Brown: We must not walk away from Afghanistan
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Gordon Brown acknowledged that Britain's strategy was not 'without danger or risk'
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Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Britain's military mission in Afghanistan today, insisting "we cannot, must not and will not walk away".
In a high-profile speech in London, hastily arranged following a series of British deaths in Afghanistan this week, Mr Brown said the military action in the country was "our first line of defence" against terror attacks at home.
Paying tribute days ahead of Remembrance Day to the 93 British troops who have died in Afghanistan this year, the Prime Minister said: "These men are our heroes today."
Mr Brown acknowledged that Britain's strategy was not "without danger or risk".
But he warned that al-Qa'ida terrorists continue to plot terror attacks on Britain from the region, and said: "This mission must not fail."
Mr Brown's speech comes amid polling evidence suggesting that a growing majority of voters now want to see British troops withdraw from Afghanistan within the coming year - with more than half in a survey this week saying they did not believe victory against the Taliban insurgents was possible.
And it follows a call from former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells for the mission in Afghanistan to be halted and the money spent on anti-terror measures in the UK.
In a clear response to Dr Howells' call, Mr Brown said he rejected any suggestion that the commitment in Afghanistan was diverting effort away from security at home.
"Britain has consistently shouldered its fair share of the burden and more - especially in the last three years, since we deployed into Southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the Taliban," he said.
"It is not easy; the choices are not simple. There is no strategy that is without danger and risk.
"But that is the responsibility of leadership - of government, and of our armed forces. To do what is necessary, however difficult, to keep the British people safe. We cannot, must not and will not walk away."
Mr Brown said that in discussions over the past few days, he had agreed a set of measures with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to improve the country's security, governance, political settlement, economic development and relations with neighbours like Pakistan.
He warned today that if Mr Karzai's government failed to fulfil these requirements, "it will have forfeited its right to international support".
Admitting that the evidence of fraud which overshadowed Mr Karzai's re-election was a "setback", Mr Brown warned: "I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption."
Mr Brown said the key to bringing British troops home from Afghanistan was building up the home-grown armed forces and police to a state where they could deliver security themselves.
Despite the murder this week of five British servicemen by a "rogue" Afghan police officer they were training, the UK would not give up its role of training and mentoring local security forces.
"We will not give up this strategy of mentoring," said Mr Brown. "Because it is what distinguishes a liberating army from an army of occupation.
"Not an army in opposition to local Afghan people but an army supporting local Afghan people."
In an apparent acknowledgement of criticisms that he has not successfully explained his strategy in Afghanistan to voters, Mr Brown concluded: "What people here in Britain ask for is the same as our forces on the ground ask for - a clear sense of what success in Afghanistan would look like, and how we will get there.
"My answer is: we will have succeeded when our troops are coming home because the Afghans are providing security themselves, continuing the essential work of denying the territory of Afghanistan as a base for terrorists.
"The right strategy - for Britain and for the international community as a whole - is the one that enables the Afghans to take over from international forces sooner; at a higher level of capability; and with a greater level of assurance that the pressure on al-Qa'ida and other terrorist and extremist groups will be maintained, and so that a safer, more stable and better-governed Afghanistan will contribute to a safer Britain - in a safer world."
Mr Brown said he hoped Mr Karzai would use his inauguration speech on 19 November to set out in detail plans to fight corruption, build up his security forces and improve the governance of his country.
In a clear criticism of Mr Karzai's performance since he became president in 2004, the PM said the Afghan government had become "a byword for corruption".
He said he wanted a high-level international adviser to be sent to Afghanistan to help in the fight against corruption and warned the president that "cronies and warlords should have no place in the future of Afghanistan".
Mr Brown made clear continued allied support for Mr Karzai's administration - including the additional 500 troops he has approved in principle - would be dependent on his delivery of reform.
"International support depends on the scale of his ambition and the degree of his achievement in five key areas: security, governance, reconciliation, economic development and engagement with its neighbours," said Mr Brown.
"If with our help the new government of Afghanistan meets these five tests, it will have fulfilled an essential contract with its own people. And it will have earned the continuing support of the international community, despite the continuing sacrifice.
"If the government fails to meet these five tests, it will have not only failed its own people, it will have forfeited its right to international support."
The Prime Minister indicated that the process of political reconciliation should include reaching out to those who have previously fought the international coalition and Mr Karzai's government, so long as they give up violence.
Commending Mr Karzai's move to reach out to his defeated presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Brown added: "More challenging still is to reach out to those who have been outside the political process.
"Reconciliation and reintegration are central to future security stability and prosperity. So there needs to be an agreed process for bringing those who reject violence back into the political fold."
