Afghanistan – Page 2

A soldier in the style of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

by Ilana Mercer

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Barack Hussein Obama at war and George W. Bush at war: How does the 44th president of the United States differ from the 43rd?

If nothing else, former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has settled that question. Bush sent troops to fight futile battles without flinching; Obama did the same with some reservation.

Hardly a peacemaker, Obama questioned the mission in Afghanistan and was skeptical of the military brass’s motivation in securing for itself—to the detriment of the grunts on the ground—a long-term commitment to the theatre of war in that country.

Like Obama, 82 percent of Americans oppose the war the president is being panned for having embraced publicly, but agonized over privately. On Afghanistan, Obama is more aligned with the American people—and the truth—than the former defense secretary and his Republican champions.

This I say with reluctance. I awarded Barack Obama brownie points thrice in his tenure: for doing not a thing about the 2011–2012 protests in Iran, for ceasing the criminalization of cancer and AIDS patients for their medicinal use of illegal substances, and for breaking with Bush and his neocons in refusing to step on the Russian Bear’s claws. Obama scrapped the missile-defense shield in Russia’s backyard.

Yet this revelation in Gates’ “Duty,” a book that hangs on one hook, has Republicans gurgling with pleasure. Limitless is the GOP’s zest and zeal for ignoring the negative right of the American people to be free of the Sisyphean (and Jacobean) struggle to save the world.

If anything, it sounds as though Gates might have had misgivings of his own about the missions in which his “soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines” were dying for nothing.

A bereft Gates tells of “evening sessions” during which he’d write condolence letters “to the families of service members killed in action.” There “probably wasn’t a single evening in nearly 4 1/2 years when I didn’t — when I didn’t weep,” he confessed. Gates relates how focused he became “on the strain on our troops and on their families.” After all, “they’d been at war for 10 years.” “My highest priority,” he averred in an interview with NPR, was “trying to avoid new conflict … in terms of recommending against intervention in Libya,” and expressing “concerns about going to war in Syria, much less in Iran.”

It just seemed to me that some of the areas where we were looking at potential conflict were more in the category of wars of choice. And it was those that I was trying to protect the troops from.

Having fought for the survival of his people—and never to democratize or “save” another—Ariel Sharon was far less of a study in contradictions than poor Mr. Gates. The former Israeli prime minister died on Jan. 11, after languishing in a vegetative state for 8 years.

Seared in my mind as a child growing up in Israel is a 1973 image of the late Ariel Sharon. He is on the western bank of the Suez Canal in Egypt, head bandaged because of an injury sustained in combat. What is he doing? Winning. Sharon was beating back an enemy that came close to vanquishing Israel.

Ariel Sharon led his men into battle and won the 1973 Yom Kippur War in which the Israeli government and the intelligence failed miserably. He himself had said that “his greatest military success came during that war, during which he surrounded Egypt’s Third Army and, defying orders, led 200 tanks and 5,000 men over the Suez Canal, a turning point.”

Had Sharon himself not performed military miracles, who knows if Israelis, myself included, would have survived? How many Americans can point to a leader who had actually saved their lives, rather than send other men to die in foreign lands, and then propagandize his countrymen about having fought for their freedoms?

As a Special-Forces commander, Sharon was on the front—and in front of his men—performing daring assaults that saved Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Pugnacious and tenacious, “Arik” Sharon was nothing if not controversial. Hated though he was abroad, Sharon was, nevertheless, a soldier in the style of “Stonewall” Jackson, not Dubya the Deserter, to whom he and the Likudniks were often compared.

Agree or disagree with the methods and politics of this titanic personality—it is unarguable that Sharon’s overriding concern was with the survival and security of the Jewish state: he saw himself as bearing a “historic responsibility” for “the fate of the Jewish people.” By contrast, Bush’s Wilsonian, global missionary movement to rid the world of “evildoers” related not even tangentially to the future and safety of the American people.

Unlike George Bush the internationalist, “Arik” Sharon was a fierce nationalist, who put his country and its people first.

