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Gordon Brown and Hamid Karzai
Gordon Brown speaks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Monday. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Gordon Brown speaks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Monday. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters

UK to send 700 more troops to Afghanistan

This article is more than 14 years old
Gordon Brown tells Commons additional troops will provide security during forthcoming presidential elections and will remain in the country until the autumn

Gordon Brown confirmed today plans to send 700 additional British troops to Afghanistan to provide security during the country's forthcoming presidential elections.

In a Commons statement, which coincided with the publication of a document setting out UK policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, the prime minister said the additional troops, which will take the British force there to 9,000, will remain in the country until the autumn.

Officials made clear that there will be no permanent increase in UK troop numbers, which will return to the current level of 8,300 once the temporary "surge" is over.

Brown, who visited Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this week, said the lawless borderlands between the two countries are a "crucible of global terrorism" that ultimately threatens the security of the UK. Britain would take "more determined and concerted action" to deal with the problem, Brown said.

He echoed Barack Obama, who warned that extremism is a "cancer that is killing Pakistan from within".

Brown said: "For Afghanistan, our strategy is to ensure the country is strong enough as a democracy to withstand and overcome the terrorist threat."

In Pakistan, Britain would work with the government and the army "to help them counter terrorism by taking more control of the border areas", Brown said. Britain would also work "to prevent young people from falling under the sway of violent and extremist ideologies".

Brown's statement came a day after a British soldier from 1st Battalion Welsh Guards was killed in an explosion while on foot patrol in southern Afghanistan, bringing the number of British service personnel who have died in the country since operations began to 153.

Brown flew to Afghanistan on Monday, where he visited troops before meeting Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, in Kabul, then going to Islamabad to see Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president.

About £665m in development aid, including textbooks, which is bound for Pakistan over the next four years, is being directed to the northern areas to encourage young people away from extremism.

Britain wants the Afghan provinces to be handed over to government control one by one, in much the same way as happened in Iraq.

The strategy also calls for the Afghan army to be expanded from 75,000 to 134,000 troops by the end of 2011, alongside the recruitment of thousands of police.

Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The truth is this [the Afghanistan conflict] can't be won by soldiers. Soldiers can hold the ring, they can protect the space you want to reconstruct governance and establish the rule of law.

"But if you go about chasing the enemy wherever they go and in the consequence kill civilians rather than hold ground, the result is you are not just going to be killing terrorists but also making enemies.

"And that is exactly what has happened. We've had a huge death toll among civilians, in large measure, not exclusively, by American bombing."

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