BRITISH MILITARY commanders and politicians have rejected charges made by senior US diplomats and Afghan politicians in secret US diplomatic cables, revealed by WikiLeaks, that British soldiers were not capable of dealing with the Taliban threat in Helmand province because they would not leave their bases.
Both Americans and Afghans agreed that the British spent too much time in a camp in Sangin, while a Nato American commander, Dan McNeill, said the British had “made a mess of things there” and they had withdrawn when they should not have from Musa Qala, leaving the door open “to narco-traffickers”.
The publication of the criticism has stung some in London, particularly since the British army has suffered major losses in Helmand since it first went there in 2006.
Stuart Tootal, a retired British army colonel, said the diplomatic leaks were “not helping anyone” and were not “in the public interest”. Acknowledging there were problems at the beginning of the Helmand operation, he said much of “this comment is historic and some of it is unfair”, since the lack of equipment, particularly enough armoured personnel carriers, which bedevilled the early stages of the campaign, had been solved in more recent times. The UK is spending £5 billion a year in Helmand.
Former British defence secretary Bob Ainsworth said the Americans had wanted the British forces to spray agricultural land to kill off the opium crop, but the British had eventually persuaded them that “this was madness”. The WikiLeaks allegations were “gossip on an ongoing situation and should not be taken too seriously”, he said.
Meanwhile, a British plan to turn over 50 islands around Diego Garcia, a British colony which was leased to the United States after islanders were evicted in the 1970s, into a world-class marine sanctuary, would guarantee that the islanders would never be able to return, the British foreign office briefed US diplomats, according to the latest diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
More than 2,000 Chagos islanders were forced to leave their homes from the 1960s onwards, although their decades-long battle to return will be decided by a ruling expected shortly from the European Court of Human Rights. The British have consistently argued that they were never permanent residents of Diego Garcia.
The islanders have long claimed that the marine park would prevent them ever getting back, since fishing would be banned. This appears to be supported by the US embassy cable, which reports a May 2009 conversation with a senior diplomat, who said that Diego Garcia had proved to be a more valuable military base than anyone had first thought.
“We do not regret the removal of the population since removal was necessary for [Diego Garcia] to fulfil its strategic purpose,” said British diplomat Colin Roberts, although he added that the British government felt itself to be “under pressure” from the islanders.
The creation of a marine park around Diego Garcia would ensure that there were “no human footprints” or “Man Fridays” to be dealt with, in language that mirrored that used in 1966 when a British official, Denis Greenhill, described the islanders “as a few Tarzans and Man Fridays”.
