We are stuck in Afghanistan - mission impossible

Guardian

British troops are facing "very difficult objectives" in Afghanistan, the former Conservative party leader William Hague said yesterday.

"They have to win the hearts and minds of the local population while at the same time removing their main source of income ... Unless it can be shown to the people in Afghanistan that there's an alternative future to growing opium and being with the Taliban ... we are not going to succeed."

Though the war in Iraq has claimed most of the media's attention over the last three years, Tory MPs have finally spotted that Tony Blair's other great foreign policy adventure is proving no less disastrous.

They accuse the government of not providing enough military resources - an easy charge to make when things are going badly - but that doesn't get to the heart of the problem. Britain's military objectives in Afghanistan are not merely "very difficult", as Mr Hague says, but are wellnigh impossible. We are stuck there, achieving very little, unable to leave and with virtually no prospect of a short-, medium- or long-term solution. Read more