Army chief: Security, not Afghan vote, was priority

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson spoke out after the Standard revealed that as few as 150 people may have voted in an area where British forces suffered heavy losses driving out the Taliban.

Ten UK soldiers died in Operation Panther's Claw which was carried out before the presidential election last Thursday.

Lt-Col Richardson, British spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "The success of Operation Panther's Claw is measured by the fact that we have brought security and not by the numbers that have voted. We were not necessarily expecting large numbers to vote."

He denied morale of troops had been hit by the reports of low turnout in the poll and said people in the UK should be "very proud" of what British forces were achieving.

Britain's ambassador in Kabul Mark Sedwill has not denied that election turnout may have been as low as 150 in the Babaji area of Helmand.

Hazel Hunt, whose son Richard, 21, was the 200th British serviceman killed in Afghanistan and who was being buried today, said she was "horrified" by the reported poor turnout. "The figures reflect terribly on our strategy," she said.

Lord Guthrie, former chief of the Defence Staff, today attacked ministers, the Ministry of Defence and the Civil Service over the running of the conflict.

"Britain is at war, but one would never know it walking around Whitehall. For too many politicians it is merely another day of awkward things happening in far away places," he told The Times.

"The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan appear no more than inconvenient blips."
He branded the MoD an "unwieldy edifice" and accused ministers of having "private empires".