Campaigns 'created perfect storm'

General Sir Richard Dannatt said a task force deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2006 came at a time when the Army faced worsening insurgency in Iraq.

Giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry yesterday he revealed he had written to the then Defence Secretary Des Browne to warn that morale among troops was so "fragile" it could trigger a potentially damaging exodus.

Gen Dannatt said he had been surprised to learn of the decision in 2004 to send British troops to Helmand in Afghanistan, even though he was at that time the commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps which was due to be deployed.

"'Where did that come from?' was my reaction," he said.

By the time he took over as the Chief of the General Staff in 2006, he found himself in charge of an Army that was "running hot".

"You can run hot when you are in balance and there is enough oil sloshing around the engine to keep it going," he told the inquiry. "When the oil is thin, or not in sufficient quantity, the engine runs the risk of seizing up.

"I think we were getting quite close to a seizing-up moment in 2006."

Gen Dannatt said that on taking up his appointment he set out his concerns in a lengthy letter to Mr Browne.

"My biggest concern was that that fragility could be turned into a sharp rise in exits from our trained manpower akin to going over a cliff edge," he said.

"Once your manning has begun to plummet we would have been in all kinds of trouble trying to man two operations with units that were not fully manned. That would have spiralled into something of a nightmare."

Commanders had been worried they would not be able to withdraw troops as quickly had been hoped from Iraq following the invasion in 2003, while at the same time having to find additional forces to deploy to Afghanistan.

"We could see that perfect storm coming to fruition in about the middle of 2006 and I would contend that it did," he added.

The decision by Tony Blair to commit UK troops to Helmand was "reasonable" when it was made in 2004, Gen Dannatt said, but by 2006 the situation had changed as the insurgency had taken hold in southern Iraq.

Despite the worsening situation in Afghanistan, Gen Dannatt acknowledged there had been no reconsideration of the decision to go into Helmand.

"Maybe that was an error," he said.

Gen Dannatt disclosed that he and Mr Blair met one-to-one just once during his time as Chief of the General Staff.

Asked whether he was confident that his concerns were being passed on by Mr Browne and the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, he replied: "They told me they were."

Gen Dannatt strongly criticised the failure to find a replacement for the lightly-armoured Snatch Land Rovers which proved highly vulnerable in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It remains unsatisfactory that it is only now that we have closed with the issue," he said. "We worked round the problem, we didn't actually confront the problem."

Gen Dannatt's predecessor as head of the Army, General Sir Mike Jackson, told the inquiry that by 2006 there was so much momentum behind the Helmand deployment it was difficult to draw back. "I think the view was we could not suddenly put up our hand and say, 'We can't do this in Afghanistan'," he said.

"Because it was not just a matter for us. It would have been the whole Nato effort in that country which would have been quite severely disrupted."

The inquiry was adjourned until tomorrow.