Afghanistan without that loving feeling.

Byline: John Avison 

WATCHING soldiers tumbling about in the choking dust of Afghanistan this week, I feel I will not be alone in asking why Britain remains committed to and involved in this distant conflict.

We know a retreat now would be loss of face for the government, and accusations from the other elements of the peace-keeping forces that we'd let the side down.

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Yet even with a UK 'surge' of troops, another 50 helicopters, and some decent anti-roadside bomb armour for their transport, the battle in Helmand Province might not be winnable. More lives will certainly be lost.

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If the present level of casualties is a cause of grief, imagine what it would be if the 'surge' was repelled with equal force? How many British soldiers' deaths is too many? Where do we draw the line? Even if a surge were launched, the outcome of the war itself is in doubt. Afghans have a natural distrust of foreigners meddling in their affairs, particularly foreigners who promised to rebuild their country's infrastructure and who haven't yet. Their hearts and minds just aren't in it at the moment.

We all know the Taliban are the bad guys, part supporting and part sponsored by Al Qaeda. If left to their own devices, they would fling wide the door from the ungovernable part of northern Pakistan and invite into the country a rag-tag army of 'freedom fighters' or 'terrorists' depending on your point of view, across this already leaky border, thus negating the Pakistan Army's efforts in the north.

We know that, given half a chance, the Taliban would impose what we see as fundamentalist, medieval conditions on the ordinary Afghan folk, blowing all Western concepts of democracy out of the water.

If the heroin poppy is thriving under the watchful but impotent eye of the military now, imagine what it would do if the 'freedom fighters' universally used opiates as a serious weapon against the West? If we backed off from Afghanistan, or were forced to retire, would this mean that a terrorist attack on our UK cities would become significantly more likely? Impossible to say for sure.

But our politicians should be wary of saying that it would, when the running sores of Somalia, Mali and the Yemen, to mention but three terrorist training hotspots, remain untreated, and terrorists move largely unhindered between them.

The elephant in the room, of course, is Islam. It nearly always is, these days.

While history is littered with 'Christian' terrorists of all shades (the last bloody exercise of which was, arguably, in Serbia) they all seem to have disarmed and gone home.

It is a big mistake to equate Christianity with the West, though the former has shaped the latter's ethical stance: democracy, equal rights, trial by one's peers, the defence of justice and the righting of perceived wrongs, even if they are not within our own borders.

The downside of this is unmitigated greed, cruel colonialism, crass and wasteful materialism and personal morality that would make a pig blush.

Neither can the vast majority of Muslims be equated with Middle Eastern insurrection, violence, the putting of the infidel to the sword, the creation of a worldwide network of caliphates, and sharia law for all.

Judaic, Christian and Muslim faiths were hammered out in the same forge and contain the same core message: Love thy God, and love thy neighbour as thyself. This is as relevant in Kandahar and Gaza as it is in Luton, and as true today as it was in BC1380, 36AD, and 630AD.

When all three finally figure out what this really means and put it into action, the UK Tommy's presence in Afghanistan will truly be unnecessary.

CAPTION(S):

AT WAR: British soldiers keep guard near the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan AP