'Enough is Enough' Anti-war protest calls for Afghan pullout

Protestors hang anti-war banners from the scaffolding infront of parliament ahead of a debate on the Afghan conflict. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images


Military families will deliver a letter to parliament tomorrow calling for troops to be pulled out of the "unwinnable" war in Afghanistan.

More than 30 people who have either lost loved ones there or have sons and daughters serving have written to MPs ahead of tomorrow's parliamentary debate on the conflict's future.

Joan Humphreys, whose grandson Kevin Elliott was killed last year, said there was a growing feeling among military families that the troops should be brought home.

"Politicians now admit it is futile but they still want our young people to go over there and risk their lives ... These deaths are devastating large numbers of families and I just hate the thought of that last soldier dying out there."

Chris Nineham, of the Stop the War campaign, said the number of people with military ties who oppose the war had grown in the past few months.

"More and more mothers, grandads, girlfriends and even ex-soldiers are contacting us wanting to know what they can do to get the troops home from Afghanistan," he said. "They say there is dismay in the forces about it. Everyone knows this is a doomed, futile mission, and people cannot accept that the politicians are forcing their loved ones to risk their lives for it."

Terry Flowers, 79, whose grandson is due to go to Afghanistan within the next three weeks, is one of the people who signed the letter.

"He is only 19 and four weeks and he should not be going out there to fight this war – there is no good reason for us to be there," said Flowers, who served in the army during the Korean war. "A lot of our boys are dying over there as well as all those civilians and it is for nothing. I am just waiting for someone big to admit what is going on and stand up and say enough is enough – but no one seems capable."

In the letter the families say the war has not made the world a safer place.

"If we stay in Afghanistan until 2015 as the government plans hundreds more soldiers and thousands more civilians may die. Politicians who send and keep the British military in Afghanistan should take heed of the majority of the population who want the troops home."

Tomorrow's debate will be one of the first opportunities MPs have had to vote on the war.