Gordon Brown has failed to resolve whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, four months after he announced a review of the subject.
Indecision on the issue has led to a Whitehall wrangle, with generals pushing for a permanent increase to shore up Britain’s combat role overseas while the Treasury warns about the dangers of spiralling costs.
Mr Brown is understood to be cautious over raising troop numbers, believing that both the human and financial sacrifice could become unacceptable. The campaign in Afghanistan was predicted to cost £2.3 billion in 2008-09, up from £1.5 billion the year before and £738 million in 2006-07. More than 150 members of the British Armed Forces have died.
However, as The Times disclosed yesterday, the US is considering putting increasingly public pressure on Britain, with senior US officials urging Mr Brown to start “talking specifics”. Mr Brown said yesterday that Britain would send “mid to high” hundreds of troops for the August elections. This is regarded in Whitehall as a comparatively easy decision to make because the Forces have a clear mission — supporting democracy — and an end date.
But the issue is seen by some in the military as a sideshow to a wider disagreement that has been in Mr Brown’s in-tray longer than almost any other.
One official said: “There are two different issues relating to troops in Afghanistan. There is a strategy for Afghanistan and the changing nature of the threat. Then there is the very specific concern that the elections generate a specific threat of their own.”
Another said that a decision on longer-term deployment is not imminent. “It’s certainly not days,” a source close to the Prime Minister said.
John Hutton, Defence Secretary, has given the strongest hint yet that there will be an increase in Britain’s commitment. Last week he said it was our duty to do more. “We remain, as we have been on many occasions in this past century, grateful to the United States for the leadership that she has shown time and again since 2001 in rooting out extremism and terrorism in Afghanistan. But Europe must do more. And it is in our interest to do more.”
Formally the issue has been the subject of a review since the Queen’s Speech. However indications of a US “surge” in Afghanistan were around well before, and discussions were live inside Whitehall when Mr Brown visited Afghanistan just before Christmas. In a press conference in February, he appeared to promise a resolution at this weekend’s Nato summit.
Some believe that the strategy is to hold off from an announcement to put pressure on countries such as Germany, which are not believed to be shouldering their share of the burden. But if Europe rejects President Obama’s call for more help, the big unknown is how much public and private pressure the Americans will bring to bear on Britain. They will have allies in the UK military.
Sir Richard Dannatt led the charge in The Times last week, saying that elements of 12 Mechanised Brigade — which had been training for deployment to Iraq but were stood down — had been “earmarked for Afghanistan”.
Some diplomatic sources suggest that there are effectively already more British troops in Afghanistan that Parliament has been told about. Using “smart” deployment, companies are rotated in and out of Afghanistan, sometimes overlapping and raising the number in the battlefield above those approved by MPs.
Nobody yet knows which way the Prime Minister will jump. The political consensus around Afghanistan is fracturing, with David Cameron saying that the increase would be worthwhile only if they were able to deal with “on the ground” problems such as tackling corruption and drugs. Labour MPs will be even more difficult.
Source:the times
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