Mediterranean Living

Mission impossible in Afghanistan?

Daily Mail Comment
4th September 2006

Less than five months ago, John Reid suggested British troops could be withdrawn from Afghanistan in three years 'without firing a shot'.

Did he actually believe it - or was he just trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes?

Either way Mr Reid's remark, made when he was Defence Secretary, has proved tragically wide of the mark.

So far, 15 of our servicemen have been killed in action. And now Saturday's terrible plane crash has brought the total British death toll to 36.

The fate of that ageing Nimrod MR2 reopens vital questions about the adequacy of our troops' equipment in the toughest prolonged battle since Korea.

We know they have nothing like the manpower they need. Some exhausted units are having to fight continuously for up to 40 days in temperatures of 120F.

Even when the latest reinforcements arrive in Helmand, barely 4,500 troops will have to police an area four times the size of Wales. And their job becomes less clearly defined every day.

Not only are they being asked to fight the Taliban and other jihadis seeking to sabotage the Kabul regime. They are also expected to tackle opium production and the warlords who control it.

This weekend's UN figures, showing a record poppy harvest, prove how impossible that task is.

Meanwhile, the repercussions of the war on terror continue to be felt at home. Police warn that thousands of radicalised British Muslims are being monitored, while an alleged jihadi training camp is uncovered in the Sussex countryside and 14 more suspects are arrested in London.

How long will the fight go on in Afghanistan? The omens are not good.

Yesterday, it emerged that rules of engagement have quietly been changed. British servicemen are now effectively on a war footing, with all that this implies for an open-ended and increasingly bloody and expensive conflict.

Will Ministers now tell us exactly what our 'war aims' are, how they see the conflict developing, and how they propose to give our troops the reinforcements and equipment they need? And will they be honest this time?

Betraying our future

A year ago, the Government caved in to union pressure and ditched plans to raise the pension age for public sector workers from 60 to 65.

Already it is becoming clear what a massive price future generations will have to pay in tax for that act of cowardice.

Last year the total liabilities of six of the seven largest public-sector pension funds rose by a staggering £50billion. Accounts for the NHS Pension Scheme could bring the figure to £70billion.

How typical of Tony Blair that when he had the chance to put fairness and the national interest first, he flunked it.

Wiped off the map

On its website the EU has a list of more than 150 'Euromyths', from a Brussels ban on curved bananas to an edict that barmaids should cover their cleavage.

They're all nonsense, claim Eurocrats - just nationalistic scaremongering.

Now cartographers have redrawn the map of Europe, proposing new regions lumping Kent and Sussex with northern France, parts of Scotland and East Anglia with Scandinavia, and Wales and western England with Ireland.

Is this the work of Eurosceptics, trying to frighten us all? Far from it. The maps have been commissioned by the EU itself.

Funny, isn't it, that no matter how mad the scare-stories of the Eurosceptics, the EU always manages to come up with something far madder?