LONDON, Nov 18: The head of the British army has warned of serious overstretch and morale problems among troops in excerpts from a high-level report published by the Sunday Telegraph.

Sir Richard Dannatt said that the present level of operations was “unsustainable”, the army is “undermanned” and troops are feeling “devalued, angry and suffering from Iraq fatigue”, it said.

Britain currently has over 6,000 troops in Afghanistan – a figure which will rise to around 7,700 by the end of the year – and around 5,500 in Iraq.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said last month that Iraq troop numbers would be cut by more than half to 2,500 by early next year as Iraqis assume control of Basra province in the south.

Dannatt’s report – drawn from months of interviews with thousands of soldiers – warned that increasing numbers of troops were “disillusioned” with service life and “the tank of goodwill now runs on vapour: many experienced staff are talking of leaving”.“We must strive to give individuals and units ample recuperation time between operations, but I do not underestimate how difficult this will be to achieve whilst under-manned and with less robust establishments than I would like,” it added.

In July, Dannatt reportedly warned that the army had “almost no capacity to react to the unexpected” because of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The main opposition Conservative Party has also repeatedly warned of overstretch.

In a separate article in the Sunday Telegraph, Defence Secretary Des Browne acknowledged that “we are now asking a lot of the services and their families”.

“Iraq and Afghanistan place huge demands on our personnel,” he wrote.

“But those who claim the covenant between the government and the armed forces is in any way broken are wrong.

“That does not mean that we, the government, cannot do better.

“But the truth is that we strive constantly to ensure that the armed forces have the best possible package of care.” Dannatt has not shied from speaking his mind on other issues – last year, he called for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq “sometime soon” because they were contributing to Britain’s security problems before toning down his remarks.—AFP