Israel to call up 60,000 reservists as it launches ‘first stages' of attack on Gaza City – Middle East crisis live
Date: 2025-08-21T08:53:26.000Z
Title: Israeli defence minister Israel Katz's order to send more troops into Gaza City came despite international criticism of the offensive
Content: Troops already holding outskirts of territory's capital, military says, while Israel approves huge new illegal settlement splitting West Bank
Israel expands Gaza City offensive
Charlie Moloney
Thu 21 Aug 2025 10.53 CEST
First published on Thu 21 Aug 2025 08.28 CEST
From
8.28am CEST
08:28
Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis.
The Israeli military has announced the first steps of an operation to take over Gaza City and said it was calling up an extra 60,000 reservists for the offensive.
It came as the government considered a new ceasefire proposal that Hamas has agreed on to pause the war and, separately, Israel approved a huge new illegal settlement in the West Bank.
Military spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Wednesday the Israel Defense Forces had 'begun the preliminary operations and the first stages of the attack on Gaza City, and already now IDF forces are holding the outskirts of Gaza City'.
Israeli troops clashed with Hamas fighters in Gaza on Wednesday and Benjamin Netanyahu's office said later that the prime minister had sped up the timeline for taking control of Hamas strongholds and defeating the militant group.
UN secretary general António Guterres on Thursday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, saying it was necessary 'to avoid the death and destruction that a military operation against Gaza City would inevitably cause'.
In other key developments:
, with fears of significant casualties and more mass displacement amid widening conditions of starvation in the territory.
The situation in Gaza City was 'catastrophic' and 'large numbers' were fleeing eastern neighbourhoods, according to the Gaza municipality's emergency committee chief, Mustafa Qazzaat. Resident Anis Daloul, 64, told the AFP news agency the Israeli military had 'destroyed most of the buildings in Zeitoun and displaced thousands of people'.
The additional Israeli reserve soldiers would not report for duty until September, a military official said on Wednesday, giving mediators time to bridge gaps between Hamas and Israel over the terms of any ceasefire and hostage deal.
Hamas said Israel's plans to conquer Gaza City showed its 'blatant disregard' for efforts to broker a truce. The Israeli talk of a large-scale operation could primarily be intended to put pressure on the militant group in ceasefire talks, reports Peter Beaumont.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli war in Gaza since Hamas's deadly attacks in October 2023, according to Gaza health officials.
British UK foreign secretary David Lammy condemned Israel's approval of the new settlement block in the West Bank as a 'flagrant breach of international law'. The plan would split the West Bank into two with the intention – Israeli far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich has said – of ending any prospect of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it has received a report about a security incident near the settlement of Malachei HaShalom in the West Bank, adding that details were under review.
10.53am CEST
10:53
Josh Butler
Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored pleas from Australian Jewish groups to calm his feud with Anthony Albanese, further criticising the prime minister and escalating an ugly spat between the two leaders.
Australia's peak Jewish group, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), on Wednesday labelled Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's attack on Albanese as 'inflammatory and provocative', and a 'clumsy intervention' which had affected Australia's Jewish community.
ECAJ's president, Daniel Aghion, wrote letters to both leaders, critical of the conduct of Albanese and Netanyahu and urging a resolution 'in the usual way through diplomacy rather than public posturing'. The group's co-executive, Alex Ryvchin, had additionally called for 'both governments to remember what's at stake to ensure that calm heads prevail and to conduct their matters of state privately, diplomatically'.
But in a new interview with Sky News, Netanyahu again labelled Albanese 'weak'. Read the full story here:
10.36am CEST
10:36
Israel hammered Gaza City and its outskirts overnight, residents said Thursday, after the defence ministry approved an expanded offensive to target the remaining Hamas strongholds in the strip.
The newly approved plan authorises the call-up of roughly 60,000 reservists, deepening fears the campaign will worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
'We are not waiting. We have begun the preliminary actions, and already now, IDF (army) troops are holding the outskirts of Gaza City,' the Israeli military said in a statement.
Israel's plans to expand the fighting and take control of Gaza City have sparked international outcry as well as domestic opposition.
Ahead of the offensive, the Israeli military said the call-up of the reservists would begin in early September.
Gaza City residents described relentless bombardments overnight.
