THE killing of yet another Yorkshire soldier in Afghanistan calls for a more concerted and determined effort to stop politicians hiding their cowardly indecisiveness behind the bravery of our soldiers.

We all know that the inherent decency of a majority of British soldiers would make them want to help Afghans rather than kill them, but that is not what the decision to be involved in this war offers them.

The reality is that our intervention, made by gung-ho politicians at Westminster, has had the direct effect of prolonging a vicious civil war that has now lasted for 35 years.

There are Afghan women and men in their thirties who have never known what it is to live in a country at peace.

It is recorded that from the time of the Soviet intervention in the ‘seventies, one in every four Afghans recruited annually to the national army deserts, often with his gun. Now the country is ridden with armed bands, yet the policy of successive British governments is unbelievably to increase the number of men in Afghanistan under arms.

We are aware of the misery of British families, who have lost a son, a husband, a father in this futile war. We need to remind ourselves of the Afghan families who have suffered the tragic loss in military action not just of their fighters, but of many thousands of non-combatant men, women and children.

We must swamp the politicians with our opposition to this war. Write to them, and sign the petition on the York Against the War Saturday stall in York centre.

Maurice Vassie, Cartmans Cottage, Deighton.