Speaking on Sky News’ Murnaghan this morning, he claimed continuing to fight the Taliban was essential for Britain’s national security and confirmed that Afghan forces will take on further combat responsibility in 2013 ahead of the British troops’ withdrawal in 2014, as the US-led alliance has largely failed to establish security in the country devastated by decades of civil war.
“Through 2013, it’s Afghans who will have the lead in conducting their own security. And from the end of 2014, British troops will no longer be engaged in combat operations, or be there in anything like the strength that they are now… we look to them after the end of 2014 to cope on their own,” he said.
However last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron warned of the consequences of the pullout of the occupying forces from Afghanistan in 2014, arguing the move would leave the war-ravaged nation short of a future “perfect democracy”, which the US and their western allies pledged when they invaded the country in 2001.
Cameron also admitted in a joint press conference with the US president Barack Obama in Washington that Afghanistan will be left in trouble in 2014, when NATO forces are slated to leave the country, ending the 11-year occupation.
Earlier, responding to the Labour leader Ed Miliband at prime minister’s Question Time, Cameron said the decade-old Afghan war “does remain vital to our national security”, regardless of the fact that British military’s death toll in Afghanistan has topped 404 since it joined the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
Furthermore, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Ashdown, warned that Afghanistan could descend into civil war once coalition troops withdraw by the end of 2014, adding, “It means we end exactly where we started.”
SSM/MF/HE
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