Former British ambassador forecasts 50-year foreign role in Afghanistan

[Hannah Bell]

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the former British ambassador to Kabul, has forecast a half-century role for foreign forces and outside agencies in Afghanistan.

Giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) into the UK’s Foreign Policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan November 9, Cowper-Coles said a 50-year aid programme would be needed, backed up by a “vigorous” political process.

More importantly, he warned of “chaos and civil war” if UK troops left Afghanistan “precipitately”, or within the previously mooted, but much derided, timetable of five years.

While serving as British ambassador to Kabul, Cowper-Coles had suggested UK forces retain a presence in Afghanistan for 30 years.

The former envoy’s declaration is being presented as a projection of future UK aid to Afghanistan—which is largely for security and policing volatile areas. In reality, they dovetail with the increasing resolve in political and military circles in Washington and London to dispense with previous troop withdrawal timetables and to step up the occupation of Afghanistan.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/afgh-n18.shtml

[old mark]

1. We still have troops in Korea, since 1950's...I think we will have troops in Afghanistan

well into the middle of the century.


mark