AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
London: An officer has resigned from the British army in protest at its “grotesquely clumsy” campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, a newspaper reported Sunday. Captain Leo Docherty was aide-de-camp to Colonel Charlie Knaggs, a senior commander in the British task force in southern Afghanistan, but quit last month after becoming disillusioned with its strategy in Helmand province, The Sunday Times said.
The approach is “a textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency,” Docherty was quoted as saying.
“All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British,” he said. “Weve been grotesquely clumsy. Weve said well be different to the Americans who were bombing and strafing villages, then behaved exactly like them,” he said.
“Weve deviated spectacularly from the original plan,” Docherty was quoted as saying. “The plan was to secure the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, initiate development projects and enable governance … During this time, the insecure northern part of Helmand would be contained: troops would not be sucked in to a problem unsolvable by military means alone.”
Docherty said the plan “fell by the wayside” because of pressure from the governor of Helmand, who feared the Taliban were toppling his district chiefs in northern towns, according to The Sunday Times.
The British military paid tribute Saturday to those killed in a plane crash in Afghanistan as they counted the cost of September, already the deadliest month they have sustained since March 2003.
In total, 22 British troops have been killed so far this month as they tackle insurgents on two fronts: 19 in Afghanistan, including 14 when a Nimrod reconnaissance plane crashed, and three others in attacks in Iraq.
According to a study by the Royal Statistical Society published in the New Scientist magazine, Afghanistan has become more dangerous than Iraq for Western troops since fighters loyal to the deposed Taliban regime renewed their insurgency.
NATO military chiefs meeting in Warsaw on Saturday pressed alliance member states to send more men and equipment to Afghanistan.
Some 4,000 British troops make up the majority of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force deployed in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
