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War in Afghanistan: Not in our name
71% of Britons back IoS call for withdrawal of forces within a year
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Seven out of 10 Britons back The Independent on Sunday's call for a phased withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as a landmark report by Oxfam this week exposes the real human cost of the war.
The powerful dossier by the aid agency reveals how women and children in Afghanistan are bearing the brunt of the ongoing conflict, undermining the international community's claims that they are the very people being helped by the West's activities.
Its contents will add to mounting concerns among the public, and in some quarters of the military and the House of Commons, that the US and the UK are fighting an ill-conceived and ill-judged war that has left as many as 32,000 Afghans dead and 235,000 displaced.
In a ComRes poll for the IoS this weekend, an overwhelming proportion – 71 per cent – supported this newspaper's call for a phased withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan within a year or so, while just 22 per cent disagreed.
Nearly half – 47 per cent – think that the threat of terrorism on UK soil is increased by British forces remaining in Afghanistan, while 44 per cent disagree. The position is at odds with the argument put by government ministers that the Afghan campaign was vital to preventing terrorism around the world – and in the UK.
Douglas Alexander, the Secretary of State for International Development, last night told the IoS that UK forces must remain in Afghanistan to prevent it becoming a "safe haven" for al-Qa'ida, and exporting terror to places including Britain.
Oxfam's report, published on Wednesday, comes at a critical time in Kabul, London and Washington, as politicians and generals decide whether more troops should be sent to fight the Taliban.
President Barack Obama said on Friday a decision would be made "soon" on whether to agree to the request of US commander General Stanley McChrystal for 40,000 more soldiers.
The President has been urged by the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, to resist a surge, because President Hamid Karzai's government lacks legitimacy.
Mr Brown will set out Britain's long-term strategy in Afghanistan in a speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in London tomorrow. Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan and Mr Brown has already agreed to send a further 500.
But there were signs this weekend that cabinet unity is starting to fracture over the conflict, with Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Wales, telling The Times that the Government needed to "get a grip" on the mission strategy. Andy Burnham and John Denham were also said to be expressing doubts.
The IoS poll revealed that 46 per cent believed that Mr Brown has handled the issue of Afghanistan better than David Cameron would do as PM, while 39 per cent backed the Tory leader.
Oxfam does not advocate a withdrawal from Afghanistan, but its report, The Cost of War in Afghanistan, amounts to a forceful indictment of the mission. It is expected to reflect a catalogue of evidence that ordinary Afghans are paying a heavy price after thirty years of war.
Researchers for Oxfam spoke to more than 700 Afghans in 14 provinces, who provided powerful testimonies.
Shamsullah, in Balkh province, said: "Families sell their daughters for money to save the other members of the family from starvation." Mirwais in Herat said: "Illiteracy, forced marriages and all other domestic violence are the consequences of the war on women."
And Noor Mohammad, from Nangarhar, said: "There are lots of differences between now and the past. But one thing that is the same is the bombing. Before it was the Russians, but now it is the Americans."
The wide-ranging evaluation of the lives of Afghans lists daily challenges, including the threat of lethal attacks from all sides, unemployment, poor education and healthcare, discrimination and violence against women.
It echoes other official research, collated by the IoS.
Various casualty counts suggest that between 12,000 and 32,000 civilians have been killed either directly or indirectly due to the fighting since 2001.
The United Nations has said the "surge" in fighting in recent months has also taken its toll on the non-military population. More than 2,000 had died as a result of the conflict in the first 10 months of this year – at a faster rate than any time since the initial invasion.
The number of botched Nato air strikes, killing civilians, is continuing to rise. Latest UN figures for the first half of this year alone report 40 rogue air strikes, which are believed to have killed 200 civilians. The figure compares with the 116 Afghan civilians killed in 13 aerial strikes in 2006, and 321 in 22 attacks the following year. In 2008, 552 were killed.
The total number of "internally displaced persons" is rising for the first time since 2001.
