find the results. "Last autumn, British commanders tried to break out of excessive reliance on military force. They made a potentially precedent-setting deal with tribal leaders in the town of Musa Qala by agreeing to withdraw provided the Taliban did not move in. The deal was sabotaged by the Americans and, as on many earlier occasions, Tony Blair failed to stand up to the White House. He let the Musa Qala experiment fizzle out." Steele As the Taliban re-occupied the place the above comment would appear to be absolute nonsense. This "agreement" was surely borne of military weakness which derived from insufficient UK forces(only some hundreds of actual fighting troops for an area greater than Wales) and hopelessly inadequate logistics plus a truly absurd "strategy" of providing "ink-spots" of "security(ie deploying the troops in penny packets in isolated locations). This had the stamp of the "Lion of Sierre Leone" all over it. Anyway the Taliban breached the "agreement" and wandered back in, without any local resistance from the police Steele bizarrely sets so much store by. "Reports from residents in the town said that between 200 and 300 Taleban had descended on Musa Qala. Assadullah Waffa, the new governor of Helmand, said that the militants had first entered Musa Qala on Wednesday and had disarmed the Afghan police. They returned last night and destroyed part of the village compound housing used by the district governor and police. British and other Nato commanders responsible for Helmand province were holding emergency meetings