Quality | 2009.09.05
Brown: more troops to Afghanistan
Britain is considering a further short-term increase in its 9,000 troop strength in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown said yesterday in a speech seeking to prop up waning public support for the war.
The extra troops would help to train the Afghan security forces, a move designed to accelerate the date of a British exit from the country. The speech, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, took place on the day a Nato strike in northern Afghanistan killed up to 130 people, including many civilians, and the day after the resignation of a parliamentary aide to the defence secretary.
Brown revealed he had held talks on British troop levels with the chief of the defence staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, and the head of the British army, Sir David Richards, as well as with Barack Obama. The US is also considering an increase in troop numbers as part of a strategic review completed by General Stanley McChrystal.
Yesterday\'s speech was made against a backdrop of mounting concern over the number of military and civilian casualties, and just hours after the Nato airstrike, which was aimed at two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban.
Nato said many Taliban insurgents were killed in Afghanistan\'s northern Kunduz province, but admitted it had received reports of many civilian casualties. The Nato-led forces said they regretted "any unnecessary loss of human life".
Speaking as the bodies of two more soldiers were brought back to Britain yesterday and a teenage soldier killed in Helmand on Thursday morning was named as Private Gavin Elliott, 19, The 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment, Brown said: "We have got to look in the next few weeks at the number of troops necessary for Afghanistan," describing this as "the next stage of the exercise". He made clear that beefing up the Afghan army was now a key objective, with the aim of increasing its total strength to 134,000 by November 2010, a year earlier than Nato\'s previous target announced earlier this year.
The scale of any increased British involvement may depend on whether other Nato forces are willing to increase their commitment, and whether the presidential election in Afghanistan requires a second round of voting in October, as seems likely.
Brown repeatedly pleaded with other Nato forces to do more – remarks likely to have been aimed at France and Germany, although neither country was named. "Each country must look over the next few weeks at the contribution it is making to this project and at the level of burden-sharing they should be considering for themselves. I think it is right to say that other countries should make a bigger contribution in the future."
On the eve of the speech, Brown was rocked by the resignation of Eric Joyce, the parliamentary aide to the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, who said the public wanted a timetable by which British troops will have left the country.
But Brown refused to give a commitment that British troops will have left the country in the lifetime of the next parliament, although he said he intended to take on the critics of the war.
Using the speech to restate the purpose of the mission in Afghanistan, Brown insisted it was vital to minimise the threat of terrorism facing Britain.
Turning to the question of an exit strategy – eight years after troops first went into the country – he said that success could be measured at the moment when troops were coming home because Afghan forces were able to do the job of quelling the Taliban alone.
"If, as I say, Afghan forces can take more responsibility for the functions of security in the different parts of Afghanistan, and if perhaps we consider transfers of responsibility of government district by district or province by province, then it is possible to envisage that, as the number of Afghans taking responsibility grows and the quality of their leadership grows, we can reduce the numbers of our forces.
"That is the basis of our strategy and it is the basis of the American strategy as well."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]n-send-troops-afghanistan-nato
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