As with so many of our military men—cast adrift by the policies of Rome-on-the-Potomac—Mr. Gates would be less of a mess had he, too, been able to lead his men into wars of necessity, instead of charging headlong into unjust “wars of choice.”

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Six dead in US drone strike on religious seminary

A US drone killed six people in northwest Pakistan Thursday in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts, threatening to inflame tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

The missile attack targeted a religious seminary that security officials said belonged to the Haqqani network — blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan — in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Earlier this month the network’s chief financier Nasirudddin Haqqani was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in a village on the edge of Islamabad.

Thursday’s drone strike was the first in the country since Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack in the North Waziristan tribal district on November 1.

That attack prompted a furious response from Pakistan, with the interior minister accusing Washington of sabotaging fledgling peace efforts with the Taliban and opposition parties calling for a blockade of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan.

“The drone strike targeting the seminary killed six people,” police official Farid Khan told AFP.

Two local security officials identified two of the dead as Mufti Ahmad Jan and Mufti Hameedullah and said they were both members of the Haqqani network.

“The seminary belonged to one Qari Noor Muhammad, a previously unknown figure. It was not clear if he was present in the seminary at the time of attack”, an official said.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, who are blamed for numerous bloody attacks in Afghanistan including one on the US embassy in Kabul in 2011.

US officials have in the past accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of links to the Haqqani network, which has bases in the tribal districts.

Since 2004 the United States has carried out hundreds of missile attacks from unmanned aircraft on suspected militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The vast majority of them have hit targets in the seven tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, which have a separate legal and political governance system from the rest of the country.

Thursday was the first time a US drone hit a district inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only previous strike outside the tribal areas came in Bannu district, a so-called “frontier region”.

The number and identity of casualties is often hard to determine because the tribal areas are off-limits to foreign journalists and aid organisations, but the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates deaths at between 2,500 and 3,700.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the attacks, according to various estimates, prompting outrage in Pakistan and abroad.

A major report last month from rights campaigners Amnesty International said the US may be guilty of war crimes.

The Pakistani government officially condemns drone strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and last month Sharif urged US President Barack Obama to halt the programme during a meeting in Washington.

Despite their deep unpopularity in Pakistan, the US sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants in the tribal areas.

One dead, 21 injured in US consulate attack in Afghanistan

US consulate building in Herat, a former hotel

Taliban militants attacked a US consulate in western Afghanistan Friday, killing an Afghan guard and injuring 21 people including 16 civilians, police said.

“Two attackers detonated their explosives-laden truck at the first entrance of the US consulate at 5:30 am (0100 GMT) in Herat city, injuring four guards of a private security company and two policemen,” said Rahmatullah Safi, police chief of Herat province.

“Following the explosion, three others who were in another vehicle opened fire on the guards,” Safi told dpa.

“One of the injured guards died due to bleeding,” he said.

The three remaining assailants were killed when the police returned fire, he said.

At least 16 civilians were injured by flying glass, according to police.

“The people were sleeping in their houses around the consulate compound and were injured when the strong explosion broke their windows,” said Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, a spokesman for Herat province police.

US Ambassador to Kabul James B Cunningham condemned the attack.

“We are grateful for the quick response of the Afghan and ISAF security forces, who secured the facility and kept our personnel safe,” Cunningham was quoted by a statement, referring to the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF.

He also said that “many Afghan civilians were killed in the attack,” while police said that only one guard was killed.

“The ISAF helicopters were flying over the area to help security forces if needed,” Ahmadi said.

Another police officer said consulate staff were evacuated by helicopter, but Safi denied this, saying the diplomats were safe inside the compound.

Earlier news reports said three security personnel were killed.

The US State Department confirmed the attack, but not the casualties.

“There are no American casualties,” the department’s deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said. “At this point there may be one wounded contract security member, and there are likely wounded Afghan police, though numbers are unknown.”

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

“A group of martyrdom-seeking mujahideen attacked the US consulate this morning, in which a large number of US troops and local security personnel were killed and parts of the consulate buildings were damaged,” the group’s spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmad said. -dpa

Did Mandela’s friend supply chemical weapons to Syrian rebels?

Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Nelson Mandela

by Terry Crawford-Browne

REPORTS from Syria by Jordanian journalists allege that it was Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia who distributed those chemical weapons to the Syrian rebels.( Here he is shown with that other unrepentant terrorist)

If true, it indicates the chemical attack in Damascus to have been a false-flag operation by the American war business.

This would be entirely in keeping with Prince Bandar’s history of organising the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra weapons exchanges, Libya in 2011, the suppression of the Shia uprising in Bahrain, Saudi support for the coup d’etat in Egypt and support for Syrian rebels.

Other reports confirm that Prince Bandar also went to see Russian President Vladimir Putin last month and offered to buy $15bn worth of Russian weapons provided Mr Putin abandoned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr Putin gave him short shrift.

Prince Bandar was not only the Saudi ambassador in Washington for 22 years and friends of Ronald Reagan and the Bush family, but he also negotiated the 1985 £43bn Al-Yamamah weapons deal with Margaret Thatcher, which Tony Blair renewed in 2007 with the Al-Salaam weapons deal.

When the British Serious Fraud Office investigated the bribes which BAE Systems paid him, Prince Bandar allegedly threatened blood in the streets of London.

Mr Blair squelched the investigation citing “national security.” The Guardian newspaper revealed a couple of months later how BAE with collusion of the British government had laundered bribes to Prince Bandar of over £1bn through Riggs Bank in Washington DC and other US banks.

Most importantly, Prince Bandar and Ms Thatcher negotiated the Al-Yamamah deal under the British Official Secrets Act, meaning that it cannot be investigated in Britain.

Saudi Arabia ships thousands of barrels per day of oil consigned to the Bank of England, which is then distributed to Shell and BP.

Over the years a surplus has developed, which is guesstimated to be worth over $150bn. Its purpose is a) to guarantee British and US support for the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection and b) to fund covert destabilisation of resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa under the guise of the war on terror.

Having targeted Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and other countries over the years, Syria and Egypt are Prince Bandar’s current targets. When will SA be targeted by the American and British “war business” given our country’s mineral wealth?

Saudi Arabia made lavish donations to the African National Congress. Prince Bandar was also the only foreigner present at Nelson Mandela’s secret wedding to Graca Machel, and was a frequent visitor to SA when the arms deal was being negotiated.

John Stossel and the New Rome on the Potomac

by Ilana Mercer

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Libertarian extraordinaire John Stossel asks the right questions. He doesn’t always arrive at the right answers.The questions Mr. Stossel poses on his Fox-Business TV show, small mercies, have little to do with the mindless things that busy Big Media.

For a couple of weeks, for example, the impetus among the mindless has been to provide the priapic Anthony Wiener with the boost his worthless life and life’s work have clearly needed. The sexting antics of this engorged organism—a New-York City mayoral candidate and once a Democratic congressman—have allowed Major Media to carry out its mission: knocking down one straw man (Weiner) to conceal the catastrophes of another (Obama).

Back to Stossel. To the question of “Are We Rome?” posed on the July 18 segment of his eponymous show, Mr. Stossel replied, “Not yet.” Wrong. Mr. Stossel takes comfort in the fact that “we don’t kill people for sport. When we go to war, misguided or not, we don’t conquer or plunder. And when we win, we usually leave.”

The popular host is utterly mistaken—just as he was wrong to summarily dismiss the threat to liberty of the “National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls,” to quote his nonchalant column.

Who is Stossel kidding? American assassins hunt down and kill very many innocents abroad by drone. Unmanned aerial U.S. “drones have killed thousands, many of them civilians,” attests Gabor Rona of Human Rights First. And talk about a Roman spectacle! Targeted killing is even a bit of a sport—so much so that the New Rome has established a “new medal that honors drone pilots and computer experts” for their long-distance killing prowess. It was to be called “The Distinguished Warfare Medal.”

Rome’s rulers were not nearly as efficient as the US is at killing. Uncle Sam has industrialized and streamlined war-time slaughter. No longer do thousands of legionnaires lay siege to a city with attack catapults; one pilot flattens it with a single “daisy cutter” (and few qualms).

