UK troops take over Afghan duties

Commanders say they will make a difference to ordinary Afghans
A contingent of British forces has taken over security duties in one of the most dangerous Afghan provinces.
The soldiers have replaced US forces in the Taleban-dominated southern province of Helmand, as part of an expansion of peacekeeping operations by Nato.
Hundreds of British troops are already in Helmand and the full complement will eventually number more than 3,000.
The handover comes as US-led coalition forces said they had killed "15-20 enemy fighters" in Helmand on Saturday.
Control was transferred in a ceremony at a base in the province capital, Lashkar Gah, where a union flag replaced the US flag flying over the site.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, two suicide bomb attacks were reported on Monday.
The attacker was killed - and a passer-by and a foreign soldier injured - in one blast near a US-led coalition convoy in the town of Tirin Kot in southern Uruzgan province, police said.
In eastern Khost province, a man died when explosives strapped to his body went off prematurely, security officials told the BBC.
Two other would-be suicide bombers were hurt but escaped in the incident west of Khost city, officials said.
Violence has been risen sharply in recent months, with a series of roadside bombings against security forces and suicide attacks, mostly in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

'Feudal issues'
Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of UK forces in the country, said he was well equipped for a "challenging mission".
The troops are taking command of Helmand's Provincial Reconstruction Team - one of more than 20 such teams charged with stabilising the country outside the capital, Kabul.
Last week Taleban fighters told the BBC they planned to target and kill British troops in Helmand, one commander labelling the British "an old enemy of Afghanistan".
But Brig Butler said the problems his troops face were "more fundamental" than Taleban or al-Qaeda insurgents.
"We're starting to understand that the nature of the problem is... about tribal issues, it's about water and land rights, it's about feudal and historical matters."
He said British troops had a "very clear" mission and would not go "looking for trouble".
He said Britain had made a "long-term commitment" to the country, and he was determined to "make a difference" to the lives of ordinary Afghans.

Three elements
The Conservatives have called for clarity over Britain's deployment, saying the government has given "confusing" statements on the nature of the mission.
Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said he wanted to know if the soldiers would be countering insurgents, or "are they going to be there purely for reconstruction, are they going to be anti-narcotics?"
Defence Secretary John Reid denied there was any confusion, saying the mission was "to protect the reconstruction and development of the Afghan economy, democratic government and security forces".
He added: "However, it will be necessary to protect that development against terrorists who seek to destroy all three of those elements, or to attack British troops."
Monday's handover of power in Helmand was described by the Ministry of Defence as of "symbolic significance" because Britain does not yet have its full task force in the province.
The army's 3,300-strong deployment to Helmand, led by 16 Air Assault Brigade, will be completed by June.
There are already about 2,000 British soldiers in Afghanistan as part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and US-led coalition forces

UK troops face growing Afghan threat
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Kandahar, Afghanistan

"Afghanistan is a country where the British have been badly defeated in the past."
There is no denying it - British forces, indeed any foreign force, have rarely done well in Afghanistan and certainly not for long.
That statement was made this month by a Taleban commander in Helmand province - by way of a warning.
Thousands of British troops are already being flown into Helmand - to the biggest base to be built from scratch since World War II.
It is a huge tented encampment in the desert of southern Afghanistan, where the wind whips up a sandstorm every other day and the fine, talcum powder sand seeps its way into everything.
There are venomous scorpions and spiders, but the real danger is the insurgents who want to kill or injure the international troops with suicide car bombings or roadside bombs.

'Old enemy'
A Taleban commander in Helmand spoke to an Afghan BBC journalist and used history as the focal point for his war on the expanding forces.
"Afghans are not scared of death and can sacrifice their heads and hearts," he said in Pashtu, the language of Pashtun Afghans.
"The British are an old enemy and were defeated with ordinary weapons. Our resources are getting better every day and we have good fighting skills.
"We are good at guerrilla war and we will apply these tactics the way our forefathers did against the British."
They are strong and not unfounded words - the number of suicide bombs detonated so far this year in Afghanistan has already equalled the number of attacks in the whole of last year.
As he spoke on the video camera, a group of Taleban fighters carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades walked past behind him. This was just a couple of weeks ago.
Security in the south has been deteriorating over the past few months.