'The house shakes with us all night long - the sound of explosions, artillery, warplanes, ambulances, and cries for help is killing us,' one of them, Ahmad al-Shanti, told AFP.
'The sound is getting closer, but where would we go?'.
Updated
at 10.39am CEST
10.08am CEST
10:08
Iran publicly hanged a convicted murderer at the scene of his alleged crime on Thursday, the judiciary said, just two days after another public execution.
Most executions in Iran are carried out inside prisons. Public executions are generally reserved for offences that caused particular outrage.
The latest hanging was carried out at dawn in the city of Kordkuy 'at the scene of the crime and in public', provincial judiciary chief Heidar Asiabi told the judiciary's Mizan Online news website.
The condemned man had been convicted of killing 'a couple and a young woman with a hunting rifle' late last year, Mizan reported.
9.40am CEST
09:40
Nine students in Gaza with full scholarships to study at British universities have been told the UK government is working to facilitate their evacuation.
The students – who have all been awarded Chevening scholarships, funded by the Foreign Office in recognition of their potential as future leaders – welcomed the development on Wednesday, but dozens more Palestinians in Gaza with university places are still awaiting news.
The breakthrough follows months of advocacy and campaigning by more than 100 MPs, university leaders and other civil society organisations. More than 80 Palestinian students in total have offers at UK universities, including 40 who have secured full scholarships.
Dr Nora Parr, a researcher at the University of Birmingham who has been coordinating efforts to support the students, said: 'We received news of the government plans with mixed emotions. On the one hand, relief that indeed there is a shared sense of the importance and urgency of the students' situation – and on the other our hearts sank. What about the rest? We must believe that this is only a start.'
Read the full report here:
9.22am CEST
09:22
Iran launched its first military exercise since the end of its 12-day war with Israel, state television reported on Thursday, with navy vessels launching missiles at targets at sea in the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean.
While such drills are routine in the Islamic Republic, the 'Sustainable Power 1404' exercise comes as authorities in Iran are trying to project strength in the wake of a war that saw Israel destroy air defence systems and bomb nuclear facilities and other sites.
The state TV report said naval vessels would fire cruise missiles at targets and use drones over the open water. It did not immediately air any footage from the exercise.
Iran's navy, estimated to have 18,000 personnel, apparently avoided any major attack during the June war.
The navy, based out of the port city of Bandar Abbas, patrols the Gulf of Oman, the Indian Ocean and the Caspian Sea, and broadly leaves the Persian Gulf and its narrow mouth, the strait of Hormuz, to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Updated
at 10.19am CEST
9.05am CEST
09:05
Here are some of the latest images from Gaza:
8.47am CEST
08:47
A group of 17 US Senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday calling for the United States to press Israel to grant access and protection to journalists in Gaza.
The letter comes one week after an Israeli strike killed a group of Palestinian journalists in the besieged territory.
'The United States must make it clear to Israel that banning and censoring media organizations and targeting or threatening members of the press is unacceptable and must stop,' the Democratic senators said in a statement.
The letter to Rubio, a staunch supporter of Israel, said: 'We urge you to press the Israeli government to protect journalists in Gaza and allow international media to access the territory.'
Last week, an Israeli strike killed four journalists for Al Jazeera, including Qatari television correspondent Anas al-Sharif, as well as two freelance journalists.
8.28am CEST
08:28
Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis.
The Israeli military has announced the first steps of an operation to take over Gaza City and said it was calling up an extra 60,000 reservists for the offensive.
It came as the government considered a new ceasefire proposal that Hamas has agreed on to pause the war and, separately, Israel approved a huge new illegal settlement in the West Bank.
Military spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Wednesday the Israel Defense Forces had 'begun the preliminary operations and the first stages of the attack on Gaza City, and already now IDF forces are holding the outskirts of Gaza City'.
Israeli troops clashed with Hamas fighters in Gaza on Wednesday and Benjamin Netanyahu's office said later that the prime minister had sped up the timeline for taking control of Hamas strongholds and defeating the militant group.
UN secretary general António Guterres on Thursday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, saying it was necessary 'to avoid the death and destruction that a military operation against Gaza City would inevitably cause'.
In other key developments:
, with fears of significant casualties and more mass displacement amid widening conditions of starvation in the territory.
