British Diplomat Tells US Envoy to Afghanistan: 'Foreign Interference is Unhelpful'

Lord Pantsdown has criticised Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan, for complaining to President Khazi about the widespread use of fraud in last week's elections.

"As a British diplomat, I'm here to tell America and Afghanistan that foreign interference is unhelpful," said the former special envoy to Bosnia, Liberal Democrat leader, SAS officer and secretary-shagger. "Criticising the blatant rigging of a presidential election could de-legitimise the West's mission to promote democracy. War is peace."

As the clocks were striking thirteen, Lord Pantsdown continued: "What both sides need to bear in mind is that this is a country where democracy, if it can be said to exist at all, is weak and superficial. Central government is hated and despised by the people. Venture ten miles from the seat of power and you're in bandit country, where centralised authority is constantly challenged. For years now this god-forsaken country has endured a succession of powerless, self-important presidents, who are widely regarded as nothing more than the ineffectual puppets of powerful, shadowy vested interests.

"As for the impoverished, backward masses scraping a precarious living out in the vast, empty hinterlands, they have no real understanding of the world beyond the limits of their own horizons. They are brainwashed from an early age by their elders, who force them to memorise a simplistic, moralising creed that was written down long ago in a different era. Rather than thinking for themselves about the complex issues facing their corner of the world, they are conditioned into seeing everything in simple terms of right and wrong. As a result, they are easily persuaded to follow any manipulative demagogue who jumps up and promises them heaven on a plate. They are told that so-and-so is their sworn enemy and that their cherished way of life is under threat - and so, in their ignorance, they beat their chests in self-righteous anger and swear vengeance on their supposed tormentors."

"You only have to look at the history books to realise that if the mighty British Empire failed dismally in its efforts to impose its will on these medieval hotheads, any present-day attempt at restoring sanity to this benighted land is probably also doomed, eventually, to ignominious defeat," he concluded sadly.

"And Afghanistan's quite ghastly, too," he added.