Prepared for setbacks
That is what the British troops know they will be facing and what British Secretary of State for Defence John Reid came to Helmand province to hear about first-hand.
Security was what he talked about and what he experienced.
On landing in a Chinook helicopter in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, the threat of attack had gone from "severe" to "imminent", with the Ministry of Defence saying "intelligence showed all the indications of a terrorist attack".
Mr Reid has warned terrorists are out to destroy rebuilding efforts
That attack never came but it could not have been a more stark reminder of just how dangerous the British deployment is going to be.
Brigadier Ed Butler is commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, and he speaks of being realistic about the threat of casualties.
"At the beginning of every operation there is a rocky period and we should prepare ourselves for some setbacks," he said.
"But that should be set against those opportunities which I genuinely think are here for the taking."

Reconstruction effort
Those opportunities are for Afghanistan to get back on its feet after decades of war.
The role of the British and the other Nato-led forces in the south of the country will be to provide the security that is so necessary for the reconstruction teams, the non-governmental organisations and, of course, the government.
But if the Taleban commander's reminder of history was not enough, the DVDs being handed out on the Pakistan border to recruit fighters demonstrate organisation and training.
The images, professionally edited and presented, run with a background of religious chanting and show foreign fighters being taught tactics on blackboards in classrooms.
Alongside images of international forces being hit by roadside bombs is footage of these devices being made - it is half inspiration and half training manual. And it is in Pashtu - they are trying to recruit Afghans.
There have been rumblings in the UK that the troops - which will peak at 5,700 personnel in the summer - are insufficient and not well enough armed.
Mr Reid denied this but then the next day announced that a squadron of Harrier Jump Jets - the perfect aircraft to protect and back up ground troops - would remain in Afghanistan another year.
It is costing £20m but the sighs of relief were heard across the British bases of southern Afghanistan.
The weeks ahead are going to be difficult and dangerous - and the Nato-led troops will be here for many years.
The chance of helping Afghanistan back on its feet is a noble aim and some would say the least they could do after all that has happened in a century or more.
But it is also selfish, as the West never wants Afghanistan to be able to host global terrorists with such impunity again.

Britons deployed as 100 killed in Taliban clashes
By Isambard Wilkinson in Kabul
(Filed: 19/05/2006)


More than 100 people died as Taliban fighters and Afghan forces clashed yesterday in the fiercest fighting since British troops arrived in southern Afghanistan last month.
A wave of attacks left up to 87 Taliban fighters and suicide bombers dead. The clashes also killed about 15 Afghan police, an American civilian, an Afghan civilian and a Canadian soldier.
A British Chinook helicopter transported police casualties and the military cared for wounded Afghan police.
Hundreds of militiamen attacked a town in southern Afghanistan where 3,300 British soldiers have deployed as part of a Nato task force.
The nine-hour battle began after police received reports indicating that Taliban fighters had massed in Musa Qala district on Wednesday.
Coalition forces provided air support to drive off the militants. The deputy provincial governor of Helmand, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada, said it was the biggest attack in the region since the fall of the Taliban.
Fighting continued in the village of Sar Besha, about 12 miles north of the town, according to a spokesman for Helmand's governor.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, blamed Pakistan for allowing the Taliban to hide in its border areas.
"We have credible reports that inside Pakistan in the madrassas [religious schools] the mullahs and teachers are saying to their students: 'Go to Afghanistan for jihad and burn the schools and clinics'."
Col Chris Vernon, the chief-of-staff for coalition forces in Afghanistan, said recently that the Taliban's leadership was operating from across the border in Pakistan in the Baluchistan provincial capital of Quetta.
The Pakistan government denies the accusation, demanding "actionable intelligence" to prove the claim.
The Taliban's capacity to launch attacks has evolved dramatically over the past year from a low-level campaign of death threats and assassinations.
Across the south, large anti-government groups are taking control of villages, attacking coalition convoys and sporadically engaging Afghan forces in pitched battles.
They have developed more sophisticated roadside bombs and reportedly harbour a company of 250 suicide bombers.
Coalition and Afghan troops conducted operations yesterday in Kandahar that resulted in the deaths of seven militants, according to a coalition spokesman.
Suicide bombings in the normally peaceful town of Herat and at an Afghan army base in Ghazni killed an American State Department contractor and a civilian.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Herat attack but there was no immediate claim for the Ghazni blast.
The United States plans gradually to hand over command of the bulk of coalition forces to Nato and withdraw several thousand of its troops from Afghanistan.
Canadian, Dutch and Australian troops have been sent to the provinces of Kandahar and Oruzgan, and the British have deployed almost entirely in Helmand.
A female Canadian soldier was killed in fighting in Kandahar province on Wednesday, hours before Canada's parliament narrowly backed a two-year extension of Canada's controversial Afghan mission to 2009.
The only fire-fight that the British have been involved in so far has been a "misunderstanding" with the Afghan police.

