‘New phase’ in Afghanistan says PM

Prime Minister David Cameron has offered his condolences to the family of a British soldier captured and killed in Afghanistan, but added there are positive signs for the future of the country.

Speaking alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a tour of Kabul, Mr Cameron said the Taliban could have a future as part of a government as former militants did in Northern Ireland.

“I’ve seen it in my own country, in Northern Ireland, where people who were involved in trying to kill, maim, and bomb civilians, police officers, army personnel, and even politicians, have actually become politicians themselves,” Mr Cameron said.

He also unveiled plans for a new British Sandhurst-style academy to train Afghan army officers as British troops leave.

Captured soldier

Mr Cameron offered his condolences to the dead soldier’s family, who have been told of his death.

“[It is] a reminder of the high price that we have paid for the vital work we do in Afghanistan and in Helmand province,” Mr Cameron said at the media conference.

The Minstry of Defence said the soldier was serving with The Highlanders, 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, and will be named later today.

The soldier’s mysterious death in Helmand province, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, forced Mr Cameron to abandon a trip to the provincial capital Lashkar Gar.

The soldier went missing from a checkpoint in the Nahr-e Saraj area during the early hours of Monday, and the Ministry of Defence later announced that his body had been found with gunshot wounds.

The most senior Afghan commander for the province, Sayed Maluk, reportedly said the soldier was found dead in a stream that ran through his military base, after apparently drowning, and his body was later shot by insurgents.

“According to the information I was given… he was swimming inside his base in a stream that runs through it. The flow of water was very fast and he drowned and his body was carried out of the base,” said the commander of 215 Corps in Helmand.

“When the Taliban saw the body of a British soldier in the stream they shot his dead body,” he said.

The Nahr-e Saraj area was apparently only cleared of insurgent activity after a joint operation between coalition and Afghan forces at the end of May.

‘New phase’

Despite the death, Mr Cameron expressed hope for the Afghanistan operation as troops begin to leave.

“In the larger picture, what is happening is we are moving into a new phase,” Mr Cameron said.

“We can see an increasingly confident Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police Force able to carry out more operations on their own and able to respond to more incidents on their own.”

The Prime Minister also repeated that there will be no movement in the 2015 deadline for the UK’s combat role to end.

He said there would be a withdrawal of British servicemen this year, in addition to the 450 already due to leave.

Meanwhile, the outgoing commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has revealed the focus of the war in the coming months will shift from Taliban strongholds in the south to the eastern border with Pakistan.

It is this area where insurgents closest to al-Qaeda are said to have a stronghold.

“The priority has been central Helmand province and Kandahar,” he said.

“We have made significant progress there… It remains a tough fight because the enemy wants to come back and try to regain the momentum the Taliban had until we took it away sometime last [autumn].”