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Mission Unaccomplished: How 3,000 Crack British Troops Failed to Find the Enemy
Thursday, June 20, 2002
By Richard Norton-Taylor & Jonathan Steele
The Guardian

With the US sometimes attacking the wrong people from the air,
and amid growing frustration among the marines -- who had yet
to fire a shot in combat -- Brig Lane exaggerated the
achievements of his men, implying at one stage that they had
engaged with the enemy. They had not.

KABUL, Afghanistan
Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, will tell the Commons today that 3,000 British troops engaged in combat operations in the Afghan mountains, spending weeks in some of the world's toughest terrain on the trail of al-Qaida fighters, and keeping the peace on the streets of Kabul, are coming home.

All but 300 of the 1,500 British International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) troops and the entire 1,700-strong British commando brigade, will return in the next few weeks. Mr Hoon is likely to tell MPs that they secured all their objectives, and claim the operations have defied the sceptics and those who warned of "mission creep" and the dangers of getting bogged down in a Vietnam quagmire.

The prime minister's official spokesman anticipated the message yesterday, saying: "The predictions that they were going into an impossible situation, that they couldn't combine peacekeeping and fighting a war at the same time, have proved to be wrong."

However, questions remain over what ministers and officials enthusiastically billed as the largest deployment of British troops since the 1991 Gulf war -- the despatch of the commando brigade, spearheaded by the Royal Marines, to the mountains of south-eastern Afghanistan. In particular, why after weeks of gruelling effort, untold millions of pounds of tax payers' money and much government hype, was not one al-Qaida fighter caught?

The marines were deployed in April in the first of a series of operations named after rare birds - Ptarmigan, Snipe, Condor and Buzzard.

The marine commander, Brigadier Roger Lane, presented the mission, which included 45 Commando, based in Arbroath, Scotland, in dramatic terms. "We said we would be here for the long haul and we stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States and our other coalition allies, and that's exactly what we are doing."
(More: The Guardian News Source)
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002.

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