Why are we in Afghanistan?

I think of myself as being a logical person, and I do not agree with taking violence against another. To me it seems futile. So why are we in Afghanistan – to stop the opium production? You could have fooled me. The United Nations drug officials say that we have failed – this year there are 90,000 hectares under production ($1 Billion dollars worth) and they predict that next year there will be an even greater production. Amounts exceeding the production that existed before we started stopping it!

We are there to bring peace to Afghanistan? – Really! - it doesn’t sound very peaceful!

To control terrorism, the Taliban train in Afghanistan. Therefore we need to stop their training programme. Now this is where my logic starts to take over – if they are training to terrorise Afghanistan then they need to train in Afghanistan. They need to understand the territory they plan to terrorise. But it’s European and American troops that are in Afghanistan; surely these troops should be in their home country stopping terrorists training there. So bring them home to check on possible terrorist training programmes, where we personally are most concerned. For the citizens of the U.K. that means bring them back to the U.K. For the Americans return them back to America.

One problem for our troops seem to be IED’s (improvised explosive devices) this is the indiscriminate laying of land mines where they can disrupt the normal flow of vehicle traffic. In Afghanistan they are taught how to place them where troop carriers or foot patrols are likely to go. And having trained in Afghanistan they then know which dusty road or track to dig up, and how to camouflage an IED. But I can not imagine the technique they learn in Afghanistan will be much use in the U.K.

I have this scenario of three young men walking along the hard shoulder of the M1.

Abdul turns to his companions, Aasim and Aymaan. ‘I think this might be a good spot, seems to be plenty of traffic.’ Carefully he takes the pack off his back and lays it on the ground. ‘Right you two nip out into the fast lane, dig a hole while I prime this mine.’

Now I would be tempted to call out and say ‘Hey! You’ll get killed if you walk into that traffic.’ Bang – possibly, goes all that training on dusty roads and tracks.

I think the training grounds that we should logically worry about are here in the U.K or America. We need our uniformed personnel at the ports checking who is coming into our countries; we need them at the underground stations checking who is coming and going. WE NEED THEM HERE.