You are here: Home / Archives for Documentary

Britain Will Need More Troops In Afghanistan

August 5, 2009 By

Britain will need more troops in Afghanistan_Britain may need to send more troops to Afghanistan despite the success of Operation Panther’s Claw, military chiefs admit. Brigadier Tim Radford, commander of Task Force Helmand, said that the existing troops could not be expected to mount further significant operations without reinforcements.

The scale of the challenge was revealed yesterday as it emerged that British soldiers have faced nearly 1,000 roadside bombs in the past three months. Although 3,000 troops managed to drive out about 500 Taleban during the five-week offensive, they will be fully deployed holding an area in Helmand province about the size of the Isle of Wight, their commanding officer admitted.

The warning came as the Ministry of Defence prepared today to launch a legal action against two former soldiers to reduce compensation payments for injuries.  Light Dragoon Anthony Duncan, who walks with crutches after being shot while on patrol in Iraq, was originally awarded £9,250, which was increased to £46,000 by an appeal tribunal. Royal Marine Matthew McWilliams fractured his thigh in a military exercise and was awarded £8,250, increased to £28,750 on appeal.

The High Court upheld the higher awards, ruling that the MoD’s argument that there should be a distinction between the original injury and later complications was absurd. Now, however, the MoD is taking the case to the Court of Appeal, where lawyers are expected to claim the pair should be compensated only for the initial injuries and not subsequent health problems.

Lieutenant Colonel Jerome Church, of the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen’s Association, described the court case as “very unfortunate” at a time when British soldiers were sustaining more deaths and injuries than at any time since the 2001 invasion. “This case is obviously appalling timing for the Ministry of Defence. This has been in the wings for some time,” Colonel Church said.

Simon Weston OBE, a former Welsh Guardsman who suffered serious burns during the Falklands War, branded the court bid “car-crash politics”. He said: “The system is incredibly flawed. If you get shot in the leg, and you get a subsequent infection which causes you to lose the leg, do you lose compensation for the loss of the leg or do you only get it for the gunshot which would probably be only a few thousand pounds?”

The MoD announced yesterday that two more soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan. Brigadier Radford said that although 23 soldiers had died since the operation began on June 19, only 10 were a direct result of the offensive in central Helmand.

The bodies of four of the dead will return to British soil today. Rifleman Aminiasi Toge, 26, Corporal Joseph Etchells, 22, Captain Daniel Shepherd, 28 and Guardsman Christopher King, 20, will be repatriated at RAF Lyneham, in Wiltshire, shortly after 11am.

As has become tradition, coffins carrying their bodies will pass through the nearby town of Wootton Bassett, pausing at the war memorial, before heading on to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where post-mortem examinations will be carried out. Hundreds of British Legion veterans, shopkeepers and residents are expected to line the streets to pay their respects as the cortege passes through.

The four died in separate incidents in Helmand province, most involving roadside bombs. Details emerged yesterday of the “industrial” scale of the Taleban’s production of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Brigadier Radford, speaking by video link from his headquarters at Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, said that troops had encountered 153 IEDs encountered during Panther’s Claw – and 994 since April. The release of details of Panther’s Claw gave Gordon Brown an opportunity to wrest back the political initiative over Afghanistan after the controversy over troop levels and helicopters.

Yesterday he hailed the offensive as an “heroic” military success, saying it had made Britain safer and pushed back the Taleban. David Miliband stole some of Mr Brown’s thunder, however, taking Downing Street by surprise with a call for renewed efforts to engage the Taleban politically. The Foreign Secretary used a speech to Nato leaders in Brussels to deliver an uncompromising message aimed at President Karzai of Afghanistan, calling for a programme of “reintegration and reconciliation” for moderate Taleban.

He rejected talks with insurgents who were fighting British troops in Helmand, telling Channel 4 News: “If they [the Taleban] carry on trying to kill British troops, then of course we can’t reconcile them into the system, because they will be making a choice of violence.”

