> Hundreds attend soldier's funeral

Hundreds attend soldier's funeral

Guardsman Downes was killed by a landmine in Helmand Province

The funeral of a soldier who was killed in Afghanistan has taken place on the same day he was due to return home to Greater Manchester on leave.

Guardsman Neil Tony Downes, known as Tony, 20, from Droylsden, was killed by a landmine while on patrol in Helmand Province on 9 June.

Hundreds of people packed out St Mary's Church in his home town before he was buried with full military honours.

Fellow soldiers in bearskins and red tunics and mourners lined the road.

The guardsman's coffin was carried into the church by six pallbearers in military uniform, the coffin draped in the Union Flag with his hat and a single red wreath on top.

You are now my beautiful angel and our hero Jane Little

Guardsman Downes' girlfriend, Jane Little, 19, paid tribute to him as a "beautiful angel".

He had written letters to her and his family, to be opened only in the event of his death.

In the letter to Miss Little, his teenage sweetheart, he said: "Hey beautiful, I'm sorry I had to put you through all this darling. I'm truly sorry.

"Just thought I'll leave you with a last few words. All I wanna say is how much I loved you, and cared for you."

He wrote: "Jane, I hope you have a wonderful and fulfilling life! Get married, have children, etc! I will love you forever and will see you again when you're old and wrinkly!"

Guardsman Downes had served with the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and had already completed a posting to Basra in Iraq after joining the Army at 17.

At the funeral, Miss Little left a floral tribute of red roses and white chrysanthemums in the shape of a heart, with a card which read: "To my loving boyfriend Tony, you are now my beautiful angel and our hero. I miss and love you forever.

"Love you lots and lots like jelly tots, big hugs and kisses, Jane xxx."

'Died too soon'

A reading was given by one of the Guardsman's closest friends starting "Do not stand by my grave and weep..." but was finished by Army Padre Pat Allroyd after his friend broke down in tears.

The padre said: "Tony has died too soon; it seems he still had many years left to live really.

"He found happiness himself in the last few months with Jane who he loved deeply. He would have been proud of you today and amazed that so many people are here."

After the service the guardsman's coffin was taken for burial at a local cemetery, where a firing party of Grenadier Guards fired a volley of shots over his coffin.

An army bugler also played the Last Post.

> Will Brown change UK foreign policy?

Will Brown change UK foreign policy?

What changes will Gordon Brown make to British foreign policy when he succeeds Tony Blair as prime minister? BBC News website world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds looks at them issue-by-issue.

IRAQ

He has not backed away from the decision to invade Iraq, but has hinted he will take a new look at how long the troops might stay. He said recently: "I take my responsibility as a member of the Cabinet for the collective decisions that we made, and I believe they were the right decisions, but we're at a new stage now." Current British policy is to regroup the 5,500 troops there into one base, at the airport, this summer but there is no timetable for a total withdrawal. Mr Blair has always insisted that the troops will have to stay until conditions for stability are right. Mr Brown, however, has room to manoeuvre because he could interpret those conditions more flexibly. This could be the test of how far he is prepared to diverge from US policy. His own military advisers might also tell him to get out as quickly as possible, perhaps within a year, to avoid army overstretch.

AFGHANISTAN

As British policy in Iraq moves towards an endgame, British military commitments in the war against the Taleban in Afghanistan are increasing and troop numbers are expected to reach nearly 8,000 later this year. Mr Brown is not expected to change this commitment. He has taken a tough stand in the fight against al-Qaeda and believes that it must not be allowed to regroup in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan could become a growing problem for him.

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

It would be wrong to suppose that Mr Brown will weaken Britain's efforts. Indeed, he has recently proposed tougher laws domestically, signalling that he thinks domestic and international Islamist terrorism remains a serious threat. As chancellor, he has acted against sources of terrorist funding. In a speech in 2006 he declared his intentions: "This global terrorist problem must be fought globally - with all the means at our disposal: military, security, intelligence, economic and culture."

IRAN

Mr Brown can be expected to continue supporting UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. Asked recently if he would rule out a military attack on Iran he replied: "We want a peaceful settlement to the Iran issue." This is in line with current British government policy, which emphasises a multilateral approach but does not rule out military action. However, one of Mr Brown's closest political allies, the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, has said: "I don't happen to believe that military action has a role to play in any event. We could not justify it." So support by Mr Brown for military action is hard to envisage.

TA riflemen set their sights on Afghanistan

KAREN BURKE - 28 June 2007

ON MANOEUVRES: Soldiers from the Seven Rifles battalion in the Macedonian foothills

TERRITORIAL Army soldiers are spending two weeks training in Macedonia before going out to serve in Afghanistan.

Riflemen from East London G Company, based in West Ham Park, left their day jobs last week to work alongside the Macedonian army in conditions similar to those in the war-torn country where they will be spending six months.

Anti-tank weapons, general-purpose machine guns, A2 rifles, light machine guns, pistols and mortars were out in force on the hills behind the village of Krivolak near the town of Negotino as soldiers simulated conflict scenarios.

"It will be completely different out there - a reality check," said TA rifleman Dave Warren, a 33-year-old printer from Woodford. "I think it will bring the guys closer together. If we can bond now and get everything right, it will make things easier.

"We've got a great set of guys who want to get out there, do the job and do it well and come back in one piece."

Colour Sgt Steve Kibble, 47, a full-time territorial army soldier from Dagenham, said British humour would see his men through.

"We have a good laugh," he said. "British soldiers are the best in the world at seeing a funny side to everything, even in a hostile environment."

Determination was another factor.

"It is like the Olympics," said Sgt Kibble. "You want there to be an end result. The hardest thing for the guys will be being away from their families, but that is part and parcel of what we do."

Captain Stephen Haywood-Smith, a 47-year-old civil servant from Chadwell Heath, will be the unit press officer for the London Head Quarter Company in Afghanistan.

"This will be my first time in a conflict zone," he said. "It is something I have wanted to do for a long time. It's about making a difference and empowering the local people.

"My wife is in the TA so she understands, but my two sons in their 20s aren't very happy about me going."

Lance Corporal Terry Duffield, a 41-year-old driver for East London buses with family in Hainault and Dagenham, was fearless.

"Hopefully I will be quite safe because I won't be leaving the camp that often," he said. "We have been told it is quite a secure location, so it doesn't seem so bad."

There will be no distinction between regular British soldiers and Territorial Army soldiers from the Seven Rifles - made up of seven battalions of around 130 regular soldiers in each - serving together on the front line in Afghanistan.

The troops, who will be based at Camp Bastion in the country's Helmand Province, leave Macedonia and return to England on Saturday.

> Fast and furious with the Taliban

By Jason Motlagh

GERESHK, Helmand province - British Captain Jeff Lee takes pride in his battalion's ability to "get in, get out" of sticky situations.

On patrol, khaki-colored vehicles bristling with firepower, roll bars and camouflage netting recall the desert pirate esthetic of Mad Max movies. And they travel equally fast and loose, sacrificing extra heavy armor plates for mobility to battle Taliban militants in this remote province, one of the hardest to tame in Afghanistan.

