By IRNA,
London : One of Britain’s longest-serving MPs is seeking the support of parliament to call a halt to the “impossible mission” in Afghanistan.
In an Early Day Motion raised in the House of Commons, veteran Labor MP Paul Flynn said the British government’s strategy in Afghanistan was both “self-serving and unachievable.”
“A stable government cannot be built on the crumbling foundations of an election-rigging president, a mercenary drug-ridden army and a corrupt and depraved police force,” Flynn warned.
He also rejected the claim that terrorism is deterred by NATO’s presence in a small area of Afghanistan when al Qaeda is still free to operate in vast tracts of Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.
In an interview with IRNA earlier this year, 74-year old Flynn described the government’s justification for continuing the nine-year war a “foolish assumption.”
His latest warning comes as British troops were suffering record casualties in Afghanistan with the Ministry of Defence Tuesday announcing the 301st death of British troops which is the 56th this year.
Flynn, who has been MP for Newport West, in Wales, since 1987, secured an adjournment parliamentary debate on Afghanistan after the number of British soldiers killed in the country reached 100 last year, questioning why the troops were being sacrificed.
In his latest motion, he expressed hope that “swift progress would be made to the inevitably unsatisfactory deal with diverse Afghan power groups that would allow the country’s courageous troops to end their impossible mission and return home.”
Flynn, who also opposed the Iraq war, has consistently argued that “sooner of later an orderly deal will have to be made with the Taliban.”
In January, he told IRNA that the other alternative could lead to NATO troops being forced to quickly leave Afghanistan like the Americans when they were in Vietnam.