This week I went to Lords to catch an hour or two of a cricket game between Afghanistan and the MCC. Afghanistan have been making quick progress in the cricketing world and have recently been awarded full Test-playing status. For a country that has had such a challenging recent past and where violence is still very much the norm in some regions, this is an extraordinary achievement.
At Lords over 5,000 Afghans now living in London, were cheering every ball bowled and every run scored. Their patriotism was infectious and was a powerful reminder that although many of those there will have fled the horrors of Afghanistan over the last three decades, they retain real ambition for their country’s future. I suspect that if we could end the violence and develop the Afghan economy, many of them would wish to return home.
However, I have long been concerned about the speed with which Western involvement in Afghanistan is being scaled back. I accept that we have recently re-committed some troops to further training and mentoring missions with the Afghan security forces but there is no escaping that the Taleban are resurgent in the south and east of the country. Suggestions that somehow the Taleban are the better known devil and that they deny Daesh the opportunity to get a foothold in Afghanistan are just wrong. The Taleban are as repressive, misogynist and violent as Daesh and they both pose a huge threat to the security of the region.
We must make sure that we remain engaged there until Afghanistan’s democracy and economy is irreversibly established and their security forces have the capacity to deliver a final defeat to the Taleban and any other terror groups who try to make Afghanistan their base.