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Mark Urban tells how a mission to reconstruct and develop Helmand province quickly turned into a fierce battle against a loose coalition of powerful local groups who did not want the British troops to be there.

When the government suggested that more troops to be sent to Iraq in 2004, military generals pushed their own alternative - a mission to develop Helmand.

General Sir David Richards, NATO Commander in Afghanistan 2006-2007, explains that conditions in Helmand were pretty good when the decision to deploy to the south-east was taken in 2004.

Brigadier Ed Butler, a UK Commander in Helmand in 2006, considers that there was a naivety about how straightforward this mission would be, pointing to intelligence failures and the lack of a long-term strategy for the region.

Initially, troops patrolled in soft hats and the majority were engineers and support troops there to build the Camp Bastion base and develop the main centres. Instead of developing the region however, British troops were quickly drawn into conflict with warlords from the former regime, the narco-criminals making money from the opiate industry in the area, and the Taliban themselves.

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