Maurice was a research assistant at Conservative Friends of Israel. He has previously worked for Douglas Carswell MP and interned for Douglas Murray at the Centre for Social Cohesion. His interests are in foreign affairs, Islamism and the US-UK special relationship. You can find more of his writings on the Henry Jackson Society's web-blog “Britain in the World”.
While yesterday morning’s speech made by the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth MP, must be welcomed for its honesty and the stating of the implications for Britain’s domestic security if we fail to make Afghanistan secure, it is unfortunate that the Government feels it even necessary to remind us as to why we are there in the first place.
As the British presence in Iraq is now formally over, the British public’s attention on our activities in Afghanistan is sharpening, particularly as the number of British troops killed increases.
According to a BBC/ ICM poll, taken in November last year, more than two-thirds of the UK’s adults want Britain to leave Afghanistan.
Even before the financial crisis, most Britons believed that the intervention in Afghanistan was a waste of money. They thought that the liberation of Taliban controlled Afghanistan was not our fight and that our interference in a “Muslim country” made Britain less safe because it made us a target for Islamist terror. But, if people are thinking this, it means that they are ignoring the historical build up to the conflict and misunderstand the threat posed to Britain by Islamist inspired terrorism.
So, why are the British armed forces in Afghanistan? On the 11th September 2001, nearly three thousand people (including sixty seven Britons) were murdered by nineteen Wahhabbi inspired Islamist terrorists from Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda. Ever since 1996, when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Bin Laden (who had been expelled from Sudan in the same year) had been a client of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda, with the blessing of the Taliban, were allowed to train and prepare for the 9/11 attacks whilst residing in Afghanistan.
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