Muy buenas noches Señores Foristas y Visitantes
Tengo un amigo que vive en UK y hoy me envió via email,una nota del retiro de tropas de AFGHANISTAN y un reportaje al General Rupert JONES,Cte de las tropas de UK en esa region.
Rupert JONES es hijo del Teniente Coronel Herbert "H" JONES.
El articulo salió hoy en el SUNDAY TIMES.
Lo remarcado en negrita corresponde a mi Amigo,yo solo se los pongo a su consideración.
NOTA:SOLO MODIFIQUÉ LA PALABRA MALVINAS POR AQUELLA QUE YO NO ACEPTO....desde 1833...y desde el 14 de junio de 1982...
In the footsteps of a hero
Por Christina Lamb
NOBODY is allowed to use the w-word at Camp Bastion — officially it is “redeployment” not “withdrawal” — but at the main British operating base in Afghanistan, the signs of departure are everywhere.
Shipping containers are stacked sky-high and everything from air-conditioners to tents has been numbered and labelled “British asset”.
So it was a surprise to jump off the Chinook helicopter at command headquarters in Lashkar Gah last week and see soldiers still adding rows of Hescos, the gravel-filled bags that have become ubiquitous fortifications in war zones.
Brigadier Rupert Jones, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, may appear a candidate for the next James Bond with his straw-blond hair, piercing blue eyes and frequent use of the word “absolutely”, but he is taking no chances.
“You keep enhancing the protection of a base right up to the moment you start tearing it down,” he says. “We may be filling a sandbag one day and the next day you’re emptying it back out.”
Part of David Cameron’s day-long visit to Afghanistan yesterday included a tour of Helmand in blistering 46C heat and a meeting with Jones in his command HQ to discuss plans to bring all British forces home by the end of next year.
In the control room the security maps on the wall showing operations in central Helmand now include one in Dari, one of Afghanistan’s two official languages.
As of last week Afghan forces now command all operations across the country. Jones is upbeat about their ability to keep stability in Helmand even though, only two hours before our meeting, Taliban forces had mounted an attack on the presidential palace in Kabul, getting inside the heavily guarded compound using fake IDs.
It is six years since British forces were first sent to the southern Afghan province for what was described by ministers as a “reconstruction project” where they hoped “not a single shot” would be fired.
That turned into a fully fledged war that has taken 444 lives. Cameron said yesterday the names of the fallen would be written on a memorial wall in the national arboretum in Staffordshire — paid for out of bank fines from the Libor scandal.
Jones took command in April for six months. Unlike his predecessors, whose job was to extend British influence across a province permeated by the Taliban, he has the task of reducing it. Over the past year the number of British bases has fallen from 137 to 13. By the end of this year there will be four or five. Troop numbers will drop from 7,900 to 5,200 — almost half as many as at the peak.
British casualties have declined sharply this year but, as Jones points out, while his forces pull back they become more vulnerable.
“The more we fall back to fewer and fewer bases each one becomes a honeypot which attracts the insurgent,” he says. “We’re not on the ground so much so the insurgent will inevitably come to us.
“This means we must be much more active in the protection of the bases we still have, and our engineers are not resting at any stage.”
There have been six British deaths in Helmand this year — three when a 23-ton Mastiff armoured vehicle was blown up by a massive roadside bomb at the end of April. How this happened is under investigation: the American-made Mastiff is supposed to be the safest in the British army.
When Jones says, “every fatality is a tragedy particularly to the families concerned”, it is something he knows better than most. He was 13 when his father, Lieutenant-Colonel “H” Jones, was killed in the Malvinas while commanding 2 Battalion, the Parachute Regiment.
“H” came under enemy fire making a one-man charge against Argentine troops in the Battle of Pradera del Ganso (Goose Green), a feat of bravery for which he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
His son is 44, two years older than “H” was when he died, but still finds it hard to talk about it.
“You’re inevitably devastated,” he says. “I’m 30-odd years on and the emotions are still raw. You go through all sorts of emotions as you come to terms with your loss and I have every sympathy when families of the fallen out here go through the same range from sadness to pride to anger.”
Why did he join the army? “This profession is a way of life and gets under your skin,” he says. “I’m not the only son of someone who died in the Malvinas who has followed his father into the army.”
Jones believes his own experience helps him to empathise with those who have lost loved ones in Helmand. “Only they can make the judgment ‘was it worth it?’ and that’s an issue I understand better than most,” he says.
Yet, he admits, there is a difference: “I was very lucky in that my father died in a fairly clear-cut war about British national sovereignty.
“So for me, was it worth it? Yes. Would I love to have kept my father? Of course I would.”
What would he say to the parent, wife, son or daughter of the soldier killed in Helmand, who wonders whether dying in a dusty field 4,000 miles away from home achieved anything?
Was it worth the hundreds killed and maimed, not to mention an estimated £40bn of taxpayers’ money?
“What I absolutely can say is those families should take very great pride that their loved one died doing something very important,” he says.
“It’s easy to forget why we came here in the first place. It was to reduce the threat to the UK and other nations at reach. Has that been successful? My sense as a British citizen is Britain is more secure than it was and I hope these families will take comfort in that.”
