Anti-war protesters demonstrated outside Downing Street on Thursday to call on the government to bring troops home from Afghanistan immediately.
The demonstration, joined by several MPs, gathered at 5.30pm to demand an end to the occupation.
It comes as Prime Minister David Cameron gets pampered at the White House amid talks with US President Barack Obama to keep large numbers of Nato troops in Afghanistan for at least another year.
This is despite recent events in the country with six British troops killed by a roadside bomb as well as the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, including children by a US soldier in Kandahar province.
Opinion polls also reveal that almost three quarters of Britain want troops home as soon as possible.
Stop the War campaign group convener Lindsey German said: "Families of soldiers must be extremely worried about fatalities.
"Troops themselves will be thinking 'why are we here?' and 'what are we doing?'
"The massacre of 16 civilians, the Koran-burnings and ill-treatment towards Afghans has only made the situation in the country even more dangerous for soldiers.
"They should not have ever been there in the first place and must be brought home immediately."
Jeremy Corbyn MP, who also attended the protest, said: "Four hundred British troops dead, 2,000 US troops dead and many more thousands of Afghan people dead, the country left in poverty and in danger of turning into a civil war.
"Western forces have long overlooked any point of being there and it's time to bring them home now."
Mr Corbyn called for the withdrawal date for troops to be brought forward during urgent questions in Parliament on Monday over the civilian killings in Afghanistan.
Rotherham MP Denis MacShane said: "We cannot justify British soldiers dying between now and withdrawal.
"Two years and nine months is half the length of the second world war and a plan that cannot be changed in the light of circumstances is barely worth the paper it is written on."
But Liberal Democrat Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said that success would be an orderly handover of security to a competent and able Afghan national security force by the end of 2014.
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