Mr Brown said the Taliban had "failed" in its efforts to defeat the international coalition through conventional warfare, and had resorted instead to insurgent tactics in the hope they could "undermine morale and erode public support at home and persuade us to give up before the Afghan people get to see the benefits of legitimate governance or share in the benefits of greater prosperity".
UK troops needed to switch their strategy from straightforward counter-terrorism to more complex counter-insurgency work, which included building support among the local population and building the capacity of home-grown security forces.
Mr Brown insisted that "our presence in Afghanistan is justified and... our strategy, set out in the spring, is the right one".
He added: "We have not chosen the path of training and mentoring the Afghan forces because it is an easier or safer alternative - often it is the opposite - but because it is the right strategy.
"The Taliban and others who seek to undermine the work our forces are doing will not divert us from our strategy."
Mr Brown said he wanted to pay a personal tribute to all UK service personnel killed and injured in Afghanistan and compared them with the dead of the First and Second World Wars who will be remembered in services across the country on Sunday.
"Just as in the past we learnt of the bravery and sacrifice of British soldiers in the First and Second World Wars; in their fight to protect freedom both in our nation and the world; so our children will learn of the heroism of today's men and women fighting in Afghanistan - protecting our nation and the rest of the world from threat of global terrorism," said the Prime Minister.
"Fighting there, so that we are safer at home. Joined by countries from all over the world so that terrorism can be combated: a campaign of 43 countries prosecuted out of necessity, not of choice."
Mr Brown was speaking to an audience of high-ranking military figures at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London's Belgravia.
Before the 30-minute speech he spent time chatting informally with the course's college members - the majority of whom are colonels and brigadiers or equivalent rank.
He followed the lecture with a private question and answer session where he undoubtedly faced careful questioning from some of the military's most senior officers.
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Comments
"... or I'll be in the most tewibble twouble with my employers in the United States".
Go, and go now, you gutless wanker. While you can still walk.
Hey, fair go, mate! Give the bloke a chance.
It's early days yet.
In another 30 or 40 years it will all seem so different and so worthwhile.
Just try to imagine those beaming Afghan children, all speaking perfect English, with the little girls wearing mini skirts and lipstick, singing songs praising our soldier boys for creating a brave new world.
An obvious option re dead and limbless soldiers would be to provide a further 50,000 troops. That way they would only represent a small, almost insignificant, percentage. I do hope that Mr Brown is reading this and thinks it a good idea.
We need to increase the army so it can support 4 more brigades of light and armoured infantry, we need a doubling of the gunship fleet and 5-6 times as many carrier helicopters, more special forces, more technology such as comms and spy satellites and drones; Our commitment into Afghanistan needs to double and we need to secure the Afghans and go after the terrorists. We need to accept casualties as the price we pay and stop the hysteria.
Or else we need to get out.
This week a woman student asked Hillary Clinton:
"What is actually terrorism in US eyes? Is it the killing of innocent people in, let's say, drone attacks?"
What say you my friend with the gung-ho approach?
Each nation must take turns at being an enemy (or an ally) .... the French, , the Spanish, the Dutch, the French again, the Russians, the Germans and Turks, the Germans and Italians and Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Russians again, Iraqis, Afghans. Manwhilke 'everyone' makes war on Africa with impunity.
Iran is overdue to be attacked, but may not be, since it seems too well protected by 'our freinds' the Russians and Chinese.
In the case of Afghanistan there have been three failed attempts to force the Afghan people to adopt 'our' way of life. The Empire will keep at it until one side or the other is incapable of fighting. If history is any good as an indicator, the Afgahn people will eventually win -though it may take another deacde or two to do so. It took the Vietnamese 30 years (1945-1975) to rid themselves of western colialists. but htey are back again, this time using economics and banking as weapons instead of bombs and Agent Orange.
The only justifiable reasons to fight are in the protection of our homes and families, or in the protection of our rights.
All other 'reasons' are simply pretexts to someone somewhere make money.
You words make you murderer brown.
Foreign forces are now seen as the enemy by ordinary Afghans. The Afghan puppet government is corrupt and intensely disliked by Afghans. The UN is now considered the enemy and a legitimate target by Afghans.
Afghanistan is a diplomatic, political and military failure, but, and I say but, fools like Gordon Brown still believe that spilling our soldiers blood is the right thing to do.
Withdraw the troops and send our politicians to Afghanistan. Let them earn their expenses for once.
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
Idiot.
Blair was obviously slightly sociopathic. Brown is just an idiot...
