Why The Afghan War Is Unwinnable ...

Political tensions in the UK over its participation in the Afghan War continue with former Defence Secretary Hutton now backing the generals over their supply concerns. 60% of the British polled think Brown is fighting this war on the cheap.

69% also think that the stabilisation of Afghanistan is not worth risking British troops’ lives for. The Army also appears to have declined to let the Prime Minister meet troops on the front line in Helmand Province as an operational distraction. Make of that what you will ...

History Repeats Itself

The situation, from a British perspective parallels the situation faced by Russia in 1979. A political decision has been imposed on a military infrastructure that is not fitted to the job with the resources at its disposal. The military have pointed this out.

The politicians, in that way that can-do desk jockeys have, have treated the Generals like middle managers and told them just to go ahead and do it. The result is predictable – a disaster in the making.

Propaganda operations back in the UK continue to emphasise British military bravery and the alleged viciousness of the Taliban. However, this only serves to encourage public support for the military without ending the questions about what we are doing there in the first place.

The UK Parliament goes into recess on July 21st. It does not return to Westminster until October 12th. This will shift the story from Parliament to the media, giving the Government a three month breathing space so long as it avoids a Dien Bien Phu. Some rethinking is needed before the Party Conference.

What is interesting is that the US itself (led by Defense Secretary Gates) is now making noises about its own public and military not being willing to stay for too long in the theatre. US legislators are beginning to follow their UK counterparts in questioning both strategy and the current level of casualties.

Yesterday, a civilian helicopter crashed killing 16 at a southern NATO base and the Taliban issued a video of a captured US soldier so the whole business gets messier by the day.

Meanwhile, the British are stuck with their ‘poodle’ status. They are in the field because the Americans have told them to be there. There is room for much domestic political embarrassment if the President rethinks his policy.

The poodle then has to trot in the other direction despite saying that the whole adventure was central to British national security.

You can imagine General Ustinov (Ainsworth) assuring General Ogarkov (Dannatt) that the Politburo (Cabinet) was united on the campaign being essential for the protection of socialism (national security). It is not true, it just has to be believed to be true.

Absurd Premises

The Anglo-American diplomatic establishment and ‘hawks’ have an apparently simple strategy and it comprises two components:

• the Pakistanis and the Afghans take their own lead in dealing with militant insurgency in their respective countries;
• the West pours resources into the country into order to help secure victory.

This strategy is becoming increasingly absurd because neither ally is in a fit state to undertake a full blown quasi-civil war.

Equally, no-one with any political sense believes that the American and British public (let alone the Europeans) will see hospitals and schools being built for tribal Islamists in a far away country while their own public services are being cut or limited in their scope.

The strategy is dead in the water given the current unstable state of South Asian politics and the global economic crisis – but an awful lot of people have far too much to lose to admit this. And so young soldiers are killed needlessly … more out of stupdity than malice.

The real crisis is thus strategic and it lies within Afghan-Western relations. In effect, the West wants to win a war against an enemy and then invest in ‘hearts and minds’ as ground is secured. To do this, it wants the Afghans to create an army and fight alongside NATO.

Unfortunately, this is not how Karzai sees things. Karzai is clearly suspicious that the ground covered might result in elections that are not so free and fair, designed to get votes in for a challenger. This is probably paranoia but such paranoia is understandable in Afghan conditions.

Karzai is actively undercutting the NATO position (or rather the position of the US and the UK military) by insisting that Afghanistan does not need more troops at all. Karzai is defending his political position against both the Taliban and the West (who would much prefer a more amenable President).

Worse, Karzai is calling for direct negotiations with the Taliban, up to and including Mullah Omar. His position thus appears to be one of nation-building from within through political compromise and, of course, he is right. It was the Russian error in the 1970s not to take that risk.

Prognosis Poor

Karzai’s position may be common sense but it is also strategically difficult if a withdrawal from Pakistan by the Taliban is not included in the talks – and, of course, the US President would have a lot of explaining to do to Middle America of why he was prepared to talk to terrorists.

Talking to terrorists raises uncomfortable issues about Hamas and Iran and seems a betrayal of the work of counter-terrorist operatives working under dangerous conditions for half a decade. All is connected!

Afghan dissidents who accuse Karzai of an excessive compromise with warlords are also turning up in London where they meet with some sympathy. This progressive impulse towards action to expand liberal values muddies the waters with key political constituencies.

