Afghanistan could take 40 years, says new army chief
General Sir David Richards says UK involvement will last decades
- guardian.co.uk, Saturday 8 August 2009 11.55 BST
- Article history
The new head of the British army warned today that the UK's involvement in Afghanistan could last for up to 40 years, as the Ministry of Defence announced that three British soldiers working with special forces had been killed in a roadside ambush.
The three soldiers, members of the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG), died when their armoured Jackal vehicle drove over a bomb in Helmand province and was then hit by gunfire. One soldier is critically injured in hospital. The dead paratroopers are expected to be named today.
The latest military losses in Afghanistan came as the army's incoming head, General Sir David Richards, predicted that British involvement in the country could last up to 40 years.
Richards, who will become Chief of the General Staff later this month, told the Times: "I believe that the UK will be committed to Afghanistan in some manner – development, governance, security sector reform – for the next 30 to 40 years."
He said British troop involvement should be needed only in the medium term and that the role of the army would evolve, adding that the focus should now shift to the expansion of the Afghan national army and police.
"Just as in Iraq, it is our route out militarily, but the Afghan people and our opponents need to know that this does not mean our abandoning the region," he said.
His prediction echoes those of other senior figures, including the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, who said last month that Britian would have to be involved in Afghanistan for decades. In January the then defence secretary, Des Browne, warned that British troops could be fighting in Afghanistan for decades.
Richards played down the issue of equipment shortages and said he would not be presenting the government with a "shopping list" of kit.
"It is impossible to say whether having more equipment of a particular kind would lead to less casualties, and it's pretty fruitless to speculate about it," he said.
The soldiers involved in the latest incident were on a security patrol with the Afghan national security forces north of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, when their vehicle struck the IED on Thursday afternoon.
More than half a dozen soldiers are thought to have died while patrolling in Jackals but the MoD yesterday sought to head off another row about the quality of equipment supplied to British troops, with a spokesman describing the Jackal as the "first choice of vehicle" to protect soldiers from the Taliban's improvised explosive devices (IED), which are often impossible to detect. Jackals are heavily armed but are not as well armoured as the much sturdier Mastiff vehicles.
The MoD said the Jackal allows soldiers to drive cross country over rough terrain, enabling them to avoid the traditional pinch points and thoroughfares which insurgents mine with explosives, but said that sometimes troops had no choice but to use main roads, as was the case with the three soldiers killed yesterday. The MoD official said: "We would struggle to find a vehicle that would deal with IEDs better."
Out of the total 9,000 British troops in Afghanistan, 6,200 are working in Helmand province.
Troops are currently engaged in a "hold and build" phase after a five-week operation to clear the Taliban from the Lashkar Gah area. That operation, which wound up last week, saw 10 British soldiers killed.
As well as the three soldiers who died yesterday, a 21-year-old mechanic, Allegra Stratton Anthony Lombardi, died in an explosion in Babaji in Helmand on Tuesday. Lombardi, from Scunthorpe, was killed as he drove a vehicle in a supply convoy.
The latest deaths take the number of British troops who have died in Afghanistan since operations began in October 2001 to 195.
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