Commentary: Withdrawal must not allow drift into anarchy

The Taliban in Helmand appears to be upping the stakes with its latest killing of a British soldier.

The soldier from 28 Engineer Regiment was killed in his patrol base by a man wearing Afghan military uniform.

The assassin was shot dead at the scene, but not before he had injured three more British soldiers. This is now a pattern, where so-called Taliban assassins — and some are not Taliban but local narco-hoodlums — are prepared to attack bases, often run by fellow Afghan soldiers, on a suicide mission.

Last year 61 Allied soldiers, mostly British and Americans, died in “green on blue” attacks in 45 incidents. That local Taliban in Afghanistan seem intent in continuing these attacks is an ominous sign for 2013 — already promising to be a difficult year.

Local Taliban seem to want to fight on, despite the growing signs of the Taliban leadership wanting to make a political settlement and call a ceasefire for 2014 when international forces are due to leave. This year Britain will halve its forces in Helmand.

From midsummer, the British troops remaining will switch from combat to a support and mentoring role. President Obama is now expected to announce a further rapid withdrawal of the bulk of the 60,000 or so US troops in Afghanistan by the end of the summer. The military says this is too drastic and too early — last autumn the Pentagon reported that only one of 23 Afghan Army combat brigades could operate on its own.

It is too easy to write off the Afghan commitment, as war-weary armchair pundits and backbench MPs seem keen to do. Afghanistan will not, and cannot go back to where it was in September 2001 — the advent of mobile phones and the resurgence of literacy and education has seen to that.

But what it will become after next year should be a bigger concern of governments from Washington to London and Berlin than it is. Afghanistan cannot be allowed to drift into anarchy, fertile ground for global jihadists like Somalia, Mali, Yemen and the northern Caucasus.