THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY-MARCH 2008

afghanistan: America's great game: The 2001 invasion was planned before 9/11
New Statesman, January 10, 2008

RAWA's understanding of the designs and hypocrisy of western governments informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from news

By John Pilger

The US and Britain claim defeating the Taliban is part of a "good war" against al-Qaeda. Yet there is evidence the 2001 invasion was planned before 9/11

"To me, I confess, are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for dominion of the world."

Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, speaking about Afghanistan, 1898

I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the safety of the Intercontinental Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but she said no. She had been there once and government agents, suspecting she was RAWA, had arrested her. We met instead at a safe house, reached through contours of bombed rubble that was once streets, where people live like earthquake victims awaiting rescue.

RAWA is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which since 1977 has alerted the world to the suffering of ! women and girls in that country. There is no organisation on earth like it. It is the high bar of feminism, home of the bravest of the brave. Year after year, RAWA agents have travelled secretly through Afghanistan, teaching at clandestine girls' schools, ministering to isolated and brutalised women, recording outrages on cameras concealed beneath their burqas. They were the Taliban regime's implacable foes when the word Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton administration was secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company Unocal could build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.

Indeed, RAWA's understanding of the designs and hypocrisy of western governments informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from news, now reduced to a drama of British squaddies besieged by a demonic enemy in a "good war".

When we met, Marina was veiled to conceal her identity. Marina is her nom de guerre. She said: "We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorise, yet they hold seats in Karzai's government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghan istan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands."

The reason the United States gave for invading Afgh! anistan in October 2001 was "to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11". The women of RAWA say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that went unreported in Britain, they said: "By experience, that the US does not want to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realisation of their economic, political and strategic interests in the region."

The truth about the "good war" is to be found in compelling evidence that the 2001 invasion, widely supported in the west as a justifiable response to the 11 September attacks, was actually planned two months prior to 9/11 and that the most pressing problem for Washington was not the Taliban's links with Osama Bin Laden, but the prospect of the Taliban mullahs losing control of Afghan istan to less reliable mujahedin factions, led by warlords who had been funded and armed by the CIA to fight America's proxy w! ar against the Soviet occupiers in the 1980s. Known as the Northern Alliance, these mujahe din had been largely a creation of Washington, which believed the "jihadi card" could be used to bring down the Soviet Union. The Taliban were a product of this and, during the Clinton years, they were admired for their "discipline". Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, " are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history".

The "moment in history" was a secret memorandum of understanding the mullahs had signed with the Clinton administration on the pipeline deal. However, by the late 1990s, the Northern Alliance had encroached further and further on territory controlled by the Taliban, whom, as a result, were deemed in Washington to lack the "stability" required of such an important client. It was the consistency of this client relationship that had been a prerequisite of US support, regardless of the Taliban's aversion to huma! n rights. (Asked about this, a state department briefer had predicted that "the Taliban will develop like the Saudis did", with a pro-American economy, no democracy and "lots of sharia law", which meant the legalised persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.)

By early 2001, convinced it was the presence of Osama Bin Laden that was souring their relationship with Washington, the Taliban tried to get rid of him. Under a deal negotiated by the leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties, Bin Laden was to be held under house arrest in Peshawar. A tribunal of clerics would then hear evidence against him and decide whether to try him or hand him over to the Americans. Whether or not this would have happened, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf vetoed the plan. According to the then Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, a senior US diplomat told him on 21 July 2001 that it had been decided to dispense with the Taliban "under a carpet of bombs".

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was "to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11". The women of RAWA say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that went unreported in Britain, they said: "By experience, that the US does not want to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realisation of their economic, political and strategic interests in the region."

Acclaimed as the first "victory" in the "war on terror", the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and its ripple effect caused the deaths of thousands of civilians who, even more than Iraqis, remain invisible to western eyes. The family of Gulam Rasul is typical. It was 7.45am on 21 October. The headmaster of a school in the town of Khair Khana, ! Rasul had just finished eating breakfast with his family and had walked outside to chat to a neighbour. Inside the house were his wife, Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft weaving in the sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine people died in this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only survivor was his nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal.

"Most of the people killed in this war are not Taliban; they are innocents," Gulam Rasul told me. "Was the killing of my family a mistake? No, it was not. They fly their planes and look down on us, the mere Afghan people, who have no planes, and they bomb us for our birthright, and with all contempt."

