Two cheers for Kim Howells. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over ninety-nine just men. So we must be grateful that having been a Foreign Office Minister 2005-8, he is now taking a significant stand in calling for pulling British troops out of Afghanistan – a demand reinforced by today’s news of the horrific killing of 5 British soldiers by an Afghan police trainee which may reflect Taliban infiltration of the Afghan police force. But to argue that the reason for doing this is that the funds for the war would be better spent on the police and intelligence services fighting jihadism in Britain is frankly absurd. The reason behind the plots that have been uncovered aimed at British cities isn’t a discret home-grown terrorism; it is intimately linked with the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by US and UK armed forces, as MI5 itself has admitted. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, explicitly stated as much in October 2006: “The video wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims, and their interpretation of UK foreign policy as anti-Muslim, in particular the UK’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan”.

There were no suicide bombers in Iraq at all until it was invaded and occupied by foreign troops. Self-martyrdom was seen as a way for the powerless to fight back, for revenge over what is seen as the brutal treatment of fellow Muslims – Russia’s suppression of Chechnya, the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and the US and British role in Iraq and Afghanistan. A leaked document, believed to have been written by a British MI6 officer attached to MOD, stated in 2006 that “the war in Iraq has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Mudlim world. Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth”.
Afghanistan was invaded and occupied because it was seen as Bin Laden’s main Al Qaeda base, but also because the country occupied a strategic position in the oil corridors out of the Caspian. Iraq was occupied, not because of 9/11 (there was never any connection), but because of its oil reserves and its location as offering a platform for Western domination over the Middle East. Given that background, and given the death toll of innocent civilians in both countries running into tens of thousands, it is hardly surprising that it has sparked some violent reaction reaction against the countries held responsible – indeed it might seem surprising there has been so little. But the lesson is unequivocally clear: withdraw the occupying armies and the rancid sore of bitterness and hatred driving the terrorism will be removed. The extra funding for increased police and security domestic surveillance would not be necessary – and anyway would drastically undermine the fundamentals of a free society which the whole fight against terrorism is designed to maintain.

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