By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Kandahar

The shaky video footage shows British troops making a hard landing in their Chinook helicopter. You hear the drama, rather than see it.
It is pitch black - even the night vision does not pick up the landing as two rocket propelled grenades fizz past the helicopter.
There is the sound of gunfire all around as the troops fan out on the ground, the infrared lights on the backs of their helmets picked up on the grainy, green camera image.
Air support comes - rockets and high calibre machine gunfire.
It is a major operation to hit known Taleban compounds and try to secure a town where a small British unit has been bombarded for weeks.

Taleban stronghold
The combat camera team's record of the landing shows the dangers the British forces are under as they try to bring security to Sangin district - one of the hotspots of the fighting in Helmand province.
Their tactics will remain broadly the same, even though Nato's approach is very different to the coalition's policy over the five years since the war
Since the operation, the town has been quieter. There have been a few hit and run attacks, but nothing sustained - or on the scale of the previous weeks when six British soldiers died in the district.
In the last few days they have carried out a similar operation in Nawzad, another Taleban stronghold which has been at the centre of fighting.
Here British Ghurkas held the small government compound from fierce attack for more than three weeks - at times using hand grenades and calling in air strikes as the militants were pushing so close.

New approach
For the last few weeks these British troops have been under the umbrella of the American-led coalition.
But now it is Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), headed by British Lt-Gen David Richards, that controls six southern Afghan provinces.
The build-up of troops in the south has been part of the Nato expansion - moving in gradually so as to make for a smooth handover.
Their tactics will remain broadly the same, even though Nato's approach is very different to the coalition's policy over the five years since the war.
The US-led mission across much of southern Afghanistan has been counter-terrorism, searching out Taleban leaders and fighters.
But with the raising of the Isaf flag over Kandahar airfield on Monday, thousands more international soldiers and aircraft are now on a mission to help the government of Afghanistan to bring the remote and lawless parts of the country under its control.
It is about security first, but it is also about winning the support of the people by bringing improved governance and development hot on the heels of the fleeing Taleban fighters.
Or at least that is the idea.

Different tactics
While the towns the British troops have "secured" are quiet for now, it is difficult to know if the Taleban have really been battled into submission, or if they have hidden away their guns, blended back into the civilian population and are waiting to begin their campaign again at a later stage.
It is incredibly difficult to know who is a militant and who is not, if they are not pointing a gun at the international forces.
In Helmand the tactic has been large-scale fighting. In Kandahar it is more of an insurgency, using suicide bombers or explosive devices left by the side of the road to target international troops.
In other provinces the status quo is yet to be broken.
In Uruzgan, it is the Dutch and Australians who will have to go through the process of pushing out into militant strongholds - something that has already cost the British, Canadian and American commands here a number of lives.
The Nato force will have to overcome the insurgency on all levels if it to bring the security which it believes will win over the people, persuade them to reject the Taleban fighters and accept a rule of law laid down from Kabul.
In provinces where a huge percentage of Afghanistan's opium poppies are grown and where warlords have had the run of the place for years and enjoy the insecurity, it will not be easy.
The fighting captured on the grainy night-vision cameras will continue. Only when security is improved will Nato commanders be able to start the longer-term, more crucial part of the mission.
It will not be easy, and for the reputation of Nato, its 36 partner nations, and for the "war on terror" it is a mission it cannot afford to fail.

