Afghan tragedy must not shake our resolve

Today the UN withdrew 600 of its staff until safe accommodation can be built for them.

This follows a Taliban attack on a guesthouse used by foreign UN staff.

In short, the place is safe neither for troops, aid workers, UN dignitaries nor the Afghans themselves.

As this paper pointed out yesterday, this may well cause us to consider the proposal by the head of the Commons Security and Intelligence Committee, Kim Howells, that troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan and the money spent instead on monitoring Islamic radicals at home who pose the real risk to our safety.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan; the situation of the Coalition forces now resembles that of the Russians before they left in more ways than we might like to think.

Whether we leave sooner or later, the truth is, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, that training Afghan police and security forces is an indispensable part of our strategy: there can be no exit without leaving some kind of credible security infrastructure.

The problem is that this training of local police and military is being conducted in a society that is profoundly corrupt and where education is lacking: inevitably many Afghan recruits, especially among the police, reflect that.

Some, too, may have been recruited by the Taliban, including the assassin of the five soldiers.

For now, we have to continue with our existing strategy and hope that the repeated exhortations of western leaders to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to purge his regime of corruption will carry some weight.

Certainly, the existence of something like an opposition in the shape of his rival, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, may help.

But it is a fragile political foundation on which to base our military strategy.

Small wonder that President Obama is hesitating before deploying many more troops there.

Cameron's Euro reality

If there is one thing that will cause the Tories to rally round their leader on the EU, it is an attack by a Frenchman.

So, the suggestion by France's Europe minister, Pierre Lellouche, that David Cameron's Euro-policy is "pathetic" and "autistic" has, if anything, caused even Eurosceptics to feel more warmly towards their leader.

Certainly, David Cameron is right to remind his party that Europe is not going to be the big issue, post-election. It's the economy, stupid, was his gist yesterday.

That is undoubtedly true, and confirms that Mr Cameron is more in touch with voters' priorities than the diehards hoping for a retrospective referendum.

But there is still a certain amount that Mr Cameron can do post-Lisbon to ensure that British interests are protected: he can, for instance, try for an opt-out from aspects of the Charter for Fundamental Rights and attempt to tweak social and employment legislation.

But he is right to attempt to maintain a positive tone towards the EU; in Euro-politics, it is tone that matters as much as substance.

Wasted youth

It is difficult for young men once convicted of crime to begin afresh, so the new unit at Feltham young offenders institution that offers inmates who want to turn their lives round training and support is a fine initiative.

If it changes even some teenagers' lives, it will be money well spent.