UK withdrawal from Sangin 'not a retreat,' Fox insists
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, July 7, IRNA -- Defence Secretary Liam Fox confirmed Wednesday that British troops in the Sangin area of Helmand province in Afghanistan are to be replaced by US forces, but insisted it was not a retreat.
“Any attempt by anyone to describe this as a retreat would be completely contemptible,” Fox insisted in the face of a critical response from some MPs to his announcement in parliament, including from Conservatives.
Former shadow health minister John Baron suggested that Britain was in danger of achieving a "pyrrhic victory" where losses outweigh the gains.
Other Conservatives were also critical of the claim that the war in Afghanistan is about protecting Britain from terrorist attack on the day the country was marking the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks on London’s transport system.
“The last government insisted on telling us that conventional military operations would somehow impede this sort of attack in the future. Clearly that is nonsense,” said former shadow minister for homeland security Patrick Mercer.
“This is as much about fighting for Pakistan's stability as Afghanistan's stability, and that the lives and blood of our servicemen are being shed … incurring terrible losses,” Mercer said.
Member of the Public Accounts Commission Edward Leigh also asked why British troops were still in Afghanistan, saying it was known that al-Qaeda has moved most of its operations to Pakistan.
“Is it to hold territory, which nobody has ever succeeded in doing in Afghanistan, not even the Soviets, with 240,000 people,” He challenged Fox.
“If it is to fight a dirty war and keep their heads down, why don't we place more reliance on special forces, rather than let the British army go on bleeding to death,” he said.
Earlier Wednesday, former head of the British Army, Richard Dannatt, who is now an adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, warned that the number of British fatalities would probably reach 400 from its current total of 312.
"The intention when we went into southern Afghanistan was to try to get the country on its feet economically. We all know it didn't turn out that way,” Dannatt said.
"We spread our small resources thinly and that inevitably made the small number of British soldiers like flies in a honey pot and we got into this cycle of fighting,” he told BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Figures released by Fox in a written parliamentary reply also showed the escalating net additional cost from the Treasury for the war is estimated to reach nearly £4.5 billion in the current fiscal year until March 2011.
The annual additional cost for the war, which fell to £46 million in 2003/4, jumped to £738 million in 2006/07, when troops were sent to replace American forces in Helmand. The following year it was up to £1.5 bn, then £2.6 bn in 2008/9 and more than £4.1 bn last year.
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End News / IRNA / News Code 1218261
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