There was the wedding party in the village of Niazi Qala, 100km south of Kabul, to celebrate the marriage of the son of a respected farmer. By all accounts it was a wonderfully boisterous! affair, with music and singing. The roar of aircraft started when everyone was asleep, at about three in the morning. According to a United Nations report, the bombing lasted two hours and killed 52 people: 17 men, ten women and 25 children, many of whom were found blown to bits where they had desperately sought refuge, in a dried-up pond. Such slaughter is not uncommon, and these days the dead are described as "Taliban"; or, if they are children, they are said to be "partly to blame for being at a site used by militants" - according to the BBC, speaking to a US military spokesman.

Return of opium

The British military have played an important part in this violence, having stepped up high- altitude bombing by up to 30 per cent since they took over command of Nato forces in Afghan istan in May 2006. This translated to more than 6,200 Afghan deaths last year. In December, a contrived news event was the "fall" of a "Taliban stronghol! d", Musa Qala, in southern Afghan istan. Puppet government forces were allowed to "liberate" rubble left by American B-52s.

What justifies this? Various fables have been spun - "building democracy" is one. "The war on drugs" is the most perverse. When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001 they had one striking success. They brought to an abrupt end a historic ban on opium production that the Taliban regime had achieved. A UN official in Kabul described the ban to me as "a modern miracle". The miracle was quickly rescinded. As a reward for supporting the Karzai "democracy", the Americans allowed Northern Alliance warlords to replant the country's entire opium crop in 2002. Twenty-eight out of the 32 provinces instantly went under cultivation. Today, 90 per cent of world trade in opium originates in Afghan istan. In 2005, a British government report estima ted that 35,000 children in this country were using heroin. While the British taxpayer pays for a &! pound;1bn military super-base in Helmand Province and the second-biggest British embassy in the world, in Kabul, peanuts are spent on drug rehabilitation at home.

Tony Blair once said memorably: "To the Afghan people, we make this commitment. We will not walk away . . . some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence." I thought about this as I watched children play in a destroyed cinema. They were illiterate and so could not read the poster warning that unexploded cluster bombs lay in the debris.

"After five years of engagement," reported James Fergusson in the Independent on 16 December, "the Department for International Development had spent just £390m on Afghan projects." Unusually, Fergusson has had meetings with Taliban who are fighting the British. "They remained charming and courteous throughout," he wrote of one visit in February. "This is the beauty of malmastia, the Pashtun tradition of hospitality towards! strangers. So long as he comes unarmed, even a mortal enemy can rely on a kind reception. The opportunity for dialogue that malmastia affords is unique."

This "opportunity for dialogue" is a far cry from the surrender-or-else offers made by the government of Gordon Brown. What Brown and his Foreign Office advisers wilfully fail to understand is that the tactical victory in Afghan istan in 2001, achieved with bombs, has become a strategic disaster in south Asia.
Exacerbated by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the current turmoil in Pakistan has its contemporary roots in a Washington-contrived war in neighbouring Afghanistan that has alienated the Pashtuns who inhabit much of the long border area between the two countries. This is also true of most Pakistanis, who, according to opinion polls, want their government to negotiate a regional peace, rather than play a prescribed part in a rerun of Lord Curzon's Great Game.

www.johnpilger.com ( http://www.johnpilger.com )
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/rawanews.php



THE CRIMINAL PLOTTERS CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY EVERYTHING HAS GONE WRONG

Exactly two years ago, the Afghan government and its many international backers met in London to plot a plan for the future, but the progress reports do not make for pretty reading.

The relief agency, Oxfam International, has sent an open letter to the leaders of supporting nations calling for "a major change in direction in order to reduce suffering and avert humanitarian disaster."

The influential US-based Afghanistan Study Group has meanwhile warned that the progress made in the six years since the end of the Taleban regime "is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people".

And the US think-tank, the Atlantic Council of the United States, starts its report with the words: "Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan."

Efforts undermined

By way of example, the day began in Kabul with a suicide bomb attack on an Afghan National Army bus and the discovery that four kidnapped security contractors working on a road building project had been beheaded by the Taleban.

The bomber blew himself up before reaching his target, but civilians were killed and injured in another blast in the capital just a couple of weeks after the attack on the five-star Serena Hotel that has affected the work of many aid workers.

The "Afghanistan Compact" came out of the London Conference in the spring of 2006, agreeing on the principles of promoting development, security, governance, the rule of law and human rights in the country.

And while there has been progress on many fronts, the assessment of the three think-tanks and organisations is bleak.

Oxfam said many of the compact's targets had not been hit, and efforts had been undermined by increasing insecurity.

"The international community could be a great deal more effective, but too much aid is unco-ordinated or ineffectively delivered," said Oxfam's policy advisor in Afghanistan, Matt Waldman.

"They need to improve their coherence in terms of aid, efficiency too - much of aid is wasted on very expensive consultants or on contractors who make quite significant profits."