"We're a light, mobile, fast-reacting force," said the veteran of counterinsurgency campaigns from Iraq to Northern Ireland, noting that only one of his men has been lost this year. "Get in, get out, and call in the air power to light the ground up if necessary."

But insurgents have adopted a similar approach to keep North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces on edge. After the bloody aftertaste of head-on confrontations across the southern provinces over the past year, they are increasingly shifting toward remote-detonated bombs, suicide attacks and other hit-and-run tactics in areas where they have regrouped. This reporter's first scheduled trip into Gereshk city was delayed by an early-morning suicide strike that killed two Afghan police officers at a bridge checkpoint.

Drugs are largely to blame. Gereshk sits next to the Helmand River, whose banks are straddled by two fertile strips of land where hardcore Taliban fighters, farmers and a troublesome combination of the two have dug in to protect their opium-poppy cash crop. The British have dubbed it the "Green Zone", but welcome they are not. World opium production in 2006 was 6,000 tonnes, 92% of which came from Afghanistan. In turn, most of Afghanistan's production comes from Helmand province.

"Just about every time we go into the area we engage [the Taliban]," said Lee. "Of course, the fighting tends to be most intense wherever opium cultivation is concentrated. You could say it's more like the 'Red Zone'."

Poring over a map at the British forward operating base 3 kilometers from the river, he said nearly every village on the banks of the river has a Taliban presence. With the opium-poppy harvest now over - and expected to exceed last year's record haul - hostilities have intensified from Gereshk up to the Sangin Valley, scene of fierce clashes in recent weeks.

NATO forces are trying to drive militants out of the valley to make improvements on the Kajaki Dam that could provide electricity for hundreds of thousands more Afghans, by far the biggest aid project the West has planned for the country. To do so, the road that runs parallel to the river must first be held to allow delivery of two massive transformers and a turbine for repairs.

"Clearing the valley has been one of our main objectives," said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo, a spokesman for British forces in Helmand. "There are still sporadic attacks, and that's to be expected because [the Taliban] want this area as much as we do."

The British strategy in the south has been to push up the Green Zone and force militants to engage. Typically this plays out as a brief, heated gun battle with bands of four to eight militants who then recede into fields and adobe warrens, though officers say Taliban clusters appear to be swelling in some areas.

Lieutenant Aaron Browne, a platoon commander who regularly sweeps north, said that during one recent patrol his men were ambushed by more than two dozen foot-soldiers; a gun battle broke out and they quickly dispersed.

Like their compatriots fighting around the Kajaki Dam, he said, troops in the Gereshk region want to secure agricultural tracts to allow civil development teams to carry out projects such as irrigation ditches and wells. This has proved difficult even in areas where they have ousted the Taliban; faced with a skeptical population, holding the ground is another matter.

Lee insists British forces have a "powerful influence" over most of the upper Gereshk Valley, estimating that of 300 or so core Taliban fighters in his theater of operations, about 140 have been killed. However, he concedes that numbers are an "illusion", since insurgents have shown a deft capacity to "inflate and contract" when they are pressured.

An Afghan police guard at the sun-baked prison fort that commands a clear view of the Green Zone from the heart of Gereshk swore the Taliban are in control of the upper valley. What appear to be Taliban roam freely in plain view of Afghan and NATO security forces in the markets below, but for the time being a tense calm prevails.

Looking to hold the initiative, British officers held a shura (council) with community elders last month to determine what was needed most to win them over. A school was asked for, and soon built. Other projects, including a bus station and a city park, are in progress.

"They give us their grievances, and we remind them of what we've done," said Lee, also noting the refrigerated morgue his men have just installed in the local hospital. "The more they see they've got, the more likely they are to reject the Taliban. Gereshk is a success story."

But errant NATO air strikes continue to take their toll on Afghan civilians, undoing hard-earned public trust. Last Friday, another attack on suspected Taliban militants about 14km north of Gereshk killed nine women, three infants and a mullah, according to local authorities.

Civilians in the line of fire
This week, an agitated President Hamid Karzai reprimanded foreign troops for unnecessary civilian deaths, writes Najiba Ayubi from Kabul in a report by Inter Press Service in association with the The Killid Group.

As civilian deaths spiral in the widening conflict in Afghanistan, there is anger on the streets against the government and foreign forces. Anti-US and NATO protests have rocked Kabul, and the eastern and southern provinces.

While militants have killed 178 civilians in attacks, Western forces have killed 203, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and international officials.

Last week, public resentment erupted on the airwaves. An independent radio network stopped regular transmission to go live with a spontaneous, two-hour discussion after a suicide bomb in Kabul on June 17. At least 30 police instructors were killed when the bus taking them to work at the Kabul Police Academy exploded in front of the heavily fortified police headquarters.

Furious listeners who phoned Radio Killid, a station that broadcasts from Kabul and Herat, forced Karzai's spokesman to come on air to defend the government over the second attack on a police bus in Kabul this year.

"I blame the government of Karzai," said a caller who identified himself as Abdul Gulbahari. "I am a truck driver and have visited 31 provinces, including many of the districts. I see no positive changes in those provinces. The government has done nothing to solve the people's problems."

Afghan and foreign security forces have constantly claimed Kabul is safe from Taliban fighters seeking to topple the Karzai government. But successive suicide attacks have nailed the lie, according to political commentator, Dad Noorani.

"I think that security forces are unable to control the situation, including the US-led coalition and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] forces. And when attacks happen, the government loses people's confidence," said Noorani, a well-known Radio Killid journalist. "We have troops from so many nations ... in order to secure our country but insecurity increases day by day," he lamented over the radio.

Security has sharply deteriorated in Afghanistan since late 2004 when many US troops were evacuated to Iraq. A resurgent Taliban have made deadly strikes on government facilities including schools, and on foreign troops. The nearly daily attacks, which began in the southern provinces along the country's border with Pakistan, have spread to the east.

Civilians, increasingly, are caught between the warring sides.

Zia Syamak Herawi, the president's spokesman, defended Karzai. "The Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and the National Directorate of Security, under the leadership of the president, are all trying their best to prevent such activities, but suicide attacks are a little hard to control, and after three years the incidents are on the rise," he told Radio Killid.

Jason Motlagh is deputy foreign editor at United Press International in Washington, DC. He has reported freelance from Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean for various US and European news media

> Cash lures civilian medics to front line | Uk News | News | Telegraph

Cash lures civilian medics to front line

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:35am BST 24/06/2007

Civilian doctors and nurses are being offered up to six-figure salaries to work in British military hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Faced with a chronic lack of front-line medical staff, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is offering consultant physicians and surgeons, hired on short-term contracts, up to the equivalent of £150,000 a year. Civilian nurses will receive payment equating to an annual salary of £80,000.

The MoD is short of about 230 doctors, surgeons and nurses specialising in all areas of medicine and surgery, including anaesthetics, burns and plastic surgery, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, neurosurgery, emergency care and radiology.

