Tag Archives: afghanistan

Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Afghanistan on the brink?

By Tom Arms | Fri 8th February 2019 - 8:55 am

Afghanistan is in serious danger of a major outbreak of peace. Or is it?

Certainly the signs are that the US is about to announce an historic deal with their foes the Taliban. The basic bones are that the US and NATO-led forces will withdraw. In return the Taliban will promise to never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist base.

Withdrawal from the 17-year-long  $1 trillion Afghan war has been one of the key goals of President Trump. It was also a political target of President Obama. The problem is how to exit without leaving behind a vacuum of the kind that led to the rise in the 1990s of the Taliban and their Al Qaeeda guests.

The question has been exercising the minds of a succession of American diplomats since on-off negotiations started with the Taliban in 2011. During the Obama Administration these contacts controversially resulted in the release of five Taliban terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Sergeant Robert Bergdahl.

The talks were held in the Qatari capital Doha where the Taliban set up a semi-official embassy paid for by the Qatari government. After the prisoner exchange the talks slipped into limbo with only the occasional diplomatic chat as the Taliban refused to deal with the Afghan government whom they called “American puppets. ” Neither would they talk seriously with the US without a date for the withdrawal of troops.

Then in November it was announced that American and Taliban negotiators were once again having serious discussions in Doha. The man heading up the American team appears tailor-made for the job. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad was born and raised in Afghanistan and educated in America. His posts have included ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Tom Brake MP

Tom Brake writes: My trip to the Calais Jungle

By Tom Brake MP | Mon 12th October 2015 - 1:05 pm

 

I visited the Calais Jungle a week ago, where around 4,000 people live in terribly squalid conditions. My trip was organised by staff from Lib Dem HQ, who had collected donations so we were able to distribute water, food and sanitary products.

It was a shocking experience to see the dreadful conditions people are living in. The Jungle is worse than a shanty town, with very few facilities.

There was no sign of water being provided and the people we met clutched gratefully the bottles we had transported.  Shoes, clothes and dry foods were also in demand. Portable toilets are provided by aid organisations while the local authorities seem to turn a blind eye to the conditions in the camp, simply wishing it would go away. I was told the French authorities don’t provide any help apart from a Centre where mobile phones can be charged and a hot meal is available. If someone is badly injured the local hospital bandages them up.

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The Voice

LibLink: Tim Farron on Chilcot

By The Voice | Tue 3rd February 2015 - 1:52 pm

At the Huffington Post, Tim Farron is decrying the delay to the Chilcot report into the Iraq war.

The publication of the Chilcot report is crucial and the delays are unacceptable – we cannot afford to continue walking in the dark.

The underlying issue which we need to understand and question is the alignment of British foreign policy with American priorities. Has Blair and Thatcher’s determination to maintain “the special relationship” benefitted our country? Should we continue in this vein? The Chilcot report, when it is eventually published, must force us to learn lessons for the years ahead: at the moment we are in limbo. In a year when the country will decide who rules for the next five, this is unacceptable.

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The Voice

Clegg: senior Labour ex-ministers should give evidence to UK torture inquiry

By The Voice | Tue 16th December 2014 - 8:55 am

Nick Clegg Q&A 12Last week came the revelations from the US Senate Intelligence Committee about the extent of the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

It immediately promoted questions about what the then Labour Government knew about what was happening on the watch of its closest ally. Nick Clegg has called for senior ex-ministers to give evidence to Parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) on what they knew about torture conducted by UK or US intelligence agencies in Iraq or Afghanistan, as The Guardian reports:

The deputy prime minister said

…

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NewsHound

LibLink: Paddy Ashdown: Afghanistan war is textbook for how to lose this kind of conflict

By NewsHound | Wed 29th October 2014 - 8:49 am

rally paddy 01Paddy has been writing in the Mirror about the Afghanistan war? Was it all worth it and could we, should we, have done things differently? What can we learn for the future?

