The commander of UK forces in Afghanistan has made a racial slur against Afghanis. During an interview on the BBC Radio 4 “The World This Weekend” on 2nd July 2006, Brigadier Ed Butler was asked whether a mission to “support local forces and help with reconstruction” had turned into a counter-insurgency operation. He replied: “We always knew that it was going to be a tough operation. The Afghan has war-fighting in his blood.”

Butler’s use of the term “the Afghan”, where he would probably not use the term “the Austrian” or “the Japanese”, strongly suggests that he believes himself to be superior. Even if it were only a lazy and ill thought-out figure of speech for the high incidence of warfare in the recent history of Afghanistan, the insupportable implication that Afghanis are genetically more inclined to warfare than Britons would still be a de-humanising fig-leaf for the UK occupation.

In fairness to Butler, one must hold the UK responsible for sending UK armed forces to Afghanistan and for asking soldiers to defend the Government’s decisions. Nevertheless, the combination of a demeaning term and a gross racial generalisation is highly insulting and I can only apologise to the citizens of Afghanistan for continuing to pay for the UK occupation and such insulting pronouncements through the taxes that I pay.