To try to meet the shortfall, it has signed a multi-million pound, four-year contract with Frontier Medical, a recruitment agency which specialises in hiring civilian doctors to work for the military.

The MoD has an established policy of recruiting medical personnel on an ad hoc basis, but it is understood that this is the first time it has signed a long-term contract with a specialist recruitment agency.

Medical staff who take up the offer will not become members of the Armed Forces, nor will they be given a rank or be issued with a uniform.

However, they will receive a week's basic training and be supplied with a helmet and body armour. In line with the rest of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will not have to pay for their food or accommodation.

Maria Rooney, 33, a clinical nurse specialist, is among those who have signed up.

Miss Rooney, who is working with frontline British troops in an Army field hospital, said: "This is a completely different kind of pressure to working for the NHS. It's certainly not a training ground, but you learn a lot.

"If you arrive with real experience, the right attitude and are prepared to work with a team, it's an extremely rewarding and unique experience."

Another specialist trauma nurse, a Canadian national who works in a hospital in the North of England, said she had been promised £20,000 for three months' work in Iraq. After that, she intends to return to the UK for a month before starting another three-month term at a field hospital at Basra.

The nurse, who asked not to be named, said it was a "once in a lifetime opportunity to earn £40,000 in just six months".

Registered nurses in the NHS earn about £25,000 a year, similar to the salary of a registered nurse serving in the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps.

Consultants in the Army and NHS both start on salaries of around £72,000.

The civilian deals have attracted criticism from Army medical staff, with one doctor describing the salaries on offer as "blood money".

The Defence Medical Services has been understaffed for years, but the demands of military action in both Iraq and Afghanistan have exacerbated the problem. Many staff have resigned while others complain of poor morale.

According to recent MoD figures, none of the 12 medical categories is fully staffed. In anaesthetics, only 48 of the 90 trained staff posts are filled and there are only 18 general surgeons to fill 42 posts. Only 12 of the 18 are considered deployable.

The MoD has only 13 personnel trained for accident and emergency - 55 per cent fewer than required. The situation for general physicians is identical, while none of the three vacancies for neurosurgeons is filled.

News of the recruitment drive comes just a week after The Sunday Telegraph revealed that casualty evacuation times from battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan were slower than those achieved by the Americans in Vietnam 40 years ago.

Dr Brendan McKeating, the chairman of the Armed Forces committee at the British Medical Association, admitted that the shortages were "deeply worrying" but insisted there was no anecdotal evidence that it was affecting frontline care.

However, Dr Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said: "Near criminal complacency has seen the Defence Medical Services run down at a time when we are fighting on two fronts."

A spokesman for the MoD said: "The Defence Medical Services have met all the operational requirements placed on them and clinical care has not suffered as a result of any manpower shortages."

> Are they insane?

Monday, June 25, 2007

Are they insane?

Just when you thought this site had become a "toy" free zone and it was safe to come back – wham! A "toy" post with a vengeance.

There is, however, no levity here. Once again, on a day when we are also reading reports of another roadside bomb in Afghanistan, killing and maiming solders in a "Snatch" Land Rover, we have to record the utter stupidity of the MoD, which seems determined to put troops in harm's way, with inadequate protection.

The proximate cause of our ire is a report in yesterday's Mail on Sunday headlined, "The 80mph 'Mad Max' monster targeting the Taliban".

This, in the usual gushing, uncritical style of idiot journos, talks up a "four-ton monster truck" which is supposed to be "the British Army's new weapon designed to take on insurgents on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan."

It is, we are told, the British-made, the Supacat Weapons Mounted Installation Kit which "boasts awesome firepower which will be unleashed early next year," adding, "British and other Nato troops are being targeted by roadside bombs and daily firefights."

Yet, although we are told that, "Infantry soldiers have complained existing Land Rovers provide insufficient protection from the bombers," the one thing that struck commenters on both the Mail site and the Army forum was the lack of protection.

Inspection of the photograph does suggest that there could be a modicum of mine protection, in that the front wheel arches do seem to have angled armour, but the position of the gunner is still extremely exposed – dangerously so – yet 130 of these contraptions are to be sent to Afghanistan, where mines are a serious problem.

Yet again, as with the Pinzgauer Vector and the Duro we see this insane obsession with putting drivers and crew over the front wheels, in the centre of the cone of destruction, where they are at their most vulnerable. As the picture shows, of an ordinary Land Rover which survived a mine strike, the crew would be better off in that type of vehicle

Just when we thought we were getting through to the MoD, with its purchase of the Mastiffs, which are turning out to be highly popular with the troops, we then get this regression to type.

One wonders whether these fools have ever seen vehicles which have taken mine or IED strikes (above) and, if so, why they are so willing, it seems, to send troops to their certain deaths.

> Soldier killed in Afghanistan named

UK soldier killed in Afghanistan named | 24dash.com - Central Government

UK soldier killed in Afghanistan named

Publisher:  Ian Morgan
Published: 25/06/2007 - 14:17:05 PM

 

Drummer Thomas Wright. Photo:
PA Wire

The British soldier killed in Afghanistan yesterday has been named as Drummer Thomas Wright, from 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment.

He was killed when his armoured "Snatch" Land Rover was caught in an explosion roughly 6km outside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province.

The 26-year-old, from Ripley, Derbyshire, and four other soldiers who were injured in the explosion, were airlifted to hospital where Drummer Wright was pronounced dead.

The other four are still receiving medical treatment at the ISAF hospital at Camp Bastion, the Ministry of Defence said.

The vehicle had been escorting a military team surveying the site for a new road project linking several Afghan villages in the Babaji area when it was caught in the explosion.

Drummer Wright joined The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment in 2003 and saw service in Kenya and Northern Ireland before training as a Drummer.

He was then moved to Belize before being deployed to Afghanistan.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Westley, Commanding Officer of 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, paid tribute to the soldier's character, skill and ability.

He said: "He will be best known for his razor sharp wit, numerous tattoos, quirky dress sense and practical jokes.

"Never shy in coming forward, always in the thick of the action, either in the boxing ring or in the field, on parades or in the block, he was a true regimental character who can never be replaced."

The soldier had been delivering civilian and military aid to needy people in remote districts when he was killed, which deepened the "tragedy" of his death, the officer added.

He said: "He was a talented young soldier who was an accomplished musician, a determined boxer and, first and foremost, one of my fighting men."

The 26-year-old had died with "vigour, valour and vigilance" and his loss was "dreadful" and a "terrible blow", Lt Col Westley said.

Major Paul "Shove" Gilby described the soldier, nicknamed "Wrighty", as larger than life, loud, outrageous, quirky, a joker and inspirational.

He said: "Widely respected and admired, he was a key member of a tightly knit company. Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family, girlfriend and mates in this difficult hour.

"The loss of Wrighty is a horrendous blow to all that knew him; nothing can replace the gap that he now leaves. He will always remain in our thoughts, lives and never be forgotten."

