MPs fearful over Afghan mission

[Anotherpost75]

BBC, 6 April 2006. MPs fearful over Afghan mission

British troops preparing to deploy to Afghanistan face "fundamental tension" over their mission, MPs have warned.

The Commons Defence Committee said attempts to crack down on drug lords in the area, one of the troops' missions, could result in increased violence. The MPs also expressed concern that the 3,300-strong force lacked close air support and transport helicopters.

The Army is preparing to deploy the full task force, led by 16 Air Assault Brigade, to start operations in June.

'Significant obstacles'

The troops are intended to restore security and stability in the southern region of Helmand, which has recently seen outbreaks of violence by the Taleban. But they may also be asked to support anti-narcotics operations in the province, which has the highest concentration of opium poppy-growing in the country.

BBC world affairs correspondent Nick Childs said MPs are not yet sure what the troops will be required to do in Afghanistan. "But, according to them, it's likely that the more successful the deployment is in impeding the drugs trade, the more it'll be attacked, and the worse security will get," he said.

The MPs' report said the task force "faces significant obstacles, and the security situation is fragile. "The opium trade flourishes and the livelihoods of many people rely on it. There is therefore real tension between the tasks of achieving security and reducing the opium trade. "It is likely that the more successful the deployment is at impeding the drugs trade, the more it will come under attack from those involved in it."

Harrier withdrawal

The committee said that the Taleban, who are believed to number as many as 1,000, were becoming more active in the drug trade.

MPs also questioned the Ministry of Defence's decision to withdraw a squadron of RAF Harrier GR7 fighter-bombers from an air base at Kandahar. The commission said support from US and Dutch warplanes may not be sufficient.

The six Chinook and four Lynx helicopters currently assigned to the detachment may not be enough to support the troops in terrain which often impossible to cover, even with back-up from US and Dutch helicopters, according to the MPs.

They were also worried that the RAF's Hercules transport planes were not fitted with adequate "defensive aids suites" to prevent them being shot down from the ground.

[dessert_flyer]

What have the MP'S got to be fearful about, they are not the ones going. If they were that worried then we would have the correct amount of kit and defensive aids.

[opso]

DF, this is their way of trying to achieve just that.

[nigegilb]

Please see PQs Herc safety for a bit more gen

[maxburner]

The defence committee are generally a good bunch with the military's best interests at heart. It's the bunch of to##ers in government who should worry those about to deploy.

[highcirrus]

UK Commons Defence Committee, BBC Report 6 April 2006:

There is therefore real tension between the tasks of achieving security and reducing the opium trade. "It is likely that the more successful the deployment is at impeding the drugs trade, the more it will come under attack from those involved in it."
Declan Walsh in Garmser, The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1748890,00.html), Friday April 7, 2006:

….. like every Afghan drugs lord, Haji Adam has little to fear from the law. Since the western-led war on drugs started four years ago only two major smugglers have been arrested - Haji Baz Muhammad, who was extradited to the US last October, and Bashir Noorzai, who was arrested in New York six months earlier. But the remainder are apparently untouchable.

Every year the drug lords effortlessly export 4,000 tonnes of opium across Afghanistan's borders, plugging into the Turkish, Iranian, Pakistani and Russian gangs that refine the drug into heroin for sale in Europe. But their strongest connections are at home. Allegations of drug links have persistently dogged some of Afghanistan's most powerful figures, including several governors, ministers and the president's brother, Walid Karzai. At least 17 of the 249 newly elected parliamentarians are smugglers, said analyst Andrew Wilder.

But the most serious charges hover over General Muhammad Daud, the deputy interior minister for counter narcotics. A senior drugs official said he was "99% sure" that Gen Daud had a stake in the trade he was supposed to be dismantling. "He frustrates counter-narcotics law enforcement when it suits him," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"He moves competent officials from their jobs, locks cases up and generally ensures that nobody he is associated with will get arrested for drugs crime."

Could it be that Bush and Bliar need to reappraise their strategy for Afghanistan? I think the solution lies a little closer to home than we are all led to believe (as usual).

[EESDL]

Why are the MPs fearful?

They have not been sent........

[southside]

The Commons Defence Committee said attempts to crack down on drug lords in the area, one of the troops' missions, could result in increased violenceLets bloomin Hope so. Whats the point in going if there isn't going to be any violence? If there isn't going to be any violence then there is no requirement to send the Armed Forces and the Govt can therefore send the Womens Institute instead.

