British Army In Afghanistan Disscussion.....

What Can we hope to see from the recent and ongoing large scale deployments of British troops to the Helmand province of Afghanistan? , What kind of threats will the British Army face there? , with the focus on Iraq and even Iran is Afghanistan the forgotten war?

To start the ball rolling this article seems to think that the Brits will struggle to eradicate Poppy farming , which of course fuels the Heroin trade here in the west and around the world as a whole.

BRITISH Army commanders formally took over responsibility for Afghanistan's lawless Helmand province yesterday as Britain's strategy to eradicate opium production and defeat Taleban insurgents was criticised as "doomed to failure".

A report published by the Senlis Council, an independent think tank that monitors Afghanistan's drugs trade, paints a depressing picture of the prospects for the deployment of 3,300 British troops to southern Afghanistan later this month.

It says previous efforts to eradicate poppy farming in the province have fuelled the insurgency that is threatening to overwhelm the Kabul government's control of the lawless region.

From this site news.scotsman.com...

I welcome comment and disscussion on all aspects of the current situation in Afganistan.

Interesting article here from Canada , on the inteligance war in Afghanistan.

British Col. Chris Vernon says recent successes prove that high-tech western surveillance is sometimes no match for old-fashioned contacts and local knowledge.

"The coalition (forces) clearly have western, high-tech capability, in terms of sensor systems, that we can get from our western technological edge," Vernon said Wednesday.

from
cnews.canoe.ca...

How many troops are left in the whole british army?, There are loads of adverts on the telley for recruitment so it sounds they are running out of men.