The bloody betrayal:

Intelligence emails reveal Taliban have taken back Afghan strongholds that 150 of our boys died for

HUGE swathes of Helmand Province, the area of Afghanistan where hundreds of British soldiers were killed in eight years of bloody fighting, are once again in the hands of the Taliban, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The districts of Now Zad, Musa Qala and Sangin have been overrun by insurgents after British troops withdrew to the security of Camp Bastion – the last remaining UK base in the province.

The return of the Taliban to hundreds of square miles of territory which was previously liberated by British soldiers makes a mockery of Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration of ‘mission accomplished’ in Afghanistan.

The devastating news was revealed in a series of emails written by a British Army intelligence officer serving in Afghanistan, which have been seen by this newspaper.

Writing from behind the wire at Camp Bastion, he described the UK mission as ‘nothing other than a failure and not something to be proud about’.

Last night, the Ministry of Defence described the situation on the ground in these districts as ‘fluid’.

But the intelligence officer revealed: ‘Almost 1,000 Taliban have captured Now Zad, the approaches and checkpoints surrounding the district centre, and most of the civilian population have left. While in Musa Qala and Sangin the enemy has taken control of routes in and out of the towns.

‘The British response is to ignore what’s happening.

‘The message from London is that we’re only here to protect Bastion, to pack up the equipment and to get everything home. Nobody wants a scrap and we’ve lost the mindset to fight.’

The last UK troops sent to Afghanistan are due to come home by the end of this year, leaving the British-trained Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to fend for themselves against the resurgent Taliban hordes.

For many years military experts have warned of a nightmare scenario of the Taliban returning to prominence in Helmand and across the whole of the country.

Now it appears that these fears are being realised.

But while almost all the 4,500 British troops still in Afghanistan are either confined to base or training Afghan troops, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) is continuing to take the fight to the Taliban, with the Marines suffering eight fatalities and more wounded in a series of clashes with the enemy in Helmand Province.

In his emails sent last week the British officer was disgusted by the different approaches of the UK and the US to the return of the Taliban.

‘The USMC is getting stuck in while we [the British] are packing up and marking Armed Forces Day at Bastion with a ministerial visit and a rugby team,’ he wrote, referring to members of Premiership team Saracens being flown in to boost the morale of troops.

He added: ‘The Ministry of Defence keeps ramming home the message that the mission has been a great success, that the enemy is completely on the back foot and that Helmand is in a much better state than when we arrived in 2006.

‘But I don’t think we can consider what we’ve done as anything other than failure, and we’ll be judged accordingly. This is not something to be proud about.

‘It is Ramadan now so everyone [the Afghans] is hungry and p***** off. Afterwards the smart money is on the Afghan soldiers going AWOL and returning to the north of the country where most of them are from, especially if they are not paid. Because they are not from Helmand the locals see them as foreigners, just as they do us.’

The Taliban also achieved a morale-boosting feat when their gunmen attacked an SAS helicopter carrying UK Special Forces troops near Lashkar Gah. This incident took place four months ago but has not been reported until now. It is referred to in the officer’s emails.

No SAS soldiers are believed to have been wounded, but the £40million Chinook helicopter was badly damaged.

The officer wrote: ‘The SAS helicopter was brought down three miles from Lashkar Gah by heavy small-arms fire. The recovery operation was a complete cock-up. The RAF did not have a helicopter powerful enough to lift the wreckage so the Americans were called in. They used a Sea Stallion helicopter to recover the Chinook. The SAS were not impressed.’

The first British soldiers to see action in Now Zad and Musa Qala, where some 50 personnel lost their lives, and in Sangin were led by Colonel Stuart Tootal, the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (3 Para).

In May 2006, hundreds of Col Tootal’s Paras, assisted by Gurkhas and soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment, took on the Taliban in these isolated but strategically significant districts.

For several bloody months the besieged and outnumbered troops fought rearguard actions and the Paras’ stubborn defence of their ‘platoon houses’ entered British military folklore.

These districts were defended with equal courage by other British regiments and Royal Marines but by the time the last soldier marched out of Sangin, around 100 UK personnel had lost their lives there, many of them shot by snipers or blown up by deadly improvised explosive devices.

From 2010, British troops continued fighting but focused more of their resources on training the Afghans to take the lead against the Taliban.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said last night: ‘Afghan security forces have been responsible for security across Afghanistan since last summer and have proved themselves capable on many occasions.

‘We are aware of reports of heavy fighting in northern Helmand, but it would be wrong to comment further on a fluid situation.

‘In the same way as our coalition partners, UK personnel continue to conduct force protection missions in support of the ANSF while working towards the end of combat operations later this year.’