First of all, Paddy writes, we did some good:

So has it all been for nothing?

No. There are children – and especially girls – going to school in Afghanistan who wouldn’t be there if British troops had not risked their lives to give them the chance. Democracy, though frail, has taken root.

There is growing prosperity in some areas, markets in previous ghost towns, new roads that never existed and, perhaps most important of all, a knowledge of how things can be better, planted in people’s minds.

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Eric Avebury

Lord Eric Avebury writes…Polio and Terrorism

By Eric Avebury | Tue 14th October 2014 - 12:05 pm

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO),has reduced the number paralysed by polio from 350,000 in 1988 to 405 in 2013, and the number of countries where the disease is endemic has been cut from 125 to just 3 –Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. But progress has come to a grinding halt, with Pakistan reporting 174 new cases so far this year out of 193 worldwide.

The WHO says there is a high risk that this highly infectious disease will spread to other parts of the world, paralysing many of its victims.

Three quarters of all cases are reported from two lawless areas of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KP) and the misleadingly named Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In these provinces terrorists call the shots, intimidating and murdering those who don’t agree with their fundamentalist brand of Islam.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Sir Robert Smith – We must not turn our back on Afghanistan

By NewsHound | Sat 12th April 2014 - 2:15 pm

At a workshop on child rights at French Cultural Centre, Kabul, AfghanistanSir Robert Smith, Lib Dem MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine and Co-Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afghanistan, has written this week about the need for Britain, as our direct military involvement comes to an end, to ensure we keep our promise to maintain support for a developing Afghanistan.

… the attacks of September the 11th brought home the fact that what happened in that far away country made a difference back here.

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Eric Avebury

Lord (Eric) Avebury writes…Pakistan’s Army stands firm against the Taliban

By Eric Avebury | Thu 14th November 2013 - 10:28 am

The Pakistan Army’s Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) has condemned Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Chief Syed Munawar Hassan’s statement in which he called former Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Chief Hakimullah Mehsud a martyr.

In fact, Mehsud was a mass murderer, motivated by implacable religious hatred, and his killing by a US drone on November 1 was fully deserved. Under his leadership the TTP slaughtered Pakistani soldiers and civilians, men women and children indiscriminately. He targeted Shia Muslims, of whom 700 have been killed so far this year.

The objective of the TTP is to overthrow the state of Pakistan and to replace it with …

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NewsHound

Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown win the argument on Afghan interpreters

By NewsHound | Wed 22nd May 2013 - 8:00 am

The BBC reports:

Up to 600 Afghan interpreters who worked alongside British troops are to be given the right to live in the UK, government sources have confirmed.

The plan marks a climbdown from ministers who had decided they should not get the same UK resettlement rights as interpreters in the Iraq conflict.

Afghan interpreters who worked on the front line for a year or more will initially be offered a five-year visa.

This is something, as we reported 3 weeks ago, that Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown have been arguing for.

Earlier this week, Paddy Ashdown said that it was Downing Street …

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NewsHound

LibLink…Paddy Ashdown: Let us not leave Afghanistan with this final gesture of betrayal and dishonour

By NewsHound | Tue 21st May 2013 - 2:29 pm

Paddy Ashdown has written a hard-hitting article for the Yorkshire Post in which he implores the Government to give Afghan interpreters who have helped UK troops the right to come to the UK.

The interpreters and their families live under threat from the Taliban:

These men are different from our troops in this sense: our troops can be sure that their families are home, secure and safe, in Britain, whereas they cannot.

Their families live, day in and day out, threatened by mortal threat from the Taliban in Afghan society.

Our troops come home every six or nine months, whereas they do not. They

…

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown say that Afghan interpreters should have the right to live in the UK

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st May 2013 - 1:30 pm

Almost exactly four years ago, Nick Clegg, as an opposition party leader, led a debate in Parliament in which the Labour Government was defeated on its plans to restrict the rights of Gurkhas to settle in the UK. David Cameron was keen to get himself into the photos with Joanna Lumley at the time.

