Britain and NATO struggle for Afghanistan numbers

By Luke Baker - Analysis

LONDON (Reuters) - Two-and-a-half years into an operation to secure vast desert reaches of Afghanistan from the Taliban, British commanders quietly admit they are seriously undermanned.

While the official line is that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must decide if more troops are needed, officers on the ground in the southern Afghan province of Helmand concede privately that they do not have enough men or helicopters to seize and hold the territory they oversee.

With nearly 60,000 square kilometers (22,000 square miles) of desert, mountains, a dense river valley and lush poppy fields to patrol, Britain has a little over 8,000 troops and just eight Chinook transport helicopters at its disposal.

"There's only so much we can do," a colonel in the Parachute Regiment said with exasperation last week, comparing the number of troops unfavorably to some small countries, where he said more than 8,000 police were usually available to keep the peace.

When asked if additional troops are needed, Brown and his defence minister Des Browne tend to say that they listen to their commanders on the ground, and if they do not ask for more, then no more will be sent.

When asked on the record, commanders, of course, defer to the government, creating a classic Catch-22.

The pressure is on, with Britain's troops and equipment pulled to remote corners of Helmand, trying to keep as much of it stable as possible. Hunkered down in small forts, resupplied occasionally, the Taliban are aware of the constraints.

At a small base in northern Helmand, a squad of British troops protects a dam and hydroelectric plant. They say they cannot go more than 3 km (2 miles) beyond their perimeter to take on the Taliban because otherwise they are overstretched.

"The Taliban know it. If we attack them, they go just over 3 km away and we have to come back," explained a junior officer commanding around 100 troops at the remote mountain base.

LONG-TERM MISSION

Seven years into a conflict that shows no sign of abating and with the Taliban resurgent, the undermanning comes at a bad time. And it may get worse before it gets better for the 53,000-strong NATO-led coalition.

Last month was the deadliest for foreign troops since the conflict began, according to independent website icasualties.org. Forty-three troops were killed, including 10 French soldiers hit in a single Taliban ambush.

There will be a special vote in the French parliament this month to decide if the deployment should continue. While no pull-out is expected, the debate is a sign of the times.

Canada and the Netherlands, which have a combined 4,000 troops in Afghanistan and have both suffered sustained casualties, are both considering ending their deployments when their mandates expire over the next two years.

NATO has struggled to get major nations to contribute more to its Afghan force, and as the death toll rises the challenge only gets greater. A NATO summit in April generated some increased commitment, but that momentum has since been lost as issues such as Georgia and Russia have filled the agenda.