Leaked cables: Karzai and US dismayed by British Afghan operations

Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan have been harshly criticised by the country’s president Hamid Karzai, local officials and the American commander of Nato troops, according to leaked diplomatic papers.

The secret US embassy cables, obtained by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, report conversations in which Mr Karzai said that Britain was “not up to the task” of securing the southern province of Helmand and suggested the job would be better given to the US.

US general Dan McNeill, who led Nato forces in Afghanistan in 2007/08, is said to have been “dismayed” by a British effort which “made a mess of things” in Helmand.

And Helmand governor Gulab Mangal is said to have criticised British troops for failing to get out of their bases and engage with local people.

The cables are the latest from a cache of 250,000 secret documents obtained by WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange yesterday lost a legal bid to overturn a Swedish court order demanding his arrest for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The 39-year-old Australian is believed to be in hiding in England as the latest publications on his whistle-blowing website fuel global uproar.

The latest revelations, reported in today’s Guardian, sparked indignation among some of those linked to the UK deployment in Helmand, which has swollen to 10,000 troops since it began in 2006.

Anthony Philipson, whose son James was one of the first British troops to die in the province, told the BBC: “We have done the best we could with some of the finest infantry in the world, we have taken terrible casualties.

“Yes, the place is still a hotbed of violence, but I think it always will be.”

According to the cables, President Karzai told US officials he was puzzled why security in Helmand had deteriorated after the arrival of British troops.

In the aftermath of the 2001 ousting of the Taliban, he had been able to visit the region with just 14 US special forces, but with thousands of British troops on the ground the area was no longer safe, he said.

At a meeting with Senator John McCain in December 2008, he said he was relieved that US marines were being sent in to reinforce British troops and “related an anecdote in which a woman from Helmand asked him to ’take the British away and give us back the Americans”’.

And a cable sent by the embassy that year said that without US support, “we and Karzai agree the British are not up to the task of securing Helmand” ahead of the next year’s presidential elections.

In 2007 Gen McNeill was said to be “particularly dismayed by the British effort”. He is reported to have said that “they had made a mess of things in Helmand, their tactics were wrong”.

A deal with the Taliban which allowed British troops to be withdrawn from Musa Qala in 2006 “opened the door to narco-traffickers in that area, and now it was impossible to tell the difference between the traffickers and the insurgents. The British could do a lot more, he said, and should, because they have the biggest stake”.

Mr Mangal is said to have criticised British operations around the town of Sangin, where more UK troops have died than in any other part of Afghanistan.

He told a team led by US Vice-President Joe Biden in January 2009 that American forces were needed as British security in Sangin was inadequate. British troops “must leave their bases and engage with the people”, he is reported to have said.

The Governor was reported in another cable around the same time to have told British officials: “Stop calling it the Sangin district and start calling it the Sangin base – all you have done here is built a military camp next to the city.”

Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon yesterday revealed that he had written a paper at the time of the Helmand deployment – which took place under his successor John Reid – raising concerns about the manpower available for the operation.

Mr Hoon, who left the Ministry of Defence in 2005, told The Times that his paper “basically said that we could do this, but only once we had drawn down significant numbers in Iraq”.

He added: “I was more concerned not about the ability of the men on the ground to do the job – I had no doubt they could do the job.

“My concern was whether we had enough resources overall to both do the job in Iraq, the existing job in Afghanistan – because we were already fairly heavily deployed there – as well as a new one. That was the bit I was bothered about.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “UK forces did an excellent job in Sangin, an area which has always been and continues to be uniquely challenging, delivering progress by increasing security and taking the fight to the insurgency.

“That work is now being continued by the US Marines as part of a hugely increased Isaf presence across the whole of Helmand Province.

“Both Afghan leaders, including the Governor of Sangin, and the US Marines have publicly recognised and paid tribute to the sacrifice and achievements of the UK forces in that area.”

Defence sources pointed out that, on the transfer of Helmand to US command earlier this year, American Major General Richard Mills described the performance of British troops in the province as “nothing short of magnificent”.