Four years on, and Clegg and Cameron have opposing views on whether Afghan interpreters who helped our soldiers in that country should be allowed to settle here. Today’s Times (£) reports that the Prime Minister, along with Theresa May and Philip Hammond are against allowing …

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink… Paddy Ashdown: It’s not a fight against “us”, it’s Islam vs Islam

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 23rd January 2013 - 6:55 pm

Mali rebel - License Some rights reserved by MagharebiaIn an article in today’s Times, Paddy Ashdown concedes that David Cameron is probably right that the so-called War on Terror (a term Paddy dislikes) will go on for another decade. Paddy argues that we need to recognise that the way western countries have been operating doesn’t work. What is needed now is to recognise that the fight is between different factions of Islam. It should be our job to help out moderate governments where we can.

He outlined why the “invasions, main battle armies and occupation” of

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NewsHound

LibLink: Paddy – withdraw British troops from Afghanistan now

By NewsHound | Fri 16th November 2012 - 7:54 am

Writing in today’s Times (£), Paddy Ashdown says that Afghanistan is ‘not worth the life of one more soldier’:

The war in Afghanistan is lost and not worth the life of one more British soldier, Paddy Ashdown writes in The Times today. In a stark assessment of the 11-year campaign that has cost 438 British lives, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon urges Britain to pull out its troops as quickly as “decently” possible. The intervention comes as David

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NewsHound

LibLink: Ming Campbell – Afghanistan: We have to see it through till 2014

By NewsHound | Mon 24th September 2012 - 5:00 pm

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Ming Campbell has taken to the pages of the Independent to set out his views on British troop involvement in Afghanistan, and the need to be realistic about the speed at which British troops can be withdrawn from Helmand. Here’s an excerpt:

It is naive to suggest that, even if we began today, we could be out by Christmas. Withdrawal of nearly 10,000 troops and their equipment is not achieved by waving a wand. During any withdrawal, forces are at their most vulnerable. What additional protection measures would be required? What equipment would we be able

…

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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: the undignified spectacle at the G8

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 22nd May 2012 - 5:22 pm

Imagine the scene. It’s a dirty whitewashed three-storey government building in the capital city, surrounded by high walls with US helicopters parked around. Inside sit several US generals and two Europeans, in the dusty heat. The war they are there to discuss is secretly assumed to go on for 25 years. They all know they cannot win it despite superior air power and unlimited cash. They had all given it their best shot with use of terrible weapons. Neighbouring countries have been mercilessly bombed, and ushering in governments very unfriendly to the US and the West.

It was time to find …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | 3 Comments
Issan Ghazni

Opinion: Support for emerging democracies – we’ll do it our way

By Issan Ghazni | Fri 6th April 2012 - 8:57 am

Speaking at the recent Munich Security Conference, US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said “Americans and Europeans must send a clear and common message to despots that they must respect the rights of their people….America and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder.”

However, the UK role in encouraging emerging democracies must be determined through a process of working closer with the EU and by identifying limited areas in which tangible gains can be made through shared resources. That is to say that we do what we can with our European partners to achieve the best results within our areas of influence. Continually …

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes – Scotland better off in Union

By Michael Moore | Wed 14th March 2012 - 11:55 am

Every week, Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore writes a column for local newspapers in his constituency. These are the highlights of the last two editions. 

Afghanistan

 The loss of six young soldiers in Afghanistan last week shocked and saddened the whole country and was a grave reminder of the huge sacrifice made by our armed forces in one of the most dangerous places in the world. The work of our men and women in Afghanistan is absolutely vital for the security of the UK and the freedom of the Afghan people and the deaths of these young men remind us …

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Paul Walter

PMQs: Lest we forget

By Paul Walter | Fri 9th March 2012 - 11:24 am

A different Prime Minister’s Questions review this week. Often, the Prime Minister prefaces his first answer with a tribute to fallen service personnel. I have mentioned these tributes a few times in the course of these write-ups over the last (nearly) two years.

