UK troops averting Afghan meltdown

GERMANY: Britain faces the prospect of millions of Afghan refugees making their way to the Europe and the UK unless British troops maintain their presence in the war-torn country, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has warned.

He said that Afghanistan risked ‘‘collapsing’’ if British soldiers pulled out and the UK would feel the consequences ‘‘very directly’’. Up to 4 million Afghan migrants could head to Europe, he predicted.

Fallon’s comments come amid plans to increase the number of British troops in the country where 456 have died since 2001. Currently 500 British soldiers are in Afghanistan training local troops. Last week Mike Penning, a defence minister, announced that more soldiers are likely to be sent to Afghanistan to supplement the training.

Then-prime minister David Cameron declared an end to British combat operations in October 2014, but the country has since struggled to hold back a resurgent Taliban and growing swathes of the country remain beyond Kabul’s control.

Now Fallon believes Britain cannot pull out for fear of prompting a further refugee crisis in Europe.

’’If it was right to go in, it has to be right not to leave before the job is done as well as we can do it,’’ he told the Munich Security Conference.

‘‘If this country collapses, we here will feel the consequences, very directly,’’ Fallon said. ‘‘There could be 3-4 million young Afghan men sent out by their villages to migrate westwards, and they are heading here. They are heading to Germany or Britain and that could be the consequence if this entire country collapses.’’

Afghans seeking a better life in the West already make up one of the largest contributions to the refugee and migrant crisis which has struck Europe in the past two years.

Fallon made the case for continued British military support to the troubled country just days after the most senior United States commander in Afghanistan said he needed thousands more soldiers to break a stalemate against the Taliban-led insurgency.

It also came a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe had an obligation to accept more refugees.

Fallon said the UK’s ongoing presence was necessary because terrorist groups that British and US troops first went to root out from Afghanistan remain in the country more than 15 years later.

Britain retains around 500 troops in Kabul, training local troops and operating a quick reaction force to defend the capital from attack. At the height of the Afghan campaign, Britain had more than 10,000 troops in the country, out of an international total of nearly 150,000.

’’We are asking the government of Afghanistan and their military to deal with the same situation that we had 10 times as many troops to deal with,’’ Fallon said.

He added that the Kabul government ‘‘has asked for our help and my view is we should stay with it as long as we can until that job is done’’. – Telegraph Group