THE deployment of British troops to Afghanistan while the Army was tied up in Iraq was “cuckoo”, a former defence chief said yesterday.

General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, Chief of the Defence Staff from 1997 to 2001, cast doubt on the prudence of running two big campaigns at once. Field Marshal Lord Inge, one of his predecessors, also recently voiced concern about the “lack of strategy” behind the Iraq and Afghanistan missions.

Last week Bill Jeffery, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, admitted to the Commons Defence Committee that having 13,000 troops in two long-term campaigns breached the Government’s own stated policy on the maximum permissible commitment of the Armed Forces in overseas operations.

Lord Guthrie said: “Anyone who had read any history, anyone who knew the Afghans or had seen the terrain, anyone who had thought about the Taleban resurgence, anyone who understood what was going on across the border in Baluchistan and Waziristan (in Pakistan, to launch the British Army in with the numbers there are, while still going on in Iraq, is cuckoo.”

A former head of the UN mission in Kabul gave warning that Nato was “staring failure in the face” in Afghanistan. Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN chief in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2004, told The Times that the problems of Afghanistan could not be solved by military means alone.

Mr Brahimi said that the international community had “made a lot of mistakes” in Afghanistan.

He suggested that the UN and Nato should open talks with the Taleban. He said of his time in Kabul: “It is a great pity that we did not talk to the Taleban, that the Taleban was not involved. But they could not have been then.”

In another development, indications are that up to eight soldiers will be charged after images of Iraqis being beaten at a British base in al-Amarah were published in February.

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