London, Nov 29, IRNA , British Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch Brown Thursday denied that Taliban was a resurgent force in Afghanistan, insisting that the NATO military mission in the country was not failing.
“The Taliban do not pose a credible threat to the democratic Afghan government. The Taliban do not control a single province or have the ability to hold territory, showing they are far from being a resurgent force,” Malloch-Brown said.
In a letter to the Independent newspaper, he insisted that “much progress” had been made in the country since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, but conceded that Britain recognized “many challenges remain.”
Last week, the London-based Senlis Council, an international think-tank, warned Afghanistan was in danger of becoming a divided state, saying Taliban now controls vast swathes of territory and that NATO should double its ground troops to 80,000.
But the foreign office minister said that the British government does “not believe the Senlis Council conclusions are accurate or offer the right way forward.”
“We and our international partners are working in support of the Afghan government to improve their institutions, build up the Afghan security forces, step up the efforts to tackle the drugs trade and bring about the economic and social development,” he said.
The denial of Taliban being a resurgent force comes after the British government retreated from its commitment to defeat remnants of the former regime.
“In Afghanistan, at some stage, the Taliban will need to be involved in the peace process because they are not going away any more than I suspect Hamas are going away from Palestine,” Defence Secretary Des Browne said in September.
Malloch-Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general, also rejected Poppy for Medicine initiative proposed by Senlis to test the benefits generated by the legal production of morphine by Afghan poppy farmers.
The counter-narcotics strategy was “balanced” involving the tackling of drug traffickers and providing alternative livelihoods for farmers, which, he said, is led by the Afghan government.
“Licensing opium production would in fact lead to an increase in opium poppy cultivation,” the minister warned, despite the initiative being overwhelmingly supported by the European parliament.
Senlis also said that in the past six years, food and development aid in southern Afghanistan has failed to meet basic needs and suggested that the amount of funding should match NATO’s military spending in the country.