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LONDON: There were increasing claims on Monday that
media coverage of Prince Harry’s 10-week tour in Afghanistan had
been “propaganda” and overlooked a failed military strategy
there.
Meanwhile, British newspapers
reported that the 23-year-old was set to get a promotion following
his time fighting the Taliban in the restive Helmand province in
southern Afghanistan that was cut short when a US website blew his
cover Thursday, forcing the military to withdraw him.
According to The Times and The
Sun tabloid on Monday, Harry is guaranteed a promotion next month,
having completed two years in the army, along with a 5,000-pound
(6,500-euro, $9,900) annual pay increase.
The Daily Telegraph also
reported, quoting an unnamed senior source, that he will be assigned
to train young soldiers in his role of Forward Air Controller, which
involves calling in air strikes and carrying out surveillance.
The prince returned to Britain on
Saturday to a hero’s welcome, and vowed to return to the frontline
as soon as possible, though British military chiefs have said that
prospect is unlikely for 18 months or so.
But dissenting voices are now
beginning to be heard above the widespread praise for the young
prince, not least because of the British media’s agreement with
the defense ministry to a news blackout until he returned.
The royal and his superiors say
the coverage could help the public appreciate more their role in
Afghanistan while the former head of the British Army, General Sir
Mike Jackson, said it was “not unhelpful” for recruitment.
A high-profile parliamentary
committee warned in January that pressure on Britain’s military to
meet its commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, where about 12,000
soldiers are stationed in total, has battered morale and spurred
experienced officers to leave.
Center-left publications the
Independent on Sunday and The Observer both highlighted the lack of
analysis about Britain’s wider role in Afghanistan in the coverage
of Prince Harry.
Former British soldier Leo
Docherty, an Iraq war and Afghanistan veteran, said air strikes of
the kind Harry called were not succeeding in winning the hearts and
minds of local Afghans.
“This [the coverage] is war
reduced to entertainment, willingly ignorant of the truth that young
men like Harry, both British and Afghan, are dying violent pointless
deaths in Helmand province,” he wrote in the Independent on
Sunday.
Little if any space had been
given to recent claims about the Afghan government’s fragile grip
on power in the face of the obdurate Taliban, the difficulties of
reconstruction or NATO’s counter-narcotics strategy, it wrote.
The renowned publicist Max
Clifford told The Guardian Saturday he believed the deployment was a
“total, superficial, PR exercise” aimed at “rebranding”
Harry—who has a reputation as a wayward party animal—in a more
positive light.
--AFP
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