Since Blair re-introduced and Bush expanded the notion that force can be used to introduce such ‘universal values’, there have been many progressives prepared to consider young soldiers and civilian casualties as fodder for their armchair aspirations.

A more relevant issue is the actual winnability of the war with much media comment on Afghan insurgent history – the insurgents cede ground, go to the hills, return when the soldiers move on and leave the provincial centres to the invaders. These are the worst possible conditions for a democratic election.

The implication is either a permanent massive troop presence extending into the mountains far beyond Western political and military capability or the abandonment of villagers to their fate after they have exposed themselves by voting. Would you trust us if you were them?

We are reminded that the Soviets (a super power in their day) lost 15,000 men and were forced to leave in February 1989 after a decade (that would be 2013 for ‘our’ war). It was the only war that the Soviet Union ever lost and it contributed to the collapse of the sclerotic empire.

The only saving grace for the West is that history shows that it can lose wars and survive because of its political flexibility - but never without consequences. Now, as then, the politicians are trying to find ways to say that lives were not lost in vain. They certainly were and they probably are ….

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Update On The Afghan War & British Politics

The pressure on the Prime Minister from the Army to increase the long term British military presence in Afghanistan has been intensifying after 15 deaths in 12 days in Helmand Province. The Army wants a rise in British troop levels from 8,300 to 9,000 in November and it is backed by the Tory opposition.

The media consensus tends to back the Army and the Tories but without much enthusiasm. Opinion polling either shows the country to be evenly split on whether the British should even be there at all. Many want the British to pull out.

Politicians Play At Statesmen

Given a lack of engagement in the war by the public, the political class of all parties once again appears to be detached from reality. The criticism is still not of the war but of the conduct of the war.

However, the Tories are beginning to demand some strategic explanation of why losing lives in Helmand province is so important to national security. Privately, most intelligent politicians know that, without massive American engagement, this war is not winnable – and perhaps not even then.

So why are British soldiers being permitted to die! The rhetoric of Government has given up on Blairite high ideals (democracy and human rights) and it has shifted to the threat to British streets. But this is scarcely credible.

British actions in West Asia are likely, eventually, to re-target terror to the UK, whether to extend the war to bring it home to us or perhaps to exploit popular doubts or as an act of desperation in defeat.

The real reason for British engagement is solidarity as junior partner to the US and as an attempt to make NATO relevant but these are truths that dare not be spoken too loudly after Iraq.

The Prime Minister is also personally asserting that the Army has the right equipment and manpower to do the job this summer – he is claiming military support for his contention.

It is as if he is waiting for some short term success, based on US determination not to let the British fail, to enable him to shift funds back from butter to guns later in the year - perhaps relying on some patriotic tabloid surge of popular support based on a victory in the field and on signs of economic recovery.

Bluff & A Possible U-Turn

But what is not credible is the assertion of military backing for the Government. The military probably accept that they will get little now but their fear is that their men are dying to give cover to a dodgy election. The ground won to put Karzai and his cronies back in power will be ceded.

Yes, military chiefs will try to stay out of politics and will get the strong hint from New Labour that further direct comments are unwise – but this will not silence the informal dialogue between angry military figures and both media and opposition.

There is no credible source that does not know that the military are furious that political dithering has turned a serious military operation into a bargain basement effort, threatening to repeat past blunders (through poor resourcing and management) in Iraq.

Beneath this is the sense of being used as a blunt instrument for ill thought out political ends. We can sense an eventual political u-turn in the making, with some face-saving formula to limit the political damage, but, as a political ‘fix’, when it comes, it may be too little, too late.

What the Army wants is a permanent rise in numbers on the ground after the Afghan election in order to hold ground. This is an open Treasury cheque for a period when the Government knows that it will be preparing the public for post-election spending cuts on services.

The British Army may get the political traction for a permanent presence in Afghanistan but not before proof of the military pudding on the ground - that is, unless the Government really cannot hold the line against dissenters. And that is now quite possible.

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Weak Government, The Afghan War and Torchwood

(WARNING: This posting contains important spoilers regarding the BBC Sci-Fi Series Torchwood. You are advised to bookmark it and read it later if you have not yet seen the full series and want to do so.)

