UK:Defence Secretary to make Statement on Afghanistan Misson

UK

efence Secretary to make Statement on Afghanistan Misson

UK

efence Secretary to make Statement on Afghanistan Misson on sky news at 3.30

(visit the link for the full news article)

Maybe intresting to see what he says after Bush has just had talks with Brown.

I think there may be a back track on taking troops out early or maybe just a lot of meaningless #!
What do you lot think.


(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by freemindmine


I think you might be confusing Iraq and Afghanistan.

The announcement this afternoon will be to state that UK troop levels in Afghanistan will be increased over the coming weeks.

There might be an announcement on troop cuts in Iraq sometime in July from what I've heard, but the MoD hasn't put anything concrete about that just yet.

EDIT: By the way, you missed the link to the story. You can see the BBC report on this on their website.

[edit on 16/6/08 by Ste2652]

You could be right but I thought Brown was all for taking troops out off both places.
And I did nt miss the link on bbc as it was not there when I made this thread!

Originally posted by freemindmine
You could be right but I thought Brown was all for taking troops out off both places.

All three main parties fully support Afghanistan - the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour have all committed themselves to keeping our troops in Afghanistan.

Iraq is more divisive; Brown wants to leave, but he's under a lot of pressure from the Americans to stick around. The British presence 'legitimises' the activities in Iraq to some extent and makes it look less like a unilateral American venture. Depending on who wins the US Presidential election in November, however, we may have all our troops home by this time next year.

But anyway, the Defence Secretary's statement this afternoon will be to announce an increase in the number of British troops deployed to Afghanistan. And when we leave Iraq, it's likely that most of the troops once deployed in and around Basra will also be sent to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

All three main parties fully support Afghanistan - the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour have all committed themselves to keeping our troops in Afghanistan.

You forgot one the SNP!
But I take your point I most have got them muddled up,I just seen they said they will send an extra 230 troops into Afghanistan.
That seems more like a token action to me,I wonder if 230 troops would make that much difference.

reply to post by freemindmine


Well, the SNP aren't exactly a mainstream party. I included the Lab-Lib-Con parties because they're involved in politics all across the UK and have a significant presence in the House of Commons (meaning they can directly influence government policy on Afghanistan). The SNP are limited to Scotland (given that they're a nationalist party) and they have only a few seats in the Commons (6 seats - less than 1% of the total number of MPs in the UK Parliament). But for the record, the SNP do support the war in Afghanistan.

It is a small number of troops to send - you're right in thinking that it's more a token gesture than anything else. The idea, I think, is to signal that the UK is serious about winning in Afghanistan. Most of the four thousand or so troops presently based in Iraq will probably move to Afghanistan when we withdraw from there, taking our troop numbers up to over 12,000. Now that certainly is a significant presence, but it's not likely to happen until next year at the earliest. It's possible we may see some extra troops sent from Iraq to Afghanistan towards the end of this year (depending on whether the Ministry of Defence decided to cut troop numbers in Iraq to 2,500 as part of a phased withdrawal) but that remains to be seen.