Attacks on British soldiers in Iraq rose dramatically in 2005 after military chiefs, under orders from Tony Blair, switched their attention to a new campaign in Afghanistan, the head of the Army has told The Times.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, who retires as Chief of the General Staff in August, indicated that the MoD became distracted after Mr Blair committed Britain to “a bigger effort” in Afghanistan in 2004. At that time southern Iraq was rela-tively quiet compared with Baghdad, where US troops were coming increasingly under attack. It was in this context that Mr Blair then decided to order military chiefs to start planning for Afghanistan.

Sources close to the former Prime Minister said that he had made the decision because of deteriorating security in Afghanistan, not because he wanted the main focus to switch from Iraq.

General Dannatt told The Times in an exclusive interview: “The importance about that decision [however] is that it was a strategic move by the United Kingdom to make a bigger effort in southern Afghanistan to relieve some of the pressure on the United States, because by the middle of 2004, in Baghdad and the north and the west of Iraq, violence was mounting considerably more than it was in the south.

“It seemed a very reasonable and understandable alliance and coalition thing to do more in another theatre to relieve the senior partner in a coalition. But we said we wouldn't do it until the middle of 2006, so we gave ourselves a two-year lead-in,” he said.

“But of course by the middle of 2006, the situation in southern Iraq had also deteriorated, which gave us the conflation of two difficult operations to put the pressure on the Army that we've spoken about in the past,” General Dannatt said, looking back at the lessons learnt from the six-year Operation Telic campaign in Iraq. Tomorrow a two-star American general will take over command of the base at Basra airfield in the first stage of Britain's withdrawal from Iraq.

In 2004, the year of Mr Blair's decision, which was announced at a Nato summit in Istanbul, twenty-two British Service personnel died in Iraq, but only two from roadside bombs. Thirteen of the fatalities were caused by road traffic accidents or other non-combat incidents. This changed dramatically in 2005 when Iran-backed Shia militia launched a war against the British troops.

One of the reasons, General Dannatt said, may have been Iran's anger at new Western efforts at the time to try to stop Tehran's nuclear programme. Of the twenty-three troops who died in 2005, eight were killed after their lightly armoured Snatch Land Rovers were blown up by a new type of explosive device that had been manufactured in Iran and smuggled over the border into southern Iraq.

The following year, out of the 29 who died, 15 were killed from the deadly roadside bombs called explosively formed projectiles or penetrators (EFPs). The MoD had to scrabble around to buy heavily armoured vehicles off the shelf to send off to Iraq to provide better protection against the EFPs.

“We'd been used to dealing with IEDs [improvised explosive devices], particularly in Northern Ireland, but these were really big ones. These weren't just made in someone's backyard. The intelligence and the evidence shows that these were proper workshop bits of equipment, down to an Iranian design, and this was a serious escalation that appeared very quickly,” General Dannatt said.

Huge Mastiffs and Bulldogs were dispatched to Basra, although there were time delays, General Dannatt said, because of the need to integrate British military radios into these new armoured vehicles.

General Dannatt recalled the impact that Mr Blair's decision on Afghanistan had on the military. “Inevitably, part of our planning effort in the MoD and in the Permanent Joint Headquarters was allocated to thinking about what we would be doing in southern Afghanistan, what sort of forces we would need, and we began planning that operation, and particularly also thinking through the very difficult issue of establishing a line of communications almost halfway round the world - no small feat,” he said.

“So inevitably the amount of work we had given ourselves was going to increase as we prepared to move towards beginning that operation in southern Afghanistan.”

Despite rising casualties, there were no reinforcements. With 3,500 troops being earmarked for Afghanistan, resources were tight. Instead, to try to stop the daily attacks on units serving in Basra city, talks began with the Shia militia to end the violence. The last-remaining 500 troops in Basra City withdrew in September 2007.

General Dannatt was at pains to emphasise the role of British Forces in restoring security to Iraq's biggest port city. ]“We've got to a very satisfactory outcome in southern Iraq and Basra today, and I think that's huge credit to the Armed Forces, frankly, for taking the pain and managing with the resources that we had,” he said.

Plain speaking

— General Sir Richard Dannatt took over running the Army in 2006 and quickly acquired a reputation for speaking his mind. He admits that everything he says is intended and calculated

— In October 2006 he warned of the risk that the continued presence of British troops in Basra might “exacerbate” the security situation

— In the same interview, he said that whatever consent British troops had enjoyed from the Iraqi people had “largely turned to intolerance”

— He frequently highlighted the pressures the Army was under and warned that it might be broken by the nonstop tempo

— He said that there was a “moral and spiritual vacuum” in Britain that had allowed Muslim extremists to undermine “our way of life”

— He criticised the practice of putting injured servicemen into the same wards as civilians

— He has urged the public to come out in support of troops when they return home

— The general called for better pay for young soldiers, saying that those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan were paid less than traffic wardens

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