Close friend Lance Corporal Les Barker said Drummer Wright had always been laughing and joking but remained professional in every way.

He said: "He loved the Army, always striving to be better than everyone else - if there was a ragging or joke being played, he was always in the middle of it. He will be sorely missed by all of his mates."

Drum Major Bryn Knowles said the 26-year-old was a "natural drummer" who had performed at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

He said: "His memory will forever be remembered within the Battalion, but in particular within the Corps of Drums, an extremely close-knit platoon.

"Today we have lost a friend, a colleague, and a piece of our heart. God bless you mate."

Major Max Wray, the officer commanding Drummer Wright's Company, said he was an "outstanding character" and "exceptional soldier" who inspired those around him.

He added: "A strong team player who gave his all to those around him, Drummer Wright's infectious enthusiasm and brilliant sense of humour will be sorely missed. It was a privilege to know him."

Defence Secretary Des Browne described his death as "tragic news" and sent his sincere condolences to his family and friends.

He said: "Losing such a talented and popular soldier is terrible, but Drummer Wright did not die in vain; thanks to his endeavours we are winning against the Taliban and making progress in rebuilding Afghanistan."

A total of 61 British personnel or MoD staff have now died while serving in Afghanistan since the start of the US-led operations in November 2001.

That figure includes 38 who are are classed as having been killed in action or from injuries sustained in action.

A further 23 died from other causes or have not been officially classified because of an ongoing investigation.

Drummer Wright is the second soldier to have been killed from the 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters within a month.

Lance Corporal Paul Sandford, 23, from London, was shot during an operation to clear a Taliban compound in the Upper Gereshk Valley in Helmand Province on June 6.

He was taken to a Nato base before being airlifted for medical treatment to Camp Bastion where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

His family, from Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, said later that the soldier - who had been married for just a year - died doing a job he had been determined to do since he was 11.

Copyright Press Association 2007

> 'Mad Max' monster targeting the Taliban

> The 80mph 'Mad Max' monster targeting the Taliban

By CHRISTOPHER LEAKE - More by this author » Last updated at 22:22pm on 23rd June 2007

It looks more like a vehicle from one of Mel Gibson's Mad Max movies.

But this four-ton monster truck is the British Army's new weapon designed to take on insurgents on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan.

British-made, the Supacat Weapons Mounted Installation Kit boasts awesome firepower which will be unleashed early next year. British and other Nato troops are being targeted by roadside bombs and daily firefights.

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Awesome: The Supacat is described by one officer as 'a serious bit of kit'

Infantry soldiers have complained existing Land Rovers provide insufficient protection from the bombers.

Now, the Ministry of Defence is buying 130 of the light-armoured beasts – which can reach a maximum 80mph – and will take delivery of the first early next year.

They will use a grenade machine gun which fires at up to 340 rounds per minute, usually in bursts of three to five rounds, at targets up to a mile away.

The Supacats will also employ a 7.62mm-calibre General Purpose Machine Gun, which fires 750 rounds per minute with a range of nearly a mile.

Scroll down for more

The vehicles, made at Honiton in Devon, will also have a mounted 0.5in-calibre heavy machine gun, which fires huge rounds more than a mile at a rate of 485 to 635 a minute. They are powered by a 5.9-litre turbo-diesel engine and will carry three or four crew.

One senior Army officer described the new super-truck as a "serious bit of kit", adding it would be a "huge boost to our long-range patrolling capability".

Senior defence sources say the Supacats will particularly come into their own against the Taliban in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, which has no roads.

Defence Minister Lord Drayson said last night: "These vehicles are well armed, swift and agile and will boost our capability with some serious firepower.

"The MoD and the Treasury have worked hard to get them to our troops in quick time, and they start going out to theatre early next year."

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Comments (4)

4 people have commented on this story so far. Tell us what you think below.

Here's a sample of the latest comments published. You can click view all to read all comments that readers have sent in.

It looks like there is not much protection for the crew. I would have thought that the crews safety and security would be the first on the list, but I suppose cheaper costs have won the day.

- John, Tendring, England

Light armoured beast? Where is the angled hull and high ground clearance to divert the blast from mines? The major threat is surely from mines and IEDs buried in the road, which can disable a tank and which have killed and injured dozens of our troops. Have the MOD got it wrong again?

- Percy, London

A serious bit of kit indeed - however, why has it taken so long to deploy and still will not be with our front-line forces until "early next year"!
Given the size of it, the weight of it, and the potential speed of it, no doubt some pen-pusher will decide that it does not conform to E.U. regulations on carbon footprint.

- Drew, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway.

> Troops deny firing on civilians

> Troops deny firing on civilians after British soldier killed in Helmand

By Terri Judd in Lashkar Gah

Published: 25 June 2007

A British soldier was killed in the Helmand province of Afghanistan yesterday when his convoy was hit by an explosive device. Minutes later the troops in his convoy shot one man dead and wounded another.

Locals accused the British of killing a civilian and wounding another, but the Army said the two men had sped towards the bomb wreckage on motorbikes, ignoring both a security cordon and warning shots.

"They repeatedly ignored all the ISAF warnings, including shouts, coloured flares and aimed warning shots," said Lt Col Charlie Mayo. A senior source said the dead man was clearly identified as a militant.

"(Nato-led) ISAF forces only open fire when they believe their lives are at risk. The local Afghan population know how we operate and how our warning systems work. This was a rural area with very few civilians and we were supported by the Afghan National Police," Lt Col Mayo said.

Raz Mohammad Sayed, the director of a local hospital, said they were treating a wounded civilian while another had been killed. At the hospital, Saad Mohammad, the brother of the dead man, said he was with him when British forces opened fire in different directions, including at houses.

The soldiers had been on a routine patrol in Lashkar Gah when their vehicle was hit. There were conflicting reports as to whether the explosive had been a mine or a roadside bomb, in a town repeatedly targeted by suicide bombers.

The incident came just hours after Nato conceded that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai had a right to be "disappointed and angry" at the scale of civilian casualties, and agreed that its forces needed to do better with such incidents.

After a week in which up to 90 Afghan civilians, including children, were killed, Mr Karzai launched an angry attack on the international forces, accusing them of using disproportionate force in civilian areas and of not co-ordinating with Afghan colleagues. "Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such," he said.

The outburst comes in a year in which it has been reported that more civilians were killed by foreign troops than by insurgents. Speaking a day after the head of Nato called for an investigation into an air strike in Helmand which killed 25 civilians , Mr Karzai said innocent people were becoming "victims of reckless operations" because foreign troops had ignored Afghan advice for years.

Responding to the comments, Nato spokesman Nick Lunt told the Associated Press: "President Karzai has a right to be disappointed and angry over the scale of civilians casualties in the last few days. We need to do better than we have been doing so far. But, unlike the Taliban, we do not set out to cause civilian casualties, and that is a critical difference."

While officially the British military has been at pains to praise the fledgling Afghan National Army and Police, privately many complain of the complexity of dealing with the new forces.

