brits, afghanistan for years

Troops in Afghanistan 'for years'
March 8, 2006, The Guardian

British troops could be deployed in Afghanistan well beyond the three-year commitment recently agreed by the government, MPs were warned yesterday.

"It would be foolhardy to say at the end of three years it's over or at the end of five years it's over. We don't know how this will develop," the armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, told the Commons defence committee. An advance party of engineers and marine commandos is building a base for more than 3,000 British troops to be deployed this summer in Laskhar Gar, capital of southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, a hostile area with a Taliban presence and a centre of the opium poppy trade.

Colonel Henry Worsley, the British commander there, told the Guardian last week that the "exit strategy" was a "a well-trained, well-led Afghan army". Asked yesterday about the colonel's remark, Mr Ingram said there had been "too much talk" of a need for an exit strategy.

He added: "I think people have got hung up on this exit strategy. The strategy is to create conditions where we effectively allow good governance to take place. That is what the Afghans want."