Source:
NYTJuly 12, 2009
Criticism of Afghan War Is on the Rise in Britain
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — Just as President Obama’s plan to nearly double American troop strength in Afghanistan gets into high gear, Britain’s involvement in the war has come under the fiercest criticism yet at home as a result of a steep increase in British casualties, including the deaths of 15 soldiers in the past 10 days.
The latest losses are the heaviest British forces have suffered in any comparable period since the 1982 Falklands war. With the Defense Ministry’s announcement of eight soldiers’ deaths on Friday, Britain’s toll in Afghanistan is now 184 killed, five more than its total losses in Iraq, where Britain’s combat commitment ended this spring.
The deaths have generated grim images that have led the nightly television news, of slate-gray transport aircraft carrying coffins landing at a military air base in Wiltshire and being driven slowly in hearses past crowds lining the high street in Wootton Bassett, a nearby town. When five coffins passed down the street on Friday, on their way to a mortuary in Oxford, women wailed.
Britain’s casualties are far lower than those suffered by American forces, who have lost 732 troops in Afghanistan and 4,322 in Iraq, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that monitors the military losses in both wars. But with Britain’s far smaller population and troop deployments, the latest deaths — from a force of 9,000 that makes Britain’s the second-largest troop presence in Afghanistan after the United States’ — have been as much of a shock here as the heavy American troop losses in Iraq at the height of that conflict were in the United States.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/world/europe/12britain.html