POLITICS
Veteran politician Tony Benn
retired from parliament in 2001
“to spend more time involved in
politics”. President of the Stop the
War Coalition, he is due to speak
at Cadogan Hall on October 12.
Interview by Kate White
You led a protest against the war in Afghanistan recently. What was your
message to Gordon Brown?
We went into Afghanistan in 2001 to capture Osama Bin Laden. There
are 64,000 NATO troops from 40 countries who have been there for
eight years. They haven’t captured Bin Laden and they can’t defeat the
Taliban. As with the Vietnam War, people are beginning to realise –
regardless of the morality of it, which is worth discussing – that it is
unwinnable. The casualties are pouring in. According to reports the
American opinion is shifting against it and British opinion is likely to do
that too. So we were commemorating those who have died and asking
that the policy be re-examined.
At the protest you said “all wars have to end by talking to somebody. We
will have to talk to the Taliban because this is an unwinnable war”. Can
you ever negotiate with terrorists?
Well very simply, yes. The IRA bombed London and how did we end it?
We talked to Gerry Adams, who was in prison as a terrorist. When
Mandela was in prison for life, Mrs Thatcher said he was a terrorist and
the South Africans forced the government to talk to him and brought
peace. All the people we locked up when we had an empire ended up
having tea with the Queen as heads of Commonwealth countries.
Don’t we have a moral obligation to finish what we’ve started in
Afghanistan? If we pull out now, the country will be at the mercy of the
Taliban, with their appalling human rights record and treatment of
women.
Well it’s a very good point. We invaded Afghanistan in 1839 and
captured Kabul. We were thrown out the following year and 15,000
British troops were killed. We went in again in 1879, we were in again in
1919 and now we’re there again and on none of those occasions were
we there to protect the rights of women. On the whole, experience
suggests that if you want better conditions for a country you don’t
threaten it, because when you threaten a country it brings out the most
right-wing forces – put simply, 9/11 gave Bush a second term. The best
thing to do is to provide support for the redevelopment of Afghanistan
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