More than eight years after the war began, the country's literacy rate is still the fourth-lowest in the world, and almost half of all children between seven and 12 are not attending primary school.
The British government has spent at least £12bn on the war so far. Some 232 British troops have been killed since combat operations began.
Mr Alexander, a close ally of the Prime Minister, said Britain's national security was behind the mission to stabilise Afghanistan. He added: "Progress on weakening the Taliban and strengthening the Afghan state will create the conditions for a new political settlement in the country.
"Delivering on these objectives will neither be quick nor easy, despite the outstanding heroism of our troops. It requires political leadership within Afghanistan and co-ordinated efforts by the international community. What is at stake, however, is not simply a stronger Afghanistan but a safer Britain."
The President's options: Four scenarios rejected by Obama
President Obama has rejected four options presented to him, all of which involve sending more troops to Afghanistan, and none of which had attached any strings relating to withdrawal, or reform in the Karzai administration. They were:
1. Send between 10,000 and 15,000 extra troops to augment the 68,000 US military on the ground now. Vice-president Joe Biden – a long-time supporter of counter-terrorist, as opposed to counter-insurgency, measures – favours this option.
2. Send 20,000 more troops. This, together with Option 3, is the so-called McChrystal-lite scenario.
3. Send 30,000 more troops.
4. Send 40,000 more troops, as General McChrystal wants. The danger is that it could give other, less committed members of the coalition all the excuse they need to pull out.
The widow: 'The war continues because of outsiders'
Muslima, a widow from Kabul
"I lost my husband in a suicide attack. He was killed when he was riding a motorcycle. We had moved to Peshawar, in Pakistan, where we lived in poverty. We came back to our country when we thought it was safe. Now I am a widow and my children are fatherless.
"When the fighting increased during the civil war, we migrated to near Jalalabad. We spent three years living in tents. Then we spent another two years in the main city and things were very hard. Then we had to move again, to Pakistan, before coming here.
"Now the war continues because of outsiders who don't let us live in peace. We spend day and night in fear. We are always afraid that there will be an explosion. We wonder, will our children come home from school? Mostly poor people's rights have been violated. Poverty is extreme in Afghanistan. My own children have been deprived of the right to education. We are in need of food. There are no jobs for our young generation. There is no life for them. If people are jobless, they will commit crimes like kidnapping, killing. They become suicide bombers, and destroy our country."
The farmer: 'It is worse under Karzai'
Mohammed Azizi, veterinarian and farmer from Parwan
"Year by year, the security situation has become worse and suicide attacks have spread. We have suffered for a very long time. We have very bad memories from the Taliban period. I still can't understand why they hated us. They called themselves Muslims, but they burnt our homes.
"I know a person that loaded his donkey with food. The Taliban asked him what he was carrying. He explained that he had brought food for his children. But these cruel people threw fuel on the donkey and burnt him alive along with the food.
"When the American war against the Taliban took place, we were optimistic. We thought that Allah was bringing us light after darkness. Now, during the time of Karzai we know that the security situation has got worse instead of better. The government should not focus on building their own wealth. It should think of reconstructing our country."
The housewife: 'Please stop the war'
Fatima, a housewife from Kabul
"I lost my youngest son to a rocket attack. He was 18 years old. Our house was looted and destroyed in the war. We had to leave with just some clothes. We went to Kandahar and settled in Nasaji City.
"All people suffer during war but women and children suffer the most. When the Taliban came, all of the schools were closed for women. Nobody could leave their homes to work. We went to Pakistan until we were convinced that our country was secure enough to return.
"Nowadays, suicide bombers are scaring people. People can't go anywhere without the fear that something bad will happen. but if we want peace we have to discuss this with our people – including the Taliban and mujahadeen, they are our Muslim brothers.
"My message to the international community is: stop the war. We are tired of war. We do not want brothers killing brothers any more."
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Comments
Your point is ?
But ... if that's the case, why are we trying to create a government? .. why are we trying to install democracy? ... why are we even sending an army? ... we are after one guy!
