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| Afghanistan - the so called surge has already started |
Helmand Over a THOUSAND extra British troops have been secretly sent to fight the Taliban this winter in a desperate race against time. Tomorrow, Gordon Brown will tell the House of Commons 300 soldiers from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment who form the Army’s Afghanistan emergency tactical reserve have already been transferred from Cyprus to Helmand. That will take the total of British forces to over 8,400.
Mr Brown will say the extra troops are vital to improve security on the ground ahead of next year’s Afghani elections.
But the News of the World can reveal there is already another complete BATTLE group of almost 500 men operating around provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
The group has been made up of units that were previously based in relative safety at the Brits’ main base Camp Bastion.
And another 300 have been sent out of Bastion to other isolated locations.
The British Army is now setting up dozens of small patrol bases around every major town in Southern Afghanistan.
The bases are designed to act as listening posts, support Afghan army and police units and restrict the Taliban’s freedom of movement.
The mini-surge explains the recent rise in casualties in Afghanistan – with more British soldiers now aggressively patrolling the streets than ever before.
However, it is also just the tip of the iceberg.
By Spring there will be up to 10,000 extra American troops working alongside the British here in Helmand.
And British troop levels will also rise to just under 10,000.
That will double the ISAF presence in Helmand before Afghani voters go to the polls in September.
A senior Military commander told the News of the World: “Everyone thinks we have to wait and see what the Americans decide but the transition government has already made up its mind to start a surge here.
“The British Army is close to its limit in terms of what it can realistically achieve with the manpower and resources it has, and with the number of troops available.
“There will be a difference because we are pulling out of Iraq but not immediately, You will probably see about an extra 1,500 troops here by the end of next year.
“But the way we are working is dramatically different now. We have more combat capability here than ever before.
“And the Americans are a dramatically different force than a few years ago, They used to be a clumsy blunt instrument but now they are a world-class counter-insurgency force.”
But there are still concerns about the rate of progress here in Helmand.
Mr Brown revealed in the Queen’s Speech earlier this month that Britainis currently reviewing its tactics in the region, and British officials are working alongside America
military planners.
Gordon Brown may have been able to go to the front line yesterday , but there number or bomb attacks is rising at a time when the fighting season traditionally grinds to a halt for winter.
It went up 19% last month, reaching 315 in November, compared to 264 in October.
Last year the number of attacks fell from 274 to 188.
And the British commanders say the number of unexploded bombs they uncover is doubling every month as the Taliban switch tactics from full blown assaults to an insurgency.
Last month, in remarks to a French diplomat whose cable was then leaked, Sir Sherard is reported to have said that
America’s strategy was doomed, foreign forces were part of the problem and the only solution was an “acceptable dictator”. A few days later Brigadier Carleton-Smith, the commander in Helmand province, was quoted as saying, “We are not going to win this war” and instead the military should aim to reduce the size of the insurgency to a size that Afghan forces could handle.
The phrase used by Downing Street officials here is “We need greater coverage in the area.”
Yesterday, over 1,000 British troops around Lashkar Gah were on Operation Sond Chara, occupying and holding a vital 274 square kilomiles west of Lashkah Gar that had been used as a major Taliban staging post for massed attacks.
That means a lot more troops, and it means driving the Taliban out if the the towns they still hold, like Now Zad and Bahramchah on the Pakistani border.
A senior commander said: “Work at the present tempo will take two years to drive the enemy forces into the desert, but it will be a hard slog after that to provide on-going stability”
The key test, possibly the most important since the fall of the Taliban, is next year’s election..
Diplomats warn there will only be elections in just over half of the 18 districts that make up Helmand Province.
A source from the British Embassy said: “Next year’s elections are set to be a disaster. In many areas it will be unsafe and that means the people have no choice and are therefore unlikely to know or believe what the Afghan government is doing for them.
“As long as that happens the Taliban are still enjoying a considerable degree of victory.”
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