan, the scene of heavy UK casualties since the deployment of soldiers to Helmand Province in 2006.
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox was scheduled to announce yesterday that British troops would be replaced by US soldiers as part of a reconfiguration of coalition forces in the area.
Of 312 British service personnel to have died in Afghanistan since operations began there in 2001, 99 were killed in the town of Sangin and the surrounding area. It has witnessed some of the fiercest fighting the British military has endured since World War II.
The area is particularly dangerous because it contains a patchwork of rival tribes and is a major center for Afghanistan’s opium-growing trade.
Political sources said the news would be presented as part of a reorganization of coalition forces in Helmand. Britain will concentrate on the center of the province, leaving the north and south to the US.
It is understood the withdrawal of British troops, which number about 1,000 in Sangin, will not begin for several months.
There has been a long debate in the British military about whether holding Sangin is worth the cost in terms of British casualties. It was argued that Britain did not need to hold the outpost of Sangin, and that British intelligence had been unable to get a grip on the tribal structure in the area.
About a third of all British forces’ casualties in Afghanistan have been in this area of operations. Only one tenth of Britain’s forces in Afghanistan are deployed there. The Royal Marines are currently holding the post.
One source said of the decision to withdraw: “I hope it will not be portrayed as a retreat. There may be people in the media who want to do that. It is a consolidation of UK forces so that we can get the proper density of UK forces in central Helmand.”
The US has been pouring extra troops into Helmand, making it easier for British forces to pull out of vulnerable outposts. However, there has also been an admission that the British have been unable to crack the complex tribal structure in the area making it hard to cut deals with the key players, and so protect UK forces.
The announcement of a British redeployment will raise questions about the whole Sangin operation by critics who believe the UK did not need to base its forces there in the first place.
It is understood that the redeployment was discussed with the US President Barack Obama, when he and British Prime Minister David Cameron held a bilateral meeting in Toronto on the margins of the G20 summit.
Cameron has always been sceptical about the value of the Sangin deployment, and recognizes that it has undermined fragile UK support for the Afghanistan operation.
Sangin has a long history of being troublesome for foreign troops. It was the scene of the first major military engagement in the south of the country during the second Anglo-Afghan war of 1878, when the British fought a cavalry battle against 1,500 fighters.
Meanwhile, former armed forces chief General Richard Dannatt told BBC radio: “The intention when we went into southern Afghanistan was to try to get the country on its feet economically. We all know it didn’t turn out that way.
“We spread our small resources thinly and that inevitably made the small number of British soldiers like flies in a honey pot and we got into this cycle of fighting,” he said.
In other developments, Afghan police said yesterday that six Afghan officers were killed in a NATO air strike in Ghazni Province.
NATO “friendly fire” on an army post killed the six late on Tuesday, in an incident that the US-led NATO force said it was investigating.
The air strike was aimed at Taliban militants, said Nawruz Ali Mohamoodzada, a provincial police official, but it mistakenly hit the army post.
NATO also announced that three NATO soldiers, whose nationalities were not given, died on Tuesday in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was