[airborne_artist]

the Govt can therefore send the Womens Institute instead

HMG did consider sending the WI, but their ROE were too robust for today's huggy, fluffy warfare. I understand that the President of the WI was not prepared to compromise/back down.

[jstars2]

Commons Defence Committee

The troops are intended to restore security and stability in the southern region of Helmand, which has recently seen outbreaks of violence by the Taleban. But they may also be asked to support anti-narcotics operations in the province, which has the highest concentration of opium poppy-growing in the country.

The Guardian

Allegations of drug links have persistently dogged some of Afghanistan's most powerful figures, including several governors, ministers and the president's brother, Walid Karzai. At least 17 of the 249 newly elected parliamentarians are smugglers, said analyst Andrew Wilder.

So it looks like we are due for a Spring offensive not only against the Taleban but also the Afghan government. Has this one really been thought out properly?

[Dogfish]

I don't think the MP's need to be fearful, its the poor sods on the ground who are in the poo. The Afghan people have a reputation for kicking ass. They beat us in the 19th century when we were the most powerful empire on earth. They gave the Russians a good doing over and if we are not very careful the same will happen to our boys. I find it unbelievable that there is a shortage of air support for our boys, just ten helicopters if the papers are to be believed. The heroin trade is the Afghans business and they will fight tooth and nail to defend it. Hang on though I have idea. Instead of spending billions of pounds chasing shadows in Afghanistan why not spend the money here wiping out the vile drug dealers in our own backyard. It wouldn't be hard to track these people down and get them off the streets. If we destroy the market for their poppy crop then perhaps they might grow less of it. Surely this would be a far better use of tax payers money, it might also save an awful lot of lives on both sides. :mad: :mad:

[FJJP]

Dogfish, oh do get a grip. You've been warned time and time again to stop thinking logically. Your thoughts re: 'getting the drug dealers off the streets' cuts across the basic tenent of their basic human rights in earning a living to clothe and feed their poor families. Locking them up would only deprive their families of the breadwinner and throw them at the mercy of the social services budget, which, as you know is struggling to meet the demand. [No, wait a minute - it's a bottomless pot of cash on demand with no checks...]

Anyway, the judges in this country have an avowed aim, and that is to save the taxpayer money by avoiding the need to build more prisons and the cost of keeping people locked up. And with the police more concerned with the lucrative business of dicking motorists rather than chasing druggies and their suppliers off the streets, you can see where the considerable savings are made to the taxpayer.

Sod the troops, they're just a further drain on the economy, and anyway, by keeping them overseas, just think of the savings to the defence budget [and therefore the taxpayer] by reduced allowances when they're out of the country. As usual, they'll make do with the kit they are given to play with.

So all in all it's a win-win for me the taxpayer.

On the other hand, I would like an MP, any MP, with enough b*alls to stand up at PM question time and ask this question:

"Will the Prime Minister accept total and personal responsiblity for the death of every single serviceman in the Afghan theatre, in view of this government's inability to properly support and equip the troops and their support arms?"

[BenThere]

Better yet, stop the drug war and give freedom to people who wish to screw up their lives with drugs. Taking the crime out of drugs, thereby reducing the scarcity factor in their cost, would reduce overall crime committed by addicts.

As quid pro quo, eliminate all government financial support for rehab, welfare for addicts and such. Society wins by placing accountability for drug problems on the individuals who choose to use them self-destructively. Poppy production would devolve to the most efficient, and the flow of drug money to terrorists would ebb.

[FJJP]

So, BT, given their incapacity to hold down a job because of their habit, precisely where are they going to get the money to feed their addiction? [If it's not through crime, that is...]

[BenThere]

Family and friends, private charity might help. Salvation Army's out there. It's the individual's problem as to what needs to be done. Getting straight is an option, too. So's starving and suicide.

As smack is really a refined agricultural product, its real cost is probably only a small fraction of its current street cost. Pot, a dried weed, would be very inexpensive.

"I'd like a dozen eggs and an ounce of marijuana, please"

"That'll be $4.55, sir. Have a nice day!"

[JessTheDog]

the Govt can therefore send the Womens Institute instead.

With all the current deployments and the mess in Iraq, that idea may be given serious consideration.

There is an occasional column in Private Eye entitled View from the Sand Pit. It is usually of interest, and the current issue points out the irony that the "air assault brigade" will be dependent on supplies moved by truck from Karachi, and that there are only two roads northwards through areas in which there is resurgant Pakistani (and Afghan/Chechen) Taliban activity. Hmmm.