No doubt if it were England under occupation, the people would be faced with the same dilemma, colloborate or resist, and in Britain's colonial history, it matters not how benign the occupation can be, there will always be people willing to overthrow the invaders.
I am always minded of the double standards we see every day, SoE and the French resistance were lauded by the allies as brave heroes, yet people that use the same method and modus operandi in Afghanistan and Iraq are terrorists, people would argue saying that the people in Iraq and Afghanistan target indiscrimately killing innocent civilians which makes them terrorists but hold on, America and Britain target indiscrimately killing countless innocent civilians... what does that make them?
And we don't hear much about the failures of the SoE and the French resistance, they did kill a heck of a lot of their own countrymen in getting at the Germans, but thats alright because they are brave heroes... and it is always America's view that the end justifies the means, no matter how grisly getting there.
In an old fashioned Labour administration it would not have been that much of an issue. Because they would not have gone to war if the Chinese Army were marching up the Mall. However after Sir Toneston Blairhill had started war all over the planet we need an Army, Navy and Airforce on a serious scale. The military have been cash starved (plus the MOD being criminally negligent) by Brown and leave him with a lot of British blood on his hands.
What a clever stratergy, open the flood gates to anybody and everybody. Rejoice in the diversity of a few million Muslims living amoung us, and then make war on their brothers. These Labour boys have sure got the brains.
Proof here....
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
The so called Taliban were in the US in the 90s trying sell a gas pipeline to Unicol. When they decided to go with the Argentinean company Bridas it hit the fan and the US through there dummy out the pram. A gas pipeline that was reported to be worth 12 trillion US dollar to the US economy.
The reason given to a US dumbdown public was that they wouldn?t hand Bin Laden over. That is lie. They said that if the US could provide evidence he was behind 911 they would hand him over. The US had not intention of giving evidence (if they had any at all) because there intention was to invade anyway.
Does no one remember the Gulf War in the 90s when our boys were complaining that they didn?t join the army to protect oil fields.
Ohh an afterthought another Excuse often given is about the poppy fields. The Taliban had almost eradicated it from Afghanistan in 2000 before we and the US . waded on in.
WE CONTANTLY AS A NATION THROW STONES WHILST LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE. WAKE PEOPLE AND MAYBE JUST MAYBE IF WE SPREAD A LITTLE LOVE INSTEAD OF HATE IT MIGHT,,,, JUST MIGHT STOP BITTING US ON THE BACKSIDE
And we come back to the opium question, that production is increasing manyfold a year, that US soldiers are sent in to guard these fields, this smacks of Iran-Contra and the Vietnam years all over again, where the US entered into the game as major drugs trafficker and supplier to the various mafias, where a certain Governor Clinton forced the Arkansas state forces to turn a very blind eye to CIA planes bringing in heroin by the ton, America is damned bankrupt but it manages to get money from somewhere and manages too like Iran-Contra to finance new projects...
An explicit attempt to connect the war against fascism with the New Labour war in promotion of fascism. Don't buy a poppy this year unless you wish to be part of their project to torture their way to freedom.
Be warned....Your jaw will drop....
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
I agree, except the last statement.
I think the real question is how nasty is the west prepared to get. I could well
imagine a parting kiss.
We're probably paying the price now for not going hellforleather at al- qaeda in
the first instance, Brown strategy means no real difference with regards their
strong hold. Explain, to me, how a strong Afghan police force will effect their
operations. They'll just pull their operations away, where needs be.
All we've done is to reinforce their own belief system.
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
“As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline, CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place.”
There are a lot of ethic or idealistic reasons for remaining in Afghanistan and helping them out (successfully or not)
BUT
it's the very fact of being there that actually FUELS the risk of "terror attacks on Britain"
THIS IS THE TRUTH....
EVERYONE watch this for proof of this fraudulent "war on terror".....
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=a
I don't care how big this information will be for people to take.....
EXPOSE IT NOW.....
News.STOP THE COVER UP........
Anyone in ay doubt watch this...
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=a
Written by the Earl of Auckland on 1st October 1838, setting out the necessary reasons for British intervention in Afghanistan. In it he laid out his reasons for war in a document filled with distortions and outright fabrications designed to cement support for the war. (SOUND FAMILIAR)
It is worth highlighting Auckland’s claim that a Persian siege of Herat was the equivalent of a Russian takeover of Afghanistan, and that in turn made necessary a British invasion. Auckland’s analysis turned a distant and manageable problem into an imminent and existential threat. Such twisted reasoning turned a professed desire to defend Afghanistan into a determination to conquer it.
