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War in Afghanistan: Britain's Vietnam
A quad bike bounces across battle-ravaged desert, the remains of three dead British soldiers lashed to its back, while a Chinook buzzes overhead.Exhausted squaddies exchange desultory small-arms fire with an invisible enemy. An infantry unit nervously patrols a burning village. These are the images that reveal the gritty, deadly reality of the British engagement in Afghanistan. And they have been released to the world by the angry and beleaguered troops themselves. The pictures were captured on digital cameras over recent months by infantrymen belonging to the Battlegroup of the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment. For the most part, they have been sent back to Britain by e-mail, sidestepping the Government's attempts to keep the true nature of the conflict away from the public gaze. This is a deployment that Ministers, safe in their plush Whitehall offices, have characterised as a peacekeeping mission. John Reid, now Home Secretary, notoriously predicted that the British would serve their tour of duty without a shot being fired. Visits to troops by news teams have been discouraged or stage-managed. But these unique pictures, backed up by commentary in the e-mails, tell the truth - of savage and bloodthirsty firefights, of unremitting skirmishes with the Taliban and of shortages of ammunition and even rations. Posted by: john 2006-10-08 |
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