UK soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Nato-led troops took over from the US a day ago

Two British soldiers have been killed in operations in southern Afghanistan.
Another is missing, feared dead, and a fourth injured after an ambush by militants in the north of Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence said.
The incident comes a day after UK and Canadian-led Nato troops assumed control of military operations in the area from US-led forces.
The attack brings to eight the number of British troops who have been killed in action in Afghanistan this year.
Nearly 4,000 UK troops are currently part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defence said a vehicle patrol came under attack from rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine fire at 0730 local time.
A spokeswoman said the operation was ongoing.

Wow tex, long but very informative posts.. The Taliban are something out of a 16th century hate novel!! Nato are doing a good job there,but unfortunately there is a cost. However, the progress is better then Iraq. The bigger mix of cohesive professional armies, and the absence of HUGE sectarian hatred is helping I think... My Sympathies to the dead from your countries, and all other contributing countries whos sacrafice may not reach the headlines, but is not going unnoticed. P.S. Saw footage of Royal Marine Commando clearing caves, never did that myself, but wonder at tactical entries like that, stun (or real) granades not used would in my limited view would increase risk on entry.... would it not??

Hmmmm..Didn't use stun grenades?? Must be a reason for it . Could be it was just done for the TV . Lights, camera and Action !

Most likely, I though it v risky to hunting parimilary fighters in caves using tactical entry drill (without the tactical tools). We for tactical entries used a combination of stun grenades and/or gas... it worked ok. Never had an issues with it as we were well training. My section boss was so used to tear gas, he didnt wear a mask.... haha!! The lunie tune was fierce on tac entries!! NOBODY messed with him and we hit up some real bad guys in our day!

British troops in Afghanistan 'on the brink of exhaustion'
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent


(Filed: 06/08/2006)

British troops fighting Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan are on the "brink of exhaustion", The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Commanders fear that the number of "high tempo" operations being launched against the Taliban is "unsustainable" unless the 3,600-strong task force is reinforced with an extra 1,000-strong infantry battle group.
Since May, British troops in Helmand province have fought 25 major battles in which they killed an estimated 700 Taliban.
Commanders say the mission has so far been "fantastically successful", but they believe that the relentless number of back-to-back operations being fought in harsh terrain in temperatures of up to 50C is beginning to take its toll.
"The men are knackered - they are on the brink of exhaustion," said one senior officer. "They are under considerable duress and have suffered great hardship."
On Tuesday, three British soldiers were killed in an ambush, bringing the total number of deaths during the mission to nine. Several soldiers have also been wounded.
Most of the fighting is being conducted by about 700 troops drawn mainly from the 3rd battalion The Parachute Regiment, the Gurkhas, the Territorial Army and the Royal Irish Regiment.
They are supported by a squadron of light tanks from the Household Cavalry and a battery of six 105mm light guns from 7 (Para) Royal Horse Artillery. Troops occupying three isolated outposts in Sangin, Nawzad and Musa Qala in the north of the province are being attacked every day by Taliban fighters.
Commanders believe that if they slow the momentum of attacks, the Taliban will gain time to regroup and reorganise before winter.
The Sunday Telegraph has also learnt that an interim study of the mission, by Brigadier Mungo Melvin of the Directorate of Operational Capability, has found "shortcomings" in the assessment of the enemy threat.
Patrick Mercer, the Conservative spokesman for homeland security, said the Government had a responsibility to reinforce the task force. He said: "Why the Prime Minister is not giving the commanders in Afghanistan the troops they require is completely incomprehensible."

