Spectator debate: ‘We must quit Afghanistan now’

Chair – Andrew Neil
Proposing – Correlli Barnett, Simon Jenkins
Opposing – Charles Guthrie, Andrew Roberts




Farce very nearly visited the debate on Afghanistan on Tuesday. A parliamentary three-line whip prevented the MPs Liam Fox and Peter Kilfoyle from reaching the hall. So our ancient democracy threatened a debate on Afghanistan’s brand new one. The issue that kept them in parliament? Democratic reform.

Correlli Barnett proposed the motion and lamented that America’s ‘panic and rage’ had precipitated the war after 9/11. Accepting the consequences of retreat would be bolder than propping up the ‘posturing clown’ Hamid Karzai. We should leave by September. Rapid evacuations were achievable, he said, and cited Britain’s short-order withdrawals from Palestine and India in the late 1940s. As we leave we might spin the headlines in our favour by advertising the present surge in Helmand as ‘a victory for the Afghan forces’.

Former army boss Lord Guthrie examined the consequences of cut-and-run. It would weaken Nato, embolden jihadis around the world and deliver a damaging blow to Western values. Recent polls showed Afghans hardening against the Taleban and feeling optimistic. Afghanistan is ‘a noble but difficult task’. We must stay and build robust institutions.

Simon Jenkins made three succinct arguments. Afghanistan isn’t our country and we have no duty to rebuild it. Occupation doesn’t protect Britain because highly mobile terror networks can’t be defeated by ‘seizing land’. And the campaign isn’t working. When he visited Afghanistan in 2006 he drove to Kandahar: unthinkable now. There is no such thing as victory in Afghanistan.

Andrew Roberts departed from his speech and laid into Jenkins’s argument that terrorists don’t need a failed state to launch their operations. Roberts quoted a British intelligence chief suggesting the opposite. Caves aren’t enough.