Nato 'making UK attack more likely'

Adam Holloway, a former Grenadier Guard, called for a new focus on reconciliation with Afghan insurgents rather than more intense fighting.

The troop surge proposed by top US commander General Stanley McChrystal would only fuel the difficulties facing Nato troops, he warned.

Mr Holloway, a member of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said Nato was "on the brink of failure" as Afghan support for its work nose-dived amid deteriorating conditions.

His comments came in a wide-ranging paper on Afghanistan, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, which also addressed resources provision for British troops. It included the disclosure that Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe sent a memo less than a month before his death complaining about the lack of helicopters.

In the paper, Mr Holloway insisted that Al Qaeda could be prevented from regaining its foothold in the country without the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops.

"Put starkly, our current situation is working against the West's security interest and is making attacks on the streets of Britain more, not less, likely," he wrote. He said that the war in Afghanistan was playing into the hands of Al Qaeda propaganda.

"Al Qaeda needs Nato in Afghanistan, more now when western troops are out of Iraq," he wrote in the Centre for Policy Studies paper.

"Before 2006 who had heard of Musa Qala, Sangin or Kajaki? Today they are global rallying cries across the websites of global jihad. Places like Helmand are, for Al Qaeda, a gigantic film studio.

"For them, Afghanistan is the best place in the world to generate video footage of 'Mujahadeen' attacks on 'infidel forces', which in turn supports both fundraising and recruiting. Al Qaeda needs pictures of 'heroic martyrdom operations' and mutilated children."