The situation in Gaza City was 'catastrophic' and 'large numbers' were fleeing eastern neighbourhoods, according to the Gaza municipality's emergency committee chief, Mustafa Qazzaat. Resident Anis Daloul, 64, told the AFP news agency the Israeli military had 'destroyed most of the buildings in Zeitoun and displaced thousands of people'.
The additional Israeli reserve soldiers would not report for duty until September, a military official said on Wednesday, giving mediators time to bridge gaps between Hamas and Israel over the terms of any ceasefire and hostage deal.
Hamas said Israel's plans to conquer Gaza City showed its 'blatant disregard' for efforts to broker a truce. The Israeli talk of a large-scale operation could primarily be intended to put pressure on the militant group in ceasefire talks, reports Peter Beaumont.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli war in Gaza since Hamas's deadly attacks in October 2023, according to Gaza health officials.
British UK foreign secretary David Lammy condemned Israel's approval of the new settlement block in the West Bank as a 'flagrant breach of international law'. The plan would split the West Bank into two with the intention – Israeli far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich has said – of ending any prospect of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it has received a report about a security incident near the settlement of Malachei HaShalom in the West Bank, adding that details were under review.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
Why Trump will patrol DC with police tonight
President Trump stated he would join police and military patrols in Washington, D.C., on Thursday night as part of his administration's federal law enforcement takeover. The planned outing was not listed on the president's public schedule, with White House officials indicating details were forthcoming. The federal operation in D.C. has low public support, with a recent survey showing approximately 80% of residents oppose the takeover. City officials have resisted the federal intervention; Attorney General Pam Bondi returned control of the D.C. police to its chief after the city sued Trump. Vice President JD Vance and the Defense Secretary encountered boos and chants of 'free D.C.' during a visit to National Guard troops deployed in the city.
Times
23 minutes ago
- Times
Rising food prices mean hefty obesity costs
Stung by the price of olive oil? Burnt by the cost of your coffee? You are not alone. The cost of food and drink is increasing fast, faster than prices in general. This is a bigger problem, politically, socially and economically, than any politician has yet noticed. The government in particular should be paying attention to food bills, and taking action. The Office for National Statistics this week put the annual inflation rate at 3.8 per cent, but also showed that food and drink prices are rising at 4.9 per cent. The average household spends a bit more than £5,000 annually on food, so those numbers add up to about £250 a year. ONS tracking of public opinion shows that the cost of living remains the number one concern for the public, with more than 90 per cent of people citing rising food bills as a reason — well above the share who cite energy bills as an inflationary worry. Being reminded that things are getting more expensive — meaning that you feel poorer — every time you fill your shopping basket is not a happy experience. Food prices rising faster than the cost of other purchases has been a dismally common feature of the UK economy since 2022, for several reasons: war in Ukraine; too much rain; not enough rain; higher energy costs; not enough migrant workers to pick fruit and veg; higher taxes. The public's daily dismay at food prices, I'd bet, is a bigger reason for Britain feeling generally dissatisfied than noisier issues like immigration or crime. Yet it gets curiously little political attention, given how much it matters to voters' lives and outlook. Labour's spin team should give more thought to finding someone else to blame for rising food bills, not least because the problem is going to get worse. The Bank of England reckons food inflation will hit 5.5 per cent by the end of the year, while the British Retail Consortium says 6 per cent. Get ready for a winter of headlines about the painful cost of your Christmas lunch. Looking further ahead, the problem is even worse, reaching beyond simple political unease into questions of fairness, public health and economic performance. Rising food prices affect some groups more than others, with the poorest facing both the greatest financial pain but also the worst long-term consequences. The worst of these is rising obesity levels. Perhaps that will surprise some readers. How do rising food prices make poor people fat? Surely if it's getting harder to buy food, people will eat less of it and get thinner? In fact, a wealth of evidence shows that when low-income households face rising food prices, they trade quality for quantity, buying more cheap foods that are high in calories but low in nutrients. Social scientists grandly call this the 'food insecurity obesity paradox' but it's arguably just the human version of a common animal instinct to put on fat when times are tough and a hard winter is coming. • From peanuts to pomegranates — the 19 foods that will keep you