New head of British Army

The new head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, is believed to favour sending 5,000 more British troops to Afghanistan on top of the 8,000 already there. This should, he argues, be part of a massive 30,000 increase in the number of occupation troops, with the US supplying 25,000 additional troops

Last month the British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, is reported to have said that the US strategy in Afghanistan is destined to fail. "The coalition presence - particularly the military presence - is part of the problem, not the solution," he said.

Only last week the U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus said that negotiations with the Taliban might be considered.

What is going on? Generals, diplomats and politicians are tripping over themselves in their confusion. British troops might be asking themselves what they are doing in Afghanistan since their political and military commanders seem to have no idea.

The wars and occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq are criminal and immoral and now a bloody farce. With at least a million dead in Iraq, spiralling civilian deaths in Afghanistan and both countries devastated, the Stop the War Coalition calls for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from both countries.

(General David Richards is also a contributor to Crimson Snow , a book on the first of three defeats suffered by British forces in Afghanistan)

See Amazon's product review of the book, Crimson Snow, below.

"We must see what the morning brings and then think what can be done," said Major General Elphinstone, when told of the rampaging mob outside his residency in Kabul, 1841. Was former Prime Minister Tony Blair wrong in 2001 to allow Britain to be drawn into a fourth conflict in Afghanistan, just as it was wrong for Britain to go into that country in 1839 without a shred of evidence to support widespread fears of imminent Russian invasion? The result of this misadventure was the worst single military disaster the Raj ever suffered: a column of 16,000 troops, their families and camp followers were massacred on the retreat from Kabul.