Its probably true that the policeman who decided to kill 5 of our soliders did it becouse we are proping up a corrupt government, Brown and Obama says they support him and a day or two later they are dead.
I say train the Afgan forces, withdraw slowly, let the terrorists back in and when they show their faces send some SAS guys in to get them. They are trained to do just that.
so again with that in mind I ask .. why the hell did we invade that dump in the first place?!
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/ju
Bin Laden and his al-Qaida fighters left the caves while US commanders discussed the risks involved, what air cover was needed, etc.. The SAS have been repeatedly frustrated by the practice of American commanders of referring operational decisions to command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, and Washington. We aren't told who is directing operations from such a distance.
Then more tellingly, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/s
I’d get our troops out immediately. It is not our interests which are being served by staying in Afghanistan.
It continues - this agonizing American "war" - waged by users of the most sophisticated weaponry against mountain people who have only rifles and primitive explosives. The barbarism is not committed by these Afghans who seek to protect land and families; the barbarism is the work of the U.S.-led NATO killers firing missiles and dropping fragmentation bombs.
Do the civilian casualties now exceed the numbers killed during the more efficient soviet campaign? We will never know. We are merely the people who pay for war, accept the lies of leaders and remain ineffective.
The real question is: what will the U.S. military elite do if they are not given what they want?
Will President Obama survive?
As endgame in this geopolitical chess match with China and Russia approaches, that is the agony.
“This is an Imperialist war. We have no business in Afghanistan and have no moral right to tell them how to govern themselves.”
It’s not an American war, the multinational invasion was sanctioned by the United Nations to oust the Taliban from power and apprehend international fugitives. Afghan’s never asked to be governed by the Taliban, they seized power by torturing and killing the democratically elected government of Afghanistan before stringing the President up from a lamp post. If Karzai is illegitimate then the Taliban were even less legitimate than him, at least some people voted for Karzai, nobody elected the Taliban. The Taliban Are not freedom fighters, they have their own designs on Afghanistan and that involves a Totalitarian Emirate like the one they set up before.
As Al Qaeda and the Taliban have previously said, the west will lose this war because “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death”, or from the mouth of Bin Laden himself “We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”. The west takes its freedoms for granted and no longer has the courage or fortitude to stand toe to toe with religious lunatics and fascist bullies. So be it, bring the troops home, but I hope your conscience is still stinging when Mullah Omar’s thugs are stoning people to death and running people over in tanks.
War never solved anything. Bombs and bullets kill and maim. Getting agreement to solve the issues in dispute becomes harder as time goes on. There are few winners in war, apart from those who manufacture bombs and bullets.
Unfortunately, if your territory is invaded you usually have no choice but to fight back or submit to people who want to bend you to their will. Are the people we label "the Taliban" or "insurgents" really dangerous people as we are told, or are they just fighting for their land? Perhaps a bit of both I suspect, but more motivated by the latter than the former I would suggest.
We need to get out of Afghanistan. If this can be done by negotiating an orderly withdrawal, fine. But go we must because our forces have become the problem not the solution to the country's problem.
This war has a few disturbing parallels with the Vietnam conflict of my youth. Supporting the unsupportable corrupt government in Saigon, substitute the corrupt Karzai government in Kabul. Bombing that kills civilians is another feature common to both wars, thus undermining support for your forces.
As Enoch Powell famously said of Vietnam, the Americans wouldn't win because they didn't live there. Forty years later, the same should be said of Afghanistan. It is not our country and we have no intention of making it so. This is a mission based on a false prospectus. We have never lost our Imperial mindset. It's about time we did and brought our troops home.
Yet Obama nor Brown adamantly refuse to do what the people who elected them strongly desire, in fact they do just the opposite, by sending even more cannon-fodder into the meat grinder. If you weren't convinced by the not-so-gradual erosion of civil liberties under the pretext of this bogus "war on terrorism," this naked truth alone should tell you, if you still have an ounce of brain left, that you no longer live in a democracy, if you ever did. The UK and US are no more democratic than Hamid Karzai's bananistan.
