We need a bigger army

Successful counter-insurgency requires an army to be able to clear an area of insurgents and hold it. Only then will the population believe that it is safe both to resume something approaching normal life and — crucially — to co-operate against the insurgents, offering intelligence on their whereabouts and the like. If you try and do counter-insurgency with too few troops, you end up just playing whack-a-mole with them as the US did in pre-surge Iraq.

The comments from Tim Radford, the commander of Task Force Helmand, that his force will be fully deployed holding an area of Helmand the size of the Isle of Wight and unable to take the offensive to the Taleban again without reinforcements is further proof that we need more boots on the ground in Afghanistan. It would be far easier to send more troops to Helmand if the army was bigger and therefore less stretched.