British Commander Demands Tro0P Numbers In Helmand Be Doubled

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A FEW WEEKS ago the US Secretary of Defence, Gates, was accused of trying to corral the British government into sending more troops to Afghanistan when he announced that he expected it to do this in the near future.

The Defence Minister Des Browne responded that there were no plans to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Now, the British commander in Helmand province, Brigadier Carlton-Smith, has taken up the US call. He told Sky TV that he wanted to see a doubling of the troop numbers in Helmand province from 4,000 to 8,000 by the sending of another full British brigade.

He said: ‘There is work to be done across the region. The Taleban keep coming from Pakistan and bolster their forces. 

‘They won’t be strong enough to change the regime, but they are strong enough to be dangerous, deadly and keep this insurgency going.

‘This is a generational problem and that will take 10 to 15 years to change, and we will need to be here.’

For good measure, he added referring to Pakistan: ‘It is a nightmare. A nuclear power that is radicalising itself and supplying fighters to Afghanistan. It is a problem that must be addressed.’ He stops just short of ‘regime change’.

As is well known the US administration is mightily concerned about both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and has decided that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won, until the Taleban and its supporters have been defeated in Pakistan.

This is a repetition of their strategy in Vietnam where the US rulers decided that the war in the South could not be won until the power of north Vietnam was destroyed.

This was the reason for the massive bombing campaign in the North, that Presidential contender John McCain knows all about.

It is known that George Bush has already given the go-ahead for US troops to pursue or attack ‘Taleban forces’ forces inside Pakistan, without asking the permission of the Pakistan government to do so.

Already US drone aircraft have been sent over the border to attack Pakistani targets, and already Pakistani troops have opened fire on US forces crossing the border into their country.

The British military, and both the US military and political administration are now in favour of an expansion of the war in Afghanistan.

All three forces consider that Pakistan is a ‘nightmare’ and a ‘problem that must be addressed’.

All attempts to address the ‘problem’ by first of all using heavier and heavier weaponry inside Afghanistan, causing massive civilian casualties, have resulted in the Taleban becoming stronger inside Afghanistan, not weaker.

The Brigadier’s request for another batallion puts to shame all of the British military protestations that they were beating the ‘enemy’.

Likewise, every intervention by US or any other troops into Pakistan is strengthening the Taleban there, and convincing millions of Pakistanis that the US and the UK are indeed the enemy and must be fought both in Afghanistan and inside Pakistan.

The end prospect is that the US and UK imperialists are heading for a bloody and violent defeat, with the heaviest fighting of the war likely to be inside Pakistan’s borders in Wazirstan and the other tribal areas.

There is no doubt that the British government will give in to all the demands of the US administration and its own military, and double the size of the army of occupation in Afghanistan regardless of the cost.

The trade unions in Britain must wake up to the fact that the imperialists are determined to turn both Afghanistan and Pakistan into areas of all-out armed conflict with massive civilian casualties.

They must campaign and march and also organise industrial action against this war and demand that all British troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan. However there is not the slightest doubt that the defeat of British forces in Afghanistan will weaken and demoralise the British capitalist state, and make the task of the socialist revolution at home that much easier.