Why should British troops be risking their necks trying to stem the international drugs trade? Is there really no other way to prevent lowlife scum from indulging in this feckless pursuit? Lets see Euan Bliar in a flak jacket manning a GPMG on a Land Rover. Perhaps pater will be less likely to offer up a "blood price" in an attempt to impress his pal Dubya.

[Grum Peace Odd]

Lets see Euan Bliar in a flak jacket...And the case for the reintroduction of National Service has just been made by our learned friend, JessTheDog.:E That would sort them out!

[Dogfish]

FJJP,
wow thought I was cynical about all this but I bow to your superior talents. That aside you are a man after my own heart. Lets stop all this fluffy bull**** and use the forces to crush these drug dealing scumbags once and for all. The death penalty would be far too good for them. Just remember people these b:mad: s could be outside the school gates where you send your children selling their poisons.:yuk:

[L1A2 discharged]

FJJP,
... Just remember people these b:mad: s could be outside the school gates where you send your children selling their poisons.:yuk:


which school does one send children to sell poison?
:E

[RileyDove]

The trade in Heroin does indeed wreck people's lives -however more people die each year from methadone overdoses which is the prescription substitute.
There is little likelyhood of being able to make any impact on the drug trade in Afghanistan - we operate a scheme out there to pay farmers not to grow the stuff - they get payments based on their acreage but we have no way of checking on how much land they really have or what they grow safely.
Through education and advertising we should aim to highlight the hazards of heroin but sadly we have people in the media eye who clearly use the stuff and have the ability to avoid jail.

[Anotherpost75]

Saturday, April 1, 2006, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

International Occupation Isn't Helping Afghanistan
by Christian Parenti

I am riding with two Humvees from the 164th Military Police Co. to observe the U.S. effort at keeping a lid on the Afghan caldron. I also want to compare U.S. methods with those of the European troops who are taking over an ever-larger part of the military mission here.

Only 98 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan last year but the ratio of casualties to overall troop levels makes Afghanistan as dangerous as Iraq. While Iraq's violent disintegration dominates the headlines, President Bush touts Afghanistan as a success. During his recent visit, the president told Afghans their country was "inspiring others ... to demand their freedom."

But many features of the political landscape are not so inspiring -- one is the deteriorating security situation. Taliban attacks are up; their tactics have become more aggressive and nihilistic. They have detonated at least 23 suicide bombs in the past six months, killing foreign and Afghan troops, a Canadian diplomat, local police and, in some cases, crowds of civilians.
Kidnapping is on the rise. American contractors are being targeted. Some 200 schools have been burned or closed down. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, senior American military officer here, expects the violence to get worse over the spring and summer.

The backdrop to this gathering crisis is Afghanistan's shattered economy. The country's 24 million people are still totally dependent on foreign aid, opium poppy cultivation and remittances sent home by the 5 million Afghans abroad. Afghanistan ranks fifth from the bottom on the U.N. Development Program's Human Development Index. Only a few sub-Saharan semi-failed states are more destitute.

Since late 2001 the international community -- that consortium of highly industrialized nations, international financial institutions, aid organizations and U.N. agencies that in concert manage disaster zones -- has spent $8 billion on emergency relief and reconstruction here. That's a lot of money, perhaps, but given what the World Bank has called the aid sector's "sky-high wastage" and the country's endemic poverty, it's simply not enough.

In the face of Afghanistan's deepening troubles, the U.S. government is slashing funding for reconstruction from a peak of $1 billion in 2004 to a mere $615 million this year. Thanks to military recruitment problems, the United States is drawing down its troops from 19,000 to 16,000. Despite Bush's feel-good rhetoric, the United States is giving every impression it is slowly abandoning sideshow Afghanistan.

To pick up the slack, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is increasing troop levels from about 9,000 to 15,000. An additional $10.5 billion in aid has been pledged for the next five years -- $1.1 billion of that promised by the United States; the rest from Japan, the European Union, international institutions and 70 other nations.

Many European states see America's unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an opportunity to impress upon Uncle Sam that he must give a bit more to the interests of the other rich economies. So they are moving in to help the United States by taking over as much responsibility as they can in Afghanistan. But the Europeans look at this opportunity with tremendous trepidation.