Meanwhile, in the Sangin area, militants executed the kidnapped son of a police officer yesterday, reneging on a deal to release the hostage in exchange for a Taliban commander, deputy district police chief Abdullah Khan said.

After the commander was freed, they changed the terms of the deal, demanding that the district police chief - the father of the hostage - step down, handing over the body of his son.

Also in Helmand, insurgents opened fire on Afghan and coalition troops, who returned fire and called for airstrikes on the militants' position in Langar village. One Estonian soldier and an Afghan soldier died.

n A German newsmagazine reported yesterday that two of its journalists, who are embedded with troops from the US 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, witnessed Afghan and American soldiers abusing Afghan prisoners.

The weekly Focus reported that, while on patrol with troops this month south-west of Kabul, the reporter Wolfgang Bauer and photographer Karsten Schoene witnessed an incident that they said amounted to torture.

> British soldier killed in Afghanistan...

British soldier killed in Afghanistan on Sunday 24 June 2007

24 Jun 07

It is with profound sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the death of a soldier from the 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters in southern Afghanistan today, Sunday 24 June 2007.

MOD Announcement

The soldier was killed at around 09.58 hrs local time roughly six kilometres outside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. The soldier's armoured 'Snatch' land rover was escorting a military team surveying the site for a new road project linking several Afghan villages in the Babaji area when it was caught in an explosion.

Four other soldiers were also injured in the explosion. All of the casualties were flown to the ISAF hospital at Camp Bastion where doctors pronounced one dead on arrival. The four remaining casualties are receiving medical treatment for their injuries.

All of their next of kin have now been informed.

Shortly after the explosion a man who failed to stop at the security cordon set up around the site was shot and killed, and a second man was wounded, after ignoring repeated calls to stop. The two men drove towards the cordon ignoring the soldiers' warnings, including shouts, coloured flares and aimed warning shots.

The soldiers were forced to open fire only after they had exhausted all reasonable measures to ensure their safety. A Shooting Incident Review is now underway.

> Blood & dust: On the front line with ...

In this exclusive report for the IoS, Terri Judd goes on patrol with the Grenadiers, Hussars, Staffords and Dragoons who form Britain's Brigade Reconnaissance Force in Helmand province

Published: 24 June 2007

Our long column of open-top armoured Land Rovers and Pinzgauers, bristling with machine guns, moved through the impenetrable darkness of a moonless desert in the far south of Afghanistan. All lights were extinguished, all conversations in whispers.

Perched on ammunition boxes in the back of an open Pinzgauer, I breathed in sand as I peered forth in an attempt to make sense of the shadows. Lance Corporal Matt "Orange" Hall, 21, manning the vehicle's mounted machine gun, handed me his night-vision scope. Through a green haze, I could just make out a few mud compounds and the first trees we had seen after travelling all day through barren desert. We were entering the "green zone".

 

Unlike the supposed safety of the district in central Baghdad, this strip of fertile inhabited ground, bordering the Helmand river, is lethal fighting territory for British troops. The Taliban avoid taking the battle into the desert; instead they operate in areas where they have the advantage, a maze of civilian compounds and irrigation ditches where tunnels have been dug and weapons stashed for battle. Entering the green zone means donning body armour and helmet in anticipation of attack.

Before leaving Camp Bastion, the main British base, on a three-week mission, Major Rob Sergeant, commanding officer of the Brigade Reconnaissance Force (BRF), had warned his men to be prepared for a tough time. They were moving into an area, south of Garmsir, where the Taliban have been attacking the British compound and a nearby checkpoint every day. Their mission was part of a wider 12 Mechanised Brigade effort to clear the insurgent stronghold - one that led to fierce battles last week as a bridge was built into new territory.

Far from the brigade's headquarters in Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, the mobile fighting unit deals with the harsher reality of a Taliban force that still controls swathes of the province, and is proving a ferocious adversary. It is a struggle which takes its toll not only on the combatants - Nato said one of its soldiers was killed in Helmand yesterday, along with "dozens" of insurgents in several clashes around the country - but also on civilians.

 

As they seek to bring the insurgents to battle, the thinly spread forces of Britain and its allies frequently have to call in air support to avoid being overrun, and civilians are regularly killed. Last week, local officials said 25 civilians, including women and children, died in an air strike in Helmand's northern half, and in Kabul yesterday President Hamid Karzai spoke out, saying: "In the past five or six nights and days, we had huge civilian casualties ... caused by Nato and coalition carelessness."

Major Sergeant explained that the BRF would be confronted by foreign fighters and what the military call Tier One Taliban, the well-trained, fanatical element of their enemy. Around Garmsir, narcotics are traded in bazaars and newly trained fighters come across the border to be "blooded", before heading north to the key points of Gereshk and Lashkar Gah. It is a part of Helmand where British soldiers have at times, in the words of one squaddie, "got a spanking".

 

"It is quite important that we don't underestimate the enemy," said Major Sergeant. "We have operated with some success in the north, but we are dealing with a different dynamic down south. They see it very much as their home ground." Company Sergeant-Major Ian "Faz" Farrell, 36, added: "They are really good. Their fire is accurate and they stay and fight."

Living in the desert for weeks on end, the BRF operates a small army of WMIK Land Rovers, known as "Wemmicks", and Pinzgauers. They are stripped of everything bar heavy weaponry, ammunition and enough food and water to survive. The force's task is to gather intelligence and "disrupt the enemy" with 50mm heavy machine guns, Javelin anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, mortars and general-purpose machine guns.

Their call sign, Maverick, is uncharacteristically macho for the British - inherited from the Americans, explained the slightly embarrassed commanding officer. But it suits this itinerant bunch of roving soldiers. They are, in the words of the Coldstream Guards officer leading them, a mongrel bunch, handpicked from across the brigade - an eclectic group of Grenadier Guards, Light Dragoons, King's Royal Hussars, Staffords, REME, Royal Artillery, Royal Army Medical Corps, Royal Engineers and one officer from the Honourable Artillery Company.

Fourteen hours after leaving Camp Bastion, we were into the green zone, with soldiers scanning the area for a shot or a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). L/Cpl Hall suggested I might like to crouch lower in the vehicle, but we moved through safely into the desert beyond the river, and there was hushed banter and laughter as the soldiers removed hot helmets.

 

Far from human habitation, the vehicles parked in formation, with an outer circle for protection. Those not on guard rolled out mats and collapsed on to them, asleep within minutes among the spiders. In the distance the sound of artillery and air bombs roared on.

But within hours we were off again - REME Staff Sergeant Ernie Tindall, 33, provided a wake-up call with the thump of a rolled-up sleeping mat. Before first light, we were ploughing into deep, soft sands, and as the heat of the day mounted, the vehicles - built for another era, another climate, another war - struggled to cope. Every so often one would sink into the sand or overheat, requiring, in the words of Sgt-Maj Farrell, a "David Mellor", or tow job.

