Kabul: A squardon of Harrier fighters is to remain in Afghanistan amid increasing concern about the safety of thousands of British troops about to be deployed in the hostile south of the country. The six jump jets, due to have returned to Britain in June, will stay at their base in Kandahar, where they will act as a deterrent against insurgents and support US forces fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban close to the border with Pakistan.

The decision to keep the Harriers was announced on Wednesday as John Reid, the Defence Secretary, continued his visit to Helmand province, a centre of the opium poppy trade whose capital, Lashkar Gah, will be the base for more than 3,000 British troops for three years. He told British soldiers that the government appreciated they faced “massive risks”.

Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of British forces in southern Afghanistan, said on Monday: “We need to expect some setbacks and we need to prepare ourselves and the public.” Defence sources said two British soldiers had been “very seriously injured” two weeks ago in a suicide bombing near the Lashkar Gah base. The sources declined to give details about the condition of the soldiers. The BBC reported a local Taliban commander in Helmand on Monday as saying: “The British have been defeated in the past. Afghans are not scared of death. The British are an old enemy of Afghanistan.”

In an unusual move reflecting the government’s sensitivity over the deployment, Mr Reid has written personally to defence journalists insisting that British troops are in Afghanistan on a nation-building mission, not to fight terrorists. He says there is a “fundamental difference between our mission of support to reconstruction and stabilisation ... and the counter-terrorist mission (Operation Enduring Freedom) led by the US.”

But in the past he has said it would be difficult to maintain any such distinction as British troops might well get involved in operations against terrorists and drug traders. Earlier this week he said British troops may have to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists. Military commanders say there may be no way of telling whether their attackers are Al Qaeda supporters, Taliban recruits, opium dealers, criminals, or a mixture of these.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service