What needs to be done in Afghanistan

Augustus

Yes, what exactly are NATO forces doing in this God-forsaken land, where in every mountain pass, or behind every boulder, one can expect to be assaulted, and where only one gigantic poppy harvest appears to offer the only solace? Rebuilding, we are told. But what are we supposed to be rebuilding in a country with such a lack of infrastructure,
no proper national organization, total diversity of interests between local warlords who fight each other one minute, then form alliances the next, according to how the wind blows on a particular day, and without any economic activity besides being the largest single narcotics state in the world? Who exactly in Afghanistan is the world supposed to be liberating from whom? Who's the friend exactly, and who's the foe? For as soon as military units leave one village, or retreat to their heavily secured compounds, the enemy is once again lord and master in that village, and the mountains and valleys beyond.

Oh, no! It's simple! We're holding in check an area close to an unstable Islamic country that has a strong and efficient army, nuclear weapons, and is called Pakistan. And where in the mountains and surrounding areas the Mujahadin are the boss, and where extremists from all over the world can practise their attack skills against the West in military training camps.
In short we seem to be there as a sort of defensive bridgehead against instability in the region. We, as liberators, accept their mega harvests of drugs. we build the odd school or hospital, a mosque or a women's home, but the whole military operation costs billions, enought to fill the whole country with houses and hospitals, schools and mosques, businesses and roads, and where people could earn an honest income, and live in peace and harmony. But of course, that's not possible. Aid workers have to hide themselves in local dress. Every activity has to be performed under heavy guard. And despite every effort, Afghanistan remains a lighted bomb. A new Vietnam where the presence of so much military hardware and manpower can only be justified because it is to protect the West from its enemies. Rebuilding the country? Securing the population? I don't think so.

strapworld

We are, most worryingly, about to see history repeating itself.

It is a total disaster and we are losing good decent UK Men and Women.

If they want to go back to their medieval standard of living -so be it.

Nice to see the armoured vehicles our Ministers are riding around in! Whilst our troops are still being killed in Snatch Land Rovers!

We should demand that the Prime Minister and his ministers ride around the UK in Snatch Land Rovers.

Hayward

This all sounds wonderful, but it is really just reinventing the wheel that Sir Robert Thompson devised to solve the Malayan Emergency. Thompson was Permanent Secretary of Defence for Malaya. He was the main driver of the change in strategy and tactics to defeat the MNLA. Former Army friends of mine who served in both the Malayan Emergency and the Viet Nam Farrago have read Kilcullen’s work. They say it uses the current acronyms, jargon /terminology, but is basically no different from what Thompson said more than 50 years ago.
The British realised early on, at Thompson's insistence, that it was winning hearts and minds that would accomplish their mission. Despite this it took 12 years and involved up to 40,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen/women including Ghurkas plus Malayan Police and Special numbering 100,000 against a peak of about 7–8,000 communist guerrillas who were ethnic Chinese from a distinct dialect minority.
When Thompson was appointed to help in the US Military adventure, the Viet Nam Farrago, JFK was receptive to Thompson's ideas but the US military refused to implement them in any serious fashion. Thompson’s warning not to bomb villages went unheeded and his dismissal of US air supremacy was ignored. "The war[will] be won by brains and on foot", Thompson told the US, but interests in Saigon and Washington marginalised him so his ideas and plans had no effect.

Then along comes Rumsfeld with the RMA and Network Centric Warfare and all those other wonderful acronyms. He and the rest of the Neocon Cabal really believed "All you need is Technology" and you can hang out the
"Mission Accomplished " sign. They did that for Iraq and look where it got them. And they have done the same in Afghanistan. Talk of not learning from history, as Santayana said.

For no one wins in Afghanistan. A history of attempts to invade and occupy that part of the world we now call Afghanistan point out just one thing. Don’t do it!.
It results in the various Afghani peoples resisting invaders/occupiers. They can fall back and wait until they want to attack. That is the problem with an occupation, the occupiers are just that they are not the indigenous, the natives, the residents. Sooner or later they leave.
Alexander the Great took about six months to conquer the Iranian part of the Persian Empire. But it took him nearly three years to subdue most of the area that is now Afghanistan. It was done with the utmost brutality, even so it did not work. Moving eastward from what is today is Herat, he encountered fierce resistance from the ancestors of the Pashtun. A letter to his mother, describes his encounters with them. Alexander writes;
"I am involved in the land of a 'Leonine' (lion-like) and brave people, where every Foot of the ground is like a well of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but Everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.”
In fact Iskander is a name used by tribes today. Local resistance and the extremes of terrain made it difficult for Alexander's forces to subdue the region as all other invaders/occupiers have found. The extremely mountainous terrain of Afghanistan is like a maze that often traps them.
Such as the British who have, so far, had three campaigns for two losses and a draw. The USSR, having had its own US assisted Viet Nam withdrew, really a loss. The UK should really have known better, from history, than to go back in again.
As a child I heard some interesting stories from my grandfather who was a senior NCO in the British Army. His unit was stationed up in the Indian NWFP, now in Pakistan, in the late 1920s and early ‘30s. They were there to patrol that strange border The Durand Line.
The Durand Line, separating Afghanistan and British India, had been drawn with no regard to the tribal territory of the Pushtun. His unit attempted to control crossings by Pushtun raiders and stock thieves. The Pushtun then paid and now pay no regard to this boundary.
Another thing to remember is Pushtunwali, the code that the Pushtun live by. The problem is if Pushtun blood is shed there is a blood debt. That can be paid either by blood being shed by the offender , as they see it, or some negotiated settlement of cash/goods/alignment. There has and is being shed a lot of Pushtun blood whether on purpose or accidentally. That will all have to be paid for in someway to the satisfaction of the Pushtun concern

dennis

If our true war aim is to prevent our civilians from being terrorized by Islamist fanatics, then surely we are doing pretty well.

Okay, so the enemy got through in July 2005 and killed 52 on the London Underground.

All other plots have been countered by the security services, or precluded by the military operations undertaken by US and coalition/NATO troops in Afghanistan.

We should not judge the success of this war purely on how well things are going for the nicer sort of Afghan (though that consideration should not be wholly ignored), but in terms of how well things are going for us (the West).

Compared to the Taleban and Al Qaeda, we are getting off lightly.