I recall clearly the first time I saw the words "Abu Ghraib". It was February 1985 and they were on a water supply map of Baghdad. The city's water supply network was the largest in the world. Abu Ghraib wasn't a regular settlement and very odd in that it was "dead-ended" and not looped. When I asked about this I was told it was a military establishment and that I couldn't go there.

My job was to figure out how a city of some 4.5 million people could expand to eight million by 2010. Would the Euphrates have to be utilised as a water source, or could the Tigris be the sole supplier?

Abu Ghraib was the least of it.

It would be nearly 20 years later before Abu Ghraib impacted on my life again. On November 5, 2003, two digital photographs were taken at Abu Ghraib. The first shows a person in a ragged black poncho-like garment standing precariously on a box, head covered in a pointed black hood, arms spread, with fingertips attached to wires. He looks like a witch or scarecrow.

The second shows a young woman hunched over the corpse of a man, lying in a half-unzipped black body bag. She is grinning widely at the camera, her right thumb held up. There were other images from Abu Ghraib.

"Dead-ended" for me had been a symbol of the inefficiency of water supply. As of 2003 it had a much more sinister connotation. The reputation of the US and the coalition, already stained by an illegal war, sunk to a new low.

At 10 Downing Street last Tuesday, Messrs Bush and Brown prattled about freedom and democracy, of a "special relationship" and "shared values". Funny old things. Hard won - a million Iraqi dead and millions more in exile. Almost as they spoke, 51 people were killed at a bus stop in Baghdad and a US Senate committee was hearing of water boarding at Guantanamo. George was kissing Sarah and Gordon was kissing Laura and the cameras were clicking. I wonder which sets will find their way into the family albums.

My guess is that it won't be those from Abu Ghraib.

Chris Walker, 21/23 Main Street, West Kilbride.

The deaths of four more British soldiers in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of British servicemen killed there to 106, vividly outlines the drastically deteriorating security situation in the country. These deaths are also further evidence that the West can no longer achieve success in Afghanistan by military means alone.

The lack of political unity among Nato member states has left the Nato-Isaf operation hamstrung, as some countries refuse to commit forces to conflict zones while others lack the resources to defeat the Taliban on their own. Research by the Senlis Council has found that the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 54% of the country, a figure that includes much of Helmand province, the area manned by British forces.

Helmand province is also responsible for half of Afghanistan's poppy cultivation - a key source of support for the Taliban. Western anti-drug policies that pursue crop eradication are pushing Afghan farmers into the arms of the Taliban, and until this problem is addressed, attempts to bring security to Helmand will continue to fail.

The Senlis Council advocates the Poppy for Medicine programme, whereby opium would be made into morphine locally and sold internationally. As the world's biggest opium producer, Afghanistan has great potential to contribute to the international pharmaceutical market. Moreover, development policy of this kind would help the Allies to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, and help to undermine the Taliban insurgency which otherwise grows increasingly adept at taking the lives of British soldiers.

Paul Burton, Director of Policy Analysis, The Senlis Council, 59 Russell Square, London.

We write concerning Binyam Mohamed, the London man who has suffered six years illegal detention, much of it under appallingly brutal torture, in Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

It was recently announced that he has been charged with acts of terrorism and is to face trial by military commission at Guantanamo. If convicted he could face the death penalty.

Trials by military commission are little more than "kangaroo courts" and were branded by retired Law Lord Steyn, "a stain on United States justice". We condemn the failure of the UK Government to challenge the use of military tribunals. By failing to act, the government is effectively condoning a system which flies in the face of justice, and denies defendants the right to a fair trial. By failing to act in Binyam's case, the government is prepared to see a British resident possibly condemned to death, by way of an unfair trial.

The UK Government is in possession of documents which, if handed over to the Americans, could prove that allegations against him are false, and based on torture. The government refuses to do this.

It is deeply shameful that, in an apparent effort to conceal its own complicity in Binyam's treatment, the government has chosen not to reveal the documents, but rather to see him face trial.

The government's role in this brings shame upon the UK.

Julia Davidson, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities, plus other signatories, c/o Peace and Justice Centre Princes Street, Edinburgh.