Many observers hope a European-led counterinsurgency strategy will be more sophisticated and effective than current U.S. methods, which are rightly criticized as overly focused on military means, inflexible, culturally insensitive and badly marred by the torture and killing of prisoners at the Bagram detention facility. The next five years -- with a new round of funding and fresh European troops -- are seen as Afghanistan's last chance to stanch the growing Taliban insurgency and build a functioning state.

Does Bliar really know what he is committing us all to and is he really confident that troop levels are up to the requirement for the job? Or is he merely brown nosing more smartie points with Dubya and setting the scenery for his post power lecture tours in USA, once he’s dumped the whole mess in Brown’s lap this autumn?

[Tigs2]

Quote from Mr Parenti above
"Only 98 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan last year but the ratio of casualties to overall troop levels makes Afghanistan as dangerous as Iraq."


What does he mean ONLY 98 troops died?? We are accepting these numbers like its all trivia.Thats 98 to f:mad: g many! Out of 98 deaths there will be in the order of 1000 injured.

I get the horrid vision that in 18 months from now we will be starting a thread on PPRuNE entitled "Bliar - We told you so"

[JessTheDog]

FJJP,
wow thought I was cynical about all this but I bow to your superior talents. That aside you are a man after my own heart. Lets stop all this fluffy bull**** and use the forces to crush these drug dealing scumbags once and for all. The death penalty would be far too good for them. Just remember people these b s could be outside the school gates where you send your children selling their poisons.

Not a bad idea - instead of sending the troops to Afghanistan. send them after drug dealers in the UK. At least they could go home most nights!

We can say "Blair - We Told You So" right now - no WMD, "undeclared civil war", no spread of democracy, terrorism in the UK. The lying sh!i should be shot.

[highcirrus]

Interesting to recall “Descending into the Quagmire”, of June 30, 2003, by Dan Smith, who is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus. He is also a retired U.S. army colonel and a senior fellow of Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Smith’s chilling prescience of 2003 can also be applied to present day Afghanistan. The Iraq imbroglio, it seems, has provided no lessons of force requirements for the stabilisation of another nation, 24 million strong, and comprised of aggressive, independent and war orientated tribes, who’ve never been bested by foreign invasion and who are not about to suddenly change the pattern of history to spare Bush and Bliar’s blushes.

Do the math, using the formulae below and you will see that a force topping out at 15,000 is mere political posturing – but then is there any other way for the deadly duo?

The Occupation of Iraq

A question the Bush White House and the Pentagon still have to answer is just how many U.S. military men and women will be needed to pacify and provide security in Iraq. Before the war, on February 25, 2003, then-Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed in post-war Iraq. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, sharply disagreed, with the latter stating that Shinseki's estimate was "wildly off the mark." But the question lingers for many in Congress, the U.S. public, and the armed forces.

How Many Troops and for How Long?

Traditional military doctrine estimates that a conventional army requires roughly a 10-to-1 size advantage if it is to defeat a well-equipped, well-executed, persistent insurgency. But where insurgents, while less centrally organized, are still too powerful for standard police (or where standard police do not exist), responding to and measuring against armed insurgent strength may not be the best gauge. In 1995, James Quinlivan, writing in the Army War College's quarterly, Parameters, suggested that force requirements should be based on the need for population control (to cut off support to the insurgents) and local security--that is, the need to "win hearts and minds" and therefore requires a force proportional to the population.

Quinlivan describes three historical force ratio levels. The first, one to four security personnel per 1,000 population, is essentially the ratio for ordinary policing. In a military setting, the U.S. Constabulary force in post-World War II Germany was staffed at 2.2 per thousand for "enforcing public order, controlling black market transactions, and related police functions." The same ratio existed in the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (1992-1993), whose duties included "supervision of the cease-fire and voluntary disarmament of combatants, supervision of about 60,000 indigenous police to provide law and order, and administration of a free and fair election." But the UN had little real presence outside the main urban areas.

The second force ratio is from four to ten security personnel per 1,000 population. India's campaign against militants in Punjab, viewed as quite punitive by many, was implemented at a ratio of almost 6 per 1,000 population. At the high point of the 1965 U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, whose purpose was preventing civil war and restoring "stability," Army and Marine personnel operated at a ratio of 6.6 per 1,000 population.

Quinlivan's third ratio level is above ten per 1,000 population. Military examples of this level are the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s when foreign and full-time indigenous security forces operated at a ratio of 20 per 1,000 population. The same ratio pertained to the combination of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British troops in Northern Ireland for much of the period 1969-1994. Here, multiple small groups advocating separation from or continued union with Great Britain waged war on each other, and one side fought "occupying" security forces with a goal of forcing them out--conditions that are unfolding in Iraq today.

