British soldiers used to say they preferred gunfights with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan to the improvised explosive devices and sniper fire in southern Iraq. They are now facing the prospect of being at the receiving end of the Taliban's shift away from open combat to the "asymmetric" attacks familiar from Iraq.
Richard Norton-Taylor

Spiralling violence and civilian deaths suggest British troops should get out of Afghanistan too

Senior military officers, defence officials and even ministers are making no secret of their view that British forces in Iraq are on a hiding to nothing, that their very presence is counterproductive. The army would like to sneak out without anyone noticing, leaving the south in the hands of Iranian-backed Shia militia.

Afghanistan, they say, is different. There, British troops are fighting for what ministers call a "noble cause". But the problem, they now privately admit, is that the spiral of violence in Iraq is plainly being repeated in Afghanistan, albeit without the sectarian violence.

In one of the bloodiest days since the Taliban was overthrown in 2001, at least 24 people were killed on Sunday by a suspected suicide bomber in the centre of Kabul and at least seven children were killed by US air strikes on a school near the Pakistan border. Yesterday, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, Acbar, which represents nearly 100 aid and humanitarian organisations, roundly condemned foreign, particularly US, troops for the "disproportionate or indiscriminate use of force".

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