Gordon Brown said at Prime Minister’s Questions on 24 February that ‘We are in Afghanistan because there is a threat of terrorism on the streets of Britain... The majority of the plots that have been discovered in Britain… come from the Afghanistan/Pakistan area… They don’t come from plots within Britain. They don’t come from plots within Europe. They are organized from that area. And that is why we are in Afghanistan.’
It is not clear that this is true in the cases of the 200 or so individuals actually convicted of terrorist offences in the UK. Those who killed 52 people in London on 7/7 were all UK residents. And those languishing in Belmarsh are not from Helmand. If it is true, the Prime Minister needs to explain – not just assert – it to the British people, in whose name our soldiers kill and die.
We have a habit of externalizing the terrorist threat we face. Tony Blair did so by invoking Blitz imagery after the 7 July 2005 attacks. But our terrorist problem – unlike in the US – is primarily homegrown.
Terrorism at home vs wars abroad is not a zero sum game. Iraq has not made us any safer. We need convincing that Afghanistan will.
Andy Hull, senior research fellow, ippr
Afghanistan is a driver for immigration (from Afghanistan) and a (probably minor) driver for disaffection for Muslims, particularly UK based Muslims. It is a cost to the UK taxpayer at a time when we need to cut costs.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, a cut-and-run policy causes the Govt to lose face, and opens the possibility of another oppressive Taliban government, which might harbour Al-Qaeda, so bringing us back to square one.
What to do?
Licensing the production of opium, and using it for relief of terminal pain in Africa, where 6 million people a year die in unrelieved agony, provides the way forward. The reasons given by Government - that some might leak back onto the black market, and that the management systems are not in place to adminster the scheme, are risible.