Written question asked by Liam Fox (Conservative) on Wednesday, 27 January 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 29 January 2010. It was answered by Bob Ainsworth (Labour) on Monday, 22 February 2010 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Afghanistan and Iraq: Peacekeeping Operations

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many personnel have served in (a) Afghanistan since 2001 and (b) Operation Telic from 2003-09.

Answer

The following table shows the numbers of personnel endorsed for Afghanistan since 2001 and Operation Telic since 2003.

	Iraq	Afghanistan
2001	0	4,300 (Op Veritas—includes personnel that supported operations in Afghanistan but were not based in the country)

2002	0	2,100 (early 2002)
		3,500 (spring 2002)
		300 (summer 2002)

2003	46,000 (March)	300 (in ISAF)
	18,000 (end May)	plus 100 (at Mazar-e-Sharif)

2004	8,600 (end May)	500 (in ISAF) (April 2004)
		900 (in ISAF and Harrier GR7 deployment) (late 2004)

2005	8,500 (end November)	1,000

2006	7,200 (end May)	5,400 (summer 2006)
		6,200 (autumn 2006)
		6,300 (late autumn 2006)

2007	5,500 (end September)	6,300 (April)
		7,800 (late 2007)

2008	4,100	8,100 (June)

2009	4,100 (end May)	9,000 (April)
	150 (November)¹	9,500 (October)

¹ This includes the UK's contribution to the NATO Training Mission—Iraq.

The data included in this response have been rounded. The Afghanistan figures represent the endorsed troop levels at the given time.

Secondary information