If you want democracy you have to vote for independents and those independents must as their first and only input set up a system of true democracy where a simple random dart is used along with a randomised voters roll to choose MPs.
Only then will we be assured these people have no axe to grind to support those who put them there and are at least a representative group of people.
Until we stop voting for parties we deserve all we get.
if you dont want to lose any more lives, get out. its just a death circus.
While we're at it, how about sending back any Afghan economic migrants once the evil Imperialists have been sent packing and Afghanistan returns to its previous state of Islamic nirvana? Thought not.
Proof here....
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
This is no "conspiracy theory"....
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
Stop all wars, and scrap NATO.
Plus the Banks and financial services have a lot to answer for.
There would be no terrorist threat if we had done what other European countries had done and stayed out of the whole futile nonsense. Ask yourself how many Muslims are currently studying in the UK and how much does this contribute to the UK economy. How many business links is Brown forging in the Gulf like taking Tescos there if he successful, how much oil has been drained from the Iraqi reserves with no one counting.
At the end of the day no matter how unpopular with the citizens of UK this war maybe it is here to stay until they have lost so many men, tanks etc that makes it no longer an economically viable engagement.
THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY OTHERWISE BUSH WOULD BE IN JAIL ALONG WITH ALL THE OTHER GOONIES. YOUR TAXES ARE BEING THROWN INTO AN EMPTY ABYSS AND THERE IS NO RETURN. YOUR HARD EARNED CASH WHICH YOU GIVE 20% BACK TO THE GOVERNMENT IS BEING USED TO FUND THE THING YOU ARE AGAINST........However, the same old lullaby sends everyone back to sleep Muslim, terrorist, attack imminent.
Just when people maybe thinking oh it is wrong lo and behold an attack happens or is foiled........Wake up and give me a break. I know I was there on the inside privvy to the crap they feed to people. Do you think that we didn't know who the main players were in Ireland, where they lived, what cars they drove, their routines.............People start thinking who is the one leading people down the garden path, who are the ones that consistently lie and lie on top of lies and everyone knows................
as does in most wars. We go there to get alqaeda and now all Mr Alexander wants
to talk about is the stabilisation of Afghanistan throught the removal of the Taliban.
You can't blame the public for it's scepticism.
It strikes me that the removal of the taliban has always been the main aim, old
scores to settle and that the threat terrorism in this country has been used to its full
potential.
To kick off or not to kick off, that is the question.
The war profiteers are happy. The top military are happy to have work and we are on the highway to ruin.
even in a population of 2
personally I find the reasoning behind the war, odd, to put it mildly
Objectively speaking war is wrong but in the life of a man or man in general there will always be justification, usually based on cowardice, greed and egoism; but one has a duty to defend oneself and revenge is not self defence
1- There is no connection between Taliban and 9/11
2- Alqaeda is a phantom created by the liers to scare people so that they do not object to the murderous policy.
3- There is no evidence that OBL has planned or ordered 9/11. When the US asked the Taliban to deliver OBL the Taliban asked for evidence and the answer was the invation.
4- There is no investigation in the role of Bush in 9/11 inspite of the fact that many holes (lies) exist in the official version. In our democracy the rulers can put anything in the minds of the people.
5- They speak always of "the international community" they mean themselves.
The killing and torturing of tens of thousands of Afghans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to bring freedom and democracy to these people is the rubbish accepted by a large number of people in US & GB. Fortunately the majority is against the war but the majority in our democracy has no weight.
The majority of the people can force the government to stop the killing if they have the courage.
But this is not Iraq - we had good reason to go in and it really is not clear that pulling out would not help destabilize nuclear Pakistan with all of the contingent risks and costs if that occurred.
Now that Pakistan has recognised that they cannot negotiate with the Taliban there (so can we in Afghanistan) I would have thought we are closer to a satisfactory ending than ever - whilst recognising "winning" may not mean a content reconstructed Afghan democracy. They are pressing their side of the Afpak border despite human costs and setbacks and disloyal elements.
