Afghan: UN leaves as Brits want troops home
Updated on 05 November 2009
Channel 4 News finds that 73 per cent of people want British soldiers to return home as the UN announces it is to relocate Afghan staff after security in the capital deteriorates.
Spokesman Aleem Siddique said the United Nations would relocate about 600 of its roughly 1,100 international staff temporarily while additional security is put in place.
Some would be relocated to safer sites within Afghanistan and some withdrawn from the country, he said, adding that the final breakdown had not been determined.
The UN said that the temporary evacuation would not disrupt its operations in the country but that the measures were necessary after security had deteriorated.
The news came as a Channel 4 News poll found that the majority of people now want British soldiers to return home. Seventy three per cent of people said they wanted troops withdrawn from Afghanistan. View the findings of the poll in full here.
Five UN staff were killed last week when militants stormed a guesthouse Kabul. The Taliban vowed to increase activity ahead of the presidential election run-off which has since been abandoned after one of the candidates pulled out.
The move has come as a sharp blow for Western efforts to stabilise the country.
"Following the events of last week, we really do need to have a look at how we can ensure that our staff can continue programmes and activities, but at the same time we can protect their safety," Siddique said.
"The United Nations has been in Afghanistan for half a century and we are not about to leave now. The Afghan people want us to stay."
British fatalities reach 230
The Ministry of Defence has announced that a soldier from the 3rd Battalion The Rifles was killed this morning in an explosion near Sangin in Helmand province.
The death brings the total killed in Afghanistan since operations began to 230. This year is the bloodiest forces have seen since the Falkland's War. See a full list of the fatalities here.
Yesterday the five soldiers killed at a checkpoint by a "rogue" Afghan policeman were named.
They are:
- Warrant Office 1st Class Darren Chant, 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards.
- Sergeant Matthew Telford, 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards.
- Guardsman James Major, 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards.
- Acting Corporal Steven Boote, Royal Military Police.
- Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, Royal Military Police.
A manhunt is now on for the policeman who fled the scene after carrying out the attack. Sources named him as Gulbuddin and suggested he was connected to the Taliban.
Paying tribute to the five men Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said:
"I was so very sorry to hear of the deaths of these five brave soldiers, killed in the course of their duties in Afghanistan. That they were killed by one of those they were working alongside is a particular tragedy.
"They were men of courage who died building security in Afghanistan and protecting people in the UK from terrorism.
"My deepest sympathies and condolences lie with their grieving families, friends, and all those who served alongside them who will feel the pain of loss most intensely. They are in all our thoughts."
Channel 4 News correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, who is in Kabul, said:
"Today there's another large question mark over this eight year occupation.
"The UN would be considered perhaps foolish to have done nothing and insist the withdrawal is temporary until they can consolidate more secure accommodation than the scattered guest houses where their staff now stay.
"But the impact of the announcement is huge: it means the biggest aid worker here is effectively leaving, for now. Every other NGO must now re-evaluate their presence - how many people they have here, where they work, what they do, who they work with.
"The effect on the aid community's nerves - if not their actions - could be significant, and this is at a time when they are being pushed ever harder to boost the "civilian surge" of development and reconstruction that sits at the heart of the new, as yet unveiled but broadly discussed, Nato strategy.
"In 48 hours: the military strategy, and the civilian strategy both take significant blows.
"And this is before the Obama administration have even announced their new troop levels.
"In Iraq, in 2007, the violence, the sense of collapse, was worse just before the surge, and the slow change in atmosphere it brought. But Afghanistan is not Iraq. It's not got a functioning society to look back to, just 30 years of war."
