Facilitating Development

The Afghan Government, international organisations, donor nations and non-governmental organisations need secure environments in which to conduct much-needed reconstruction and development work in Afghanistan.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is facilitating and enabling this work in the south of Afghanistan. ISAF partners and the Afghan Government have recognised that there is no purely military solution to the problems faced in the region. Efforts to improve security must be swiftly followed by determined reconstruction work.

The UK's Task Force Helmand, part of the expansion of ISAF across Afghanistan, is playing a crucial role in setting these conditions.

Task Force Helmand consists of around 7,900 UK troops operating out of Camp Bastion, situated 30km outside Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province. Under their ISAF mission UK troops are facilitating reconstruction and extending Afghan Government authority. They are working closely with the combined military and civilian UK Provincial Reconstruction Team based in Lashkar Gah.

In the initial stages of the deployment UK troops saw operations designed to root out insurgents, an essential prelude to them implementing their clear ISAF mission of facilitating development. Deploying to provinces in the south of Afghanistan has, as expected, proven a major challenge. The region was a Taliban heartland and the expansion of ISAF was bound to lead to clashes with those who oppose the Afghan Government.

It remains, too, the major drug-producing area of the country, and is where the trade is organised. Nonetheless the presence of UK troops is having a positive effect. The people of Helmand province are starting to see the benefits of Afghan Government and international community reconstruction efforts.

The UK is not alone in ISAF’s expansion into southern Afghanistan:

• Denmark and Estonia are providing military and civilian resources to the British PRT
• Canada have deployed troops to Helmand's neighbouring province of Kandahar and assumed command of the PRT there
• the Netherlands have deployed troops to Oruzgan province and are in charge of the PRT in Tarin Kowt with assistance from Australia
• the US with support from Romania have a civilian-military PRT in Zabol's provincial capital of Qalat.