For me the problem was that we should never have allowed the corruption to get out of hand and Karzai to get into the frame and started in Iraq before we had finished in Afghanistan.
But I still have not heard a coherent explanation of what we do after withdrawal. Is there a coherent plan that is secure?
If al Qaeda get a nuclear weapon its not awkward questions in the House of Commons that will be on peoples minds....
I really see no reason why we should wait 12 months to withdraw - get out now.
People know nothing apart from what you read in the papers or watch on the internet.
The reasons behind the war can be disscussed at a later date but this has become a war that needs to be fought and won. Yes young men and women are making that ultimate sacrifise but being a former soldier and having worked in Iraq and currently in Afghanistan i understand what these lads go through daily. To pull out now would be a complete insult to all who have paid that sacrifice as there deaths would have been for nothing.
This poll is a complete farce drummed up to sell papers and yes i will say it is not a good thing for British service men and women currently serving in Afghanistan. the poll consisted of 1071 and does not reflect the true feelings of a nation proud to back our troups.
All these people who go on about the Taliban not being as bad should come here speak to the people and visit the places they hanged and stoned people for trivial crimes which they were committing themselves behind closed doors.
This is not hearsay this is fact as i work actively alongside Afghans how say that the people are glad we are here (ie NATO) as they want to live a normal life just like we do but its not NATO who is bombing houses in Kabul, planting IED's, driving VBIED's into market places full of men, women and children and detonating them killing hundreds and cutting civillians heads off who are trying to make an honest living its the Taliban.
This paper and author of this article disgusts me instead of reading reports come over here and see the people. Speak to a lot of them not just a few and the gauge the feelings these people have.
If we leave this place security in our country will be far worse than any of yous could imagine. We would totally leave these people to be slaughtered by the Talibs and give the Pashtuns more chance to take control of countries like Pakistan then what.
Yous would be saying we should have sorted it out when we were there but that would be too late.
_Why_ are the Talibean using their IEDs? Because of _us_.
We should have not helped to overthrow the Afghan government during the cold war. We should have helped to sort it out in the period between the fall of that government and September 11th 2001.
Our governments chose not to sort it out in a peaceful and humane way when they had the chance, so we punish the people there _now_. All the good deeds that our soldiers carry out make no difference as long as there is a war, and there will be a war as long as our soldiers are there.
Sad but true.
There is no point, apart from the fake lies coming from the MOD which would have us believe that our 'security' in the UK depends on the war over there. This is an utter load of rubbish and an insult to the intelligence of the british people.
How many more poor soldiers sent over there to fight in this illegal war will come back in body bags? How many will it take for the stubborn govt to tune into the public's opinion and pull out ?
The article is far too simplistic in its analysis of the situation. I want balanced reporting and not newspapers pushing one side of an argument. I leave that to the likes of "the Sun"
Since writing my previous comment President Obama has made a speech in Shanghai inviting China to participate in the Afghan war!
The endgame in the geopolitical chess match has opened out, changing from closure to offensive.
China prides itself in having not one soldier fighting anywhere in the world, even when its business interests in, say, Chad and Sudan are threatened by U.S.-U.K. destabilizing operations. Now the President makes a move suggesting Chinese police" should move across the border from Muslim-majority Xiang Jing province into Afghanistan.
This may be a brilliant political move - finding CHINESE additional troops for a war intended to open all Central Asia to resource exploitation by the U.S. and its obedient allies.
How the Chinese leaders respond will be critical.
Sadly, what British politicians decide has minimal impact on opening Central Asia and filling the region with NATO professionals.
But the British PUBLIC, who fund both NATO and the UN, can organize to bring Britain out of NATO and start inventing an economy which is NOT based upon manufacturing weaponry and providing British soldiers for U.S. expansionist wars.
Otherwise - Central Asia could soon be in flames...like Iraq and Afghanistan.