British armed forces were on Friday facing embarrassment after leaked diplomatic cables showed that American generals were “dismayed” by Britain’s military performance in Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzai reportedly said he was “relieved” that American marines were brought to help them.
There was also discomfiture in Labour Party over claims of American assessment of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown with the American Ambassador in London quoted as describing his record as “abysmal” and saying he was responsible for “post-Blair rudderlessness” in the government.
According to WikiLeaks documents, published by The Guardian , Britain’s four-year military mission in southern Afghanistan, aimed at securing the Helmand province, was regarded as a failure by Nato and Afghan officials.
The most damaging assessment came from President Karzai who reportedly told Senator John McCain at a meeting in December 2008 that he was relieved that American forces were being sent to assist 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".
He also reportedly pointed out to his American interlocutors that the rapid deterioration in the situation in Helmand coincided with the arrival of British troops in 2006. He is quoted as saying that after the Afghan invasion in 2001 when there were just 14 American special forces Helmand was “safe for girls to go to school…Now 4,000 (sic) British soldiers are in Helmand and the people are not safe”.
The British operation, involving 10,000 troops, was described as a “mess” by an American general Dan McNeill. In one cable, he was said to be "particularly dismayed by the British effort" in combating the drugs trade saying that British forces had "made a mess" of counter-narcotics operations by employing the "wrong" tactics.
In one cable, dated late 2008, the American embassy in Kabul said, ”We and President Karzai agree that British forces are not up to the task of securing Helmand" without American support.
The criticism of the British mission is said to centre on its failure to establish security in Sangin where, ironically , Britain lost more lives than anywhere else in Afghanistan.
Ministry of Defence defended the British effort saying that “U.K. forces did an excellent job in Sangin… delivering progress by increasing security and taking the fight to the insurgency”.
