Fight them there or fight them here?

Former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells poses the question in the Guardian in a piece made grimly relevant by Wednesday’s shooting dead of  five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman.

Howells says troops should be brought back from Afghanistan and that the billions of pounds saved should be used to beef up homeland security in Britain – drawing the front line against al Qaeda around the UK rather than thousands of miles away in Helmand province.

He accepts that such an approach would result in “more intrusive surveillance in certain communities,” a tacit acknowledgment that Britain’s Muslims would be subject to greater scrutiny by police and intelligence services.

His “Fortress Britain” theory takes into account indications that a growing number of experts feel the war against the Al Qaeda’s supporters the Taliban in Afghanistan is unwinnable.

It also makes the point that not all Al Qaeda training camps are in Afghanistan anyway.

Howells is Gordon Brown’s intelligence and security watchdog and his theory goes counter to the prevailing wisdom in Washington and London, both of which are preparing to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Do you agree with him?

- Col. Richard Kemp is a former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and the author of Attack State Red, an account of British military operations in Afghanistan, to be published on September 3, 2009, by Penguin. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Disillusionment with the inability of the Kabul administration to govern fairly or to significantly reduce violence played a role in the reportedly low turnout at the polls in Helmand.

It is critical that this changes if we are to avoid another Vietnam. The South Vietnamese Army, well trained and equipped, lost heart once the U.S. withdrew, collapsing at the first push, partly because their corrupt and ineffective administration was not worth fighting for.

That an election was held at all in Afghanistan’s most violent province is an achievement. But despite a major operation to drive out the Taliban, the insurgents deterred large numbers of voters. This illustrates just how steep a mountain NATO has to climb. But it does not mean we cannot prevail against them in Helmand.

As President Obama says: "This isn’t a war of choice; it’s a war of necessity." Home grown British terrorists have only demonstrated an ability to kill our people when they have attended serious training and had face-to-face direction from war-hardened jihadists.

The Al Qaida leadership and their camps were driven into Pakistan in 2001. U.S. pursuit across the border using unmanned aerial vehicle strikes has been remarkably effective, resulting directly in the recent reduction of the UK terrorist threat level.

Al Qaida is not just a “global franchise” but also a solid organization that needs places to meet, to plan and to train terrorists. It cannot all be done on the internet.  Substantially unable to function now in Pakistan, the leadership is actively seeking a new base – perhaps in Yemen, Somalia or North Africa. In any of these they would be much more exposed. Their real desire is to return to Afghanistan. NATO forces are preventing that.

But we cannot do it forever. Success equals reducing the insurgency to a level that can be managed by a viable Afghan government backed by a capable security force which can prevent the country becoming a base for attacks on the West including Britain.

How long will this take? The answer to that is how long do we have?  The next U.S. election is at the end of 2012 and the patience of the British electorate will have no greater longevity.

Even as I have defined it, we will not achieve success fully in that time-frame. But we must be very clearly succeeding in a way that we are not now. And certainly in the British forces, we cannot continue with anything like the current rate of casualties over that period.

To counter the Taliban’s present devastatingly effective tactics of mines, roadside bombs and booby traps we need better surveillance and better intelligence, achieved in part through greater active support from the local people. We need to control the night as well as the day. While we build the Afghan army, this can only be done with more of our own troops. A lot more.

Casting aside inter-service rivalries, every sinew of strength of the British armed forces must now go into Afghanistan.  Even that will not be enough.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown must take close personal direction of this war through a war cabinet that will drive every relevant government department to achieve real progress in the short time we have left. And crucially to communicate our war aims to the British people with far greater effect.

Government ministers have said that Britain supports greater efforts to talk to hardline insurgents fighting in Afghanistan.

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said that those who turn away from violence should be offered a chance to become part of the political process, while Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that “conservative Pashtuns” should be brought in and separated from “the hardline Taliban, who must be pursued relentlessly.”

“The reintegration of former Taliban requires offering bigger incentives to switch sides and stay out of trouble, alongside tougher action against those who refuse,” wrote Miliband in the Financial Times.

Alexander made his comments while visiting the Afghan province of Helmand, where most of the British troops are fighting. The total number of UK fatalities since operations in Afghanistan began in 2001 has now risen to 191.

He told BBC radio: “It is a difficult message for politicians — to talk about the issues of reconciliation and reintegration when British troops are fighting the Taliban. It is necessary to put military pressure on the Taliban while at the same time holding out the prospect that there can be a political process… whereby those who are wiling to renounce violence can find a different path.”

What do you think? Should entering into dialogue with the Taliban be part of our strategy in Afghanistan, or would it be wrong to give their leaders a place at the negotiating table?

A poll for the BBC has indicated that the vast majority of the public want British troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan within the next year.

Since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, 124 British soldiers have been killed, with two Royal Marines becoming the latest casualties when their convoy was hit by an explosion on Wednesday.

Defence Secretary John Hutton says it is more important than ever that the 8,000 British troops remain in the country to fight the resurgent Taliban, saying it is vital to British security and interests.

On a trip to London with President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s foreign minister has said more international forces were needed while U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to send in more U.S. troops.

Do you think British troops should stay in Afghanistan? Send us your comments.

The government should look at ways of opening communication channels with groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban if it wants a long-term political solution as well as a security solution, a former senior aide to Tony Blair says.

Jonathan Powell, who served as Blair's chief of staff between 1995 and 2007, told the Guardian newspaper that such a policy helped secure a peace deal in Northern Ireland.

He was quoted as saying that a secret back channel between the British government and the IRA, first opened in the 1970s, was one of the key factors that contributed to a peace deal three decades later.

"It's very difficult for democratic governments to do - talk to a terrorist movement that's killing your people," he was reported as saying.

"[But] if I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban; and I would want to find a channel to al
Qaeda."

The Foreign Office said it was "inconceivable" that it would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with al Qaeda, and has called on disaffected Afghans to renounce violence.

It has also told Hamas "dialogue is impossible so long as one party is dedicated to violence and the destruction of the other".

Can peace be achieved without dialogue, and if not, at what point do you begin talking?