young Almost a third of UK adults are obese, with rates highest among the poorest. There are many links between obesity and poverty but raw economics is a significant factor. According to the Food Foundation, a campaigning charity founded by former Tory MP Laura Sandys, recent years of inflation have made it almost impossible for poorer people to eat healthily. The foundation reckons that the poorest households would need to spend almost half of their disposable income on food to afford a healthy diet high in fruit and veg with limited sugars and fats. For poor parents, a healthy grocery shop could cost 70 per cent of disposable income. Healthier foods are just more expensive per calorie than stuff that's full of sugar and fat. Government calculations show that cauliflower and broccoli might cost almost 2p per calorie; for cheap biscuits it's less than half as much. Obesity means more sickness — diabetes and heart disease, in particular — and shorter lives. It means misery for individuals and mounting costs to taxpayers. My back-of-an-envelope calculations suggest that just a one percentage point increase in the obesity rate (roughly 550,000 more people getting too fat) costs the state more than £3 billion over ten years in higher NHS and care costs. We must make good food cheaper for poorer people, but that's far easier said than done. Continuing education to overcome ignorance about nutrition helps but new ideas are needed. What about Nutrition Impact Bonds? Building on NHS 'social prescribing' models, public and private investors could pay upfront for subsidised or even free healthy food for poorer households, then be paid back from the savings the state makes from lower obesity spending. The causes of higher food prices are big, complicated and long-term. Likewise the public health challenge of obesity and poor diets. It follows that fixing them will be a long-term project, the sort of job that no government, especially an unpopular one worrying about its next election, rushes to tackle. • Eating home-cooked food 'helps you lose twice as much weight' But Labour should lift food prices and obesity up its agenda, because they interact with the government's emerging economic focus. Ministers are planning an autumn drive on productivity, correctly identifying Britain's basic economic effectiveness — how much stuff do we generate from each hour of work we do? — as a national priority. Helping business to finance and deploy technology and training to make workers more effective is a key part of productivity, but so too is ensuring the availability of a healthy workforce. And our fatter, sicker population is emerging as a drag on productivity, as more and more people go off sick or leave work outright. Last month a paper by Nesta, a think tank, and Frontier Economics put the cost of productivity lost to obesity at £31 billion a year. The study shows that obesity doesn't just drag on the economy by taking people out of the workforce through sickness. Boldly, it says that obese people just aren't as effective at work as healthy colleagues and cost the economy almost £10 billion a year, it estimates. The government rightly wants to increase productivity but the fact is that Britain is simply too fat and ill to be fully productive. And in large part that's because of bad and increasingly expensive diets. Sadly, the cost of food is even higher than you think. James Kirkup is a senior fellow of the Social Market Foundation
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
How to secure a peace deal in Ukraine without starting World War III
Twenty-six years ago a tall, stooping man in a maroon beret and a powerfully-built figure with hooded eyes in green camouflage stood opposite one another in a Balkan field. The taller of the two produced a hip flask. A conversation began. And an understanding was reached. Thus the last confrontation between Russian and British troops – a stand-off over control of Kosovo's Pristina airport – was resolved without bloodshed. One of those men – the British General Sir Mike Jackson, who in the run-up to the confrontation had warned his Nato superior about what was at stake, saying 'Sir, I'm not going to start World War III for you' – is now dead. The second, colonel-general Viktor Zavarzin, is retired from the military and sits as a member of the Russian parliament. Now, British and Russian troops may soon find themselves in a high-stakes armed stand-off once again across what is Ukraine 's front line. If they do, how do those British forces offer a credible guarantee to Kyiv and secure any peace deal – without really starting World War III? The peacekeeping paradox What is sure is that planning is already under way. With Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin seemingly moving slowly towards a peace deal for Ukraine, British military chiefs – along with their French and American allies – are laying plans for preserving the truce should they succeed. Details so far are scarce. Admiral Tony Radakin, the Chief of the Defence Staff, was presumably hammering them out with Americans when he flew to Washington this week. What is known is that the discussion is not about peacekeeping in the orthodox sense of neutral blue helmets holding the ground between two warring sides. Rather, says Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London, it is drawn from the design of Nato itself: a tripwire force of Europeans whose deaths in combat would put Russia at war with the West, and thus provide a deterrent against invasion. Yet as a so-called 'reassurance force' it will face many of the same dilemmas as both traditional peacekeepers and conventional war fighters. If it is to succeed, say veterans of previous peacekeeping operations, its planners must learn from the mistakes of the past – starting with the basic question of what it aims to achieve? Will its commanders have the latitude to defuse crises as Gen Jackson did with his whisky? Or will impossible choices be pushed down to officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and even privates on the ground because politicians and diplomats find it convenient to fudge their mandate? 