Army chief hails Afghan progress

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Brigadier Andrew MacKay, the commander of 52 Infantry Brigade, is back at its headquarters at Edinburgh's Redford barracks after six months heading operations in Helmand.

Brigadier MacKay was in Helmand Province when Prince Harry was deployed there. The 23-year-old Household Cavalry officer spent 10 weeks there, with his work involving him carrying detailed aerial surveillance behind Taliban lines and calling in bomb strikes on confirmed enemy bunker positions.

Brigadier MacKay praised him and said: "He shared the same risks, he endured the same austerity as everyone else, there were no special protection teams or anyone guarding him. He was just doing his job, like everyone else. I think that's why he enjoyed it as much as he did."

Under his leadership the Brigade HQ and the troops it commanded were responsible for recapturing the strategic town of Musa Q'alah from the Taliban.

It was the biggest operation in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion and Brigadier MacKay said: "There's now a school, with about 800 kids going to to that school. We built a road, there's a health clinic up and running, there's a work programme that employs 400 people a day on various projects, there's a mosque that will be built.

"We're trying to show the people they have a better chance this way than with the Taliban."

He stressed the importance of such reconstruction and development work to Afghanistan and said: "What we were trying to do is make sure that we don't make sure that body count is a measure of success. It never is."

Brigadier MacKay - who was in charge of some 7,000 troops in Afghanistan - told how most soldiers in Helmand had been involved in work such as digging irrigation ditches, building schools and refurbishing mosques, saying the forces were trying to improve the quality of life for the local population.

But he added: "Often the real improvement they want is security." In the six months he was in Helmand, 10 British soldiers were killed, with troops from other countries, including a number of American soldiers, also losing their lives.