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Troops 'face five more years of fighting and bloodshed'
Nicholas Cecil, Deputy Political Editor17 Aug 2009
British troops could be locked in bloody combat with the Taliban for five more years with hundreds more casualties, the outgoing head of the Army admitted today.
General Sir Richard Dannatt issued the grim warning as official figures showed that almost 1,000 UK military personnel have been killed or wounded in action since the start of the Afghan conflict eight years ago.
The British death toll has soared in recent weeks as UK soldiers have been deployed to the "epicentre" of insurgent violence in the southern Helmand province ahead of the Afghan presidential elections on Thursday.
Senior British military and diplomatic sources say the recent Operation Panther's Claw will allow tens of thousands more people to vote.
But Taliban fighters are threatening to cut off the fingers of people they catch with ink on their hands which election officials are using as a mark to show they have voted.
General Dannatt, who has criticised the Government for not providing more resources for UK forces, said: "We have got to get it right. It will take a bit of time.
"We will go on doing, as the military, what we need to do until the Afghan capability is good enough to take over from us.
"That will continue for years. I don't want to put a figure on that but certainly two to four years, three to five years, of this kind of level of commitment by the military."
General Dannatt's comments come after Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth was criticised for suggesting the UK's role in Afghanistan could be scaled down over the next 12 months.
Mr Ainsworth said yesterday: "It will not be at a situation where we will be able to pull back, but we will increasingly see the Afghan National Army taking the front."
When asked whether British troops could be reduced within the next 12 months in Afghanistan, General Dannatt said: "Realistically, one year would be a challenge."
The incoming head of the army, General Sir David Richards, said that it could take up to 40 years to rebuild Afghanistan but he denied a split with the Defence Secretary.
He emphasised that he was talking about the wider mission to support the wartorn country rather than the current, intense military operations.
"There is no difference between my views and those of the Secretary of State on this. It is unhelpful to all those engaged in this conflict, both here and in Afghanistan, to suggest that there is," he said.
Mr Ainsworth said today that he agreed with General Richards that there would need to be a "long-term" deployment to help with training and development assistance.
He said General Richards had been "misrepresented" when he suggested that British forces could be in Afghanistan for up to 40 years.
Opposition MPs accused the Government of spinning to try to cover up its errors over the military campaign.
