BRITISH SOLDIERS in Afghanistan will continue to serve along Afghani troops to create a stable country, prime minister David Cameron has said, following the killing of three soldiers on Tuesday by an Afghan recruit.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Cameron yesterday said an investigation into the killings is under way: “I have to say that there should, however, be no knee-jerk reaction and no change in our strategy.
“We must continue to work with the Afghan army to create a stable Afghanistan able to maintain its own security and to prevent al-Qaeda from returning. At this very sad time, our thoughts should be with the families and friends of all these brave servicemen.”
One of the dead is Lieut Neal Turkington from Portadown, Co Armagh, who was serving with 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles in the Nahr-e Saraj region of Helmand province as part of a unit training recruits to the Afghan national army.
Ulster unionist Upper Bann MP David Simpson said he had visited the Turkington family late on Tuesday and spoke at length with his father: “They were very proud of the fact that he had achieved so much in his short life. His ambition was to be an officer with the Gurkhas.”
“May I say in closing that this House will know that, when it comes to the Crown forces, young men and women of Northern Ireland have never been found wanting? Today, we have lost another son and we hope it is the last,” Mr Simpson told the Commons.
Saying that an inquiry would be held into “this tragic, although I believe, isolated case”, the prime minister said: “There is nothing you can say to parents who have lost a child that will help with the sense of grief and loss; there is nothing you can do.
“But it is important that they get the information to try to help achieve some sort of closure on what has happened,” he said, adding that 5,000 of the British forces stationed in Afghanistan are working “together day and night” with local forces. “When we hear their stories about how well they are working together it does gives us hope that we are building an Afghan army that we will be able to hand over to. We must not lose sight of that, in spite of all the difficulties,” he said.
Meanwhile, the British armed forces, army, navy and air force have a new commanding officer, following the appointment yesterday General Sir David Richards as chief of the defence staff, who last year warned that the British military might have to be in Afghanistan for 40 years.
A former Nato commander in Kabul, Gen Richards, who joined the British army in 1974, served four tours in Northern Ireland and replaces the much-criticised air chief marshal Sir Jock Stirrup. Gen Richards became the first British officer to command US troops in the field since the second World War during his time in Afghanistan.
Gen Richards said in an interview last month that he assumed British forces, the second largest foreign contingent in Afghanistan, would be involved in the country for another three to five years.