Hundreds More Troops Are Needed To Beat Taliban, Warns NATO Chief

Nato's senior military commander yesterday called for hundreds of reinforcements to combat the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, where he said fighting was reaching a "decisive moment".

US Gen James Jones said that the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, British Lt Gen David Richards, needed more troops soon.

"We have to give the commander additional insurance in terms of some forces that can be there, perhaps temporarily, to make sure that we can carry the moment," he said in Belgium, admitting that the "level of intensity" of the Taliban's summer offensive had been a surprise.

He said Nato troops were fighting the fiercest battles in the organisation's history. "It's something akin to poking the bee hive and the bees are swarming," he said of the Taliban resistance.

Gen Jones said the coalition had lost 21 dead in fighting this year with 80 wounded, with another 21 dead and 37 injured in non-battle incidents such as the crash of a RAF Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft last Saturday. In all, 35 British troops have died since a contingent of 4,500 began arriving earlier this year.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary-general, joined the general's appeal, urging alliance members to come to the support of the British, Canadian and Dutch troops leading the fight.

"Those allies who perhaps are doing less in Afghanistan should think, 'Shouldn't we do more?' There are certainly a number of allies who can do more," Mr de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels.

The number of troops in the south has risen to about 10,000 since Nato took over from US forces in July.

Troops have pushing into areas that were previously largely left to their own devices with limited government presence.

However, they have been facing Taliban fighters who have abandoned their established hit and run tactics in Helmand and areas of Kandahar province and instead have taken and held ground with groups of fighters in the hundreds.

Pressure is now falling on several nations with forces deployed to less dangerous areas to allow their troops to be redeployed to the south.

Germany, with 2,800 men in the relatively tranquil north, is being encouraged to loosen restrictions on where its forces are deployed, as are France, Italy and Turkey. However, a German defence ministry spokesman said: "It is still the case that our focus is on the northern region." Gen Jones said a meeting of senior generals from all 26 Nato nations in Warsaw tomorrow would be used to ask for hundreds of reinforcements, as well as extra helicopters and transport planes.

"It will help us to reduce casualties and bring this to a successful conclusion in a short period of time," he said.

"In the relatively near future, certainly before the winter, we will see this decisive moment in the region turn in favour of the troops that represent the government."

Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, this week aimed to reassure Afghanistan and the coalition that his country, accused of tolerating havens for militants, would act to prevent cross-border Taliban activity.

"There was not much acknowledgement of the problems that Afghanistan and the international community are citing," said one senior Western diplomat. "There was an almost wilful ill-attention to those concerns."

Canadian forces south-west of Kandahar yesterday reported that they were tightening their hold on the area where they claim to have several hundred Taliban fighters trapped in the village of Pashmul.

Your British officer is coming home anyway (and will stay there).

Rubbish. He'll be returning to Afghanistan after his leave of less than three weeks.

The end of the alliance is here, killed by New Labor.

There are many... erm.. well, MANY.. reasons to loathe NL. I have a friend, a good old-style Glesga Socialist, and he despises that lot every bit as much as my soldier and I do. Contempt for NL kinda unifies both the Left and the Right. It's a British thing.

I am a bit bitter, given that my family sent its sons to Europe to take care of Adolf, and now the Euros seem to have forgotten that.

Your family sent its sons to Europe because Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbour, and as a result of that attack President Roosevelt declared war on Japan. The declaration led to a state of war between the US and Japan's European allies, Germany and Italy. The romantic notion that the Americans entered the war to save Europe and some Brits from Hitler is just that, a romantic notion.

After the US was attacked on 9/11, your president as well as many Americans expected all of us, Brits as well as Europeans, to become involved, even to the extent of sending our troops into combat. By comparison, the Americans didn't get involved in WW II until after Pearl Harbour, by which time many of our cities were in ruins, tens of thousands of civilians were dead, some countries had been occupied, and we had been at war for over two years.

Need I reming you that no American fighters came to our aid during the 27 months, between the time Britain declared war in early Sept 1939 and the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941 43,000 British civilians were killed and more than a million houses were destroyed. I won't go into the number of historic structures and irreplaceble national treasures that were destroyed by German bombs.

When Americans think of the Blitz, they think of London, and that isn't incorrect. Let me add a few more cities the Germans bombed; Avonmouth, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Clydebank (Glasgow), Greenock, Hull, Plymouth, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Sunderland, Swansea, and Swindon. Just for fun they bombed Bath, Canterbury, Exeter, Norwich and York, cities that had no strategic value but were of historic significance.

Mind you, this destruction and carnage all took place and the Americans had no intention of joining in to defend us. So don't be bitter. It would seem that the Americans placed little value on the 43,000 dead British civilians, not to mention the ruined cities and dead civilians on the continent..

Now I don't blame you lot for that. You Americans didn't see it as your war until those nasty boys crawled into bed with you and bit you on the bum on a lovely Sunday morning in Hawaii. And what was going on in Washington on that fine morning at the same moment their planes were swanning about sinking your Pacific fleet? Your officials in Washington were trying to hammer out a peace treaty with some Japanese diplomats who just happened to be good friends and allies of those same Germans who had destroyed so much of our country and had killed so many of us. It would have been a treaty that would have kept America out of the war. Some alliance.

Please don't act as if America (finally) joined the Allied effort to do the Brits and the Euros a favour. What happened was that the bad boys attacked the US and at that point the Americans joined the fighting because it suddenly became your war. The Americans weren't fighting to do us any favours. European or British, we all know that.

Of course the knock on effect was that after FDR declared war, the British and European Allies had one more nation aiding in the fighting, one that wasn't knackered by two years of war. No denying that extra manpower and materiel helped. However, we are under no illusions that coming to our aid was your primary intention.

Yes, America will do it alone if we have to. Mark Steyn got that right.

Which brings us back to where we started. If our fighting men are such inferior soldiers as some think, then you Americans should 'go it alone'. Suit yourself.

Thanks, we will do just fine.

Americans aren't exactly fighting each other to enlist. It must be a relief to know you need so few of them. ;)

Thank an American that you speak english, not german - twice.

Thank a Brit, along with the other Allies, that we kept the fight going until you all decided to show up. Had we all just caved in you would be the ones speaking German today. ;)

Twice you lot come late to the party and then some of you act as if you are belle of the ball. Give it up. I write this as no slur on the American fighting men, their commanders, or degree of commitment when you finally did join in. I refer only to the timing.

Most Brits and many Europeans, no matter their politics, take a fact-based view history as I do. If it's obeisance you're expecting from us, well think again.

I am grateful to all the Allies, including the French. Their army didn't have much staying power, and some of the civilians were disgraceful collaborators. However, there was an active underground in France, as there was in countries like Norway, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Oh, and you didn't have to learn russian either.

Nae bother. I speak several languages, and one of them is Russian. Not as impressive as my soldier's Arabic, Farsi, Dari, and God knows what else. He also runs marathons, up mountains and through jungles with packs that weigh almost as much as he does, and he jumps out of aeroplanes.

Right. I knew what you meant. I was being a bit stroppy with that last response. However, you make a huge mistake if you think that because you are a powerful nation you can go it alone. No nation can. You don't know which country will be the one which gives you the next Alan Turing.

At times like this Kipling comes to mind. In his poem Recessional he writes:

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!

Need I remind you that Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins?

Even a mighty nation can become weary and exhausted. The US is no different from any other nation in that it needs friends and allies. However, the US will have few friends and no allies if the value of that friendship is demeaned and allies' contributions aren't given the recognition they deserve.

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