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Afghanistan: Holding Helmand
Ayesha Khan, June 2007
The World Today, Volume 63, Number 6
This time last year, three thousand five hundred British troops braved their way into the heart of Taliban country with low expectations of a fight and high hopes for providing security in Helmand province. So optimistic was the outlook for the deployment, that John Reid, then British Defence Secretary, described it as a reconstruction and peacekeeping mission and insisted the soldiers would return home in three years 'without a shot being fired.' Exactly a year on, and millions of rounds of ammunition later, troops entrenched with the Taliban in a battle to regain lost territory in Helmand, have seen the 'worst and most prolonged fighting since the Korean War', according to former NATO Commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Richards.
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