Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday affirmed Britain's commitment to Afghanistan after roadside bombs killed two more soldiers and pushed the UK death toll past 200. The grim milestone has reignited debate about the heavy human cost of a conflict the government claims is vital to defeating terrorism but that critics say is unwinnable.
Ten British troops have been killed so far in August, and 22 died in July, Britain's bloodiest month since the invasion of Afghanistan soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Brown said it had been ``a very difficult summer,'' but insisted the troops' presence in Afghanistan was keeping Britain safe. "Three-quarters of the terrorist plots that hit Britain derive from the mountain areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan and it is to make Britain safe and the rest of the world safe that we must make sure we honour our commitment to maintain a stable Afghanistan,'' he said. Others said the price was too high.
``This should never have happened in the first place,'' said Anthony Philippson, whose son James died in Afghanistan in 2006. He said the war was ``a waste of time'' and the troops poorly equipped.
Britain has about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, the largest international presence after the United States. Most are based in Helmand province, where they face determined Taliban insurgents, and casualties have been rising steadily in the past year.
A soldier from 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers died after being injured in an explosion during a foot patrol near Sangin in Helmand on Saturday, the Ministry of Defence said. He is the 201st British military fatality in Afghanistan. Another soldier, from 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh, died earlier Saturday at a military hospital in England, two days after he was wounded in a blast in Helmand.
Separately, the Foreign Office said Sunday that a British man had been killed in Herat, western Afghanistan, but released no other details. The Ministry of Defence said he was a former soldier and British media reported he was working for a private security company. British troops are part of a 64,000-strong Nato force in the country to bolster the shaky democratic government of President Hamid Karzai and prevent the return of the fundamentalist Taliban, driven from power by the US-led 2001 invasion. Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the rise of Britain's death toll past the 200 mark ``a heavy price to pay,'' but said preventing the return of terrorism in Afghanistan remained ``a critical security task.''
Britain's armed forces are used to long conflicts and to taking casualties. More than 700 were killed over the 30 years of Northern Ireland's Troubles, and 179 British troops died during a six-year mission in Iraq that ended earlier this year. But critics of the Afghan campaign say the mission is too open-ended, and its goals too vague. At various times British officials have emphasised the need to make Afghanistan a stable democracy, to curb the opium trade and to stop al Qaida and related groups basing themselves there.
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