Applying the average of 2.2 per 1,000 of level one to Iraq would require 52, 800 individuals. But Iraq is not a defeated, broken, devastated country like Germany. Nor is it at peace or semi-peace, where the main task is maintaining public order. It is still a country at war, a country saturated with weapons, a country that is becoming more and more restless under its "liberator."

Level two ratios of 6 and 6.6 yield 144,000 and 158,400, respectively. These are comparable strength totals to what the U.S. and its allies have in Iraq today. Yet these forces seem unable to isolate Iraqi and foreign militants who have come into Iraq to fight "the Authority" and to provide both the perception and reality of public safety. Perhaps even more important is the need to avoid any hint of punitive measures that inevitably would lead to a precipitous decline in general Iraqi tolerance of foreign forces.

At 10 per 1,000 population, the point of intersection between levels two and three, Quinlivan's numbers skyrocket to 240,000. (Interestingly, just in Baghdad, where the population is roughly five million, there are 55,000 troops, producing a ratio of 11 per 1,000.) Matching the British experience in Malaysia and Northern Ireland at 20 per 1,000 doubles this total to 480,000, which is the total authorized strength of the active U.S. Army. Clearly, any of these levels are impossible to sustain given the demands for and on people. Even level two ratios may be impossible, given that 5 of the Army's 10 active divisions currently are engaged in Iraq.

In Iraq, as one phase of the "global war on terror," the Bush administration chose war and occupation, and must now face the consequences of its choices. Having dislodged the previous regime by force, the U.S. increasingly is caught in the quagmire of depending on force to control the Iraqi people in the name of national and regional "peace." But "peace through war" or the threat of war is a costly chimera, both for the "victor" and the loser. This truth was well understood by the 19th Century British statesman Edmund Burke, who noted that "War never leaves where it found a nation."

What remains to be seen is what price will be exacted from the U.S. public--and in what condition Iraq will be in two, five, or 10 years.

[Dogfish]

L1A2,
Thank you for questioning my 'Stella'' induced grammer. I take it from your flippant reply that you either don't have kids or don't take the problem of drugs seriously. There are frequent reports in the West Midlands, where I live, of kids being offered hard drugs within spitting distance of their school gates. So if you do have kids I suggest you wake up and smell the coffee.:* End of Stella induced rant.:E

[Compressorstall]

The mission isn't to fight "these drug dealing scumbags", it is to provide a "safe, secure environment".

[hoodie]

I hope that prescience does not also exist in an article by Col. Charles J Dunlap, Jr, USAF entitled "How We Lost The High Tech War of 2007: A Warning From The Future (http://http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/569nzbrd.asp)". Published in the US 'Weekly Standard' in January 1996.

But I worry that it might, and recent history isn't helping.

(Edited to say that the direct link above to the Weekly Standard website is temperamental. This is an alternative (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/806682/posts).)

[Onan the Clumsy]

which school does one send children to sell poison?
Are you talking about Girl Scout Cookies?

[FJJP]

Don't you think this is too serious a subject to allow it to descend into flippancy?

[Anotherpost75]

Back on thread!

How Predictions for Iraq Came True

By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor, 9 April 2006

It was a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, three years ago (Feb/Mar 2003). I was interviewing the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in the ballroom of a big hotel in Cairo.

Shrewd, amusing, bulky in his superb white robes, he described to me all the disasters he was certain would follow the invasion.

The US and British troops would be bogged down in Iraq for years. There would be civil war between Sunnis and Shias. The real beneficiary would be the government in Iran.

"And what do the Americans say when you tell them this," I asked? "They don't even listen," he said.

Over the last three years, from a ringside seat here in Baghdad, I have watched his predictions come true, stage by stage.

And we’ve all got ringside seats here in UK, so do we all think the above predictions are comparable to the likely future for Afghanistan and will the applicable elements come true, stage by stage? To paraphrase Private Eye – Yes, Ed. Do we also think that Dubya and Bliar are listening - No, Ed.

