Troops operating in Iraq need a break and must not be transferred to Afghanistan when numbers in Basra are cut next year, the head of the Armed Forces said yesterday.

In a clear warning to the Government against calls for a surge in British troops in Afghanistan next year, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said that personnel needed time to recover.

Britain’s troop numbers in Iraq are expected to be cut from 4,100 to a few hundred by May, but Sir Jock said troops returning from Basra could not simply be sent off to Afghanistan. “It cannot be just a one-for-one transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan,” he said on BBC TV’sAndrew Marr Show, emphasising that the Armed Forces had been stretched to the limit in recent years.

Separately, Major-General Simon Mayall, Assistant Chief of General Staff, gave warning that security in-Iraq would be compromised by the early withdrawal of British troops, suggesting that their work would not be complete until the end of next year.

General Mayall said: “We are very aware of the politics both in the coalition and Iraq, but having made a lot of sacrifices, done some really brave things in the last six years, we would hate to see all those benefits thrown away by too precipitous a withdrawal. I genuinely think by the end of next year we will, with hand on heart, say, ‘That has been six years’ hard pounding and we’ve done what we set out to do, which was to empower a sovereign Iraqi government to take control of its own destiny’.”

There were also firm signals yesterday that Britain will not be sending troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite the humanitarian crisis that has arisen after renewed clashes between government and rebel forces.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said on the Andrew Marr Show that it was “not on the agenda”, and Sir Jock insisted that the 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers already there were “more than enough”.

Sir Jock emphasised that the Armed Forces had to focus their efforts on the campaign in Afghanistan, which he described as a “marathon, not a sprint”.

He explained why 8,200 British troops needed to be in Afghanistan. “We’re fighting for our own national interest. There is a very large ungoverned space that straddles the ‘Durand Line’ between Afghanistan and Pakistan. That ungoverned space is a breeding ground for violence and criminality. In this case Islamic extremism, which exports global terrorism and an intensive narcotics industry,” he said.

More military force was required in Afghanistan, but not from Britain, he said. “We’re the second-largest troop-contributing nation. We expect others to take up their share of the burden.”

Sir Jock also spoke out in favour of the lightly armed Snatch Land Rovers in Afghanistan, insisting they had the manoeuvrability commanders needed.

“Now we want a vehicle like that that has better protection than Snatch and that’s what we’ve been developing.” New Snatch-Vixen armoured vehicles are being sent to Afghanistan.

-A biography of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig says he pushed for a compromise peace with Germany at the end of the First World War. J. P. Harris, senior lecturer in War Studies at Sandhurst, whose book, Douglas Haig and the First World War, is out tomorrow, says despite a series of victories, Haig lost faith in his ability to defeat Germany. “He wanted to offer the Germans very easy ceasefire terms in late 1918. He seemed to show no realisation of just what a serious defeat for Britain such a peace would actually be.”

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