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LONDON: Prince Harry, the youngest son of Prince
Charles and the late princess Diana, has been fighting the Taliban
on the front line in Afghanistan, the defense ministry in London
said Thursday.
The 23-year-old prince’s
deployment to the restive southern Afghan province of Helmand, where
most of Britain’s 7,700 troops are stationed, makes him the first
British royal to be sent on active duty in more than a
quarter-century.
The prince, who is third in line
to the throne and had considered quitting the armed forces after the
Iraq decision, retrained as a battlefield air controller, known as a
JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller), to go to Afghanistan.
He flew out on December 14 last
year and spent several weeks working in Garmsir, in the far south of
Helmand province, operating just 500 meters from front-line Taliban
positions. He has since left Garmsir to work in another part of
Helmand, although the details cannot be reported for security
reasons.
It was unclear how much longer
his tour there could last, however, with details of his posting
having been released—one newspaper declared that, now that his
presence there was in the public domain, “security comes first.”
The Ministry of Defense reached
agreement on a news blackout with British media to ensure details
did not reach insurgents in the area after Harry’s planned tour to
Iraq last year was halted due to security risk sparked by media
publicity. As part of the deal, a group of journalists visited the
royal in Helmand on condition that details would only be publicized
once he was safely back in Britain.
But the arrangement broke down
after news was leaked out on the US website, the Drudge Report,
which said that the Australian magazine New Idea and the German
tabloid Bild were the first to break a world embargo.
Those pre-prepared interviews
were released in the aftermath of the revelation that he was in
Afghanistan, in which the prince said he joked about his
nickname—”bullet magnet”—with colleagues and thought his
late mother, princess Diana, would have been proud of his
deployment. He also talked of life on the front line, including
spending Christmas Day in a former Taliban madrassa peppered with
bullet holes eating scrawny chickens slaughtered with the Gurkhas’
fearsome kukri knives.
Of British public reaction, Harry
said he hoped it would be positive and rounded on some commentators
who branded him a coward for not going to Iraq, saying,
“hopefully, they’ll eat their words.”
Harry acknowledged that his tour
could make him a “top target” for extremists, adding that
“every single person that supports them will be trying to slot
me.” He even admitted that he often wished he was not a
privileged, well-known royal.
Meanwhile, authorities
unanimously lauded the prince’s deployment, with Prime Minister
Gordon Brown describing him as an “exemplary soldier (who) is
serving with dedication in the finest tradition of our armed
forces.”
The British Army’s most senior
officer, Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, described
Harry as a “credit to the nation” but slammed the premature
publication of news about the deployment.
“I am very disappointed that
foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting
us,” he said.
--AFP
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