{"id":1033,"date":"2010-12-03T08:59:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T08:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp3\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2010-12-03T08:59:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T08:59:06","slug":"leaks-show-uk-afghan-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2010\/12\/03\/1033\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaks show UK Afghan failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; float: right;\" alt=\"afghan-army\" src=\"images\/stories\/news\/afghan-army.jpg\" width=\"276\" height=\"214\" \/>US diplomats and Hamid, Karzai, the Afghan president, criticised the role of UK troops in Afghanistan as &#8220;not up&#8221; to standard, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.<\/div>\n<p>  <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the US embassy memos published by the Guardian, a UK newspaper, on Friday, senior officials derided the forces&#8217; efforts in the southern Helmand province, a stronghold of the Taliban.<br \/>&#8220;We and Karzai agree the British are not up to the task of securing Helmand,&#8221; US diplomats from the Kabul embassy said in a 2008 cable.<br \/>In a separate cable sent in February 2009, Karzai complains that UK forces had allowed law and order to breakdown in Helmand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;Dismayed&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I first returned to Afghanistan, I had only 14 American soldiers with me,&#8221; the cable quoted Karzai as having said.<br \/>&#8220;Helmand was safe for girls to go to school. Now &#8230; British soldiers are in Helmand, and the people are not safe.<br \/>&#8220;We must stand on a higher moral platform than the bad guys.&#8221;<br \/>General Dan McNeill, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan from 2007-2008, was reported to have said to a US drug-control officer in April 2007 that the British &#8220;had made a mess of things in Helmand, their tactics were wrong&#8221;.<br \/>Gulab Mangal, Helmand&#8217;s governor, was also quoted in a cable sent from the US embassy in Kabul as telling a US team led by Joe Biden, the vice-president, that US forces were needed urgently due to British security in the town of Sangin failing to extend even to the main bazaar.<br \/>&#8220;I do not have anything against them [the British] but they must leave their bases and engage with the people,&#8221; Mangal said.<br \/>&#8220;Stop calling it the Sangin district and start calling it the Sangin base &#8211; all you have done here is built a military camp next to the city.&#8221;<br \/>The UK has reacted to the leaked memos, stating that their troops had performed well and that safety in Sangin &#8211; which the US now maintains responsibility for &#8211; was improved by their presence.<br \/>&#8220;British forces did an excellent job in Sangin, delivering progress by increasing security and taking the fight to the insurgency,&#8221; the UK&#8217;s ministry of defence said in a a statement.<br \/>&#8220;Both Afghan leaders, including the governor of Sangin, and the US Marines have publicly recognised and paid tribute to the sacrifice and achievements of British forces in that area,&#8221; a spokesman added.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Afghan graft<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The cables also show that US staff were concerned of widespread corruption within the Afghan government, with one memo stating that Ahmed Zia Massoud, the then vice-president, had been found with $52m\u00a0 in a suitcase when stopped at Dubai airport.<br \/>Massoud has denied the claim.<br \/>Al Jazeera\u2019s James Bays, in Kabul, said that the documents showed US fears of corruption within the Afghan government and criticism of Karzai.<br \/>&#8220;Certainly there is criticism of some of the things he has done, like releasing some prisoners from jail &#8230; said to be for tribal, political reasons.<br \/>&#8220;The cables show a progression of when Karzai has been in power from total confidence in him to now when they are deeply concerned.&#8221;<br \/>Nato forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, following a US invasion of the country to remove the Taliban, whom they accused of harbouring al-Qaeda operatives connected to the September 11 attacks, from power.<br \/>This year has been the most violent since the campaign began.<br \/>The UK has 10,000 troops in the country, now costing more than \u00a35bn ($7.7bn) a year, of about 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan.<br \/>The WikiLeaks website began releasing a trove of classified US diplomatic cableson Sunday, infuriating Washington, which called the leak an &#8220;attack on the international community&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><em>Source: Al Jazeera and agencies<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US diplomats and Hamid, Karzai, the Afghan president, criticised the role of UK troops in Afghanistan as &#8220;not up&#8221; to standard, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Leaks show UK Afghan failure - SunniOnline<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2010\/12\/03\/1033\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leaks show UK Afghan failure - SunniOnline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"US diplomats and Hamid, Karzai, the Afghan president, criticised the role of UK troops in Afghanistan as &#8220;not up&#8221; 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