Britain withdraws Prince Harry fighting Taliban

"Following a detailed assessment of the risks by the operational chain of command, the decision has been taken... to withdraw Prince Harry from Afghanistan immediately," it said in a statement.        

The 23-year-old prince, an officer in the Household Cavalry regiment, has spent the past 10 weeks secretly serving in the volatile southern province of Helmand, where most of Britains troops are based. His deployment makes him the first British royal to be sent on active military service in nearly 26 years, when his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew Royal Navy helicopters during the Falklands War with Argentina in 1982.                   

In an interview to have been published on his return, Harry told Britains domestic Press Association news agency his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II broke the news to him and that he was relieved to be sent. Asked about his reaction, he said: "A bit of excitement, a bit of, phew, finally get the chance to actually do the soldiering I wanted to do from ever since I joined." But he said most of his friends did not know "for the obvious reasons" of security.        

The British Armys most senior officer, Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, slammed the premature publication of the deployment. "I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us," he said. Dannatt said the last two months had shown it was "perfectly possible" for Prince Harry to serve in the same fashion as other army officers of his rank and experience. "His conduct on operations in Afghanistan has been exemplary," he said. "He has been fully involved in operations and has run the same risks as everyone else in his battlegroup."         

Dannatt said he had decided to deploy Harry in Afghanistan because the news blackout agreement with the media had made the risk "manageable." "Now that the story is in the public domain, the Chief of Defence Staff and I will take advice from the operational commanders about whether his deployment can continue," he said. "I now appeal to the media to restrain from attempting to report Prince Harrys every move and return to our understanding."  Â

British military top brass performed an about-turn last year over Harrys deployment to Iraq as a Scimitar light tank troop leader, which led to him considering quitting the army.  Â

The prince, who is third in line to the throne, said an offer to retrain as a battlefield air controller, known as a JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller), with a view to going to Afghanistan. He flew out on December 14 and spent several weeks working in Garmsir, in the far south of Helmand province, operating just 500 metres 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.  Â