'useless in Afghanistan'

[coco]

Why on earth do we still have troops in Afghanistan, when looks like the poor bloody infantry has got no chance of achieving anything useful there.
The recent leaked emails from Major Loden of 3 para tell a story of a lack of troops, equipment and useless close air support by the RAF.
So EVERY day our troops are involved in firefights in Helmand province, taking casualties and for what ?

[kasavien]

As far as i know they're there to try to stabilise the region, but they need far more troops and better equipment than they have. That's if the reports by the media are correct. One of the big problems i see with our troops being there that they are responsible for making sure the opium crops are destroyed. The problem with this is that it is the one of the main sources of income for the country so they aren't making things easy by removing this. I read an article a while since that said they would be much better allowing the opium crops to grow, but policing them correctly. The reason being that opium can be used to produce medicine, and also if i remember correctly supply can't meet demand. I think Turkey already have license to grow opium legally, so i don't see why it couldn't be expanded to Afghanistan.

[iranu]

I agree that the troops are certainly not well equipped enough and there is not enough of them to get the job done. RAF hasn't got enough aircraft wether that be lift helicopters, attack helicopters or harriers for close air support.

However, the "useless" close air support was most likely from a USMC harrier not an RAF one. As far as I'm aware there are no female RAF pilots in Afghanistan and the RAF GR5/7/9 harriers are not equipped with the 30mm aden guns.

I also don't see why we can't buy the opium as a crop because there is a world wide shortage of opium based painkillers at the moment.

[GeorgeTuk]

The NATO Afghan mission is an extension but seperate arm of the invasion in late 2001, the aim then was to remove Al-Qaeda presence in the country and its current regime. The current mission is combat the growing threat of the Taleban and combat the drugs producers.

The current resurgence of the Taliban is a threat to the recent democratisation of Afghanistan and if that were to fail then Al-Qaeda would possibly be able to return.

The idea of stopping poppy crops is to replace them with more sustainable products for the benefit of the country as well as to try and stop it being distributed to the UK, US and Europe.

There is also 2 other missions in Afghanistan led by US forces to track down Bin Laden and to destroy remaining pockets of resistance.

[Koolpc]

Get them all back home.

[ToMmEh]

Bring the buggers back.

Then send the buggers back.