Compare the demographic and economic indices of countries the US has invaded—for their own good, of course, but without their consent—before and after those faith-based initiatives. You’ll get a better idea of the carnage than John Stossel’s optimism allows.

Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there.

The Comitatus—”the sprawling apparatus that encompasses the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”—refused to keep count of the casualties in the Iraq war. Thus are the losses variously estimated to run from 110,600 violent deaths (Associated Press), to 601,027 (a Lancet survey), and likely even 1,033,000 (Opinion Research Business survey).

Likewise has “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, still ongoing, been the direct and indirect cause of the deaths and displacement of many thousands of Afghan civilians. (Wikipedia has tallied the “deaths caused by Coalition forces in Libya.”)

Again, contrary to Stossel’s assertion, the latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare-state’s killing capabilities and has refined its propaganda wing to an art—so fine an art that John Stossel has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Nobody attempting to tackle the “Are We Rome?” vexation should get away with a failure to mention Cullen Murphy’s book by that name. This question Murphy has asked and answered. Superbly so.

Murphy’s “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome” draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America, down to the contemporary “musicians” [like Beyoncé and Jay-Z], “the courtesans, diviners, buffoons [clearly categories are not mutually exclusive] … the people who taste the emperor’s food before he himself does … the core groups of bureaucrats and toadies who function within the nimbus of great power.”

The domain name “USA.gov.”, if you will.

Lest you forget, the D.C. hood is also home to your favorite, oh-so gritty media personalities, who gather inside or near the Bubble to reap “the benefits of being at the center of the Imperium.” This means rocking the ship of state just enough to retain street cred with “the folks.”

Ultimately, “All life in Washington today derives … from the capital’s own version of Rome’s annona — the continuous infusion not of grain and olive oil but of tax revenue and borrowed money,” avers Murphy. “Instead of ships and barges there are banks, 10,000 of them designated for this purpose, which funnel the nation’s tax payments to the city. This ‘never-ending flow of revenue creates a broad level of affluence that has no real counterpart anywhere in America. Washington simply doesn’t look like the rest of America.” But its residents “fail to view this as bizarre.”

The rest of the country doesn’t much flinch about the fleecing. The people of the provinces are programmed to go on pilgrimages to D.C., and genuflect to their opulent oppressors. The rest exist merely to serve the masters of modern Rome. Thanks to the graft flowing into the Beltway, the average income in and around Washington D.C. is $85,189 compared to $49,777 for the hinterland, where unemployment rates are almost double.

Unless the pauperized hoi polloi are willing to do something drastic, like repeal the “annona”—the number of that beast is 16: the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—we’ll continue to live as the Beltway’s bitches.

Yet another of Mr. Stossel’s less piercing insights consists in objecting “to President Obama’s $100 million dollar [African] trip,” but consoling himself that “The Romans were worse”: “Nero traveled with 1,000 carriages.”

By Murphy’s telling, when on-the-go, “just one element of the president’s U.S. security detail [is] a thousand strong”! It entails Air Force cargo planes which bring helicopters, Secret Service SUVs, and the official presidential limousine (plus the official decoy limousine). Along for the ride are ground forces, U.S. Naval vessels, with surface-to-air missiles as backup.

When the modern-day Xerxes is on the move, he travels with more auxiliaries than Nero, bringing smaller countries to a standstill.

There’s nothing Spartan or beneficent about the latter-day Rome’s rule.

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Pentagon awards contracts to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan

Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing “due process rights” as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending.

The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said today in a letter accompanying a quarterly report to Congress.

“I am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract,” Sopko said.

The 236-page report and Sopko’s summary provide one of the watchdog agency’s most critical appraisals of U.S. performance in helping to build a stable Afghanistan as the Pentagon prepares to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year.

“There appears to be a growing gap between the policy objectives of Washington and the reality of achieving them in Afghanistan, especially when the government must hire and oversee contractors to perform its mission,” said Sopko, whose post was mandated by Congress.

The Pentagon is scheduled to deliver its own Afghanistan status report to Congress today. Its appraisal, which is months late, will outline progress from October 2012 through March and concerns that deal with handing over security operations to the Afghan military.

