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Afghan withdrawal not based on desperate hope, says Hague

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Dec 15, IRNA -- British Foreign Secretary William Hague has denied that plans to transfer security to nascent Afghan forces to allow the withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan was wishful thinking due to the desperate situation.

“It is not just based on a hope, a wing and a prayer; to say that would be unfair to everyone involved,” Hague told MPs when questioned in parliament following Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Afghanistan last week.

He said that according to his latest monthly report on Afghanistan published on Tuesday that looks at the Afghan national army's 28 brigade and corps units, “seven are now capable of undertaking operations with minimal advice.”

“It is also important to bear in mind that, as the report points out, 70% of the violence in Afghanistan is in four of its 34 provinces,” Hague said.

“That illustrates how dramatically different conditions are in different parts of Afghanistan, which means that transition will be able to take place in some areas years before it can take place in others,” he insisted.

The foreign secretary was challenged by the former chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Mike Gapes to confirm that the original plans put forward by the former US commander in Afghanistan General McChrystal to defeat the Taliban have been “scrapped.”

“The position being put forward by the international coalition is based on a hope, a wing, a prayer, and an assumption that the Afghans will come forward in an effective way, but we have no basis on which we can know that,” Gapes said.

During his visit to Afghanistan, Cameron not only confirmed that British troops will not only have ended combat operations by 2015 but could start to withdraw from next year.

Conservative MP, Julian Lewis, a former shadow defence minister and military writer, also criticised the government’s fluctuating policy in Afghanistan.

“Our strategy in Afghanistan oscillates between infantry-intensive counter-insurgency campaigning, at high cost, and advance notice that we are going to withdraw, which puts pressure on one side to compromise, but not on the other,” Lewis said.

Announcing the next roulement of UK forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday, Defence Secretary Liam Fox indicated that there would be no early reduction of troop levels.

The new deployments in April, Fox said, “would not result in any change to the UK's established and enduring conventional force level of 9,500 personnel.”