 

When the temperature rose close to 50C, the order came once again to make camp in the desert close to their target - a known Taliban stronghold. Entertainment was limited to watching dung beetles or bantering between themselves. One vehicle crew claimed to have adopted a spider named "Fred West".

Far from the spit and polish of base camp, sandals, shorts and bare chests are the rule during quiet times. With water in short supply, washing is an unaffordable luxury, and beards grow wild. One soldier said he had been taken into hospital in Camp Bastion with a minor injury. "I woke to find a nurse spraying me with deodorant. She said, 'You stink.'" As the evening cooled, the men kept fit by lifting ammunition boxes or running through the sand. Meals consist of boil-in-the-bag corn-beef hash, "biscuits fruit" from ration packs and the ubiquitous "brews" on which the British army has long survived.

 

Under the shade of an army poncho, Maj Sergeant and Sgt-Maj Farrell explained what usually happened in the kind of encounter for which they were preparing. The mobile unit did not start fights, they said, but simply entered known enemy territory. This usually led to women and children leaving the village, swiftly followed by the first shots, at which they would return fire with ferocity. While many of the locals simply fled, they said, others would come forward with information.

In the past few months they had operated in the north of the province, near Sangin and Gereshk, where three of their men had suffered serious injuries. One of their fiercest fights was in late April in the village of Pasab, north east of Gereshk. On an intelligence-gathering mission, Maj Sergeant took one of his platoons into the village while the rest remained watching from a distance. The dusty streets were deserted as they walked between the high mud walls of the compounds, acutely aware of each step in the eerie silence.

"We found a local elder and, as is the good British way, I took off my helmet and my rifle, only keeping my pistol," said the major. "The elder insisted there were no Taliban. He had barely finished the word 'Taliban' when they opened fire." RPGs and fire from machine guns and small-arms fire rained down on the platoon. At one point the fight became so fierce that the soldiers fixed bayonets, anticipating hand-to-hand combat. At the same time, fighters emerged from the poppy fields and encircled the platoon outside the village. Departing "women" lifted their burqas to reveal armed men.

 

Suddenly over the radios they heard that one guardsman had been seriously injured by an RPG. With rounds whipping past, Sgt-Maj Farrell and his team went in to rescue the wounded soldier and take him up to open ground for the medevac helicopter to land, but they were immediately attacked with mortars. They returned fire with mortars, grenades and small arms, silencing the fighters long enough for the Chinook to come down and fly the injured guardsman to field hospital.

Back in the village, 2 Platoon was running low on ammunition. "In one of the gardens, there was a wheelbarrow so we loaded it up to get the ammunition to the platoon, still in contact. As we got back to the vehicle they were firing around our heads," said Sgt-Maj Farrell.

The battle raged for three hours but eventually, with the help of Hellfire missiles from Apache attack helicopters, it quietened down. As they withdrew, they could hear the sound of a single AK-47 rifle. "It all goes quiet and, as we pull out, there is a burst of fire or RPG. They always have to have the last word," added the senior non-commissioned officer.

The next day the BRF was in the nearby village of Khugyani when once again they faced a full ambush, "walls of RPGs". Two of their team were seriously injured and there were countless near misses. "Their courage is humbling," the major said of his 80 men. "That platoon went into the village knowing that they were going to get hit again. It was quite impressive."

And now, south of Garmsir, they were expecting even fiercer opposition. At daybreak, each man reacted in his own unique way. Some joked, others sat quietly on their own - a few admitted to butterflies or feeling sick. Nerves were tempered with humour, often black, always barbed.

Across the radio between the different vehicles, the jokes focused on Lance Sergeant Dave Rideout, the lone member of the team yet to be "christened" in a fight. Contemplating his future R&R (rest and recuperation break mid-tour), the 34-year-old, nicknamed "Dagenham Dave", said: "Is there a McDonald's near Brize [RAF Brize Norton]?" A corporal replied: "You have to get through this first." Another added cheerily: "Don't worry, we will wheel you out of Selly Oak [hospital]." The Lance Sergeant retorted: "I can't go home today. I haven't tanned my legs yet."

Each man had his own lucky charms and rituals. Staff Sergeant Tindall sported a yellow soft toy duck, sent by a young relative, on the side of his Pinzgauer, where a "chuff chart" marked off the days until R&R. He munched on biscuits before battle.

Next to him Sgt-Maj Farrell carried a heart pendant from his wife as his lucky charm. As the vehicles prepared to head into the green zone, he listened to "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses. As the track finished, he placed the iPod carefully away, turned and smiled: "Let the games begin."

 

Once again the vehicles sped and lurched through the desert and into the green zone, waiting at a distance as they watched long columns of women and children depart. Closer and closer they inched into the compounds, eyes scanning the area. But for some inexplicable reason the onslaught never materialised. After hours of daring the enemy to emerge, the team returned to its desert camp, the anti-climax of the day proving a mixture of disappointment and relief.

The following morning, on a Chinook to another part of Helmand, I listened with little interest to the chatter coming over the radio when suddenly I heard the BRF's call sign requesting an emergency response helicopter, and my stomach lurched. They had a T1 - a serious casualty. Their battle had come, and someone had paid a heavy price.

Further reading: 'Poppy for Medicine', a Senlis Council paper on Afghanistan's opium trade, is issued tomorrow

Dispatches: The incessant sound of warfare

By Lt Matthew Fyjis-Walker of the Light Dragoons, 25, from London. He is currently serving in the Brigade Reconnaissance Force, Helmand, southern Afghanistan

My impressions of Camp Bastion and Afghanistan are somewhat contrary to those of an MP who is rumoured to have remarked to the Commons that Camp Bastion was "just like Wiltshire with the heating turned up".

But after a hot and dangerous patrol, even the limited delights of Camp Bastion seem like a haven of rest to the British soldiers here in Helmand. The last Brigade Recce Force (BRF) patrol, scheduled for two weeks, lasted the best part of a month.The BRF has been given the task of putting the Taliban on the back foot. At midnight the vehicles move out across the desert towards the "green zone". There is always a flutter in my stomach as we drive through villages and towns, the fighting ground of the Taliban. Your senses seem to become more aware of even the smallest changes to the norm that unerringly give your position away.

We camp in the desert overnight. When we are not engaged in direct action with the enemy, we are out in the desert re-supplying, watching the enemy or gathering intelligence. After a long day on sentry duty with a corporal, we discussed his family. He met his girlfriend in late November, and she was pregnant by early December. When I asked whether he was planning to marry her, he said: "No, sir, I don't want to rush into things." The traditionalist in me sort of questioned whether he hadn't already done so.

We spend a day in the desert developing and reconnoitring a plan to get into the "green zone" the following day. The move in is usually the worst time.

 

It is the sounds I will take away above all else, of the country and the conflict. The muezzin's call to prayer, the crack of AK rounds, the whizz of an RPG, the whine of rockets and, of course, the explosions. So often we catch only a fleeting glimpse of our enemy, but we hear his rounds for hours at a time.

