Britain's spending on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has nearly doubled to more than three billion pounds (six billion dollars, 3.95 billion euros), lawmakers said Monday, voicing surprise.
Costs for the current financial year - which ends March 31 - are forecast to run to 3.297 billion, a 94 percent increase on last year's total of 1.698 billion, said the lower House of Commons defence oversight committee. The figures include a "surprising" 52 percent increase for operations in Iraq, despite a cut in British troop levels there, according to a report by the committee, citing Ministry of Defence (MoD) forecasts.
"We expect the MoD to provide us with a full explanation for the very significant increase in the indirect resource cost of operations in response to this report," they said. Spending on military in Iraq is forecast to reach 1.449 billion pounds, while in Afghanistan spending is expected to reach 1.424 billion pounds, a 48 percent increase on the previous year.
"Few people will object to the investment being made in better facilities and equipment for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," said committee chairman James Arbuthnot. "However, this estimate represents a lot of public money. The MoD needs to provide better information about what it is all being spent on." Britain, which controversially backed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, last year cut its forces there to about 4,100 troops, most of them based at Basra Airport just outside the southern port city.
It also has some 7,800 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, where Taliban rebels have waged an increasingly deadly insurgency, over six years after they were ousted in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.