The news that two more British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan should be read in the context of this outstanding piece by Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times.
It is gripping war reporting, but she also puts her terrifying experiences in the context of the conflict. And as someone who was once reporting from (more or less), “the other side”, the mujahaddin, she’s well-equipped to comment:
Back in the 19th century thousands of Englishmen split their blood on fields like this and I didn’t want to join them. I thought about John Reid, the former defence secretary, glibly saying he hoped to complete the three-year British mission to Helmand without a shot being fired. If this wasn’t a fourth Anglo-Afghan war, it felt very much like it.
Why were we there? Why had we thought the Afghans wouldn’t fight — they defeated the Russians after all. And why did everyone in Kabul and London keep insisting that nobody in Helmand really wanted to support the Taliban but were being forced to?
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