Graffiti depicting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Smithfield area of Dublin. Niall Carson/PA Archive/PA Images. All rights reserved.An attack on a Nato convoy in Kabul on 3 May killed eight civilians and injured at least twenty-five people, including three Americans. It is a sign of escalating war that coincides with the annual “fighting season” in Afghanistan. The fear in Washington is of a tipping-point: that the Taliban, which now controls as much as a third of the country, may be close to destabilising the government.
Washington's immediate reaction was to send some of its top military leaders to Kabul. There was also talk of 3,000-5,000 more United States troops being sent to try and support the Afghan national army (ANA). If the plan is implemented, as seems highly likely, then Nato as a whole will be expected to make an additional contribution. That raises the prospect of British combat-troops being redeployed to Helmand province, the scene of bitter fighting after 2006, when many hundreds of young soldiers were killed or critically injuted after a previous troop surge.
In turn this possibility focuses attention on Britain’s relationship with President Trump. If Theresa May's Conservative government is re-elected on 8 June, it might well wish to demonstrate the prime minister's much-vaunted “strong and stable” doctrine alongside its closest ally. Military defence and security is a key part of the Conservative approach to the election. But the return of substantial numbers of western troops to Afghanistan into the sixteenth year of the war would suggest that the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s desire for a full review of defence policy would make much more sense.
