LONDON, July 15: Britain’s senior generals have issued a blunt warning to Downing Street that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing failure, a development that could lead to an ‘Islamist government seizing power’ in Pakistan.

The Sunday Observer said amid fears that London and Washington are taking their eye off Afghanistan as they grapple with Iraq, the generals have told the British government that the collapse of the Karzai government in Kabul would present a grave threat to the security of Britain.

Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, highlighted the fears in public last week when he warned of a ‘strategic failure’ in Afghanistan. Lord Inge made a point in the Lords of endorsing a speech by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who painted a bleak picture during the debate.

‘The consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,’ he said. ‘If we fail in Afghanistan, then Pakistan goes down. The security problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I think you could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off in warlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end between Sunni and Shia right across the Middle East.’

The warnings from Lord Ashdown and the generals on Afghanistan are likely to find an echo in a report this week by the all-party Commons defence select committee. Legislators are expected to argue that the combination of civilian casualties, war damage and US-led efforts to eradicate lucrative poppy crops risk turning ordinary people towards the Taliban.