When Joe Glenton became the first British soldier to publicly refuse to go to Afghanistan as a conscientious objector, his superior officer called him 'a coward, a malingerer'.

With a popular product and thoughtful marketing, says Mark Steel, even in war-torn Afghanistan there are always opportunities for those with flair and vision.

Britain has no strategic or economic reason for waging war in Afghanistan, which is why Cameron has to spout his ritualistic nonsense about us being there to stop them being here.

American officials say the CIA's bags of cash are the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan, undermining Washington's exit strategy from the country.

Afghans say US forces behind these crimes like murdering and torturing and harassing people and are an elemental factor in the deteriorating security situation.

Conventional accounts blame the Taliban for the expansion of drug production, and claim opium funds insurgency. Julien Mercille shows the reality behind the failed 'war on drugs' in occupied Afghanistan.

Ex-soldier Joe Glenton says, while war is a toxic institution, for some of those who conduct it, particularly privileged young princes it can appear to be a latter-day boy's own adventure.

"This arrogant and insensitive attitude to killing Afghans, whoever they are, is hardly likely to win hearts and minds - a supposed aim of the war."

Karzai and Obama are working on an agreement legalizing permanent military bases in Afghanistan: but as long as we have foreign military bases in our country, we have no independence.

Soldiers are being sent to kill and be killed in Afghanistan as "human shields" for politicians who would rather the killing and dying continue than have to admit the war is lost.

In 2012, the British army killed a number of children and injured more in a war which is lost and serves no other purpose than to protect the reputations of those waging it.

As Britain alongside the US and Nato plans new interventions in Syria and Iran, the only "success" coming out of the failure of the war in Afghanistan would seem to be yet more war.

Arguably the greatest collection of military power in history has been ground down by ordinary people with no planes, no armour, no drones and no illusions about why Afghanistan was invaded.

The children of north-west Pakistan are not like our children, they have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears, they belong to the non-human world.

With their failure to anticipate that western armies cannot remain popular for long when they invade Muslim countries, Bush and Blair are guilty of as great a folly as they were in Iraq.

Three Afghan children aged 12, 10 and 8, who were killed in a US airstrike as they were gathering fuel, were legitimate targets with "potential hostile intent".