Deployed to Afghanistan's 'Hell'

By Alistair Leithead
BBC News, Kandahar


In the first ever land deployment outside Europe for Nato forces led by the UK and Canada, 8,000 soldiers are now positioned in six of Afghanistan's southern provinces. Helmand province, in particular, has been the scene of heavy violence.
In the fierce heat of the Kandahar summer, eking out what little shade I could while waiting by the runway for a military flight, I got chatting to a British soldier.
He was on his way to what here they call "Hell"... the itchingly sandy and repressively hot Camp Bastion in the Helmand desert, miles from the nearest town, where sandstorms can last for days and where thousands of British troops are now based.
"When I joined up 10 years ago," he said, "people rarely knew anyone who had died in action. Now, pretty much everyone you speak to knows someone who's been killed here or in Iraq."
Helmand is not a pleasant place to be.
It is not only hot and dusty, but as a heartland for the Taleban and the biggest producer of opium poppies in the country, it is also a very dangerous place.

Counting the days

I spoke to a medic about how she was getting on.
"Eight weeks to go before R and R (rest and recuperation)," she said.
I smiled and added that most troops I spoke to knew exactly the number of days they had left on their tour.
Some argue this was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission, but in Helmand there is little peace to keep
"Fifty-seven" she quickly replied, and went on to explain that new technology was helping them keep track.
Every day when they log on to their computers, an updated bar chart shows how much money they have made so far, and a pie chart fills in another slice of their little circle showing how many days, hours and minutes they have left in the country.
It made me think of the play Journey's End, about British troops in the trenches during World War I.
One of the characters, Trotter, obsessively fills in his little circles every day with a pen, counting down to the end of his war.
And I am not the only one harking back to World War I.
In an off-the-cuff remark, one commander said: "At least back then troops were rotated out from the front line every 12 days."
"In one of Helmand's districts," he continues - the scene of some of the heaviest attacks - "the Gurkhas were only relieved after more than three weeks of intensive fighting."
At one stage, he tells me, they had to use hand grenades to fight off the Taleban. And hand grenades are only effective up to 30 metres.

Guerrilla warfare

There has been plenty of discussion about what the British troops are here to do: help the government bring security and then governance and development.
The line is well rehearsed.
Some argue this was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission, but in Helmand there is little peace to keep.
The Paras - some of the best of Britain's regular forces - were sent here and they knew they would have a fight on their hands.
But they did not expect to lose so many soldiers so quickly.
I think they expected more of an Iraq-style insurgency campaign rather than this guerrilla warfare that they now find themselves caught up in.
And they are caught up in it because they have gone on the offensive, moving into the remote areas trying to bring security by chasing the Taleban out.
It is in these operations that the Taleban militia are hitting them hard.

Measuring success

Of course everyone says Afghanistan is not Iraq.
There is not the religious division and the insurgency has not reached anything like that kind of intensity, but having worked in both places there is something that worries me.
Sitting in Baghdad for a month at a time watching the news wires flashing up the latest reports of car bombs, roadside bombs, assassinations and kidnappings, I would sometimes find myself losing track, by the end of the day, of the number of incidents and the number of people killed and injured.
Now sitting here in Afghanistan I am finding myself doing a similar thing.
A key difference between the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the majority of Afghans still want the international forces to be here and they know things would be a lot worse if they left.
The commanders in the Nato force and among British troops insist the Taleban are coming off worse and that hundreds are being killed.
That is hardly a measure of success, one can argue, but what they ask for is time.
The Nato force has only just taken over control of the south from the American coalition and they need six to nine months, they say, before they can be fairly judged.
In the meantime the Canadians, the British and the Americans are losing men and women.
I spoke to another soldier in Camp Bastion and asked her why she thought the British forces are here.
"I don't know" she said. "Something about drugs I think... but it seems more like we're here to be shot at by the Taleban."
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 5 August, 2006 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.