Online war despatch: Officer to tweet from Afghan frontline

LONDON - A senior British Army officer will start using the online social networking site Twitter from next month to inform the world about the frontline in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

Daily Telegraph Monday reported that Lieutenant Colonel Dougie Graham, who is commanding officer of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, plans to tweet during the Afghanistan tour.

The officer leads over 450 soldiers who will soon leave for Lashkar Gah, the capital of the Helmand Province. The contingent is part of the 10,000-strong 16 Air Assault Brigade.

Graham made it clear that his soldier’s military manoeuvres will be confidential, but there will be other issues to keep people back at home and the general public interested.

“I would like to be able to give people a feel for the reality because it’s not all fighting, it’s not all bombs and bullets.

“What we’re trying to do is draw everything together so that we can get messages of support to the men, as well as updates of what the battalion’s been doing back home,” he was quoted as saying.

“I’m a pragmatist and most of my friends communicate with each other these days through Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. It was a very obvious thing to do.”

He is in talks with the ministry of fefence about the content and the plan is to shortly go live with the battalion’s account.