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Scale Of British Casualties In Afghanistan Under-Reported
London (AFP) Sep 21, 2006 The scale of British military casualties in Afghanistan is being under-reported, a press report said Thursday, citing a report by a senior army officer. Major Jon Swift, currently serving in Afghanistan, made the comments in the internal Royal Fusiliers newsletter, which was initially placed on a regimental website before being taken down, the BBC reported. He also apparently said the military operation in the country was "politically" driven. According to Swift, soldiers in Afghanistan were often patched up and sent back out into the field without the injury being recorded. "The scale of casualties has not been properly reported and shows no sign of reducing," the Major said. Swift also alleged: "Political and not military imperatives are being followed in the campaign." Speaking to AFP, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that while Swift's comments were reported accurately, the MoD denied the allegations that injuries in Afghanistan were under-reported. The spokesman also said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had asked for British troops to be deployed to the southern province of Helmand, "and we responded and deployed our troops". The news comes after British Defence Secretary Des Browne said in a speech on Tuesday that Britain and its NATO allies underestimated the strength of the Taliban militia's resistance. "We do have to accept that it's been even harder than we expected," Browne said. "The Taliban's tenacity in the face of massive losses has been a surprise, absorbing more of our effort than we predicted it would and consquently slowing progress in reconstruction," he told the Royal United Services Institute in London. Britain took over command of NATO forces in the volatile south of Afghanistan in May, and have faced fiercer-than-anticipated resistance from Taliban insurgents. A total of 33 British troops have died since then, compared to a total of 40 since NATO moved into Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.
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Has Pakistan Created An al-Qaida Sanctuary
Washington (UPI) Sep 21, 2006Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's new strategy for dealing with the Taliban insurgency in the country's lawless tribal regions on the Afghan border through a hearts and minds approach, rather than relying on the military, will need to show results quickly, Pentagon officials say. The most senior U.S. general in NATO, which has the security mandate on the Afghan side of the border, said Thursday that he would be conferring with NATO allies "in another month or so." |
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