Armed Forces Too Weak To Defeat The Taliban

British soldiers landing in Helmand Photo: EPA


A Top-Level Report Blames Defence Ministers and Senior Officers For Grave Errors In Afghanistan.

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
7:00AM BST 17 Jul 2011
Courtesy Of "The Telegraph"

A devastating report into the Afghanistan war has concluded that the British task force sent into Helmand in 2006 was ill-equipped, under-resourced and too weak to defeat the Taliban.

In Operations in Afghanistan – which is deeply critical of both senior commanders and government ministers – the Defence Select Committee states that the Helmand mission was undermined by bad planning and poor intelligence, and the task force was capped at 3,150 troops for financial rather than operational reasons.

Much of the blame for the failings is levelled at senior officers for claiming that field commanders were content with the support they were receiving, when the reverse was true.

The report reveals that the high levels of British casualties was not predicted. Since 2006 more than 370 British troops have been killed and almost 2,000 wounded.

The report, which comes as a Nato soldier was yesterday shot dead by a member of the Afghan security forces in Helmand, also states:

* The task force deployed with just five chinooks and just over half the number of vehicles required.

* Defence chiefs told minister they had enough helicopters in Helmand even though field commanders complained of shortages.

* The MoD did not respond quickly enough to the threat posed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The task force was deployed to help safeguard security and reconstruction efforts and to increase governance. But the operation quickly turned into all-out war, leaving British troops isolated and surrounded by insurgents.

The key decision taken to deploy troops to Sangin, Musa Qala and Now Zad in late May 2006 had serious strategic implications, the report adds, given that the force was so poorly resourced. But MPs say they consider it “unlikely that this fundamental change, which put British soldiers’ lives at much greater risk, was put to ministers.”

The development of IEDs – the Taliban’s most lethal weapon against British troops – was also not predicted: “We believe that the MoD did not respond quickly enough to these challenges as they developed. We continue to be concerned about the time taken to get a suitably capable vehicle fleet into theatre. Protecting Armed Forces personnel is a critical duty of the MoD.”

The report also criticises senior commanders for sending a military task force into Helmand without a strategic reserve force – a move widely regarded as a fundamental and potentially catastrophic military mistake. It adds: “There should always be a contingency reserve available with the resources to support it. If it is used, immediate plans to restore it should be in place.”

The 75-page report does not name officers but those in positions of authority at the time included Gen Sir Mike Walker, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Gen Sir Mike Jackson and Gen Sir Richard Dannatt.

James Arbuthnot, chairman of the Defence Committee, said: “Our forces have achieved the best tactical outcomes possible in very difficult circumstances due to the high quality and training of our personnel.

"But the force levels deployed throughout 2006, 2007 and 2008 were never going to achieve what was being demanded of the Armed Forces by the UK, Nato and the Afghan Government.”

Mr Arbuthnot said the defence committee now believed that Nato’s “conditions-based approach” to withdrawal was a suitable one.

In response to the report, Dr Liam Fox, the Defence secretary, said: “Since 2009 we have seen increases of force levels in Helmand and through the growth of the Afghan forces that have halted the momentum of the insurgency. Since November 2006, the number of UK airframes [aircraft] available to commanders in Afghanistan has doubled.

“While there is much still to do, we are on track to achieve our target of ending UK combat operations in Afghanistan by 2015... We will not abandon Afghanistan.”

The damning report digested... and what it means for the mission

ARMOURED VEHICLES

The British Task Force was deployed without a single vehicle capable of surviving a strike from a Russian anti-tank mine or larger IEDs.

Brig Ed Bulter told the committee his force deployed with a “45 per cent shortfall of vehicles”. Despite his staff identifying that the Snatch Land Rover was “not an appropriate vehicle for the desert”, it was still used as there was nothing else available.

Mastiffs – one of the few armoured vehicles capable of surviving a blast by an IED – were not supplied to the British force until 2007. The report concluded: “Protecting Armed Forces personnel is a critical duty of the MoD. We recommend, in its response to this report, the MoD explains how current equipment levels are providing the Armed Forces with the necessary protected vehicles, body armour and counter-IED support.”

Analysis: The lack of armoured vehicles meant British convoys could not safely travel the vast distances over which troops were spread without sustaining heavy casualties.

COUNTER-IED STRATEGY

The report states that the MoD failed to respond quickly enough to the threat posed by IEDs. In 2009, 80 British soldiers were killed by the Taliban and 75 per cent of those

died from wounds sustained by IEDs. Hundreds more were wounded.

Analysis: In 2008 there were just two bomb disposal teams in Helmand, even though the number of IED incidents had risen 300 per cent in 12 months. By 2009, thousands more bombs had been planted and the number of disposal teams risen to 10.

In June 2010, the Government announced that the Counter-IED task force would receive an extra £67 million.

THE FUTURE

Britain’s and Nato’s exit strategy is linked to the capability of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to take over responsibility for the country by 2014.

The report states: “There have been significant improvements ... but there is much progress yet to be made before the Afghan National Army (ANA) is ready to take over.

"We welcome General Richards’s assurance that the aim of a sustainable ANA is being aggressively pursued, but the MoD must maintain its focus on training the ANA.”

Analysis: The fear is that if there are not a significant number of troops of the right quality capable of repelling a Taliban offensive, Britain’s withdrawal could be delayed.

NUMBER OF TROOPS

In its Operations in Afghanistan report, the Defence Select Committee states that the decision to send British troops into Helmand was “not properly thought through”, and that defence chiefs failed to predict that the presence of British troops would “stir up a hornets’ nest”.

Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of the first task force to enter Helmand in April 2006, told the committee that the planning process was “far from clear” as too many officers were involved, which resulted in a “split planning effort”.

Analysis: The key failing was to send too small a force into Helmand. Despite an £808 million budget for three years, troop numbers were capped at 3,150.

Of those, around 650 combat troops were deployed into an area half the size of the UK; by contrast, in 2001 Nato had 30,000 personnel in Helmand.

Within weeks of their arrival, the British were trapped in isolated locations and engaged in daily battles.

HELICOPTERS AND TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT

The report states that the previous defence committee had been told by MoD officials that British troops had sufficient helicopters, when in reality they had too few.

Analysis: The lack of helicopters meant that troops had to move long distances by road, running the risk of being ambushed or suffering casualties through IED strikes.

With just five Chinook support helicopters, Brig Ed Butler’s task force also lacked the flexibility to operate in a highly fluid combat environment.

Within two months, the British unit had exceeded the number of planned flying hours for Chinooks by 20 per cent, and by 11 per cent for attack helicopters, while transport aircraft were flying at 92 per cent of their maximum output.