BRITISH SOLDIERS in Afghanistan could start to withdraw from day-to-day fighting with the Taliban next year and transfer responsibility to local security forces, said British prime minister Gordon Brown.
In a clear signal to an increasingly war-weary British public that the Afghan conflict is not open-ended, Mr Brown offered to host a summit in London in January for major powers to decide on the next steps to be taken in the country.
“I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished,” he told the lord mayor’s banquet in London – the traditional venue for major foreign policy speeches.
The London summit, to be followed by a second gathering in Kabul, should set down means to transfer responsibility for security “district by district to full Afghan control” starting in November next year.
Mr Brown’s speech – which is not “an exit strategy”, No 10 Downing Street insisted last night – came as news emerged of the latest death of a British soldier in Afghanistan, killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand province.
The Royal Engineers soldier was killed on Sunday afternoon in Gereshk. Another, from the Royal Rifles, died in a gun-battle earlier that day.
So far, 234 British servicemen have died in Afghanistan, 97 of them this year.
In his speech, Mr Brown insisted the UK will not back away from the battle with the Taliban and al-Qaeda: “Vigilance in defence of national security will never be sacrificed to expediency.
“Necessary resolution will never succumb to appeasement. The greater international good will never be subordinated to the mood of the passing moment,” he told the lord mayor’s banquet held in the Guildhall.
Several hundred foreign al-Qaeda fighters are based in Pakistan, while the organisation is recruiting extensively in Africa, the Middle East, western Europe and the UK, Mr Brown told his audience. “And to those who say this threat is not real, I ask them to consider that almost half of those convicted pleaded guilty,” he said, adding that 200 people have been convicted of terrorist crimes in the UK since 2001.
“So I vigorously defend our action in Afghanistan and Pakistan because al-Qaeda is today the biggest source of threat to our national security – and to the security of people’s lives in Britain.”
The fight against al-Qaeda has been more successful this year than any year since 2001: “Since January 2008, seven of the top dozen figures in al-Qaeda have been killed, depleting its reserve of experienced leaders and sapping its morale,” he said.
Significant and long-lasting damage can now be inflicted upon it: “We understand the reality of the danger and the nature of the consequences if we do not succeed: we will never forget the fatal al-Qaeda-led attacks in London on July 7th, 2005. We are in Afghanistan because we judge that if the Taliban regained power, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would once more have an environment in which they could operate,” he declared.
Meanwhile, a British soldier convicted of war crimes following the death in 2003 of an Iraqi man beaten to death in a British army barracks in Basra has claimed his commanders led the abuse. Former corporal Donald Payne told a public inquiry yesterday that Lieut Craig Rodgers had kicked or punched prisoners, while his commanding officer, Lieut Col Jorge Mendonca, was “gung-ho” and “trigger-happy”.
Payne claimed he had lied in his first round of interviews into the death in 2003 and 2004 because of a “misguided sense of loyalty” to his regiment, the Queen’s Lancashires.