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Telegraph View: Mixed signals from Whitehall on counter-terrorism may provide a boon for media-savvy enemies.
Published: 7:41PM GMT 21 Jan 2010
If coherence is what one expects from governments fighting a war, it was sadly lacking yesterday. A Commons statement by the Prime Minister on Wednesday that the Afghan-Pakistan border posed the primary security threat to this country was followed by news that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had cut its budgets for counter-terrorism in Pakistan and a counter-narcotics programme in Afghanistan. Lady Kinnock, an FCO minister, told the Lords that the cuts had been made to offset an estimated shortfall of £110 million in the departments budget for the current fiscal year, with a slight increase expected for the next. This she attributed to the decline in value of sterling on foreign exchange markets.
As over half of FCO spending is in overseas currencies, there is a strong case for resurrecting the Overseas Price Mechanism, which, until it was withdrawn in 2008, compensated the department if the exchange rate fell. But at a time of financial stringency, the FCO does not help its case for special consideration by paying £20 million over the past three years in exceptional performance bonuses to three-quarters of its staff. Again, the left hand does not seem to know what the right is doing.
The programmes cut in Pakistan and Afghanistan are no doubt a minute part of the war against Islamic extremism. But in propaganda terms they are a boon to a media-savvy enemy. The Pakistani government is refusing to extend its counter-terrorism campaign to embrace the Afghan Taliban operating from the tribal agencies. Imran Khan, the former Test cricketer, has told this newspaper that he is willing to act as an intermediary with their Pakistani counterparts. With the war in such a state of military and political flux, now is hardly the time for conflicting signals from within Whitehall.
Source : Counter-terrorism cuts and confusion - Telegraph
