UK/Afghanistan

British MPs slam Afghanistan military mission

Article published on the 2009-08-02 Latest update 2009-08-02 16:07 TU

US soldiers in Helmand province
(Photo : AFP)

A report from a parliamentary committee in the UK has severely criticised the British military mission in Afghanistan, which is part of Isaf, the international military mission there.

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee says a lack of clear strategy meant that stabilising Afghanistan had become "considerably more difficult than might otherwise have been the case".

"We conclude that the international effort in Afghanistan since 2001 has delivered much less than it promised and that its impact has been significantly diluted by the absence of a unified vision and strategy grounded in the realities of Afghanistan history, culture and politics," the report says.

"Although Afghanistan ’s current situation is not solely the legacy of the west's failures since 2001, avoidable mistakes, including knee-jerk responses, policy fragmentation and overlap, now make the task of stabilising the country considerably more difficult than might otherwise have been the case."

Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan. In July they suffered their worst month for casualties with 22 fatalities.

“It’s pretty damning stuff,” says Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.

He told RFI the report was going to raise a lot of questions for the government.

“It is always easy to say things with hindsight but when the decision was made to put something like 5,000 troops into Helmand Province, which was three and a half years ago, there was an expectation then by the Ministry of Defence that it would be purely a stabilising operation.

“They said they were prepared for violence but I think they seriously underestimated the way in which the presence of such a large number of troops would be a magnet for the Taliban.

“It became apparent very quickly that there had been a real miscalculation in the assumption that one could bring more security through more forces. That has clearly proved not to be the case.”

The report also recommended that the British military should not be involved in the counter-narcotics war, describing it as "a poisoned chalice".