Pat Dollard

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Times Online:

Leaving Afghanistan early would betray British loss of life, warns the British Defense Minister

British Forces will be among the last to come home from Afghanistan and any premature withdrawal would be a “betrayal” of soldiers who have lost their lives, Liam Fox said yesterday.

Days after David Cameron indicated that he wanted to bring home British Forces by 2015, the Defence Secretary flew to Washington to urge the international community to “hold their nerve” over the conflict.

Premature withdrawal would be “a shot in the arm to jihadists everywhere, re-energising violent radical and extreme Islamism”, he said, adding that a “natural impatience” to bring the troops home should not be allowed to cloud national security interests.

“The primary reason for being involved in a conflict is to win it, not to find the earliest exit. We must hold our nerve, maintain our resolve and have the resilience to see the job through,” Dr Fox said.

His words struck a sharply different tone to those made by Mr Cameron on Monday when he told the Commons that British troops would not stay in Afghanistan a day longer than necessary.

“We want to get the job done, train up the Afghan Army and police, and bring our troops back home,” the Prime Minister told MPs.

Downing Street denied that there was any disagreement between Mr Cameron and Dr Fox over strategy and insisted that it had cleared the speech in advance. A spokesman said: “The Prime Minister has been very clear about this. There is an agreed strategy.”

World leaders agreed last weekend to set President Karzai of Afghanistan a deadline of five years to sharpen his security forces and improve the judicial system or risk a Western backlash.

No reference was made to this five-year timetable in the advance briefings five hours before Dr Fox’s speech, though they were added when he delivered it at the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think-tank.

In a BBC interview later, Dr Fox emphasised that British troops could be among the last to exit the country. “The bottom line is that because we’re in one of the most difficult parts of Afghanistan … the likelihood is that will be one of the last parts to ‘transition’ to Afghan security,” he said.

The remarks coincide with the approval of General David Petraeus as the new US commander in Afghanistan. In the Senate confirmation hearing,

he was persistently asked about President Obama’s decision to start a drawdown of US troops from July next year.

Dr Fox was asked yesterday if he had concerns that this withdrawal timeline had sent the wrong message to the Taleban and the Afghan people. He replied, as did General Petraeus, that any troop withdrawals were dependent on conditions on the ground.

He warned allies serving in less demanding provinces in Afghanistan that when it came time for their troops to hand over to their Afghan counterparts, they should not think that their job was over and they could go home.

Dr Fox told The Times later that he did not mean that Nato partners should come and join the British troops in Helmand, but there was no reason why they could not do more to help to train Afghans in other parts of the country.

His speech, part of a three-day visit to Washington, was clearly an attempt to change the language about future troop withdrawals, to underline Britain’s continuing commitment.

He emphasised this commitment in talks with Robert Gates, his American counterpart, during a visit to the Pentagon on Tuesday. Mr Gates told him he was not expecting Britain to send more troops — currently standing at about 10,000.

To those back home urging a quicker withdrawal, worried by rising casualties (more than 300 killed), Dr Fox said that al-Qaeda and the Taleban still posed a real and significant threat in the region.

“So the first reason we cannot bring our troops home immediately is that their mission is not yet completed,” he said. “Were we to leave prematurely … we would probably see the return of the destructive forces of transnational terror.

“Not only would we risk the return of civil war in Afghanistan, creating a security vacuum, but we would also risk the destabilisation of Pakistan with potentially unthinkable regional, and possibly nuclear, consequences.”

An early pullout, he said, would also damage the credibility of Nato and “be a betrayal of all the sacrifices made by our Armed Forces in life and limb”.

Dr Fox was echoing the views of Britain’s top commanders in Afghanistan, who have remained adamant that despite the high casualty toll, the military wanted to stay and finish the job.

The Defence Secretary also said that political and military leaders in Nato needed to prepare their publics for a rise in casualties throughout this summer.