Sopko said the Army “appears to believe that suspension or debarment of these individuals and companies would be a violation of their due-process rights if based on classified information” or on Commerce Department reports.

Regarding the 43 cases of contractors with militant connections, Sopko said the Army should “enforce the rule of common sense” in its suspension and debarment program.

“They may be enemies of the United States but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts,” according to the agency’s report. – Bloomberg

Mass jail break in Pakistan

The assault on the heavily guarded Central Prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan took place despite reports that regional officials had received intelligence a fortnight ago suggesting such an attack was imminent.

The carefully planned attack underlines the growing capabilities of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban, an offshoot of the Islamist insurgents of the same name in neighboring Afghanistan.

Fighting continued into the early hours of Tuesday, with explosions and machine gunfire rattling the city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on the edge of Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

At least 12 people were killed, officials said, including five policemen and four prisoners from the minority Shi’ite sect whose throats were slashed by gunmen, officials said. The Taliban are mostly majority Sunni Muslims.

Mushtaq Jadoon, the town’s civil commissioner, said the 253 escaped prisoners included 30 top militants and six people on death row. Those who escaped are believed to have been whisked away to nearby South and North Waziristan, areas where the Taliban has strongholds.

As the attack unfolded, gunmen blew up electricity lines to the prison and detonated bombs to breach the outer walls.

They fought their way inside using rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, and called the names of Taliban prisoners they wanted to release through loud speakers.

Once inside, attackers shot open most of the locks and used bombs to blast their way deep into the prison, shouting “All the locks are broken! Those who want to escape, now is your chance,” prison officials who were there at the time told Reuters.

Security forces said they had imposed a curfew on the city and the gunbattle was over by dawn. A Reuters reporter at the scene saw security forces and bomb disposal squads conducting searches amid ruined walls strewn with bullet holes.

The attack came a year after a similar mass jailbreak in the northern town of Bannu which Taliban militants said was carried out with inside help from prison guards.

There was no official comment from the central government.

Another security official said provincial authorities received warning of the impending attack two weeks ago.

He said phone intercepts indicated the militants had been planning a jail break and interrogations of captured fighters confirmed it. Security officials had alerted the provincial governor of the threat based on the intercepts.

As the gunbattle unfolded, gunmen took over a nearby house and hospital, holding the residents hostage as they fired on police from the rooftops and laid ambushes for reinforcements.

A senior Taliban official told Reuters separately the attack on the prison was masterminded by Adnan Rashid, a Taliban commander who was himself freed when his prison in the northern town of Bannu was overran by militants last year.

After that attack, militants told Reuters they had been helped by insiders in the security services. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been and those who were there lacked sufficient ammunition. – Reuters

US Marine who urinated on Taliban dead says he’d do it again

A Marine who was fined and demoted for urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan in 2011 says he would do it again.

“I regret maybe any repercussions it might have had on the Marines. But do I regret doing it? Hell no,” Sgt. Joseph Chamblin told WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., adding that he would do it again.

The infamous incident was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube last year, becoming international news and raising fears of retaliation by Afghan troops against their coalition trainers.

“These were the same guys that were killing our family, killing our brothers,” said Sgt. Chamblin, who was on a mission to stop Taliban insurgents from making roadside bombs.

One of his sniper team members, Sgt. Mark Bradley, was killed by a buried bomb days before the incident.

“We’re human,” he said. “Who wouldn’t if you lost your brother or mother? Wouldn’t you want revenge?”

Sgt. Chamblin said he didn’t consider endangering other troops by the act, but considered the psychological effect it would have on the enemy “because if an infidel touches the body, they’re not going to Mecca or paradise.”

“So now these insurgents see what happens when you mess with us,” said Sgt. Chamblin, adding that he is planning to retire in September and is writing a book.

The Marines court-martialed nine troops for the incident. Sgt. Chamblin, a 15-year veteran, pleaded guilty for urinating on the bodies and dereliction of duty and was fined $500 and demoted, WSOC reported.

