LONDON: Military planners have been urging senior commanders to seek the pullout of up to half their troops from Iraq to bolster the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, The Observer has learnt.

Their hope is for a withdrawal of ‘between one-third and a half’ of the 7,000 British troops in Iraq by May next year, and reflects a growing concern over the pressures on an increasingly stretched army.

The call reportedly emerged from a major planning review earlier this year, shortly before then defence secretary John Reid sent the first major part of a currently 5,500-strong army contingent to Afghanistan.

In the run-up to agreeing to the increased Afghan mission, Reid was understood to have sought and received an explicit assurance from his top commanders that the army could handle it without the necessity of any pullouts from Iraq.

A spokesman last night ‘categorically’ denied that the military chiefs had advised Reid that an Iraqi pullout would be necessary for the Afghan mission to succeed.

Yet the conclusion of the military planning review was that while the army could indeed cope with both the Iraqi and the Afghan missions for the present, ‘if we continue to have the same level of need for forces in Iraq, it will be difficult to find the number and types of troops needed to make Afghanistan a success’, an informed military source said.

The pressure for a significant early withdrawal of some troops from Iraq is understood to have been strengthened in recent months by the unexpected ferocity of the fighting in Afghanistan. Before the deployment to the country’s Helmand province, Reid had voiced hopes that the mission might even be completed without British forces having to fire a shot.

The military planners are said to have calculated that in order to sustain and succeed in the mission in Afghanistan in the longer run, an ‘on-call’ force of some 12,000 troops ‘either in training or pre-deployment’ would be needed to rotate into the combat area.

The army has a total of about 100,000 personnel, but the number of troops with the skills, training and equipment needed for conflicts such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq is estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000.

News of the hope for a shift of resources could further increase political pressure on Tony Blair to accelerate plans to pull out at least some of the troops from Iraq. It comes on the heels of the controversial and very public call last week by the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, for British forces to begin pulling out ‘soon’.

Dannatt also voiced a concern that an open-ended troop commitment in Iraq could ‘break’ the army.

Iraq is also rising up the agenda in the campaign for Labour’s deputy leadership, with the MP Jon Cruddas set to formally launch his candidacy this week. He will accuse the government of having stored up problems at home because of the war on terrorism.

‘We have to admit openly that our foreign policy over the last few years has reinforced a sense of insecurity, fear and isolation within some of our own communities,’ he will say.—Dawn/ The Observer News Service