Afghans are victims of Western foreign policy

SO Tony Blair thinks the West should stay in Afghanistan. This is the man who bombed and killed over a million civilians in Iraq, thousands in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Although implemented crassly, leaving many people in the lurch, the decision to leave was the right one. However viewed here, this was a military occupation and seen as such by Afghans and the Taliban was the resistance. They couldn’t have taken over so swiftly had it not been the case.

The Taliban are Afghan citizens, many of them joined as little boys orphaned by Western bombing.

We don’t see Afghans as they are, in all their diversity, but as victims of the Taliban, when they are actually victims of insane Western foreign policy. Think of the colossal sums of money spent on destruction, when a fraction of it could have bought medicine and education. Western populations didn’t create this situation; it was the US and UK elites, who already have so much but don’t want to lose it and want to go on take-taketaking, at whatever cost to others.

Remembering those who were killed, innocent Afghans and soldiers who thought they were helping, let’s also remember Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Afghanistan who was sacked for denouncing Western foreign policy; Joe Glenton, the British soldier who when he saw how the Afghans were treated refused to fight and was court-martialed; Yvonne Ridley, the journalist captured by the Taliban, who wrote sympathetically about them.

After the Second World War (when we were fighting for our lives) bombing seems to have become part of our DNA. It’s time we moved away from a foreign policy dependent on it.

Tony Blair and the Western elites, so destructive around the world, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, will also destroy the West and the planet, if they aren’t checked.

We should leave Afghanistan to sort itself out and wish them well.

Sylvia Riley, Derby