Why we need to stay the course in Afghanistan

As British deaths in Afghanistan reached 200 over the weekend, we were once more reminded of the harsh fighting our troops are engaged in overseas. Although every single death in Afghanistan should cause us to reflect on why we’re there, the 200 mark is logically a point where we have to start asking ourselves some hard questions.

As we watch the pictures of our troops being brought back from Helmand on our television screens the easy thing to do is to say let’s bring them home and end our mission in Afghanistan. The hard thing to do, yet the right thing, is to recognise that our mission in Afghanistan is one of great importance and one we mustn’t lose.

The mission in Afghanistan is important for two groups of people: the British Public and the people of Afghanistan.

For us, our security depends on creating a stable and peaceful Afghanistan without the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We should not forget that it was the Taliban Government that financed and encouraged the September 11th attacks on the United States and trained Islamist terrorists that were dispatched to numerous other countries across the world. That threat has not diminished. I recall an interview I saw several weeks ago on television where the father of a solider who was in Afghanistan was talking about the contents of an email his son had sent. In the email his son had said: “if we don’t fight them here, we’ll be fighting them in the streets at home.” I think that puts it all in to perspective.

For the Afghan people, the end of the Taliban’s regime means and end to several years of brutal oppression and abuse at the hands of one of the harshest regimes the world has seen. Next week the Afghan people will take part in Presidential elections which is an important milestone in the country’s transition to a democracy. This is a stark contrast to the days of the Taliban; days when women were regularly flogged and stoned in public as half-time entertainment in football stadiums, where primary school education was virtually non-existent and Sharia law was enforced in its most barbaric form. It’s so the Afghan people don’t have to suffer the same again that we must succeed and we must stay the course.

The next few months will no doubt be as bloody as the last and our mission may go on for many years to come, but it is in our own security interests that we stay in Afghanistan and complete our mission.