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Afghanistan Day School - Report and audio recording

Written by Jane Shallice, national officer of Stop the War Coalition

Wednesday, 19 September 2007

On 15 September Stop the War held a well attended and highly successful day school on the war in Afghanistan. While the mainstream media has its focus on Iraq and the increasing noise about Iran, the importance of the Afghan adventure for the British must not be overlooked. British generals think is a “good and winnable war” and Afghanistan is the place that the new Foreign Secretary chose to visit as his first overseas engagement.

The day school began with the history of western intervention in Afghanistan, with specific reference to how the USA engaged in training of Mujaheddin fighters in the 1980s, funded by Saudi money and trained by Pakistan security forces. These fighters became the backbone of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the jihaddis.

The next session on women in Afghanistan examined the way “feminist” arguments have been used to justify an invasion that has been a disaster for Afghan women.

The final session looked at recent developments; the “victory” over the Taliban and the gradual increase in opposition to NATO forces. The period has been marked by a massive increase in opium production, huge but
unrecorded numbers of civilian casualties, a rising death rate amongst the coalition troops, no reconstruction and growing chaos in Pakistan.

The central message coming from the discussions was that, as Gordon Brown switches troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, the anti war movement must spotlight this so called good war, point out that British troops have no
more business in Afghanistan than they do in Iraq and re-energise the national campaign to get the troops out.

As a first step Stop the War is asking its local groups to organise public meetings on the subject and circulate the fact sheet, available from the Stop the War office, as widely as possible.

icon Download recording Afghanistan Day School (25.86 MB)