It seems appropriate to devote the whole of this week’s review solely to those who have died fighting for us, as we pass the milestone of 400 troops killed in Afghanistan with a particularly bloody incident.

Whatever our views of the right or the wrongs of our involvements overseas, I think most people agree that our service personnel do …

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Paul Walter

LibLink: Ashdown – This 11-year exercise in self-delusion must end

By Paul Walter | Mon 6th February 2012 - 10:24 am

Paddy Ashdown has an opinion piece on Afghanistan in The Times today (£) in which he says:

We have repeatedly deluded ourselves about “successes” that never existed and thus took so long recognising that a victor’s peace was beyond our reach that we wasted the best opportunities for a negotiated one. We failed to understand that in these wars it is politics, not weapons, that counts most. Even if you win on the battlefield, you lose if you lose politically; which we have, painfully

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Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey MP writes: A hard look at defence spending

By Nick Harvey | Wed 3rd August 2011 - 6:53 pm

Today the Commons defence committee published a report criticising the MOD for decisions taken in last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).  The report claims that recent defence budget reductions will leave our Armed Forces unable to execute the operations the Government sets for them post-2015.  
 
I disagree.
 
It is true that the MOD is reducing numbers of service personnel across the Army, Navy and Air Force and indeed the MOD has altered the equipment programme, which led to the deletion of Nimrod and Harrier.  But these tough decisions were necessary in order to address the black hole in the …

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Mark Pack

Resignation of Afghan central banker puts Western governments on the spot

By Mark Pack | Mon 27th June 2011 - 6:54 pm

The resignation and flight to the US of Abdul Qadeer Fitrat, chairman of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, has been accompanied by a wide-ranging set of allegations from him about corruption being behind the near collapse of Kabul Bank. That it itself is not a surprise, as corruption was already widely suspected, but he has also claimed that corruption investigations had been deliberately blocked and that he feared for his own personal safety.

It is credible that he would have detailed knowledge of such matters, though Abdul Qadeer Fitrat …

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Mark Pack

LibLink: Nick Clegg, the New Statesman interview and crying

By Mark Pack | Sat 9th April 2011 - 12:26 pm

The latest edition of the New Statesman has an interview with Nick Clegg, which has mostly garnered attention for the shock news that Nick Clegg is a human being and has been known to cry to music:

He is besotted by his “three lovely boys” and is most proud “by a long shot” of the family life he has created with Miriam. They manage to lead a relatively normal life, “not in a bunker in Westminster”, and he tries to pick his children up from school and put them to bed at night at least two or three times a week.

He

…

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The Voice

LibLink… Paddy Ashdown: Defence cuts? Why, they’ve barely started

By The Voice | Tue 22nd February 2011 - 2:43 pm

In today’s Times (£) Paddy Ashdown argues that the Ministry of Defence is “no longer fit for purpose.”

Ashdown says that the current government are not making enough progress with addressing the Ministry’s problems: the large annual deficit, bureaucratic blunders and project overruns and puts them down to a lack of political direction.

Here’s an excerpt:

The dust is now settling on the Strategic Defence and Security Review, published last October. And what it reveals is that the deeply painful cuts already announced are not going to be enough to balance the books. There will have to be more — there may

…

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Paul Walter

PMQs: The Pillsbury Doughboy takes on Motherhood and Apple pie – and loses

By Paul Walter | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 11:32 pm

For the second time in three weeks, a LibDem asked the first question at Prime Minister’s Question time. Bob Russell asked, first of all, for the PM to list his engagements for the day. As usual, there was the same response as there has been for virtually every week since Noah was in short trousers. “This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others and, in addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.” Same question, same answer, every blinking week. It is hard not to have a mite of sympathy with …

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Mark Pack

Inside the Danger Zones: Paul Moorcraft on thirty years of war reporting

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd January 2011 - 8:55 am

Paul Moorcraft’s account of his several decades touring the world’s violent trouble-spots as a journalist and some-time government representative entertains as well as informs. From Rhodesia in the 1970s through to his contemplation of pioneering a niche market in blind observers for African elections in 2010, Moorcraft’s account reflects plenty of the swagger of many war correspondents but with enough self-mockery to make the account illuminating and interesting rather than a macho display. Even the clichés about drinking and womanising journalists, which he seems to have often fulfilled to the maximum, are full of his own failings.

