War in Afghanistan

In July, following its April release of footage of a US Apache helicopter firing on civilians, including children, Wikileaks, coordinating with the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times, released 92,000 secret US documents dating from January 2004 to December 2009, relating to the war in Afghanistan. Thousands more were held back.

In February ‘Allied' forces in Afghanistan began a new offensive against the Taliban, trading under the name of ‘Operation Moshtarak'.

After 8 years in Afghanistan, the international force led by the USA is sending in more troops. Far from a blow for democracy or the ‘war on terror', this conflict is turning the region into an ever worsening hell.

After 8 years in Afghanistan, the international force led by the USA is sending in more troops. Far from a blow for democracy or the ‘war on terror', this conflict is turning the region into an ever worsening hell.

"We are caught between the government and the Taliban..." The situation for the population in Pakistan was put very clearly by a South Waziristan resident fleeing to Dera Ismail Khan.

All three main political parties propose cuts in government spending. But even though the war in Afghanistan is increasingly costly in lives and money, there's no way public sector services will be maintained by cutting the military budget or withdrawing the troops.

The deaths, within a few days of each other, of the last surviving First World War veterans in Britain, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, have generated the most enthusiastic tributes from the high and mighty: the Queen, Prince Charles, Gordon Brown, and all the rest of them. In addition to massive media coverage, we will soon be treated to a spectacular service at Westminster Abbey to remember the ‘sacrifice of a generation', who, we are told, laid down their lives in the cause of freedom...

There is an accelerating slide into chaos in Pakistan. The US has a real fear of the consequences of a collapse of the civil administration. In particular there is the question of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The US has belligerently asserted that it would invade to secure the bases, if it felt it served its interests.

There can be no doubt about the government's determination to defend the interests of British national capital abroad. We have only to look at the UK involvement in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain isalways pronouncing on current conflicts, even if it is powerless to influence, as it was in Georgia, and even more now with David Milliband proposing an EU force on stand-by for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.