The two deaths announced yesterday take the total losses to 191 since 2001. Neither was linked to Panther’s Claw. A soldier from The Light Dragoons was killed by an explosion while he was on a vehicle patrol in Lashkar Gah. A soldier from the 5th Regiment Royal Artillery was killed by an explosion during a foot patrol in Sangin, in northern Helmand.

Filed Under: News & Media Tagged With: ,

Troops ‘Too Fat’ To Fight In Afghanistan

August 3, 2009 By

troops too fat to fight_Tom Morgan – Britain’s war effort in Afghanistan is being hindered by a number of frontline troops too fat to fight, according to a leaked Army memo.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed today it had directed military chiefs to ensure units are following Army fitness policy after concerns were raised over a “worrying trend of obesity”.

The Army needs to “reinvigorate a warrior ethos and a culture of being fit”, according to the leaked memo apparently sent to all Army units and obtained by the Observer newspaper.

The memo from Major Brian Dupree, of the Army physical training corps in Wiltshire, said basic fitness policy “is not being carried out”.

Units were routinely failing to fulfil the Army’s basic fitness regime of two hours of physical exercise a week, he added.

The memo leaked to the paper said: “The numbers of personnel unable to deploy and concerns about obesity throughout the Army are clearly linked to current attitudes towards physical training.”

There are 3,860 Army personnel classified as PUD – personnel unable to deploy – with a further 8,190 regarded as being of “limited deployability” for medical reasons, it was reported.

Major Dupree added: “The current Army fitness policy states that to be fit to fight requires a minimum of two to three hours of physical activity per week. It is clear that even this most basic policy is not being implemented.

“To cope with the demands of hybrid operations in Afghanistan and future conflicts the Army needs personnel with that battle-winning edge that sustains them through adversity. It is clear this message has been diluted recently and this attitude must change. “The increasing PUD list and concerns over obesity in the services are clearly linked to this indifferent attitude.”

An MoD spokesman said: “Following a review of recent evidence, direction has been given to the chain of command to take action to ensure units are following the Army’s fitness policy.”

The revelations came on the day a hard-hitting report on British efforts in the war-torn country by a committee of MPs was published.

Since deploying to Afghanistan in 2001, the UK has suffered from “significant mission creep” with an ever-growing list of responsibilities, including drugs, human rights and state-building, which have made it more difficult for the Government to explain the purpose of Britain’s mission, said the report by the cross-party House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

Filed Under: Government Tagged With: ,

Six Christians Burned Alive In Pakistan

August 2, 2009 By

burned alive in Pakistan_Ben Quinn – Six Christians were burned alive in Pakistan yesterday when hundreds of Muslims attacked and looted their homes, sparked by rumours that pages from the Qur’an had been desecrated.

The dead, including four women and a child, were killed when Christian homes were torched by hundreds of supporters of a banned Muslim organisation in the Punjabi village of Gojra, in eastern Pakistan.

Tensions have been running high between the two communities over allegations that Christians had defiled pages from the Muslim holy book, despite authorities insisting that the rumours were unfounded.

Television footage from the area showed houses burning and streets strewn with debris and blackened furniture as mobs ran at each other. There were reports in the local media of exchanges of gunfire between Christian and Muslim communities and that rioters had blocked a railway line.

Pakistani authorities named the Muslim group involved in the violence as Sipah-e-Sahaba, which has been accused of launching attacks against security forces and carrying out bomb attacks in public places in recent years.

Rana Sanaullah, Punjab’s law minister, said that an investigation had been carried out into allegations made during the week that a copy of the Qur’an had been defaced but that no such incident was found to have taken place.

Although the situation had calmed down by Friday, he said yesterday that “some miscreants and extremists entered the city [on Saturday] and pushed people toward armed clashes”.

Pakistan’s federal minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, said he had visited Gojra on Friday and asked police to provide protection for Christians who were facing threats, but accused them of ignoring his efforts.

Pakistan is a predominantly Muslim nation although religious minorities, including Christians, account for about 4% of its population of 170 million. The communities generally live peacefully alongside one another, but Muslim militants have periodically targeted Christians and churches in recent years.

Filed Under: Education, Society & Culture Tagged With: