Afghanistan is tipping into civil war and Al-Qaeda could return, warns British defense minister

Afghanistan is tipping toward civil war and the West must understand that the Taliban is not a single entity but a title for a myriad of competing interests, Britain’s defense minister said on Friday, warning that he feared there would also be a return of Al-Qaeda.

“Britain found that out in the 1830s, that it is a country led by warlords and led by different provinces and tribes, and you end up, if you’re not very careful in a civil war, and I think we are heading toward a civil war,” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC.

“The Taliban is not entirely a single entity, they break down underneath the title into all sorts of different interests,” Wallace said.

Wallace said he was worried that Afghanistan was spiralling toward a failed state that could become a breeding ground for militants such as Al-Qaeda which would probably come back.

“I’m absolutely worried that failed states are breeding grounds for those types of people,

“Al-Qaeda will probably come back.”

Wallace said that Afghanistan’s second biggest city of Kandahar and the town of Lashkar Gah were “pretty much now in the hands of the Taliban.”