Families’ fury as Afghan leader mocks Nato efforts
FAMILIES of British troops killed and maimed in Afghanistan were furious last night after its leader dismissed Nato’s campaign as a pointless failure.
President Hamid Karzai said Britain and the US had done little more than cause ‘suffering, loss of life and no gains’.
He added that Britain had paid a high price in ‘blood and treasure’ fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
A total of 444 UK servicemen and women have died in battle and the Government has spent as much as £37billion on the conflict.
At the same time, Washington has spent £412billion bankrolling a war effort that has claimed the lives of 2,270 US troops. In an interview to mark six months before he leaves office, President Karzai said: ‘The entire Nato exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life and no gains because the country is not secure.’
He accused Nato of focusing on Afghan villages rather than Taliban and Al Qaeda ‘ sanctuaries and training grounds’ in Pakistan and also attacked air strikes as a ‘violation’ of sovereignty.
Elaine Bell, from Bradford, whose son Martin, 24, was awarded a George Medal after he was killed by an IED while trying to save a colleague in January 2011, said: ‘For him to make these flippant comments will for lots of families be deeply upsetting.
‘We sleep safer in our beds because of the bravery of our soldiers.’
Helena Tym, from Reading, whose son Cyrus Thatcher, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb while with 2nd Battalion the Rifles, said: ‘I suppose Cyrus and the British Army felt it was for the good of the Afghan people to go out there and fight a war.’
Karzai was installed in 2001 after allies drove the Taliban from power and he agreed that they should continue fighting.
General Lord Dannatt, former head of the Army, said: ‘He is looking after his legacy but doing it in an extraordinarily insensitive and rather unfair way.
‘Without the intervention we have made, with a considerable cost in lives and treasure, the Taliban would have got into control in Afghanistan and it would have been a far less secure country than it is now.’
Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded UK forces in Afghanistan in 2003, said: ‘The lives of our soldiers have not been sacrificed in vain in Afghanistan.’
Nato’s former secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said: ‘It’s unfair to those Nato soldiers who lost their lives and unfair to Great Britain, responsible for one of the most complicated parts of Afghanistan, Helmand.’
Comment – Page 14