This Tory MP believes we need to invade Afghanistan. Again.

British troops in Afghanistan


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UK military forces must return to Afghanistan, a Tory MP has said. Tobias Ellwood insisted that only a new deployment could stop a potential civil war. In recent weeks, the Taliban has made massive gains in the territory. This has led to fears the country could end up back under its control.

Airstrikes against the Taliban were underway on Thursday 5 August. But the same report suggested that more and more territory is falling to the insurgent group regardless.

Ex-army officer Ellwood also tweeted that a coalition force of 5,000 could prop up the current government. And he warned the other option was a failed state:

A large-scale deployment so soon after an official withdrawal seems unlikely. And the UK government does not seem to want to rake over the past 20 years in Afghanistan. For instance, Boris Johnson recently rejected calls for a full Iraq War style inquiry into the war.

Withdrawal

Ellwood’s call comes just over a month after the US officially withdrew. It did so in an unusual way: by sneaking out in the dead of night on 4th July and without telling Afghan allies.

Ellwood also attacked the US decision to withdraw at all, saying it was “made for political reasons”.

Earlier in the week, senior general Nick Carter was asked if Afghanistan could become a failed state again:

That is one of the scenarios that could occur, but we have to get behind the current Afghan government and support them in what they are trying to do.

Interpreters

Meanwhile, the safety of Afghan interpreters who helped UK forces during the war has become a flashpoint as the Taliban has advanced. On 28 July, a group of former military officers demanded that the Afghans be re-homed in the UK more quickly than they are being.

The UK MOD announced a package of measures to help those affected in June 2021. The former officer’s letter sparked an angry response from defence secretary Ben Wallace, who disputed their claims.

Endgame

Ellwood’s call for more troops may not go anywhere. There’s little appetite in the UK to return to Afghanistan – a location of major international embarrassment and defeat. But what he says is telling. Even now in the upper echelons of the UK security and defence establishment, some still believe that military intervention is a cure-all.

This proves true even in places like Afghanistan, where military occupation is what caused the problems in the first place.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/L/Cpl Jeremy Fasci

 

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  • Show Comments

    1. It wasn’t the Tories who took us into Iraq or Afghanistan though. It was The Labour Party. It still has blood on it’s hands.
      I disagree with Ellwood on many things, but he’s a decent man who has life experience. Unlike career troughers like Corbyn who have earned millions from the taxpayer by doing nothing.

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      1. So you accept and feel comfortable with right-wing governments lying…….
        Thatcher, Blair, Camoron, de Pfeffel Johnson hardly representative of leftist politics…
        I’m guess you couldn’t spell ideology let alone navigate a dictionary…
        Boomers……LMAO

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      2. No, he’s an ignoramus who seems to know nothing about Afghanistan. We went into Afghanistan in November 1878 to fight Russia. Sound familiar? And eventually withdrew in 1919. Seems Mr “life experience” isn’t aware of that. We went back in again by supporting rebels with arms and finance under James Callaghan (Labour. Minority gov.). Regardless of who was in power in the UK we would have supported first the rebels and then against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
        You don’t seem to have much life experience. Tell us about all the millions Corbyn has been given?

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    3. So Tobias “Bombing for Peace” Ellwood believes we need to extend the conflict even longer.
      The whole debacle started in 1959 when the USSR controlled PDPA violently overthrew the elected government. After 2 decades of brutal repression the people rebelled against the government and in 1978 the USSR intervened to support the ruling PDPA. The rebellion was financed and armed by the USA and the UK. The USSR gave up after a year and went home and 3 years of civil war followed, until until the fall of Kabul in 1992.
      This was followed by 4 years of infighting between mujahideen rebel factions, ending in 1996 after the Taliban and al-Qaeda took Kabul. and then the The Afghan Civil War from 1996 to 2001, again between Islamic factions.
      So the USA then had to invade, just to make things worse. And the morn Ellwood believes he knows the story? He also doesn’t seem to know about the disastrous Anglo-Afghan (UK-Russian) wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries which were really the precursors to the present conflicts.

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    4. “Ellwood also attacked the US decision to withdraw at all, saying it was “made for political reasons”.”

      And the decision to invade WASN’T????

      The Taliban had already arrested Bin Laden, and merely asked for some EVIDENCE before they handed him over for a show trial and execution. The US didn’t have that evidence then, and they don’t have it now.

      The invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan was PURE politics. Unless you count the dark-money the Intel Agencies spun from the heroin trade profits.

      TBF to the guy, if HE wants to go to Afghanistan, let him give up his safe seat in Parliament, and go help some pro-Govt militia personally.

      I’m sure he’ll be “Back in time for Xmas”…….

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      1. In a coffin.
        To me the sad, but typical, problem is the inability to learn from history. We started the First Afghan War in November 1878, for political reasons, and got hammered over the next 40 years, and yet a so called military man doesn’t seem to know about that.

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    6. ” … otherwise we face a failed state.” Err …

      Elwood, you’re living in a ‘failed state’. I suggest you worry about your own shabby little pile of corruption before you criticize other countries. Didn’t your dorm captain tell you that people that live in glass houses should never throw stones?

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