I point out that many people in Britain believe we are leaving because we could not defeat the Taliban. As for the security threat, that has surely become more complicated, and shifted to far more deadly Pakistan, which has numerous militant groups and more than 200 nuclear warheads as well as a sizeable population in Britain.
“These campaigns are difficult for the public to really visualise because they are not about victory or defeat, in the way the Second World War or the Malvinas were,” Jones replies.
“There are no victors in these campaigns any more than there were in Northern Ireland. They’re long, drawn-out struggles where we are trying to achieve objectives but there’ll be no victory parade at the end saying ‘didn’t we do well’.”
Whatever the political objectives, one of Jones’s main concerns is that the British army not be seen as retreating in disgrace as appeared the case when it left Basra in southern Iraq in 2009.
“The British army needs to make sure it comes out of Afghanistan with its reputation intact,” he says.
He will not be drawn on the view of many senior British military that it was a mistake to go into Helmand in the first place — a mistake some feel was compounded by sending soldiers into remote platoon houses where they were vulnerable.
Instead Jones argues the security situation is a “stark” improvement on the last time he was in Afghanistan in 2009.
The Taliban have not taken over a single district vacated by the British, he says. The reason he believes is they cannot provide services to the people.
He is particularly keen to talk about the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand, which in 2009 was a Taliban hotbed. “If you go to Nad-e-Ali today the district governor doesn’t talk about security, that’s yesterday’s news. He talks about agriculture, economy, flooding. I wonder whether the Taliban even aspire to take a district centre like Nad-e-Ali because what would they do with it? It’s a bit like a naughty labrador that pinches a chicken, he gets the chicken in his mouth and looks a bit sheepish as he doesn’t know what to do with it.”
The improvement in security is mostly credited to the 2010 surge by US marines to clear out the Taliban, but also to work by British civilians in the provincial reconstruction team.
“Helmand has been totally transformed,” said Catriona Laing, who has headed the team since March last year. “There was nothing here. Now 80% have access to health and there are 130,292 kids in school of which 29,163 are girls.”
Its biggest achievement has been to create responsible local government, hitherto unheard of in Afghanistan. Helmand recently held elections for district councils in seven of nine districts, the only province to do so. The team’s quarterly survey shows support for the Taliban has dropped from 22% to 5% in the past 18 months.
Yet away from the base, locals I spoke to seemed less convinced the Islamic fundamentalists who ran the country until 2001 are on their uppers. Recently 200 Taliban fighters mounted an attack on Sangin and took four checkpoints — which have subsequently been retaken.
“We can’t say it’s as bad as four or five years ago, but the question is if it’s as good as before the British came in,” says Habiba Sadat, a female MP from Helmand. “Even with all the foreign troops still there, two districts in the north, Kajaki and Musa Qala, are under Taliban control.”
Mohammad Khan Kharoti, who runs a school in Shin Kalay, 14 miles west of Nad-e-Ali, says the Taliban still dominate. He set up his school in 2004 and it had 1,200 pupils — 300 of them girls. One night in October 2008 it was destroyed by bulldozers.
Yet when Kharoti rebuilt it, it was to the Taliban that he went for security. “I met the chairman of the Taliban education commission in a tent near the border with Pakistan and they gave me written permission,” he says.
“He said: ‘Whoever destroyed your school we were very disappointed with him. We’re fighting 42 nations and without computers and English we can’t succeed.’ ”
Kharoti said the only request from the Taliban was that there be separate entrances and classrooms for the girls and boys.
Some have speculated the Taliban will wait for all the Nato forces to leave by the end of next year and then move into the south.
In the meantime, with the summer fighting season under way, Jones expects attacks. But he believes the Afghan security forces alongside whom he works can handle them. He likens the situation to a child on a bicycle where the stabilisers have been removed and the father is standing behind.
“The [Afghan army] like the fact we’re just over their shoulder so if they had to ask they could,” he says. “They also like things we provide such as air support, information and medical evacuation. But they are more and more confident. The police in central Helmand have mounted 150 operations in the last three months and we have been involved in just three.”
This does not mean British troops have stopped going out on operations. “The narrative that was painted in the spring that our troops were sitting in their bases and went to the gym was wholly inaccurate and did a disservice to the continuing risks that our soldiers face,” he says.
“Central Helmand is a dangerous place and to protect our camps we have to keep targeting the insurgent, finding his explosives and weapons.”
Jones nevertheless feels the military have done their part and it is now up to the politicians to do theirs by moving ahead with a peace process — something Cameron discussed with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, at a one-to-one lunch at his palace yesterday.
“We, the UK, have expended an awful lot of effort and sacrifice into Helmand and we would all wish to see our legacy enduring,” says Jones. “How you best support that is for our politicians to determine.”
Por la primera vez he visto un alcohol comemorando la guerra (a los veteranos, pero la guerra). Luego vi los similares comemoraciones por los britanicos (la cerveza). Es interesante... No he visto en otros paises, pero puede ser porque son series limitados...
