147 soldiers dead in Iraq, 54 in Afghanistan - the human cost of 'humanitarian intervention'

Since Tony Blair took office a decade ago, he has committed British forces to action more often, and in more conflicts, than any Prime Minister since 1945.

Britain's military has implemented Mr Blair's policy of "humanitarian intervention" from Kosovo to Afghanistan, Sierra Leone to Iraq. Not only has this crusade embroiled them in what one officer called the most intense fighting since the Korean War, more than half a century ago, it is stretching their depleted resources to the limit. And the cost in lives goes on: in the past week another two soldiers have died in Iraq, bringing the total there to 147, and one more in Afghanistan, where 54 have been killed on operational duty.

The doctrine of using force in the pursuit of moral causes, rather than any calculation of Britain's vital interests, formed no part of the New Labour manifesto when Mr Blair came to Downing Street in 1997. It evolved as a PM unversed in foreign policy responded to crises, first in Kosovo, then in Sierra Leone and, after 9/11, in Afghanistan.

If "humanitarian intervention" had stopped there, it might have been seen as one of the most successful aspects of the Blair legacy. Whatever holes critics could have picked, it would have been possible to claim that more than a million Kosovar Albanians had been saved from ethnic cleansing without the loss of a single British life; that legitimate government had been restored in Sierra Leone; and that Afghanistan had been freed from the medieval tyranny of the Taliban and its al-Qa'ida allies, again at scarcely any cost in British lives.

It is easy to forget how high the Prime Minister's international prestige stood at the end of 2001, just after the Taliban fled Kabul. He had persuaded one American President, Bill Clinton, to stand tough in the Balkans - though if Nato had been forced to stage a ground attack, rather than bombing Kosovo and Serbia for 78 days from the air, he might have discovered the bloody reality of full-scale war much earlier than he finally did.

In the wake of 9/11, Mr Blair was again prominent, immediately pledging support to Mr Clinton's successor, George Bush, and helping to rally near-unanimous world backing for the intervention in Afghanistan. But within months he had begun to squander this credit as he secretly pledged his unqualified support for the neo-conservative campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, culminating in the construction of a false case for war in Iraq.

In his 2003 book, Blair's Wars, John Kampfner provides a telling detail about the PM's first military venture - the missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan after al-Qa'ida bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The retaliation, which demolished a pharmaceuticals plant near Khartoum wrongly thought to be producing nerve gas, was criticised as an attempt to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, then at its height, but Mr Blair paid no attention.

"Everyone knew that what Clinton was doing was wrong - bombing that plant - but we also knew that supporting him was right," a member of the Downing Street inner circle told Kampfner. That was the attitude which carried Tony Blair to where he is now, at the end of his term: fighting on two fronts, in Iraq and Afghanistan, without sufficient troops to make a decisive difference in either place.

"We abandoned Afghanistan once," Mr Blair said in November 2001, referring to the way the country was allowed to become a failed state after the Cold War. Left awash in arms, drug-running and warring militias, it fell into the grip of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. "We are not going to abandon [it] the second time," he added, but that is what happened, almost immediately, with the charge towards war in Iraq.

"As in Iraq, the war phase in Afghanistan was successful, but there was no post-conflict planning," said one of Mr Blair's most bitter military critics, Sir Michael Rose. The retired general, ex-head of the SAS and former commander of UN forces in Bosnia, has just published a book, Washington's War: From Independence to Iraq, likening the 2003 war's aftermath to the failures of British forces during the American War of Independence. Sir Michael sees all of Mr Blair's military interventions as "catastrophic", saying: "He has been as successful a Prime Minister as Lord North, who lost us the colonies in America."

The consequences in Afghanistan did not become clear until late 2005, when the Taliban, having been given the time and space to regroup across the border in Pakistan, began to reclaim their former heartland. In January last year the then Defence Secretary, John Reid, announced that 3,300 British troops would be deployed to the southern province of Helmand, expressing the forlorn hope that "we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years' time without firing a shot, because our job is to protect the reconstruction".

Not only did British soldiers find themselves fighting a full-scale insurgency, in less than 18 months their numbers have had to be doubled, despite Mr Reid's rejection of claims that he was sending too small a force. Development has been set back as Western forces seek to clear Taliban fighters out of the areas where it is supposed to take place - this weekend British troops are leading a 1,000-strong Nato offensive against insurgents preventing the refurbishment of a hydro-electric dam at Kajaki, in Helmand, which could supply power to all southern Afghanistan.

General Julian Thompson, a Falklands veteran, said military commanders believed that the Afghanistan conflict was "certainly winnable, but it would have been better if they hadn't been diverted by Iraq". But the fear is that the mounting toll of civilian casualties in southern and eastern Afghanistan is creating the kind of hostility towards the occupiers that is universal in Iraq.

Military chiefs warned the Government that British forces could not sustain both conflicts indefinitely, and earlier this year Mr Blair finally relented, announcing the reduction of the Iraq contingent to below the number now serving in Afghanistan. For the reduced force concentrated at one base at Basra airport, however, this is proving a dangerous phase, with April the bloodiest month for British troops in Iraq since the end of the war in 2003. It is not the most opportune moment for Prince Harry, as a senior royal, to arrive.

Operation Sinbad, a final effort to wrest control of Basra from the militias, appears to have failed, and there are not enough British soldiers in Iraq for another push, a fact which has caused anger among US commanders throwing reinforcements into the security crackdown in Baghdad. But even if all the 5,500 British troops left in the country were to be pulled out immediately, it would not relieve the strains imposed by frequent combat tours, shortage of time for rest and retraining, and shortages of equipment needed to fight an infantry war. Last week commanders in Afghanistan made it clear that they still did not have enough vehicles, despite complaints which go back almost a year.

"Mr Blair has been very willing to use the armed forces, but not to sustain the commitment," said General Thompson. "They are not prepared to spend the money, and this Government's politicisation of the civil service extends to the Ministry of Defence, where the chiefs of staff appear to have lost influence."

He concluded: "This is the Blair legacy. He has pushed the envelope too far in pursuing his policy of 'humanitarian intervention', and the armed forces are haemorrhaging as a result. People are saying that they don't feel supported, and they have had enough. They are probably right to feel that way."

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former political director of the Foreign Office and head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, recently told the Policy Exchange in London that Britain would have to persevere in Afghanistan, "which has become a test of our capacity and Nato's". But in the future, she added, "I don't think there will be a great appetite for humanitarian intervention."

The latest toll: three more Britons are killed in the service of their country

Guardsman Simon Davison

The 22-year-old from Newcastle was killed on Thursday by small-arms fire while manning a checkpoint near Garmsir in Afghanistan's Helmand province. He was serving with the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards. Guardsman Davison was described by his platoon sergeant, Matthew Betts, as "diligent and smart".

Major Nick Bateson

The Royal Signals officer, 49, was killed in an accident at Basra air station, Britain's main base in southern Iraq, on Tuesday. He was hit by a coach while cycling on the base. The keen sportsman, from Kent, was described by his commanding officer as "one of life's real characters."

Rifleman Paul Donnachie

Aged 18, Rifleman Donnachie died after being hit by small-arms fire on patrol in the Al Ashar district of Basra city last Sunday. Rifleman Donnachie, 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, was from Reading, Berkshire. His family said: "You have always made us very proud, and you will never be forgotten."

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