British minister justifies Afghan role despite loss of soldiers
By Francis Obinor
AMID mounting resentment over deaths of troops in Afghanistan, British Minister of State for Armed Forces, Bill Rammell, has justified the government's insistence to help eradicate elements of terror and usher a lasting peace in the troubled country.
In a speech made available to The Guardian by the British High Commission in Abuja yesterday, he said since his country is a permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Commonwealth, it has the obligation to fight those threatening global peace and harmony.
"As a nation, we have to be continually adept at meeting new challenges as they are thrust upon us. In the last century, the threat to most nations was overwhelmingly from the Armed Forces of other nations. In this century, there is a growing confidence that for most nations in the international community, the state on state threat is receding.
He said terrorists groups like Al Qaeda have continued to use the features of the new world - global communications, international travel, devolved networks, outsourced operations, franchising, diverse finances to finance their evil ends.
According to him, their aims are not the narrow nationalist aims of 20th century terrorists like the IRA as they are undertaking a global campaign exploiting a range of grievances to carry out acts of terror.
"Al Qaeda does not accept diversity.
They want to impose by force their concept of a caliphate across the world.
They wish to impose across continents a system sharing many of the ways used by the hard-core ideological Taliban in Afghanistan when they were in charge. Brutality, oppression, intolerance and violence.
Rammell said this new form of terrorism forced the UK, and many of its allies, to take difficult but necessary decisions - particularly when it comes to the use of military force.
"The political choice was clear, we had to intervene in Afghanistan and we are their now to stop that happening again.
Our ultimate objective in 2001 holds true for 2009: to protect our citizens from terrorist attacks by preventing Al Qaeda having a safe haven in the tribal belt - in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.
"They must never again become a safe haven for terrorists. For us to be safe, Afghanistan needs to be secure, Pakistan needs to be secure.
"That means Afghanistan is not a conflict of choice, but of necessity.
Operations there have a direct bearing on the safety of our streets. Opting out of military operations does not remove you from the target list. To use a football metaphor, there are no 'home' and 'away' threats any longer. And we are one of 43 Nations in the UN-authorised and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who have made this same judgment," he said.
Rammell said as a permanent member of the Security Council and a leading member of NATO, the UK is required to stand ready to act with its allies - and to take responsibility for the security of others, as well as of its own citizens.
"That's why we, as leaders, must remain resolute. That's why we, as leaders, must become more agile in countering these tactics. That's why we, as leaders, must communicate more effectively with our own people, and show them the true nature of the enemy we all face.
"Because, as the new Head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, said last month, "The price of failure hasn't really been properly understood."
Certainly, it would embolden those who preach extremist violence, and increase the threat of terrorist attacks around the world.
Meanwhile, the United States will not be in Afghanistan eight years from now, according to the White House, as President Barack Obama prepared to explain to Americans next week why he is expanding the war effort.
The Obama administration, which said it is still reviewing its policy on a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, is expected to announce he is sending about 30,000 more troops as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy that will place greater emphasis on accelerating the training of Afghan security forces so that U.S. soldiers can eventually withdraw.
After months of deliberation and fending off Republican charges that he was dithering on Afghanistan while violence there surged, Obama will address the nation next Tuesday on the way forward in the costly and unpopular eight-year war.
It appears highly unlikely Obama will offer a specific troop withdrawal timetable, but White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the president would stress that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was not open-ended.
Germany's top general and a senior defence ministry official has quit over an air strike in Afghanistan in which NATO said as many as 142 people died.
The resignations, announced in parliament by Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, followed press revelations that a military report about the September 4 strike was suppressed.
Germany, with around 4,300 troops, is the third-largest contributor of foreign troops in Afghanistan after the United States and Britain. The mission is opposed by a majority of voters in Germany, polls indicate.
