UK: Afghan war continues despite unpopularity

UK's army chief says the Afghan mission will continue despite its unpopularity at home, following a dramatic rise in British troops' death toll in recent months.

General David Richards wrote in a letter to The Daily Telegraph on Monday that the British government must disregard negative opinion polls about the war and press ahead with its own security policies.

The top General's remarks about British security policies in Afghanistan comes as diplomats have revealed that the British army has been involved in fueling insurgency in the country by transporting the militants from the south to the north of Afghanistan.

The revelations days after Afghan President Hamid Karzai was quoted by the BBC Persian as having ordered an investigation into reports of 'unknown' army helicopters carrying gunmen to the relatively calm north.

Richards also believes that the Afghan war is winnable even though it may seem far off.

The top general was referring to a recent opinion poll, carried out for The Times newspaper on Wednesday, which showed that an increasing number of Britons are now opposed to the UK's involvement in Afghanistan.

The survey also revealed that 36 percent of the voters were now in favor of withdrawing all British forces from the volatile south Asian nation.

Anyone who suggests "the sooner we get out the better... is wrong", Richards wrote, while stressing that the government's security policy should not be "driven by opinion polls".

"It has been a struggle to persuade the British public about this and we need to do better," he added.

The mounting British death toll in the war-torn country has also been putting Prime Minister Gordon Brown under heavy pressure.

However, heedless to all calls for a withdrawal, Brown announced on Wednesday plans for the deployment of 500 more troops to Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, to join up to 9,000 British soldiers already stationed there.

At least 221 UK service personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to allegedly destroy the militancy and arrest its leaders, including Osama bin Laden, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

The operation was labeled "the war against terror", leading to more terror, and insecurity in the conflict-torn country.

Latest UN reports show that in the first six months of 2009 alone, more than 1,500 civilians were killed across violence-racked Afghanistan, either from US air strikes or in the Taliban-led insurgency.

As a further consequence, a UN report in 2001, prior to the US invasion, showed poppy cultivation to be almost non-existent in any province of Afghanistan.

Now, according to the Washington Post, around 4000 tons of opium is produced in all corners of the country, which amounts to three-quarters of world production, an increase reminiscent of the 'golden triangle' operations during the Vietnam war.