War

Kabul schoolgirls 1960

Kim Howells is chairman of the intelligence and security committee responsible for overseeing the security services. He was the Secretary of State for Defence for three-and-a-half years until the October government reshuffle. In an interview in the Guardian he says:

"Institutionally, Afghanistan is corrupt from top to bottom. There are few signs that the chaotic hegemony of warlords, gangsters, presidential placemen, incompetent and under-resourced provincial governors and self-serving government ministers has been challenged in any effective way by President Karzai."

The poppy of remembrance

I was born after the Second World War and can remember that, right into the 1950s, there were bomb-damaged buildings in the town where I grew up. I can also remember the nervous ticks and odd behaviour of some of the 'survivors', the walking wounded who lived in that town. This war was to me so far in the past that I assumed the emotions of my parents' generation would never be felt by mine; then there was the Falklands War. This woke me up and I have been aware of the role of the armed forces in the service of this country ever since. So please take a look at this site.