Exclusive: More than 500 Scots soldiers are being sent to Afghanistan for the first time early next year to take part in a make-or-break Nato spring offensive.

MORE than 500 Scots soldiers are being sent to Afghanistan for the first time early next year to take part in a make-or-break Nato spring offensive designed to shatter the Taliban's grip on Helmand province.

The Royal Highland Fusiliers, recruited from Glasgow and Ayrshire, has been earmarked for the operation alongside the three regular battalions of the Parachute Regiment and supporting engineers, gunners and signallers from 16 Air Assault Brigade.

Military sources say that the Glencorse-based RHF will form the core of an extra light infantry battle group to give British commanders the reserves they have lacked to take and hold ground in the strategically vital Sangin Valley.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday that the RHF, now 2nd battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland, "is under orders to train for a deployment next March, although exact details have still to be worked out and an announcement made in the House of Commons".

The decision to commit additional reinforcements was taken after US General Dan McNeill, the overall Nato commander, warned last week that British troops might have to fight and die to recover the same ground their comrades had already won in 2006 and 2007 because it had since been abandoned to the insurgents.

The RHF has already completed one six-month combat tour of Iraq and several of its rifle companies have put in shorter stints as emergency reinforcements during local elections.

The battalion has a notional peacetime strength of 535 officers and men but is 80 soldiers short and will have to "bolt on" volunteers from other Scottish battalions and possibly from the Territorial Army.

News of the deployment came on a day when the MoD announced a 45% financial boost to Combat Stress, the service charity dealing with the growing number of psychological casualties of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Poppyscotland revealed it had raised £2.4m in the past year to help forgotten veterans.

The spring campaign in Helmand will mark the first time since the Suez crisis in 1956 that all three parachute battalions have fought together. It will also involve a sizeable number of reservists from 4 Para, the regiment's TA unit.

Commanders fear that the Taliban will use the approaching winter months to regroup, recruit and rearm across the border in Pakistan's tribal territories before launching its own offensive to wrest control of key towns along the Sangin River from poorly motivated Afghan government troops.

A shortage of Western fighting soldiers and the reluctance of alliance members such as Germany and France to put military manpower into harm's way has meant Nato could not leave garrisons in more than a handful of locations.

Britain has lost 72 dead and 245 wounded in Afghanistan since June 2006, including 68 with life-threatening injuries.

Insurgency-related deaths were 55% higher in the first nine months of 2007 compared to last year, as violence since the 2001 US-led invasion surpassed all previous highs, according to an Associated Press analysis. Almost 5100 people have been killed in suicide bombings, gun battles, roadside booby-trap ambushes and airstrikes since January.

A recent UN report recorded a lower rise of 30% in violence, with an average of 550 incidents a month compared to 425 a month in 2006.