British military forces in Afghanistan

The excellent, remember, is the enemy of the good. For weeks I have been seeking the opportunity to draft a considered exposition of my thoughts about the British contribution to the war in Afghanistan. So far the opportunity has not arisen; alternatively, there have been opportunities, but I have chosen instead to do something else. So I determine: let the good be sufficient. If this first piece requires a continuation, so be it.

It was the public debate in London last February which prompted me to think about the matter. So far as I can recall, there have been British forces in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan for three, may more, years. But I have thought about other things. Now I am about to engage for the first time with the matter.

The case against the continuation of a British component in the NATO deployment in Afghanistan was opened by a fluent, well-organised major-general (Winchester, Balliol, National Defence College, Islamabad) who had no doubt that the NATO mission in Afghanistan was bound to fail. I relished the coherence of his exposition. Substance aside, the presentation, in my view, was the best one of the six we heard.

He was focused and damaging. In his view, there was no clear aim; there was no agreement on the strategy. There were insufficient resources for the task (which I take it is the subjugation of military forces hostile to the presence of NATO forces in the country). There was no clear chain of command. And the necessary political commitment to the military operations within NATO was lacking.

Such was the general’s contribution to the debate. At the time of hearing, and ahead of hearing anyone else, I would have liked to have heard him present the case again. (What I should do, I guess, is to seek the oral or written record of the debate.) My recollection of his presence and delivery, along with my written notes of what he said, impressed me. Others who spoke have left little or no mark. He did leave one.

Later I listened to the air commodore who had been seconded to the High Commission in Kabul. He reminded us of some relevant generalities. The people in Afghanistan are illiterate. Loyalties are tribal. Practices which we regard as corrupt are endemic. It is with these generalities in mind that we must view the challenge of cultural reconstruction as well as the physical.

So we can wonder what will constitute success. If the physical reconstruction could proceed unhindered then, in ten years time or so, Afghanistan might have reached the present condition of Bangladesh. The improvement of Afghanistan will take a long time. That is, the physical improvement will take a long time.

The cultural improvement, or development, will take longer. If there is to be schooling for all, then not only must the schools be built in distant parts but they must be staffed by teachers who are committed to the new ways. If those new ways are to be supported by the parents and other adults, then those others also must be willing to tolerate, if not to adopt, the western approaches.

Here the cultural and the military intertwine. Suppressing the hostile military forces is not an end in itself. The military subjugation of a territory is a means towards an end, the end being a political accommodation. So we need to think about the people with whom we will be negotiating the political settlement. Whoever they will be, the must be the people who will command the loyalty of those for whom they speak. Maybe they will be Afghans, as we understand the term, who constitute the present military opposition. It seems sensible to suppose they will be. If it is sensible to think in terms of a commanding tribal loyalty, then the hostile forces in Hellman province, or any province, may be Afghans who, unlike the Afghans in the north, are resisting a hostile invasion in much the same way as other Afghans have resisted other hostile invasions, including the Russian.

There will be more to say about this matter. For the moment, as I move to conclude this first chapter, I want to return to the warfare between the British forces and the military forces which oppose them (in Hellman province and maybe elsewhere). I know little of these battles, even though I have read that they are akin to the battles of the Korean war or even of the First World War. Those comparisons suggest, to my mind, trenches, close encounters, artillery exchanges, and so on, battles, that is, with a well-organised, well-equipped army.

Yet as someone who reads The Times and similar papers and who listens to news on the radio I read or hear little about these battles. I hear of British casualties and sense that they are few in relation to the purported scale of the battles. I hear about British estimates of the other side’s casualties, but I hear nothing about prisoners (and nothing of prisoners of war). Compared with the news of the war in Iraq and with the news of the insurgency over the years, the news from the front line in Afghanistan is scant.

And there is no news of what is happening in the northern, peaceful territories. No interviews, no photographs of NATOsoldiers as they build roads or schools. No news.

After all the years of engagement, I know little about military or political events in Afghanistan. I sense that the reach of the present government does not extend beyond Kabul. I have no idea what political settlement is being sought. I have no sense of the people with whom the political settlement is to be reached.

So when I am asked to support the continued engagement of British military forces in Afghanistan I must refuse my consent with the words ‘You have not told me enough about the purposes of the present engagement and the likelihood of its success’.

Don