After £12 Billion War, Nearly £800 Million in Foreign Aid and 338 British Deaths, Afghanistan Aims to Get Taliban Back
The announcement by Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai that he intends to bring the Taliban back into government as part of a peace deal has underlined the pointlessness of the war which has cost the British taxpayer billions of pounds and the lives of at least 338 soldiers.
Karzai announced his latest plan at a meeting in Kabul where he said that he had appointed a new 68-member council tasked with setting up peace talks with Taliban-led insurgents.The proposed plan includes an improbable program to lure Taliban insurgents with cash bribes and “seeking reconciliation with senior militant leaders by offering them asylum in Muslim countries and striking their names off a UN blacklist,” according to reports.
The cash bribes will, of course, come out of the £700 billion in foreign aid that the British taxpayers are busy handing over to the Afghan government.
The 10-year old war has cost several billion each year, with latest estimates saying the annual cost has now risen to about £4 billion per year as the military struggle intensifies.
Some 338 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, and thousands more seriously injured. The total number of Afghans killed in the conflict is unknown, but certainly numbers in the tens of thousands.
And now, after all that sacrifice, blood and money, the Taliban, which was supposed to have been the reason for the invasion in the first place, is going to be allowed back into government — with money provided by the taxpayer.
To add insult to injury, President Karzai also warned that the war was causing the “next generation” of Afghanis to “flee the country.”
In other words, the invasion of Afghanistan has caused an upsurge in refugees and asylum seekers entering Europe, and Britain in particular, precisely as the British National Party predicted.
Furthermore, the latest offer to the Taliban to rejoin the government makes a mockery of the original reason given for the war, namely that the Taliban regime was a supporter of international terrorism and was providing refuge to Osama bin Laden.
In fact, the head of the American CIA is now on record as saying that there were no more than 50 Al Qaeda terrorists in all of Afghanistan.
Now it seems that the original objectives (to drive out the Taliban and to capture Osama Bin Laden) have also been abandoned.
What was it all then for?