Call for change

There is a feeling among diplomats in Kabul that the international community is lacking in direction - hence their disappointment that President Hamid Karzai rejected the UK's Paddy Ashdown as a new super-envoy.

A United Nations representative who could co-ordinate and take the civilian effort forward is seen as the key to improving coherence, but it will be some months now before the position is filled.

The rejection of Lord Ashdown by the Afghan president at the 11th hour is indicative of the precarious relations between the international community and the charismatic leader.

Oxfam's criticisms and call for change are echoed by the two US bodies.

The Afghanistan Study Group, headed by the former US ambassador to the UN, Thomas Pickering, and Gen James Jones, the former Nato Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, says "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid" are to blame.

"Afghanistan is at a crossroads," their report says. "It's time to revitalise and re-double our efforts towards stabilising Afghanistan and re-think our economic and military strategies."

The recommendations are for a special envoy for Afghanistan within the US government to co-ordinate all US policies, and for Congress to "decouple Iraq and Afghanistan" and formulate a new unified five-year strategy.

And the Atlantic Council of the United States says its report is intended "to sound the alarm... that urgent changes are now required to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failing or failed state".

Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Monday, 4 February 2008

Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."

The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.

Afghan government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.

Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.

A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."

But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple's EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.

Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and "spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail" which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.

Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".

Background to the proposal

* December 11

British and Afghan troops take Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand, after President Hamid Karzai reveals that a senior Taliban commander swapped sides.

* December 23-24

The acting head of the EU mission, Michael Semple, and the third-ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, hold talks with local dignitaries and Taliban sympathisers in Helmand. Afghan secret police arrest their colleague, General Stanikzai, and seize a memory stick containing plans for training camps.

* December 25

Semple and Patterson are given 48 hours in which to leave Kabul.

* December 27

The two diplomats fly out of the Afghan capital, despite international appeals to let them stay.

My country is using Islamic law to erode the rights of women
The Independent ~~ London ~~ Thursday January 31 2008
Malalai Joya:

After six years in control, this government has proved itself to be as
bad as the Taliban - in fact, it is little more than a photocopy of
the Taliban. The situation in Afghanistan is getting progressively
worse - and not just for women, but for all Afghans.

Our country is being run by a mafia, and while it is in power there is
no hope for freedom for the people of Afghanistan. How can anyone, man
or woman, enjoy basic freedoms when living under the shadow of
warlords? The government was not democratically elected, and it is now
trying to use the country's Islamic law as a tool with which to limit
women's rights.

In 2007 more women killed themselves in Afghanistan than ever before -
that shows that the situation hasn't got any better. The murder of
women in Afghanistan is like the killing of birds, because this
government is anti-women. Women are vulnerable - recently a
22-year-old woman was raped in front of her children by 15 local
commanders of a fundamentalist party, closely connected to the
government. The commanders then urinated in the face of the children.
These things happen frequently.

I utterly condemn this undemocratic act of those in power against
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh. This situation has exposed the corruption of
the government, which is inherently undemocratic, which does not
believe in women's rights and which is willing to go to extreme
lengths to prevent freedom of speech. Mr Kambaksh has not broken any
law, but he is a "real" journalist, one who is not afraid to write
articles exposing the corruption of the fundamentalists in power. This
has been a bloody year for journalists in Afghanistan, and they are
now in a lot of danger.

If Mr Kambaksh is killed for his "crime", then tomorrow it will be
someone else. The situation that the press is faced with gives you a
clear indication of the level of freedom and democracy in the country
as a whole.

I would like to appeal to the UK and democratic countries around the
world to speak up in defence of Mr Kambaksh, who must be released as
soon as possible. He is an innocent man whose life is in real danger.
I therefore thoroughly endorse The Independent's campaign for justice
for Mr Kambaksh.

The country's parliament is like a zoo, it is corrupt and chaotic. It
is run by warlords who should be tried for their crimes. As the people
running our country were not democratically elected, it should be no
surprise that they are imposing these undemocratic sentences.

There are countless examples of human rights abuses - from rapes to
imprisonments and killings. I want to raise international awareness of
these issues but I have been forced to stay in Kabul after my passport
was seized by the government.

The economic situation is also terrible - official figures put
unemployment at around 60 per cent but in reality it is much closer to
90 per cent. Hundreds died in the winter from hypothermia, and women
were so poor that they tried to sell their babies because they could
not feed them.