'Telling the soldiers exactly what they've got to do is crucial,' says Col Bob Stewart, a former British officer who commanded peacekeepers in Bosnia in the 1990s. 'But also they've got to have flexibility. This is the conundrum.' When can we fire? For Col Stewart, a veteran of one of the most high-profile and debated peacekeeping missions of the post-Cold War era, the mandate is the only means of giving the troops on the ground a clear sense of 'direction'. 'They must have a mission,' he says. '[In Bosnia] I didn't have one for three months, so I made one up – to save lives. That might not sound like a big deal, but for soldiers it is crucial. 'If you are going to send British soldiers into Ukraine, be bloody careful and sure about what you are asking them to do.' The next problem, he says, follows on from the first. 'When can a peacekeeping force open fire? Can it open fire only to protect itself? There's a real problem there, because that means it doesn't open fire to protect civilians. Can it open fire to protect human life?' Being handed vaguely-worded mandates and inadequate rules of engagement have been blamed for some of the most notorious peacekeeping failures, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia a year later. The former saw an estimated 800,000 people slaughtered. The latter, 8,000, becoming Europe's worst single post-war massacre. In the Ukrainian context, that means deciding whether British soldiers would stand aside while Russia re-invaded Ukraine, provided no bombs landed near their base, or enter the fight. Will Britons really kill Russians? No one seems to want to say this bluntly. Put the question to a Western official, and they will generally reply with something about how very the point of the deployment is to prevent such a clash from happening. But willingness to fight the Russians 'has to be the implication – otherwise, there's no point in even talking about it,' says Freedman. 'I think the British assumption would be that the first line of defence has to be Ukrainian. And the first, and the best, thing you can do is to keep on building up Ukrainian capabilities, which are now, in many ways, quite impressive. 'But if you're saying 'we're behind them', there's no point unless you assume that if the Russians violated an agreement and aggressed again, they would have to reckon on fighting Western forces.' Will there be enough of us? The 'coalition of the willing' must, therefore, have a mandate to fight if necessary. And if it is to fight, it must have sufficient numbers of boots on the ground to win. But how many boots would that be? For every soldier deployed on a rolling operation, says Freedman, an army needs to have one in training and one coming out of deployment. For example, he points out, to keep a hypothetical 15,000 troop force on the ground would require a commitment of 45,000 men to the mission. No government has yet put a figure on the actual size of the force they want on the ground. Britain and France simply do not have the capacity to field a very large force, even with contributions from those other Nato and European allies willing to contribute. Other allies – Australia has said it is considering involvement, and Japan has said it would play an as yet undefined role – face similar limitations. That's one reason why initial discussion of a Franco-British coalition of the willing deployment earlier this year came to nothing. 'They started to put something together without really having thought it through,' says Freedman. 'And then as they started to think it through, they sort of saw it was dangerous. It was not credible, because you were talking about having large numbers of European troops on Ukrainian soil, which is actually quite a big commitment. The ideas sort of drifted away into more air power support and sea support, and it's not clear how much we've moved beyond that.' The America factor The missing piece of the jigsaw then was securing American buy-in, the ultimate source of credible deterrent. To address Trump's aversion to putting boots on the ground, Keir Starmer had suggested a 'backstop' – US aircraft based in neighbouring countries to provide air cover in the event of war. The White House was not interested when this was first floated earlier this year. But on Tuesday this week Trump revived the idea by saying he would be willing to 'help [the Europeans] with things, especially, probably… by air.' The final picture, then, may be of a relatively small European and British ground force in Ukraine, backed by a more serious air and naval contribution, and ultimately US missiles and