> Hero Kuku

Hero Kuku, 24, wounded

By JOHN KAY
and TOM NEWTON DUNN
June 21, 2007

 
Injured ... Guards officer Folarin

 The first black officer in the Grenadier Guards has been seriously wounded in southern Afghanistan.

Second Lieutenant Folarin Kuku, 24 -- a polo playing pal of Prince William -- suffered shrapnel wounds to his arms and leg from a Taliban grenade.

Lt Kuku, whose mum is a Nigerian chief, was leading a routine foot patrol in Helmand province when the fanatics ambushed them on Tuesday morning.

He was rushed from hot-spot town Gereshk by chopper to a field hospital at British HQ Camp Bastion.

Once he is stable, he will be flown back to the UK for expert treatment.

Lt Koku trained with Prince William at Sandhurst and joined the elite 350-year-old regiment six months ago.

The Harrow-educated officer won national fame after his appointment was revealed by The Sun. He is the only black officer in the entire Guards division -- which includes the Scots, Irish, Welsh and Coldstreams.

An MoD spokeswoman said last night: "We can confirm that a soldier was seriously injured on a foot patrol."

> Afghan Taleban 'targeting Kabul'

Afghan Taleban 'targeting Kabul'

The Taleban have promised more attacks in Kabul

The Taleban in Afghanistan are changing their tactics to mount more attacks on the capital, Kabul, a spokesman for the militant group has told the BBC.

The spokesman, Zabiyullah Mujahed, said Taleban were recovering after Nato had infiltrated the group and killed some of its leaders.

But more people were volunteering to carry out suicide bombings, he said.

A police bus in Kabul was bombed on Sunday killing at least 24 people, in the deadliest attack there since 2001.

Mr Mujahed said the city was the next main target of the Taleban.

A lot of people are coming to our suicide bombing centre to volunteer

Zabiyullah Mujahed
Taleban spokesman

"It is true we are increasing our pressure on Kabul, because Kabul is the capital city and the foreign troops are concentrated there," Zabiyullah Mujahed said.

He added that the "independence and freedom of our country" was the goal of the Taleban and that they were repeating the same tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.

"A lot of people are coming to our suicide bombing centre to volunteer," he said.

'Tide turning'

On Wednesday Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said support for the Taleban was diminishing.

AFGHANISTAN'S FUTURE

This week, BBC News is taking an in-depth look at the challenges facing Afghanistan's people and the peacekeepers.
Stories include: the state of the Taleban; corruption; the drugs problem; and attacks on schools.

Afghanistan in-depth

Can Afghanistan be won?

"At the moment you see the tides are turning in our favour, the Taleban have failed to materialise their so called spring offensive, they have failed to isolate Kabul or to cut highways or to expand their area of influence," he told the BBC.

Despite the Taleban's new focus on the capital city, heavy fighting in the south of the country has continued.

Three Canadian Nato soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province on Wednesday.

The Taleban said it had carried out the attack.

About 90 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, most in combat for the Nato-led force Isaf in the country's south.

Correspondents say that the south of the country has this year seen the worst violence since the Taleban were ousted from power in 2001 by an international coalition.

> UK 'in Afghanistan for decades'

UK 'in Afghanistan for decades'

Nato's International Security Assistance Force includes UK troops

The UK presence in Afghanistan will need to remain for decades to help rebuild the country, British ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has said.

"The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He added that the Afghan people wanted the UK presence to help resist the Taleban and develop the country.

Extra diplomatic staff are being deployed to Afghanistan this year.

"The message we are getting, the message I had only last week down in Helmand from the people of the villages there, was, 'Please protect us from the Taleban,'" said Sir Sherard.

AFGHANISTAN'S FUTURE

This week, BBC News is taking an in-depth look at the challenges facing Afghanistan's people and the peacekeepers.
Stories include: the state of the Taleban; corruption; the drugs problem; and attacks on schools.

Afghanistan in-depth

Can Afghanistan be won?

"Their worry isn't about us staying, it's about us going; about us not finishing the job of standing up the police, standing up the security forces, standing up the judicial system, putting schools and hospitals in place."

He added: "They remember the Taleban - they have had a test-drive of Taleban rule and if there is one thing they are clear about it's that they do not want to return to the dark days of medieval Taleban rule."

'Huge commitment'

The BBC learned in January that the government planned to send as many as 35 extra diplomatic staff to Afghanistan.

The priorities would be to combat corruption, help build government institutions in the south and to tackle the production of opium, the Foreign Office said.

The number of UK troops in Afghanistan is also being boosted to about 7,700 this year. They will be mainly based in the volatile Helmand province, where they have been fighting the Taleban.

It's a marathon rather than a sprint

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles

BBC world affairs editor John Simpson said the British embassy in Kabul was likely to become the UK's biggest anywhere.

"It's a huge commitment," he said.

"The fact that Sir Sherard is here as ambassador is itself a sign of the Foreign Office's determination to upgrade its whole representation in Afghanistan.

"He's a big hitter in the diplomatic service."

Sir Sherard said: "We are going to win this, but it's going to take time. It's a marathon rather than a sprint - we should be thinking in terms of decades."

'Troops stretched'

Meanwhile, a soldier serving in Afghanistan has complained that forces are fighting the Taleban without enough men or equipment, making them vulnerable to attack.

The 23-year-old told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight of a number of missions which had gone dangerously wrong.

In one instance, 16 men were sent to clear an enemy compound holding as many as 100 Taleban fighters, but their trucks failed to operate in the rough terrain.

They then had to carry heavy packs in 50C heat without enough water before being ambushed. They had no back up.

The Ministry of Defence has admitted the armed forces are stretched and says it hopes troop reductions in Iraq, Bosnia and Northern Ireland will ease the situation.

> Helmand Residents Cast Doubt on Success of NATO Operation

It is either the best of times or the worst in northern Helmand, depending on who your source is.

By IWPR trainees in Helmand (ARR No. 257, 19-June-07)

NATO says Operation Lastay Kulang - or "Axe Handle" - which its forces launched in early June to clear the Taleban out of the Upper Sangin Valley has been an unqualified success.

"From Sangin to Greshk, the entire area is under government and ISAF control," said Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Mayo, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, ISAF. "The Taleban are weak. They are not able to fight with ISAF and the Afghan government."

There is, however, another version of this story, according to which Operation Lastay Kulang has been a miserable failure, causing death to civilians and destruction of homes and livelihoods without producing any lasting results.

"We took Kajaki district back from the NATO forces and the Afghan government and it is now completely under our control. We also took some parts of Sangin district," said Taleban spokesman Qari Yusuf.

NATO and the Taleban may be about as far as possible away from each other on their view of Operation Lastay Kulang. But residents of the area are not swayed by spin - their daily lives are directly affected by the reality on the ground.

"At ten in the evening on Thursday [June 14], NATO took its soldiers away by helicopter," said Mahmadullah, a resident of Kajaki. "Then the Taleban came back. They took over those areas that NATO and the Afghan government captured two weeks ago, called Kata-Kajaki [lower Kajaki]".

