Interpreters

But up to now we’ve been given the impression that we were there helping them.

It may be because they are at risk in their own country, which would suggest that the project to impose a secure Western-style democracy was misconceived.

Perhaps we have kept soldiers in Afghanistan only because successive leaders didn’t want the failure of our invasion to be acknowledged on their watch.

Afghanistan has a future free from Taliban rule if and only if Afghans, like these interpreters, are prepared to fight for it. If the Taliban win, those who deserve asylum will already be dead.

The effect on our population, at a cost of many billions of pounds, will have been to replace several hundred young Britons by a similar number of foreigners. So it has at least been consistent with the rest of Government policy over the period.

JG Riseley Harrogate