strike aircraft deployed nearby. On the ground So, what will the troops have to plan for? The nearest thing the Russian-Ukrainian war has seen to peacekeeping was an unarmed observer mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) deployed to monitor compliance with the Minsk ceasefire agreements from 2014 onwards. It was a frustrating business, admits Alexander Hug, the Swiss diplomat and lawyer who led the special monitoring mission (SMM) between 2014 and 2018. Russian-led 'separatists' in Donetsk and Luhansk were particularly brazen in simply refusing access to areas they did not want the monitors to see. But Ukrainians, too, had little trust for the mission. In 2017, a Ukrainian artillery commander gleefully showed me how he hid heavy weapons inside the zone that the Minsk deal said they should have been withdrawn from. His duty to protect infantry from Russian ceasefire violations outweighed the agreements of politicians, he reasoned. And because they knew that the OSCE was unarmed and had strict safety rules for its staff, both of the warring parties were able to control the mission's movements simply by increasing the level of risk. Stepping up shelling or mining of roads was an effective way to manipulate the observers without explicitly refusing to co-operate, says Hug. 'But the main problem was, and this should be a major lesson for anything that now comes to the fore when solutions are being discussed, there must be a mechanism through which violations will be processed,' he says. 'The only task the OSCE had was to document, but there was no mechanism through which identified violations would see any follow-up.' Even so, in the years during which the OSCE monitoring mission operated up to the 2022 full-scale invasion, violence in eastern Ukraine steadily declined, or was at least relatively contained. But it is impossible, admits Hug, to test whether that was a result of the SMM's presence. The tripwire The United Nations claims that two-thirds of completed peacekeeping missions have succeeded in preventing the outbreak of, or resumption of, a war – a figure backed by a 2005 RAND Corporation report. But the principle of peacekeeping – being a third, neutral force, accepted by both belligerents as an aid to keeping a peace that already exists – requires a basic, even if reluctant, commitment by both sides to ceasefire. Should one or another party be determined to continue fighting, UN Blue Helmets often struggle to stop them. Dutch peacekeepers were unable to prevent Srebrenica. Unifil, the long-running mission in southern Lebanon, is sometimes held up as a success, but could not stop Hezbollah rocket attacks, and was simply swept aside when Israel launched its most recent invasion last year. The 'reassurance force' being discussed is meant to avoid those pitfalls. But it still presents enormous risks. 'Then you're not talking about peacekeeping, you're talking about a tripwire. I did that when I was a very young soldier in Berlin in 1970 to 1972,' says Col Stewart. There was 'no way' the British and American forces in Berlin would have been able to stop a Soviet attack, he adds. The deterrent was that by killing them, the Russians would be declaring war on the West. Fundamentally, tripwire operations mean making troops 'a hostage to fortune', he says. That's why 15 years ago Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski was known to brief journalists that a single US missile battery on its territory would be enough to secure Poland's borders – not because of the missiles, but because it would be manned by American soldiers. And the killing of a single US soldier would engage America's entire might against whoever was behind it. 'You're adding to Russia's sense of risk,' explains Freedman, about the 'hostage' strategy. 'So it's not the same as saying 'You can be sure, if the Russians did something terrible again, that we would act'. What you're saying is 'We're creating a situation in which we are likely to act; we could act'. And that is something that Putin would have to take into account.' Avoiding the death spiral What is certain is that preventing inevitable confrontation from spiralling into conflict will require both a delicately crafted mandate, and highly motivated, trained and thoughtful soldiers. 'My instructions to my men in Bosnia were, if people are shooting at you, you have every right to shoot back, and you should if you're in danger. But just before you pull the trigger, think, is this going to make the situation more difficult or more dangerous than now,' says Col Stewart. 'That's why the soldiers have got to be well trained. They've also got to be trusted; trusted by the officers and the NCOs. I personally considered that every single one of my soldiers had the right to make a decision: he didn't have to turn around and ask his superior what to do. 'My worry is we now have got very limited men of that calibre, of the calibre to go in and be really thinking soldiers.' And it is not just the senior officers that troops have to be able to trust. In that Balkan field 26 years ago, after Gen Jackson had stood talking to Zavarzin for a while, the Russian general confided the difficulties he was having with authorities in Moscow: 'I am hacked off with politicians.' Gen Jackson, by then in possession of 'the inevitable glass of vodka', responded with: 'You too eh, Viktor?'