The sharp increase in deaths amongst serving soldiers in Afghanistan (8 men in 24 hours, 15 in a week, and a total now exceeding Iraq) is now headline news.

The argument is less over whether we should be there (which might be interpreted as insufficiently supportive of ‘our boys’) and far more over whether sufficient resources have been provided to protect them from the Taliban’s intelligent strategy of leaving behind a few men but many roadside bombs.

The Military Situation

There are not enough soldiers and helicopters to do the job in Afghanistan. The Land Rovers, Vikings, Jackals and Vectors are certainly not up to the job either. Above all, the longer the war goes on, the more mayhem and the greater the loss of local ‘hearts and minds’.

The greatest risk is that the Afghan Presidential Election proves to be a farce in the key province of Helmand. This portion of a much wider war has to be ‘won’ within perhaps six to eight weeks or it may well come to be regarded as a defeat.

The Sunday Times shows a photograph of every dead soldier, mostly in their early 20s. Many of these are apparently dead because they were travelling by road in inadequate vehicles and not by helicopter.

The Taliban are not fools. They have largely withdrawn to fight again later, but they have left behind guerrillas who have created a new type of guided minefield, placing IEDs (roadside bombs) that can be triggered for maximum damage. The troops retreat from one bomb and then get caught in another.

The Government at a every level, right up to the Prime Minister, is preparing the public for a summer of deaths of young men. Their argument remains that the mission is ‘vital to the safety of the world’, a somewhat grandiose interpretation of what should have been little more than a police action in 2001.

The Brown Government has now committed itself to remaining until the job is finished - much as Johnson’s did in Vietnam with probably a very similar outcome. The concern within the military, of course, has nothing to do with whether the British should be in Afghanistan (that is a political decision). 

The military concern is with the tools being provided to do the job. If anything, Sir Richard Dannatt is an aggressive booster for the somewhat dubious justifications for the war. But conditions on the ground are now helping to create a political crisis at home.

Growing Tensions Between Government & Army

We have been reporting the growing tension between the military and New Labour for quite some time. Even before the credit crunch, there was a debate about expenditures between ‘guns’ and ‘butter’. The military pointed out that a progressive foreign policy of the Blairite type requires adequate funding.

The military complaint has lately been that too much was going into expensive hardware that was irrelevant to anti-insurgency operations and to the security services, with not enough support for boots on the ground.

The underlying strategic debate has now come out into the open as Secretary of Defense Gates starts to shift the US from Cold War megatron power (big and expensive metal objects) towards soft power support, intelligence and tactical flexibility.

This debate should have taken place in the UK long since, but its ‘poodle’ approach to the US, waiting on Washington for a lead, and electoral considerations have mean its own Strategic Defence Review has been left until far too late, just as its economic base is getting ready to crumble.

Until the Northern Rock crisis, the military might have expected sufficient compromise to get important concessions. Now, they are scrabbling for a diminishing pot. The Government is scarcely likely to cut health and education before it has won its election.

Governments have, in the past, been able to appeal to the standard soft militarism of the British working class and to the sheer weight of industrial jobs linked to the killing machine in order to deliver a fair proportion of budget to the ‘guns’ side of the equation.

The credit crunch and the associated political scandals have completely changed that scenario. The Government has to manage big wasteful job-creating metal-ware projects, its naked fear of domestic insurgency and major overseas commitments, all within a shrinking budget.

Weak Government & Torchwood

If you scratch the surface of public opinion, you find that there is still stomach for supporting the troops but little stomach for the war in Afghanistan or for toadying up to the Americans (who no longer seem to want us anyway).

New Labour is also undoubtedly gambling with its fiscal policy. The entire political class is at best distrusted and, at worst, in pockets, actively hated. It now acts as if this is not so - or just does not matter.

The military are thus faced with the problem of a weak Government which does not have the political credibility to throw more funds after bad in an endless mini-Vietnam undertaken for strategic reasons now lost in the mists of political time.

The public may be disengaged rather than anti-war, but the Government knows that it cannot afford to shift funds too noisily into its foreign and defence policy away from its domestic public sector nor can it conscript men - nor accept too great a death rate - without shifting that perspective dramatically.

The army is also beginning to lose ‘hearts and minds’ not so much in the mass of the population but increasingly amongst the liberal influencers who feed prejudice and opinion. An example of the shift lies in the popular sci-fi series Torchwood.

