Afghanistan proving British Vietnam, British MP says

Afghanistan could prove a British Vietnam unless we pull out from the dangerous south immediately, a senior British politician has warned.

Labour MP Paul Flynn in an exclusive interview described the current international campaign in Afghanistan as a “mission impossible”, and sharply criticised US-led counter insurgency and counter narcotics policies in the country.

Support for the Afghan war is dramatically diminishing amongst British public and politicians as the country four years after the ouster of the Taleban is still teetering on the brink of anarchy and collapse.

“We are sending troops to defend Karzai, and his brother is a crook. If that becomes publicly recognised, the support for the war will drain away. That is a reality. We are propping up a very nasty regime. Not Karzai himself, but all his henchmen who run the provinces.”

Mr Paul, who served as government’s spokesman for social security before being elected to the House of Commons, believes the Afghan mission could not succeed because of “ill-conceived” US strategies. “Vietnam started a small thing. And there was assumption by the Americans that they could tell a country what kind of system they should have and there is the same arrogance there. They are trying to impose a system which is in America.”

He ascribed the recent surge in insurgency and violence to “counter-productive drug strategy” being implemented and warned of dire consequences if current forced eradication efforts are not halted. “It is an idiocy and it’s always been and idiocy. I said in 2001 that getting rid of poppies was idiotic… I would rather go to Afghanistan to get rid of al-Qaeda, but I have always been against poppy eradication. And if we go on we will lose lives.”

His scathing remarks come as the British troops recently sustained heavy casualties amid the deadliest Taleban offensive since the troops’ deployment to the turbulent province of Helmand last year.

He emphasised that drug problem could not be tackled on the supply side and called for robust international effort to reduce the demand in America and Europe. “This year there will be more heroin – the biggest harvest ever – yet the price of heroin on the streets of Britain is the lowest it has ever been. And it’s absolutely no good,” he pointed out. “Let’s say if they reduce the production by half in Afghanistan as they did something similar in Columbia, and what happened was that coca was the produced in Peru and Bolivia… It is still failing in Columbia. They have spent 4.7bn dollars in Columbia, but coca production increased by 20 per cent last year.”

Mr Paul, who has also worked as member of European Parliament, backs licensing opium cultivation for production of medicines – a proposal by the Senlis Council, an international security and development think tank. He is strongly against US drug policies being pursued in Afghanistan. He says the drug policy in Afghanistan is a “repeating error” of Columbia – what he termed as “Columbiaisation of Central Asia”.

The current eradication campaign combined with US planes bombing villages, according to Paul, has moved the local population closer to the Taleban.

Paul describes Afghanistan as a rouge nation that could not be run as a unified country. “To come to the sober conclusion, it can’t be run as a unified country. It will always be run by warlords, cooks and so on. And the best thing what America must consider is to deal with crooks.”

Paul recalled Russian MP’s warning at the outset of US invasion that America and its allies would face the similar fate Russia met in the 1980s. “When we first moved in, a Russian MP laughed and said well you conquered Afghanistan. He said we conquered Afghanistan in six days and we were there for ten years, and we left, 15000 Russian troops killed.” He also noted that there was a whole series of 200 years of invading armies coming in and leaving their death bodies behind – a calamitous fate, according him, awaiting foreign troops in the country at present.

British Secretary of Defence John Reid at his trip to Afghanistan early this year said that his troops would come back within three years “without firing a single shot”. Describing his remarks as “idiotic”, Paul said: “In any conflicts we go through this process where everyone underestimates the problem. In the First World War we said we would win by Christmas, and we were there for four years then.”

He also questioned coalition forces’ claims the casualties were Taleban fighters and said that they could be civilians. Increase in the number of civilian casualties is said to be another factor changing public opinion against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Mr Paul warned that consequences would be terrible if civilian casualties were not avoided in future. “They can’t win the war without the support of the local people,” he said.

Asked whether Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf was doing enough to crack down on Islamic extremists and terrorist elements on its soil, he replied: “I don’t see what advantage would be for him to have trouble and instability on its borders.” He however pointed out that while Musharraf had reacted on madrassas, he had yet to react on trainees.

He also criticised Afghan President Hamed Karzai for appointing “nasty officials” in key positions. “They are trying to strengthen the rule of Karzai and that seems another mission impossible, because he has appointed all these crooks to run this show.”

Paul called for immediate withdrawal of British troops from the volatile province of Helmand. Asked who could fill the vacuum of power to avoid a Taleban comeback, he said: “I don’t see a threat of the Taleban comeback. The Taleban are coming because Americans are there… I don’t think the Taleban need a base now or al-Qaeda needs one. They can run their operation from Somalia, Indonesia or Iran. There is no deterrent.”

When asked whether a British pull-out would mean British soldiers who died in the conflict so far died in vain, he replied: “Yes, they died in vain. So we mustn’t say we should wait for others to die in vain.”

Mr Paul criticised his government of following “flawed” US policies in Afghanistan and Iraq. “They also wasted lives in Iraq. If we had not followed George Bush into Iraq, 110 British would not have died in Iraq. But did they die in vain? Yes, they did die in vain. They achieved nothing. We are tied in to American policy, and American policy on drugs is columbiaisation.”