In 1839 the British invaded Afghanistan with the intention of incorporating it into the British empire. The immediate provocation for the war — replacing a supposedly pro-Persian ruler with a British puppet — was dubious and based on sexed-up evidence. Lord Auckland often referred to Herat — the gateway to Afghanistan, on the border with Iran — as “the western frontier of India”. The welfare of our possessions in the east,” said Auckland, “requires that we should have on our western frontier an ally who is interested in resisting aggression and establishing tranquillity, in the place of chiefs ranging themselves in subservience to a hostile power and seeking to promote schemes of conquest.”
HOW HISTORY TENDS TO REPEAT
I hope this bit doesn’t
On 1 January 1842 an agreement was reached that provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependants from Afghanistan. Five days later, the retreat began. The evacuees were harassed down the 30 miles (48 km) of treacherous gorges and passes lying along the Kabul River. The force had been reduced to fewer than forty men by a retreat from Kabul that had become, towards the end, a running battle through two feet of snow. Only a dozen of the men had working muskets, the officers their pistols and a few unbroken swords. The only Briton known to have escaped was Dr. William Brydon, though a few others were captured.
Withdrawal could lead to the Taleban sharpening up their efforts to topple Karzai - not an impossible task afterwards, given his ineffectiveness in providing peace and security and the corruption of his state institutions. Whether al Qaeda would rise again depends on how much of it is still around to be resurrected.
But al Qaeda's not a single organization, the eradication of which would solve the problem; it's more like a cultural/sociological/religious version of Japanese knotweed! Rip up the above-ground manifestations of it, like al Qaeda, and a myriad rootlets survive to pop up again the following year. Better to forget al Qaeda, and think instead of extreme jihadism. The defeat of al Qaeda, which may have been accomplished, won't mark the end of that - more likely to strengthen it, with bin Ladan, al Jawahiri, &c. being enrolled in the martyrology of heroes.
Western withdrawal from Afghanistan would undoubtedly hearten a host of jihadists, in Afghanistan and right across the Islamic world; not least in Pakistan, where their Taleban would surely be encouraged to redouble their attempts to "talebanize" their own society. And Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and an endemic tension with India where there's a huge Muslim minority that not infrequently suffers at the hands of zealous Hindu nationalists. Easy to imagine a nightmare scenario emerging from that. Paddy Ashdown this week envisaged the problem in just those terms, and while he's too much an "establishment man" to be my favourite Liberal Democrat, he could be right about this.
Finding a way out of the toxic Afghan adventure puts me in mind of the Irishman's reply to lost English tourists: "Sure, if I was heading for Ballymacafferty, I wouldn't be going from here ..." But, having plunged into Afghanistan on the mindless coat-tails of George W Bush (New Labour's gut-instinct in foreign policy(, "here" is where we are - and it's a more difficult and nasty a place than the one we were in back in 2001. I'm not sure that simply pulling out is now an option, much less the clearly most desirable course that it was in Iraq.
But posters above are right. Mr Brown's assertion that military action in Aghanistan is our first line of defence against terrorist attacks at home is absurdly simplistic, and the greatest risk of these does derive from angry young men, usually of UK birth, in the Muslim areas of our cities. Specialized home-grown jihadists may so far have had much of their training on the Afghan-Pakistan borders, but there are plenty of other places and ways for them to learn the technology of terror if that region became unavailable.
And our continual jackbooting and manipulation in Afghanistan continues to alienate our own Islamic community, and recruit small numbers of them to the jihadist ranks. Obviously too soon to be certain, but the Fort Hood gunman's name suggests that those same Muslim resentments might have reached into the heart of the US military establishment in mid-Texas, where an immigrant might be expected to have totally integrated into the American way of life.
If it can happen there, how much more likely that violence will again at some point erupt here - because so many of our Muslim communities, unlike those in the States, don't identify with nation and culture, but continue the lifestyles and ways of thinking of rural Punjab and Azad Kashmir. Perhaps we should ponder - not that there's not the slightest sign that we are doing - whether, regardless of the ethics, just in the interests of our own security and community cohesion, we can afford a foreign policy which clearly alienates the vast majority of our two-million-plus British Muslims - even though the vast majority abhor the violence as much as the rest of us. In that climate, jihadism finds a fertile soil.
And the Israel/Palestine conflict remains the root grievance behind all this. How long, I wonder, are we prepared to pay this price, in terms of our own security and the lives of ordinary soldiers, to further the interests, on their own terms, of the Israelis, and for the right of Orthodox Jewish zealots to expand and add to their settlements on the hilltops of the West Bank?
PLEASE WATCH THIS.....
You will blow your mind I promise you-
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h
Mention 9/11 or climate change and you are off the site.....Un freaking believable...
Please watch this....
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?h