“Do you want the Marine Corps to be a group of Boy Scout pretty boys or do you want guys that will go out and kill the people trying to take advantage of your country and kill Americans?” he said. “Which do you want? Because you can’t have both.” – Washington Times

More U.S. troops died by suicide than in Afghanistan combat in 2012

Suicides by active duty U.S. troops last year exceeded the number of servicemen and women killed in combat in Afghanistan. More than half of the soldiers who killed themselves had already sought help from a mental health

The statistics are stunning. According to the Associated Press, suicides among active-duty troops reached a new high last year. The suicide rate has been rising since 2001. And last year, 349 service members took their lives, much more than the 295 killed in combat in Afghanistan. The suicide figures are tentative, pending completion of pathology reports later this year.

This is a rising trend.It’s an uptick that over the past several years, where we have seen more and more soldiers take their lives with suicide and unfortunately also die in other accidents.It’s the tip of an iceberg of a bigger problem affecting the force at large.

About 100,000 or so Army soldiers and Marines will be leaving the military. There are going to be budget cuts. And all these things are putting great burden on the leadership and great burden on the soldiers on the front lines.

What should be recognized is that this is an epidemic, in the sense that it’s across the Army. The whole Army has been — and Marine Corps and the other services.

An estimated 22 military veterans take their lives every day in America, according to the study helmed by Robert Bossarte, an epidemiologist and researcher who works with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“While the percentage of all suicides reported as Veterans has decreased, the number of suicides has increased,” the conclusion of the study stated.

Specific trends were observed during the course of the study regarding the age and gender of veterans who most frequently committed suicide.

“A majority of Veteran suicides are among those age 50 years and older. Male Veterans who die by suicide are older than non-Veteran males who die by suicide,” the study’s findings stated. “The age distribution of Veteran and non-Veteran women who have died from suicide is similar.”

The study was conducted over the course of two years, and is, according to Bossarte, indicative mainly of veteran suicides playing a part in what is a national problem.

“There is a perception that we have a veterans’ suicide epidemic on our hands.”

The Washington Post is reporting that the rate of veteran suicides discovered by Bossarte is approximately 20 percent higher than 2007 figures offered by the VA.

UK cuts social services to finance Afghan war

British soldiers in Afghanistan — British soldiers from B Company, 2 Mercian set off on an operation in Malgir, Helmand

The UK has revealed that the cost of its involvement in the war in Afghanistan has reached $27.6 billion, and may end up being as much as $32.5 billion. Meanwhile, the UK continues to slash domestic social services to reduce its budget deficit.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that Britain has no plans to abandon Afghanistan: “We will be contributing £70m [US$113 million] a year to help pay for the Afghan National Security Forces.”

The UK recently announced an accelerated plan to withdraw 3,800 of its 9,000 troops from Afghanistan in 2013. However, like the US, the UK will maintain an undisclosed number of soldiers in Afghanistan to help local forces with security after NATO’s mission ends in 2014.

“Because of the success of our forces and the Afghan National Security Forces… we’ll be able to see troops come home in two relatively even steps – 2013 and 2014,” Prime Minister Cameron told Parliament.

At least 438 British troops died during the UK’s 11-year involvement in the widely unpopular and expensive war. UK opinion polls suggest that a majority of British voters think the war is “unwinnable,” and would like to see the soldiers come home ahead of schedule.

And while the UK continues to spend money in Afghanistan, even past the 2014 mark, vital domestic services are being cut. Public spending in 2011 and 2012 dropped by 1.58 per cent ($17.5 billion), the Guardian reported.

The country’s healthcare budget was reduced by 1.2 percent including inflation, about $2 billion, and the education budget was cut by 5.7 percent including inflation, about $5.4 billion.

Cameron has warned that Britain must continue with deep cuts to public spending to reduce the UK’s budget deficit.

In 2012, local patient care was put at risk when GPs were asked to cut services including childhood immunization campaigns, out-of-hours care and minor surgery.

The funding of arts organizations and museums in England will also be cut by $18.8 million starting in 2013. And more than 200 UK libraries were closed this year alone.

The cuts to education have mostly affected children from poor families – one of the repercussions was the closure of primary schools’ breakfast clubs, which were run by charities that provided free breakfasts. – RT