Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh: Tony Blair’s back – and we should not be listening

And so there he was, large as life, looking older, but no wiser, beamed into unsuspecting homes by Sky television for a patsy interview. Not once was he challenged on his record as an unconvicted war criminal, but instead he was given free reign to pontificate on Afghanistan, as if the blood was not dripping from his hands. This is a man jointly and severally responsible for more deaths than the Taliban could ever dream about, lecturing the world about the limitations and mistakes of the current crop of world leaders.

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It was Blair who was the key advocate of the disastrous project of “nation building”, who then advocated the “war on terror” extension into Iraq (which ironically ensured the failure of his own Afghani project) and then, in the very final gasp of his term of office, promoted the disastrous and bloody military surge back into Helmand Province. Even in the very dying days of his administration, Mr Blair was ensuring that other people would continue to do his dying.

Now Blair is back and urging Afghans to “change their situation” and that “this is not over”, presumably advocating a continuing civil war. Hopefully, Mr Blair will now pay a personal visit and lead from the front, rifle in hand.

In contrast, when the chief of the defence staff General Nick Carter gave an entirely sober and pragmatic assessment of the reality facing his troops on the ground, he was denounced as some sort of “traitor” not just by the usual suspects of the Daily Mail and Andrew Neil, but by the Labour Party. The real mistake General Carter made was to be interviewed by Kay Burley, who clearly hasn’t spent her time off air improving her reading. At least when the BBC’s John Simpson was leading the Northern Alliance into Kabul 20 years ago he was actually in theatre.

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Last week, I asked why the MoD had not deployed the Scots to hold Kabul airport. This week I see the Black Watch are duly on their way. Things are clearly fraught! That mission, though dangerous, is entirely achievable unlike generational neo-colonial conflicts. The question is, why were the airport evacuation plans not in place many months ago?

The end game was indeed foreseen, not two weeks ago but 20 years ago. as prime minister Blair was then told by the Labour left, the SNP and sensible Tories. These anti-establishment voices are in short supply these days and, in the SNP, virtually extinct but they are on the right side of history. The culpability of the west is not the withdrawal but the chaotic manner of it, and 19 years too late. The real responsibility lies with those like Blair who changed a hunt Bin Laden operation into the occupation of an entire country. Amid all the tragic and deadly chaos around the airport, what is the underlying justification for the 20 years of war? It cannot be the installation of corrupt, venal government that nobody in the end was prepared to fight for. It can’t be the “war on drugs”, the production of which boomed under western supervision. It can’t be to “stop ISIS”, the sworn enemies of the Taliban. And so the western media have alighted on women’s rights as their human shield for the folly of war.

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As a Muslim woman, it is a subject which concerns me most of all and consistently. However, the fate of Afghan women was not uppermost in the minds of the western governments when they funded the Mujahideen, even to the extent of sending in John Rambo. The Soviet-backed puppet Afghan governments of the 1980s had many deficiencies. However, the rights of women was not one of them.

Nor was that the first attempt to emancipate the woman of Afghanistan. Amanullah Khan and Soraya Tarzi, who were respectively king and queen consort in the 1920s, embarked on a radical programme of social reform. Indeed it was one of the causes of the Saqqawists coup which deposed King Amanullah in 1929. Whatever progress for women there has been in the last 20 years has been bought dearly in blood and treasure.

Estimates of the total deaths vary, but in Pakistan and Afghanistan are pushing 300,000 – or 100 times the death toll in the Twin Towers. In international law, the Nato allies had the right to seek and destroy the few thousand Al-Qaeda terrorists. It did not have the right to embark on a generation-long occupation of an entire country. The waste by the allies of trillions of dollars is equally breathtaking. With each drone, car bomb and missile explosion, defence contractors and Afghan warlords could hear their tills ringing.

None of this was part of the original mission, as Joe Biden has reminded the American people. It was, however, Blair’s mission. The attempted refashioning of other countries as a pastiche of western liberal democracies was above all his project. That is where the real “idiocy” and tragedy of Afghanistan lies. And the real prospects for the people of Afghanistan?

The Taliban are not boy scouts, but nor are they evil incarnate. They are the victors in a bloody civil war. However, they are not Al-Qaeda, and they are certainly not Daesh. They vary in their zealotry, and no doubt in their brutality, but essentially the Muslim nationalists of Afghanistan are not international terrorists. The safe refuge offered to Al-Qaeda in the 1990s is not a mistake they are likely to make again.

It is clear their leadership craves international recognition, acceptance and a continuation of aid and support. These are key cards in the hands of the west if governments spend less time fascinating on the geopolitics and more money improving the lot of the 38 million Afghanis who are staying in their country. Properly targeted aid and support for women and girls of Afghanistan will achieve more than guns, bombs and bullets ever could. The real task now is to develop a non-military strategy of helping Afghanistan. We should finally turn away from the sickening, self-justifying, trumpetry of old warlords like Tony Blair.