LONDON - British soldiers will be ordered to “seek and destroy” insurgent remnants of the ousted Taleban regime in Afghanistan, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper said. Citing a briefing document, the British weekly broadsheet said troops would be sent to hunt down and kill insurgents, despite Defence Secretary John Reid telling parliament’s lower House of Commons that this would not happen.Britain, which had 1,100 soldiers in Afghanistan, has started the deployment of 3,300 additional troops in the country, in particular to the lawless south, as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
Under the heading “Deep Manoeuvre Effects”, the document said that soldiers would “find and track insurgents, interdict and disrupt opposition sanctuaries and locations and defeat (eventually)”, which, a source told the newspaper, was an accurate description of a “seek and destroy” operation.
The plans formed part of a presentation to Royal Marine officers. They said the most dangerous operations would take place in the south where a large proportion of AfghanistanÂ’s heroin and opium is produced. British forces are currently in the area, which still has a presence of the hardline former ruling Taleban, as part of a multi-national operation working on counter-narcotics and reconstruction.
Reid told the Commons in January that the extra British troops were not heading to Afghanistan “to wage war or carry out seek and destroy” operations that US forces had been undertaking. He announced the deployment of the additional troops to Helmand, one of four southern provinces where Canada has been put in charge of multinational forces hunting Taleban and Al Qaeda terror network sympathisers.