Torchwood is a horror story that played for five consecutive nights on prime time TV last week and will be repeated regularly. It is not at all about Afghanistan but it is about the relationship between the people and the organs of the State in these troubled times.

In this story, the Government was shown to be self-centred and cynical, prepared to take no responsibility for its past actions, and duplicitous to an American ally which effectively ran the country in a crisis. Sections of the population were to be judged disposable.

Some people were deemed less ‘useful’ or not ‘nice’ (a fairly common trope in liberal fiction) but the link to New Labour was very obvious in one line – these sections were to be identified for destruction through school league tables, ‘after all what is the point of having them otherwise’.

Hokum Is Power

Much of this may be too subtle for many of its audience, but the sight of British troops willingly rounding up people as a machine of the State was graphic and vivid. It had troops in our council estates, seizing children from schools.

Many public servants were portrayed as deluded in their obedience to orders if not ‘bad people’, but the core image was a revolutionary one – of agents of the State as enemies of at least some of the people and certainly of those most vulnerable and most currently angry at their condition in life.

Of course, this was fiction and ‘hokum’. Yet, like the X-Files in its time, such stories reflect what audiences are thinking privately. They also guide their thinking in the near future and an election is only a year away.

A theme was the authorities’ constant reference to ‘trust’, the sort of nonsense ‘spin’ perpetrated on the people by Blair. The message of the writers was undoubtedly to trust no-one in authority. This was coming from the premier nationally-funded broadcast network that needs public money to survive.

All this preamble about the mood in the country is necessary because military resentment at continued failure by Government to deliver the funding that it requires to pursue a war not of its choosing, and as auxiliary to a foreign empire, is becoming an increasingly open matter.

Senior New Labour figures are now fighting back, accusing the military of interfering in politics (an extremely rare accusation in the UK). But what do the military actually want? Not a great deal. They need 2,000 more troops (a debate that Brown does not want to have in Parliament) and helicopters.

The alternative is the worst of scenarios – more British deaths in a war that, if it is won, will be a public humiliation because the Americans will, with their superior force, be the ones who do the work in the end. To many military, it might be better to withdraw than be degraded and humiliated in this way.

The Political Problem

The political problem, the Torchwood factor if you like, is that this debate is being played out over the heads of a sullen public that does not trust the political class as a whole, let alone the Government.

Genuine concern for soldiers on the ground is tempered by a more general irritation with the indignity of the country’s poodle status and a growing distrust not only of the politicians but of all the organs of authority transmission, including the police, the media and local government.

This distrust is on the cusp of spreading to the Armed Forces. It gets complicated at an elite level because none of the political parties has had the imagination to tell the truth – that a mid-sized power needs to rethink its global role.

The Liberal Democrats strut as if they were statesmen even if they do make the most sensible analysis of current events.

The Tories continue to try to encourage the natural instincts of the officer class to support them. New Labour anger grew in part because Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, dined with Tory MPs to lobby for the additional troops that he needs.

There is a great deal at stake here. Perhaps the public is still passive, alternating between a degree of traditional support for ‘our boys’ and cynicism, but the growing military-Tory alliance is a major breach of the convention that soldiers do not dabble in politics.

However, the military is now close to desperate – it faced a certain degree of humiliation in Basra and it faces something similar in Helmand. It needs a diversion of resources but the British Government fears being mired in a mini-Vietnam at election time.

Behind all this is the fear that the Government itself is just not fit for purpose. The Sunday Times reports that the departing maverick Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown, the classic loose cannon, has averred that Brown’s government is more ‘chaotic’ than many administrations in the developing world.

This makes sense – the Prime Minister appears to have a track record of dithering, his claims often lack substance, he has no ‘vision’. His Cabinet is watching the political car in which they are passengers hurtle towards the cliff, with the driver insisting that he knows what he is doing.

If true (and we must take the Sunday Times with a pinch of salt), Malloch-Brown’s complaint would appear to centre on the problem of ‘strategic thinking’ – which rather confirms the failure to drive forward the Strategic Defence Review.

State servants need a strategic vision so that they can make decisions.

Too strong a vision without administrative control can lead to the chaotic evil of national socialism or the tyranny of communism. Too little can lead to a social anarchy that starts from the top and steadily works its way down to the street. The fish, as they say, rots from the head.

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