Afghanistan: Hearts, minds and 'maximum violence'

Mick Smith Weblog

This War Can't Be Run on a Shoestring!

More than 200 SAS and SBS troops are being rushed out to Afghanistan this weekend to mount a major search and destroy operation against the Taliban. The force will double the number of UK special forces on the ground, with the intention of dealing the Taliban a sudden crippling blow, senior defence sources said. "They are there to cut the head off the snake," one said. "We need to break the back of this offensive now in one fell swoop." Let's hope it works.

Des Browne, Defence Secretary, is expected to tell MPs on Monday that an additional battle-group of around 700 infantry soldiers, extra transport helicopters and more ground attack aircraft are also being sent to reinforce the British troops in southern Afghanistan. It follows the deaths of six soldiers in Afghanistan, five of them within the space of eight days. With pressure mounting on both the politicians and the generals over the lack of combat troops on the ground and the surge in deaths, military planners have decided on "a quick and deliberate action to dislocate the insurgent campaign in Helmand", the source said.

The emergency deployment comes amid intelligence indicating that the current fighting, in which six British soldiers have died, is just the preamble to a much larger Taliban offensive. Several thousand Taliban fighters have assembled in Helmand province already with more being trained in al-Qaeda funded Jihadi camps in the Yemen, intelligence sources said last week. "We have evidence that many of the insurgents are foreign fighters," the source said, confirming something said by one of those posting on this blog last week.

"Trained in Yemen...entering Afghanistan via Pakistan"....

The decision to send out more troops followed a reassessment of the situation by commanders at the permanent joint headquarters in Northwood, north-west of London, the sources said. British troops had killed around 200 Taliban but they were very resilient, the source said. "We believe they are being trained in Yemen and entering Afghanistan via Pakistan. What we did not expect was the fact that they are very tactically aware and very well organised. We now need to demonstrate our capability and send a clear message to the insurgents that British forces will use maximum violence where required."

The doubling of British resources on the ground raises important questions as to why the British troops were so short of resources in the first place. Even before the deployment was announced in January there were repeated intelligence reports that the Taliban was reqrouping for a major offensive against the Nato expansion into southern Afghanistan. But John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, insisted that British infantry numbers would not increase. Read more

db: We inserted the map above to illustrate the distance between the 'AQ funded jihadi training camps' in Yemen and Pakistan - from where intelligence sources state the newly trained Taliban fighters are entering Afghanistan. That journey appears to be around 2,000 miles - it would be interesting to read how many fighters are expected to make the trip. You would have thought that Afghanistan itself was the perfect place to improve your skill-set.

It is also said that 'many' of the insurgents are foreign fighters - which was a popular myth propagated by the 'coalition' earlier on in the Iraq conflict.

We look forward to seeing how 'desperate' Des Browne deals with all this on Monday. He is likely to emphasise that the situation on the ground has changed - rather than admit that his government have thus far made a complete hash of it and have placed British forces in an impossible situation.