UK - Why we've paid a terrible price for the war in Afghanistan

[Junkhead23]

War on Afghanistan and drugs a complete failure



Sending British troops into Afghanistan would result in a quick victory against the Taliban at little cost, Tony Blair said seven years ago. Even better, it would stem the flow of drugs into this country.
That rose-tinted optimism has proved wrong in every way. Now a serving Army officer has for the first time not only attacked the military campaign as a failure, but condemned it for turning Helmand into "the opium centre of the world".
Yet another soldier was killed on Friday, bringing the terrible toll of British deaths in Afghanistan to 169, obscuring the side-effect of our presence, which is to have given a huge boost to the drugs trade.

There has been an enormous surge in the poppy crop, leading to low-cost heroin flooding our streets.
The senior intelligence officer, Major S N Miller, speaks for many of his comrades when he says that "British policy-makers sleep-walked the armed forces into Helmand Province without any meaningful reconstruction plan".
There is no doubting the commitment of our troops and the superb leadership from their officers. But there has to be vision, planning and leadership from the top, as well.
The failure there has not only resulted in the lives of our courageous forces being risked daily, and often lost, but in an explosion of drugs which affects many young people in this country.
Once again politicians stand condemned of speaking grandly of what they will achieve and discovering too late that they have done the opposite.


Source - http://www.mirror.co.uk/opinion/voic...5875-21458907/