Ukraine in Arabic | British PM to visit new Afghan president
KYIV/Ukraine in Arabic/ British Prime Minister David Cameron has made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan for talks with new president Ashraf Ghani.
He’s the first world leader to meet the new government after several weeks of political wrangling following presidential elections in June.
Britain has "paid a very high price" for the war in Afghanistan, David Cameron said this morning on his last visit to the country while British troops are on the ground.
After 13 years and the loss of 453 British soldiers, he conceded that terrorist plots against the UK are still being hatched in the region.
The Prime Minister insisted the US-led coalition had succeeded in its aim of forcing al-Qaeda out the region, under a mission launched weeks after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.
Mr Cameron insisted British troops will not return to Afghanistan. “We are not going to send combat troops back to Afghanistan," he said, because the Afghanistan national army can now look after itself. “It has been hard, long, patient work”.
Britain will spend "many, many years" fighting Islamist terrorism that has spread from its "furnace" in Afghanistan to Nigeria, Yemen and Syria, he warned.
"Britain has paid a very high price for our engagement in Afghanistan. We've done vital work here, but we should remember those who have paid the ultimate price and been injured from the work they did here," the Prime Minister said after landing at Kabul Airport.
"When you think about it in very bald, British terms, what is it we have been trying to achieve? That is to deny a safe haven to al-Qaeda," Mr Cameron said.
"This was the place where the 9/11 attacks were plotted from. This was the place where countless attacks were planned. Al-Qaeda and the training camps have been driven out of Afghanistan.
"When I became Prime Minister I think something like nine out ten plots we faced on the streets of Britain came from the Afghanistan-Pakistan area. That is now well down - somewhere below half, from the latest figures I saw."
Mr Cameron said Britain had "gone a long way to achieving" a situation where the "capable" Afghan National Army and police force are able to take control of its own security.
"When you compare Afghanistan in 2001 to today, the country has been transformed."
Afghanistan was the "furnace" of Islamist extremism that is now rearing its head in Nigeria and Syria.
"We are fighting a generational struggle against Islamist extremist terrorism. It had its original furnace here, where al-Qaeda were based.
"You can see extremist terrorism in terms of Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Qaeda in Yemen, Isil in Iraq and Syria. This is a battle that we are going to be engaged in for many, many years."
Afghanistan now has a "capable, determined" Army and police force to tackle terrorism, he added.
Mr Cameron has visited 13 times since becoming leader of the Conservative Party, including nine as Prime Minister.
Britain is to pull soldiers out the country within weeks, 13 years after the US-led invasion intended to destroy the al-Qaeda network which had been granted a safe haven in the country.
Britain recently handed over control of Camp Bastion, the last UK base in the country, to American command.
Some 1,300 British soldiers and airmen are today on the base, down from more than 9,500 at the height of the war.
This morning Mr Cameron held meetings with Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, and Abdullah Abdullah, the country's chief executive - the first Western leader to do so. Mr Cameron said he wanted to "get in early" with the pair.
The pair were sworn in this week under a power-sharing deal brokered by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State.
It was the first democratic transfer of power in the country's history, and followed an election in June in which eight million Afghans voted. It was followed four months of wrangling after Mr Abdullah alleged his rival had won on the back of ballot fraud.
Mr Cameron said the election was "momentous" and underline the "progress that this country has made".
At a joint press with President Ghani in the garden of the presidential palace in Kabul, the Mr Cameron said the Taliban can have a role in the governance of Afghanistan if it gives up violence.
"If the Taliban want to secure a role in the future of Afghanistan then they must accept that they have to give up violence and engage in the political process," he said
"That is a way to have a voice in this democratic country."
Dr Ghani, an anthropologist who spent many years abroad working for the World Bank, as an academic, and as Afghanistan’s finance minister, used his inaugural speech to call for unity and for Taliban insurgents to join peace talks.
President Ghani said he would like to thank the families of British soldiers who died in Afghanistan.
In flawless English he said “I would like to say thank you to the families for the loss of their loved ones. They stood shoulder to shoulder with us. We will remember them.”
President Ghani urged Britain not to shut itself off to the world. He said: "Remember what brought us together. It was through tragedy. 9/11 was followed by attacks on London.
"Your presence here means London has been safe, as has the rest of the world."
He added: "We can't be fortress Europe or fortress America. We live whether we like it or dislike it, in an integrated world with global forces for good and evil."
He said he hoped British soldiers injured in the county would remember the good nature of the Afghan people.
"I thank your soldiers and civilians injured in Afghanistan and have left parts of their limbs there. Some have haunting memories.
“But I hope they will remember the good heart of the Afghans."
He said Afghanistan has no choice but to end the endemic corruption that threatens the country's tax base. "Either we deliver or we collapse. There is no alternative," he said.
The Government hails some gains for the Afghan people: seven million children, including three million girls, are in school.
But it has come at the price of 453 British lives.
The most recent British deaths, that of thee airmen and two intelligence officers, came in a helicopter crash in Takhta Pul, Kandahar Province, in April.
The first to die was Pte Darren George, 23, from Pirbright in Surrey, a soldier in the Royal Anglian Regiment. He was killed in Kabul on April 9, 2002, struck in the head by a ricochet bullet from the gun of a colleague who fell dizzy on patrol.
The youngest killed, twelve of them, were 18. Among them was Private Thomas Wroe, of 3 Battallion, The Yorkshire Regiment, shot at Nahr-e Saraj by an insurgent wearing an Afghan police uniform.
The oldest, Senior Aircraftman Gary Thompson, Royal Auxillary Airforce Regiment, was 51. He was killed, like 226 others, by an improvised roadside bomb which detonated while he was on patrol in Khandahar.
Despite the British drawdown, the Taliban still pose a serious through to national stability, and have launched a series of fresh offences in recent months. There has been heavy fighting near Sangin, where nearly of a quarter of Britain's fatalities occurred.
As Mr Ghani took his oath of office, a suicide bomber killed seven in an attack on Kabul's airport. Two days later, twin Taliban bombers killed at least six in a coordinated attack on army buses.
Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, this week acknowledged the fragility of the Afghan state after 13 years of Western involvement.
"There can be no guarantees but we can be proud of having helped to give Afghanistan the best possible chance of a stable future," he told the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham on Wednesday.
As Britain extricates itself, the United States, which has lost around 3,000 soldiers since the invasion, in is set to remain in the country for another decade.
On Tuesday President Ghani signed a pact, rejected by his predecessor President Kazai, to keep 12,000 NATO troops, including 9,800 Americans, in the country to train the Afghan Army.
A number of US special forces will also remain in the country under the Bilateral Security Agreement to take on the remnants of the Taliban.
Britain will continue to provide £178 million a year in aid to the country and British forces will train Afghan officers at a training camp known as "Sandhurst in the sand."