The result is a portrait of not only the countries he visited but also the breed that makes up war correspondents, with their bravery, their bravado and their desire to get the story and the footage even at great personal risk. The motivation for such story getting may often be as much ego as public service, but in the end the public benefits from people willing to take remarkable risks with their personal safety in the name of journalism.

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Alex Feakes

Opinion: for the want of a nail

By Alex Feakes | Fri 24th December 2010 - 11:42 am

Joining the traditional Nativity story of revelation followed by deliverance, this festive season we have been able to enjoy even more revealed truths about our world courtesy of Wikileaks, the Daily Telegraph and more or less any senior Army officer near a microphone.

Although there are moral and technical differences between these sources of information, they have each attempted to lift the veil to reveal the ‘truth’ behind the public face of diplomacy, coalition governance and military strategy. But have we liberals been consistent in our responses to these revelations?

With the diplomatic cables released through Wikileaks, there’s been a strong …

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Mark Pack

Nick Harvey outlines the UK’s objectives in Afghanistan

By Mark Pack | Thu 16th December 2010 - 9:43 pm

Minister of State for the Armed Forces and Liberal Democrat MP Nick Harvey set out the government’s objectives in Afghanistan in a speech he gave during his visit to Denmark this week. He made clear the limits to what the government is now seeking to achieve:

We do not seek a perfect Afghanistan, but one able to maintain its own security and prevent the return of Al-Qaeda.

This is primarily a mission of national security.

We are neither colonisers nor occupiers.

We are there under United Nations Security Council endorsement and at the invitation of the Afghan Government.

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Mark Pack

Camp Victory, Afghanistan

By Mark Pack | Tue 23rd November 2010 - 8:57 am

Over the weekend I went to see a screening of Camp Victory, Afghanistan. In short, if you get a chance – go see it.

What makes the film different from many others about Afghanistan post-2001 was illustrated by a comment from the director in a post-screening Q+A session. Carol Dysinger explained that, unlike many others making films of the conflicts in Afghanistan, she had first approach the Afghan government for permission to film rather than the US (or other) military forces.

It is the Afghan army that is at the centre of the film. The footage comes from five visits, each …

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Mark Pack

How to defeat Al Qaeda

By Mark Pack | Wed 10th November 2010 - 8:55 am

The cover of Bruce Riedel’s The Search for Al Qaeda shows a group of armed men working their way up a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley that stretches away to rolling hills. It captures the wonder and the tragedy of Afghanistan in one frame.

The book itself is similarly crisp, packing a wide-ranging history of Al Qaeda and its key figures into only 150 pages of moderate size print. It is penned by an ex-CIA man of thirty years service who was frequently closely involved with the figures and events painted in the book, but not so closely as to make the reader fear it is more a justification of his career than a fair account of events.

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Mark Pack

It’s not a science journalism problem, it’s a journalism problem

By Mark Pack | Mon 11th October 2010 - 10:25 am

Late last month, Martin Robbins wrote a fantastic spoof of science journalism for the Guardian’s website – This is a news website article about a scientific paper. In his subsequent commentary on the reaction to that spoof he wrote,

Science is all about process, context and community, but reporting concentrates on single people, projects and events … Hundreds of interesting things happen in science every week, and yet journalists from all over the media seem driven by a herd mentality that ensures only a handful of stories are covered. And they’re not even the most interesting stories in many

…

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