Bloody betrayal raises fresh doubts about Britain's campaign in Afghanistan

[FarCenter]

Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Michael Evans, Defence Editor

The killing of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman raised fresh doubts yesterday about Britain’s mission in Helmand.

Senior political, diplomatic and military figures warned that public support for the British presence was in danger of collapse without a clear and freshly defined strategy.

The deaths of the soldiers, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, came when a policeman trained by British forces opened fire at Shin Kalay base in southern Afghanistan. Building up the expertise of the Afghan army and police force is key to the British and American forces eventually leaving the country, and that may now be far more difficult to achieve.

The shootings exposed cracks in the military alliance and domestic political unity. Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, the former Liberal Democrat leader, and Lord Powell of Bayswater, Margaret Thatcher’s former foreign policy adviser, warned of the dangers of ebbing public support.

Lord Ashdown writes in The Times: “There is now a real chance that we will lose this struggle in the bars and front-rooms of Britain, before we lose it in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.” Lord Powell said that the public wouldn’t accept a strategy that did not include a cut-off point within three years.

<SNIP>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6903754.ece