This week the defence select committee published a report which concluded that civil war in Afghanistan is likely when international forces leave next year. If the predictions of Securing the Future of Afghanistan are correct, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence share much of the blame.

When I returned to Kabul in January and asked an American journalist I’d known in 2001 his view of the situation, he said: ‘When you look at the facts on the ground, it is hard to believe that civil war is not inevitable.’

The facts on the ground include the militias the west has set up in the countryside in a desperate attempt to shore up the barely legitimate Karzai regime. Sadly, these militias, plus the many Afghan private security companies, have contributed to a proliferation of armed groups that will be roaming the country after 2014. Ironically, in the MPs’ report, the Foreign Office acknowledges the need to disarm the Taliban, yet omits to mention the problems of re-arming these groups, presumably because they are ‘the good guys’.

What is so tragic is that back in 2001, the west did have the opportunity to assist Afghanistan on its path to peace. But myopia, jealousy and […]