More British troops for Afghanistan 01.10.2005 Up to 4,000 British troops are to be sent to Afghanistan to fight a growing terrorist campaign. John Reid, the Defence Secretary, said yesterday that a force of "sufficient size" would be deployed as he spent the day with members of the present 900-strong British force in Kabul. Army sources say that the additional force required to take on a resurgent Taliban campaign against western troops in the south could be as high as 4,000. The precise formation will be announced in Parliament next month but last night Mr Reid said: "We would need sufficient numbers of soldiers accompanied by sufficient mobility to accomplish the mission with maximum effect. Then you would need the capacity to defend and attack in the air and I would like assault helicopters as part of the package." The reference to "attack" aircraft could mean Britain's new Apache assault regiments, part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, being used for the first time on operations. Mr Reid spent part of the day with defence chiefs discussing the amount of British and Nato troops needed. Despite having more than 8,000 troops in Iraq and hundreds elsewhere, the Defence Secretary said the Afghan deployment would not affect other commitments or overstretch the Armed Forces. "Anything I need for Afghanistan is independent of the requirement to draw down forces in Iraq," he said. Asked if the public could stomach further casualties in another theatre of war, where the Americans have already lost 51 troops this year, Mr Reid said: "I think the British public understand that the reason why we are in Afghanistan is directly a result of terrorism which resulted in thousands of American and a significant number of British people being murdered by terrorists in New York. "When we are in Afghanistan we are defending people in Britain and the rest of the West by denying the terrorists a base from which to plan their operations." Mr Reid toured the capital yesterday with Gurkhas and British bodyguards. Capt Nick Aucott, of 2Bn the Royal Gurkha Rifles, said the multinational forces around Kabul, a collection of French, Germans, Danes and Italians, had learnt much from the British Army from its experience of counter-insurgency over the past 30 years. "We go through a berets approach rather than waving around machineguns," he said. "We get stuck in on foot patrols and interact with the local population which gives us good human intelligence and builds up a good relationship on both sides." << | >> |
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