UK/Afghanistan: British take command of Helmand from US forces
01 March 2006
British soldiers officially took over control of one of the most dangerous regions of Afghanistan from United States forces in May as part of the US-led "war on terror". Over the next few months thousands of soldiers will be deployed to the volatile southern Helmand region where they will engage in offensive operations against the Taleban and will attempt to eradicate opium crops, which have proliferated for export under the US-backed Karzai regime. There are currently 2,000 British troops in Afghanistan, but this number will increase to 5,700. The 3,300 strong deployment to Helmund, led by 16 Air Assault Brigade is expected to be completed by the end of June. A force of 1,400 Dutch troops will be deployed to the mountainous Uruzgan province by the beginning of August; this figure will increase to 1,600 between November 2006 and May 2007 when the Netherlands will lead the regional ISAF headquarters in Kandahar. The Dutch contingent will take over from the Dutch Deployment Task Force, which is already carrying out preparatory logistical and reconnaissance missions.
The UK troops will take over the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) from the US and the government hopes that their deployment will free-up US forces to assist the unpopular President Karzai to travel outside of Kabul and extend the Afghan government's remit beyond that city. The PRT is a small (usually between 60-100 personnel) operating base from which civilian and military specialists work on small reconstruction projects or provide security for others engaged it, much in the "hearts and minds" tradition of military intervention. As in Iraq, the soldiers are likely to be in Afghanistan for a considerable length of time and Defence Secretary, John Reid, has acknowledged that they face "massive risks", (see Statewatch Vol. 15 no 6).
The risks have been prefigured in recent months by an increase in violence. At least 31 foreign soldiers were killed in the first three months of 2006 while in July 2005 16 US navy seals died after their helicopter was attacked. There have been a number of roadside bomb attacks on foreign soldiers and Afghani security forces, including one in neighbouring Kandahar province in April that killed four Canadian soldiers. The British are particularly concerned by Taleban threats to utilise suicide bombers; a local Taleban spokesman told the BBC that they had trained hundreds of suicide bombers to target British troops. In a satellite telephone interview with The Times newspaper Mohammed Hanif Sherzad, the spokesman for Taleban leader Mullah Omar who has a $10 million US bounty on his head, warned that his fighters "Will turn Afghanistan into a river of blood for the British."
VD AMOK, Utrecht; BBC 25.4.06, Independent 2.5.06, Times 5.5.06ste.mobi/b.js><