Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Brown Warns Afghan Leader on Corruption

Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke about Britain's role in Afghanistan in London on Friday.Credit... Oli Scarff/Getty Images

LONDON — In unusually harsh terms reflecting international frustration with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday that the government in Kabul would forfeit its right to international support against the Taliban insurgency if it failed to root out corruption.

“Sadly, the government of Afghanistan had become a byword for corruption,” Mr. Brown said in a speech to defense experts. “And I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption.”

His words were regarded by some analysts as the toughest by a Western leader since Mr. Karzai was declared the winner this week of Afghanistan’s flawed elections.

The timing of Mr. Brown’s warning was particularly significant, with the Obama administration under domestic and international pressure to decide whether to commit up to 40,000 more American troops to Afghanistan at a time when international appetite for the conflict seems to be receding.

Mr. Brown was speaking four days after five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman they were supposed to be mentoring in an attack that shook many Britons’ support for the eight-year war. So far, 230 British soldiers have died since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001. Seven of them died in the past seven days.

A spokeswoman at the international forces’ joint command in Kabul said Friday that two American soldiers were killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, but gave no further details.

The deaths bring to three the number of United States service members killed in the Afghan war so far this month. October was the deadliest month of the war for American forces, with 59 deaths reported, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Brown reiterated that Britain would not abandon its role in the American-led NATO coalition. “We cannot, must not and will not walk away.”

He continued, “If the Taliban insurgency succeeds in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda will once again cross the border and re-establish themselves in sanctuaries in Afghanistan from where they will plan, train and launch attacks on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Brown said he had spoken several times this week to Mr. Karzai, who had promised that the first action of his new government would be to tackle corruption.

“International support depends on the scale of his ambition and the degree of his achievement in five key areas: security, governance, reconciliation, economic development and engagement with Afghanistan’s neighbors,” Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Brown also echoed calls this week by senior White House officials for Mr. Karzai and the Afghan government to establish an anticorruption commission to establish strict accountability for national and provincial officials.

In addition, some American and European officials are pressing for at least a few arrests of what one administration official, speaking to reporters in Washington on Thursday, called “the more blatantly corrupt” people in the Afghan government. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.

Administration officials declined to provide the names of people they wanted to see arrested and acknowledged that such arrests were a long shot.

The international community’s wish list of potential defendants includes Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade; Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is accused of involvement in the killings of thousands of Taliban prisoners of war early in the Afghan conflict; and one of Mr. Karzai’s running mates, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a former defense minister who is suspected of drug trafficking.

On Friday, three retired officers who have held the top post in Britain’s armed forces, chief of the defense staff, criticized Mr. Brown in a House of Lords debate on the armed forces, saying, in effect, that he had denied British troops the financing and equipment they needed, exposing them to greater risks.

One of the officers, Field Marshal Peter Inge, said of Mr. Brown that the armed forces “have felt that he has never really been on their side.”

Adm. Michael Boyce said the Brown government “does not realize we are at war,” and Gen. Charles Guthrie said “dithering in London” had left “the people in the front line questioning whether the government is really, really committed to making progress” in Afghanistan.

Britain is the second largest contributor to the coalition fighting the Taliban, with about 9,000 soldiers, compared with 68,000 Americans. But the steady increase of casualties is eroding public support for the conflict.

On Thursday, the body of Sgt. Olaf Schmid, 30, who had died trying to defuse a roadside bomb, was flown back to Britain.

As has now become the tradition, the body was driven on Thursday through the Wiltshire village of Wootton Bassett, close to a military airfield used by flights to and from Afghanistan, as a church bell pealed. Mourners stood in silence, laying flowers on a hearse bearing a coffin draped in the red, white and blue union flag.

Such poignant moments, broadcast on national television, have raised public doubts about whether the war in Afghanistan could be won.

Mr. Brown’s government insists that British troops will be able to withdraw only when Afghan forces are able to take over the campaign against the Taliban.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Patience on Corruption Is Running Out, Britain Warns Afghan President. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT