Time: What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan?
A very dramatic front cover from this month’s Time. Apparently she fled abusive in-laws.
But is this really the reason we went in or the reason we’re still there? Well the grounds for our presence seem to keep shifting week by week, so as a point of reference let’s take Foreign Secretary William Hague on the Politics Show from Afghanistan on 23rd May:
“We’re here to make our own nation more secure and our allies more secure. We’re here really to try to make sure that Afghans can look after their own affairs and their own security in the future without Afghanistan presenting a danger to the rest of the world. So our objective is security. But that of course does not exclude the other things, the things that Andrew Mitchell has just been talking about because good development… making sure that people have some jobs to go to, that they can take their goods to market, that they’ve got roads they can travel on, that of course, is an important part of bringing about the security. So development and education is one of the ways in which we achieve better security for the people of Afghanistan and for the people of the United Kingdom.”
So yes, it seems, is the official answer.
Personally .. I couldn’t give a fish’s tit what happens to Afghanistan if we leave ..
They can continue to live in a stone-age society, ruled by a medieval religion ..
Their long-term future is not worth the slightest injury, let alone serious injury or death of a single British Soldier, Sailor, Marine or Airman/woman ..
We should withdraw now & let them get on with it .. and stop kidding ourselves that we can make a difference .. We can’t & as soon as we do leave, they will simply revert to type ..
We’ll never change the culture of any country, surely history proves that. The present PR about us ‘making progress’ is depressing. I listened yesterday to a Major doing his forced propaganda speech. “Things have improved here. The market you can see over my shoulder is functioning again. People are able to come out and about’.
237 deaths and many more to come to do the work that the Afghans should be doing for themselves.
Of course everyone in Afghanistan is happy. Billions are pouring into the country so everyone’s a winner in a way.
Couldn’t agree more SR …
237 lives so far, just so that these people can go to a market ..
That seems like far too expensive a price to have paid …
I’d like a word with the bastards who did that. But sadly, I agree that we will not change the culture of that country
The culture of a country or a people changes only if they choose to change it themselves. It cannot be imposed with bombs or bouquets.
I think it might have been Devils Kitchen who publised a pic of women walking in Western dress around a 1970’s Afghan library. All very nice ‘n’all but not worth our blood to restore.
Agree. Interview without coffee required for the men with the knife. But as we know there are ten thousand other identical knifewielders in country who will step forward and take their place.
It’s just so depressingly obvious where this will end. At some random point it will be announced that the Afghanis are now able to defend themselves so we will have “won” and leave, hurrah! At which point Afghanistan will descend once more into internal strife hopefully won by the warlords rather than the Taliban.
At least we’ll be able to sell the warlords guns so BAE won’t get too upset by the Defence cuts I guess. And better them cutting each others’ throats than ours, the theory will go.
I agree with ‘banned’ in that the military’s concern with Afghanistan will be short lived and victory will be claimed when the tax payers protest against the vast amount of their money going towards a seemingly lost cause. People forget however that Afghanistan wasn’t always a war-torn country but a country whose geographical position and agriculture etc are of great interest to the world’s greedy superpowers. Research Oxfam’s involvement in Afghanistan and their interest in its agriculture even before the start of the war. Learn how and why Afghanistan began to grow opium. Also, learn why Russia and British India were so desperate to get a central government in Afghanistan with whom they could form an alliance!
It is shocking that so many people believe that the USA and Britian’s interests in Afghanistan are purely altruistic or triggered by the need to defend their own countries from terrorism. I appreciate that many of you don’t give a ‘fish’s tit’ about Afghanistan and if that is indeed the case then refrain from making ignorant comments otherwise read a book about it so you can at least back your fallace comments!
Very interesting article I was reading in ForeignPolicy exactly when you commented just now. Only published today, and I was considering blogging on it. I’d appreciate your thoughts on what it says if you have 5 mins.
Oh, and considering that one of our writers here is not entirely unfamiliar with certain hot sandy foreign places himself, the “don’t care” and “ignorant” comments are unjustified on this blog.
this picture is lie like all of u bastards ,,the war just to steal countries ,,, but we took ur lifes instead of that