[highcirrus]

Defining success

Leader
Saturday April 8, 2006
The Guardian


The war in Iraq still casts a giant shadow over much the government does, and that is especially true of the expanded British troop deployment to Afghanistan. No surprise then that the all-party Commons defence committee expressed concern this week about several aspects of the operation, part of the Nato-led mission to steer that war-torn and drug-ravaged country to a more stable future. MPs do not oppose the despatch of 3,300 soldiers to Helmand province, a base for supporters of the deposed Taliban regime that contains significant areas of opium poppy production, but they did raise important questions. Some were specific, such as whether the troops have enough air support or whether they need more training in handling prisoners. But the general issue is defining the role of British forces in a situation the government openly acknowledges is getting more not less dangerous.

Independent experts have coined the ominous phrase "Iraqisation" to describe what is happening in Helmand and other southern provinces where Canadian and Dutch troops are based. Suicide bombings, once unknown in Afghanistan, are on the rise. Incidents are growing in frequency, intensity, sophistication and cruelty. Three US soldiers were injured yesterday in an attack on a base that is shortly to be handed over to the British as the Americans shift focus to hunting down Taliban and al-Qaida "remnants" on the Pakistani border.

The intention of ensuring that Afghanistan becomes a working democracy after its terrible years as a failed state is a laudable if ambitious one. The problem is the tension between the objective of promoting stability and security and implementing an effective counter-narcotics strategy, so central to the functioning of the weak central government in Kabul. Nato insists its personnel will not be destroying poppy crops - which provide up to 70% of the country's income - leaving that to the Afghan authorities. But it is hard to argue with the notion that the more successful the deployment is at impeding the drugs trade, the more British troops are likely to come under attack by those involved. The nexus between opium and insurgency seems frighteningly clear.

The government has to be certain what it is trying to achieve and how long it is likely to take. MPs asked the ministry of defence to be "more forthcoming" and publicly to state the criteria by which it will judge the success of the Afghan deployment. After Iraq, the British public have a right to be told how they will tell when this mission has been accomplished.

[jstars2]

BBC, 11 April 2006.

UK soldiers hurt in Afghanistan

Three British soldiers have been injured in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Two were seriously injured in the blast, which happened on Monday in the Helmand Province, while the MoD said the third was "walking wounded".

They were treated at a military medical facility after being airlifted.

The MoD was unable to say what caused the explosion and said an investigation had been launched.

The soldiers had been travelling in a UK military Land Rover as part of a search operation by multi-national forces when the blast happened.

[Onan the Clumsy]

Don't you think this is too serious a subject to allow it to descend into flippancy?Yes, my apologies. Sometimes I forget I'm not in JetBlast anymore. In fact I think it's an extremely serious subject and worry about how far things may go.

[FJJP]

Onan, accepted. I'm afraid I descend into a blind fury at times when I see the sheer incompetence of those in power - it makes me very tetchy...

FJJP

[highcirrus]

So, what we could all see happening some considerable time ago now seems to be coming to the attention of "New" Labour. The Guardian leader of 8 April 2006 (four posts above this one) makes interesting reading in the context of what Des Browne now says, as quoted by the Telegraph on 19 September 2006 and whose words are at variance with those of his predecessor, John Read, to the effect that not a shot would be fired by our troops in what would essentially be a "peacekeeping and reconstruction mission" and who never, ever, said that "The Government (was) under no illusions that the operation would be tough" or that "We always knew the south (of Afghanistan) would be hard". Oh Dear!

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, has admitted that the scale of the task in Afghanistan had been underestimated by Britain and Nato.

British troops are facing a hard fight in Afghanistan. Mr Browne said the Government had been under no illusions that the operation would be tough, but it had proved "even harder" than predicted.

In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute in London, he said: "We always knew the south (of Afghanistan) would be hard.

"We do have to accept that it's been even harder than we expected. "The Taliban's tenacity in the face of massive losses has been more than we expected."

Mr Browne said there had been "very little progress in governance and reconstruction" in the south of the country.

He said the lack of progress there was perhaps "inevitable at this stage", and things were getting better in other areas.

However, Mr Browne insisted the operation had enjoyed "broad support" internationally from the outset, and success was "essential" to global security.

"Success won't be what we understand to be security and prosperity and proper governance, but it will be progress and it will be massively worth it," he added.

He also rejected the idea that Nato forces were bound to fail in the same way as the Russians and British previously had in Afghanistan.

At the weekend Lieutenant-General David Richards, The British commander of Nato's 8,000 forces in Afghanistan, revealed that he expects the military campaign against the Taliban to last another three to five years.

His comments came against a background of efforts to muster reinforcements for the mission in the south.