UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is on a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he is holding talks with President Hamid Karzai in Kandahar.
Brown – who has also been meeting British troops and inspecting equipment – wants the Afghan government to play a bigger part in controlling the country’s security apparatus. The Afghan war is growing ever more unpopular in Britain. This year 100 British soldiers have been killed in the fiercest fighting of the eight-year-old conflict so far. Public doubt over Britain’s role in Afghanistan is putting pressure on the prime minister ahead of an election in the UK that will have to be fought by June of next year at the latest.