Malalai Joya is an Afghan MP suspended from the country's parliament
for criticising her fellow delegates. She spoke to Rachel Shields

Save Pervez! Global protests to save Afghan student from death sentence

Worldwide outrage over Afghan sentenced to death for reading article on women's rights. Join the Independent campaign now


John Stillwell/PA

The Afghan Senate yesterday backed the death sentence handed to Mr Kambaksh. The motion was proposed by a Senator who is a key ally of President Karzai (pictured)

By Kim Sengupta, Jerome Starkey in Kabul, Anne Penketh and Ben Russell
Friday, 1 February 2008

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has been inundated with appeals to save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death after being accused of downloading an internet report on women's rights.

While international protests mounted over the affair, with the British Government saying it had already raised its concerns, hundreds of people marched through the capital, Kabul, demanding Mr Kambaksh's release.

A petition launched yesterday by The Independent to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh had attracted more than 13,500 signatories by last night, and a number of support groups have been set up on the social networking site Facebook with more than 400 joining one group alone.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, was arrested, tried and convicted by a religious court, in what his friends and family say was a secret session without being allowed legal representation.

The United Nations, human rights groups, journalists' organisations and diplomats urged Mr Karzai's government to quash the death sentence and release him.

Instead, on Wednesday, the Afghan senate passed a motion confirming the death sentence. The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Mr Kambaksh was Sibghatullah Mojadedi, a key ally of Mr Karzai.

In London David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, told The Independent that Britain had raised Mr Kambaksh's case as a member of the European Union and with the United Nations, as well as strongly supporting a call by the UN special representative to Afghanistan for a review of the verdict.

He said: "We are opposed to the death penalty in all cases and believe that freedom of expression is one of the cornerstones of a democratic society." The British Government is funding training for journalists in the country as part of an effort to create a civic society.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "It is clear that this case has nothing to do with blasphemy and everything to do with prejudice. Afghanistan is sliding back towards the bad old days where women were subjugated and journalists persecuted. We have invested far too much in Afghanistan to allow freedom and democracy to falter. If this sentence is carried through, it will raise major questions about the country's future."

William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "We call upon President Karzai and his government to urgently reconsider the decision to sentence Pervez Kambaksh to death. Mr Kambaksh was tried without being allowed any legal representation. Moving towards the rule of law is a vital part of peace-building in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan cannot feel secure unless protected by a body of law and a functioning judicial system."

The former foreign office minister Denis MacShane, who has raised the matter of Mr Kambaksh's "persecution" with the Foreign Office, said: "The challenge to freedom of expression from fundamentalist Islam is now a major world problem. The maximum pressure must be put on President Karzai, ministers and MPs in Afghanistan stressing that if they want to be partners in democracy then this young man must be set free."

The Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, chairman of the all-party group for the abolition of the death penalty, has put down an early day motion urging the British Government to intercede to save Mr Kambaksh's life. In a Commons plea to Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House, he said: "I draw the Leader of the House's attention particularly to the front page of The Independent which highlights the case of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh... Surely, given our current involvement in that country... we will not just sit back and allow this monstrous act to take place without doing anything about it?"

Ms Harman replied: "The Government are determined to stand up for human rights, including freedom of speech, in all countries, and are of course concerned about the matter."

Among the representations received by Mr Karzai was one from the International Federation of Journalists, based in Brussels, which stated: "Upholding freedom of expression is essential for your country's democratic progress. This death sentence indicates a disregard by your government for its own constitution."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, pointed out that the trial was held in secret and expressed concern that any appeal process would be biased. The organisation said in its letter: "He should be allowed to resume his studies without delay or punishment."

The row over Mr Kambaksh's death sentence came during another day of violence in Afghanistan.

Abu Laith al-Libi, reputed to be the senior al-Qa'ida commander in the country, was said to have been killed. US and British officials said they were receiving "normally reliable reports" that al-Libi was killed during a rocket attack in northern Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border earlier in the week. A website used by Islamist groups, ekhlaas.org, said last night evening that al-Libi had "fallen a martyr".

Earlier yesterday, the deputy governor of Helmand province, Haji Pir Mohammed, was killed in a suicide bomb attack on a mosque. This followed a blast in Kabul's Taimani district in which a dozen people were said to be injured.

Mr Pir Mohammed was regarded as an ally of the British at a time when UK policy in the country is coming under strong criticism from President Karzai and senior Afghan officials.

Mr Miliband said the death was "a horrific reminder of the difficulties we face in Afghanistan". He added: "The sheer scale of the task is enormous and we will only succeed if we have better co-ordination between the international community and the Afghan government."

How you can save Pervez

The Independent campaign to save Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has already attracted 13,500 signatures. But the more pressure that can be brought to bear on President Karzai, the more likely it is that his sentence will be revoked. So add your voice to the campaign by urging the Foreign Office to put all possible pressure on the Afghan government to spare his life. Sign our e-petition at www.independent.co.uk/petition

Click here to have your say