British soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan should be welcomed home as heroes and honoured with parades in their local towns, General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the Army, said yesterday.

Looking enviously at the treatment of returning troops in the United States, where ticker-tape parades and bands are commonplace, General Dannatt said he was worried that there was a widening gulf between the members of the Armed Forces and the public. He blamed it partly on the “demonstrably unpopular war in Iraq” and, by association, what was “deemed to be an unpopular war in Afghanistan”.

General Dannatt urged councils to consider arranging parades for returning regiments based in their areas, and called on football clubs to offer free tickets to soldiers who had spent six months in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Parades in their home towns organised by local councils would make them “feel good”, he said. He made his appeal during a speech on the future of the Army at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

General Dannatt said: “We don’t ask for sympathy when we are doing what we are paid to do. But we do what we do in the nation’s name. They are not supermen, but soldiers need to know that they are respected for their acts of selflessness and courage . . . and for their commitment.”

The general, who is Chief of the General Staff, has made previous public pronouncements about the importance of the so-called military covenant between the Armed Forces and the Government and nation they serve. But yesterday he went farther. “In the United States, appreciation of the Armed Forces is nothing short of outstanding and I would like to see some of that reflected here,” he said.

When the troops returned home from the Falklands conflict in 1982, thousands of people lined the harbour at Portsmouth to welcome them; and victory parades were held in London after the Falklands campaign and after the 1991 Gulf War.

“Soldiers are genuinely concerned when they come back from Iraq to hear the population that sent them being occasionally dismissive. We are in danger of sapping at our volunteer Army’s willingness to serve in such an atmosphere again,” he said.

The head of the Army fully acknowledged that the public’s perception of the two campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan was unfavourable. But the operation in Afghanistan, he said, was “misunderstood”. It was wrong to describe it as Britain’s “fourth war” there – after the wars of 1839, 1878 and 1919. “We’re there at the Afghan Government’s request to assist them in building security, economic stability and the rule of law,” he said.

He then revealed that, until now, the British military had avoided taking on the opium growers in southern Afghanistan because of the risk of alienating the Afghan farmers whose livelihoods depended on their poppy crops. Had the troops eradicated the poppy fields from the start, it would have caused “an own goal”, giving the Taleban a propaganda opportunity.

However, General Dannatt said that next year the intention was “to bear down on the poppy harvest”.

He made no reference to possible future troop cuts in Iraq, other than to say that all the Service chiefs had now given their advice to the Government on appropriate levels, in anticipation of the expected statement on Iraq by Gordon Brown next month.

General Dannatt said that significant progress had been made in southern Iraq, with three of the four provinces already handed over to Iraqi security control, and he denied that the 500 British troops withdrawn from the Basra Palace base this month had been forced out. “To say that we were bombed out of Basra is completely wrong,” he said.

He added: “We have not lost a single significant tactical engagement, and the nation should take great pride in what has been achieved.”

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