Nazar Mohammad, also from Kajaki, confirmed this version of events. "When I woke up early on Friday morning, I went to the mosque," he told IWPR. "On my way there, I saw a lot of Taleban walking around, and I asked why they were there. All the people said, 'The British have left, and now the Taleban are back.'"

A Taleban district commander, who did not want to be named, was more specific: "The centre of Sangin and Sori-Gaari to the north of the centre, as well as the Tangay area, are under government control. The rest of Sangin, including Sarwan Qala, is the Taleban's."

According to ISAF sources, a small number of British and American "advisors" are accompanying Afghan National Army, ANA, troops and driving northwards in a wedge from Greshk to Kajkai, clearing the area of insurgents. The foreign forces then push on, leaving the national troops to hold the area that has been taken.

But locals say that as soon as the last foreign boots leave the ground, the Taleban, deterred only by NATO's overwhelming air advantage and heavier armour, swarm back.

The area around Sangin and Kajaki is strategically important because it furnishes electricity to Helmand and to a great extent also neighbouring Kandahar. More than two million people depend on the Kajaki dam and hydroelectric power station, which are in need of major reconstruction. The power supply has been highly unstable since January, when Taleban insurgents began cutting electricity lines that run through Sangin.

The Provincial Reconstruction Team, PRT, in Lashkar Gah has been promising for months that work on the power station would soon begin, but the standoff between Taleban and ISAF has prevented any real progress from being made.

HEARTS AND MINDS GONE WRONG

Sangin, located between the provincial capital Lashkar Gah and Kajaki, has been the scene of bitter fighting in the last two months that has left much of the district centre a mass of rubble. In part to reach out to local residents and assure them that their concerns were being heard, ISAF organised a shura, or council, to confer with tribal elders in Sangin on June 7.

As hearts and minds campaigns go, it was certainly unique.

After a tentatively optimistic beginning, during which British forces listened sympathetically to complaints about the lack of water and electricity, the need for reconstruction, and demands for compensation for damages, a bearded American Special Forces officer who identified himself only as "Major Gill", jumped to his feet.

"You do not actually want assistance! You are all Taleban! It is my job to kill Taleban and I will not leave here until all the Taleban are gone," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

As an angry murmur spread through the crowd, Gill continued, "You continue to allow the Taleban into your villages and homes. I have seen them misuse your women and children as human shields.

"The ISAF forces have come to help you, and you ask for power and water. But you don't want schools and hospitals. No one will come to build these things if the Taleban are there and the workers are getting killed."

Major Gill was not best served by his translator, in whose interpretation the words "You allow the Taleban to misuse your women and children" took on a slightly seedier meaning than Gill perhaps intended.

The American also took the somewhat unusual step of unilaterally offering amnesty to Taleban fighters, although forgiveness under the law is normally the prerogative of a country's elected government.

"The Taleban should come and lay down their arms and we will guarantee that no one will say anything to them," the US officer told the white-bearded elders, who by now were standing up and shouting, some making threatening gestures.

"Do you want us to dig up our dead women and children so you can see that they were not Taleban?" said Gul Agha, an elder who had to be physically restrained by his colleagues. "The British do not help us. They just come for a look, and then leave again. They kill civilians, innocent people."

"You came to arrest the Taleban but you can't do it!" screamed another man.

Gill continued, seemingly unperturbed.

"Millions of dollars are coming into Sangin," he said. "If you don't grow poppy, we will spend the money on you."

The US Congress recently passed a 6.4 billion US dollar assistance package for Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Freedom and Security Support Act. But the bill mandates a cut-off of aid to those provinces and districts that support "terrorists" or continue to grow opium poppy.

Helmand is far and away the leader in Afghanistan's drugs trade; according to a 2006 survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. This one province furnishes close to 40 per cent of the world's supply of heroin. Despite stirring rhetoric and billions of dollars spent on the counter-narcotics effort, this year's crop looks certain to be even larger, according to provincial officials.

Given the disappointing results of assistance programmes to date, the anti-poppy speeches may be a bit of a hard sell in the province.

"We will never stop cultivating poppy until the end of your life, Gill," said one shura member who did not want to be named. "This is our land and our livelihood. If we stop planting poppy life will get much harder."

SECURITY A "LIE"

Sangin's district governor, Ezatullah, insisted that the area was getting back to normal.

"We have created a tribal shura and invited people of every tribe, and the people have assured us that they will help us with security," he said. "We will start first with power and water, and then begin to rebuild the bombed-out houses."

But Afghan army officials say privately that there is no real security in Sangin.

"Those foreign [expletive deleted] say there is security - it's a lie," fumed one commander. "They don't risk their asses out here. There are Taleban right in the district centre, but the British and the Americans stay in their holes."

This latest operation against the insurgency has been costly. While exact figures are difficult to come by, most accounts track hundreds of civilian casualties, and dozens of ANA deaths. The British and American forces have also sustained losses, with seven killed in a helicopter crash in early June, and dozens others killed or injured in fighting or terrorist attacks over the past three months.

"The Taleban are all over the place," said Abdul Hakim, a resident of Sangin. "The British will never be able to get rid of them. We now have troops from 35 countries. They could make it 70 countries, and still they wouldn't succeed."

SANGIN A GHOST TOWN

Locals have had enough of empty promises. Sangin's bazaar is almost entirely flattened, and those walls still standing exhibit black gaping mouths instead of doors.

The town itself is almost deserted, with a few isolated specks of life. The small army of journalists at the shura had to hunt hard to find residents to interview.

Most people were unwilling to talk.

"I saw 18 people killed here in this bazaar," said Noor Mohammad, a young shopkeeper. "Not even a cat can live here now. Anyone who so much as moved was shot so full of holes he looked like a soup strainer."

According to Noor Mohammad, barely three per cent of the shops are now open.

Abdul Razzaq, who had a small shop in the bazaar, looked sadly at the ruins of his enterprise.

"I lost 50,000 rupees worth of goods, and mine was the smallest shop," he said, shaking his head. "Others lost much more - millions in damages.

"I don't think the British have got even with us yet. There will be more bombs," he said.

But some local people seem to be taking the harsh lessons of the past month to heart, and are uniting to deny the Taleban access to their homes and their villages.

In May, an insurgent attack on coalition forces called down a retaliatory strike that all but flattened the village of Sarwan Qala. In response, residents rose up against the Taleban, chasing down and killing a commander and his deputies.

"There was a fight between locals and the Taleban, and Commander Wali Mohammad and his two friends were killed," said Sultan Mahmud, chief of police in Sangin district. "They captured their weapons, and now the people are more powerful than the Taleban."

Some of Sangin's residents agree.

"Last week the American Major Gill accused us of being Taleban," said one shopkeeper. "But we are against the Taleban. We won't let the Taleban use our houses and our people.

"In Sangin district people are getting closer to the government, because right now the Taleban are weak. We will help the government kick the Taleban out of Sangin district."