More troops will just mean more targets

28 October 2009

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Since the war on terror began, Christina Lamb has believed that the answer in Afghanistan was to send more soldiers. Now, after eight years of fighting and no end in sight, she has changed her mind. Victory is not an option

It was Bonfire Night last year in the Officers’ Mess of 2 Rifle and I was jokily explaining how fighting is such a national sport among Afghans that they fight with birds, kites and even boiled eggs, when I suddenly realised my heart had gone out of it. As one of the few journalists to have been reporting from Afghanistan since the days of the Soviet occupation, I had often been asked to visit regiments before they deploy and had always enjoyed talking to young soldiers about a land I love and hearing their expectations.

But that grey November evening in Abercorn barracks in the Northern Irish town of Ballykinler was different. I had been in Helmand the previous month and was shocked at the lack of progress. How could I give a positive presentation of what the troops might achieve when the security situation was so much worse than before British troops arrived in 2006?

In one-camel opium towns like Sangin, Musa Qala and Nawzad, which no one back home had even heard of three years ago, our soldiers were repeatedly fighting over the same dusty scraps of land that previous troops had been killed trying to secure. The top Foreign Office mandarin inside the wire and thick walls of the British headquarters in Lashkar Gah tried to convince me progress was being made because the bazaar was open and we could drive through (albeit at high speed in a heavily armoured convoy). Yet I had stayed in the town for a week before the British deployment when the bazaar was flourishing and people walked around freely.

For the many Helmandis who have lost their homes or relatives in the bombing, it is stretching credulity to say that the British presence has brought them a better life. I’ve met families in tents outside Lashkar Gah who lost everything as they fled from village to village to escape fighting. The cost of one Javelin missile to blow up a compound of suspected Taleban is 80 times what the average Afghan makes in a year.

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Janus

October 29th, 2009 5:34pm Report this comment

As your article explains, it is the local population that always bears the brunt of these conflicts, despite being promised a better life. I am reminded of the story of a mexican chicken farmer during the civil war. "First one side comes through and steals my chickens. Then the other side do the same. And they all say they're fighting for me."

Snowman

October 29th, 2009 7:48pm Report this comment

Two small, but not insignificant points.

Sending armed forces from non-Muslim countries to fight the Islamic Teleban could only succeed in alienating both the local Afghan population, and the Muslim community elsewhere, but not in defeating the enemy. The West, together with those Muslim countries that are to lose as much as us if the fanatics were to prevail, should have set-up an Islamic equivalent of the French Foreign legion, funded largely by the West, and backed by the UN.

The roots of the Afghan conflict lie not in the Afghan and Pakistani border caves, but in those madrasas that fill the young hearts with hate for years. Without tackling the teaching of evil, we can hardly win on the battlefield. To learn how to shoot a Kalashnikov, or dig in a IED takes only hours.

Herbert Thornton

October 29th, 2009 8:33pm Report this comment

This article is a sad mix of naivety and defeatism.

For naivety, try this - "The Taleban may have smashed TV sets when in power, but they can teach the MoD propaganda skills any day, and argue that if they come back to power they would not shut down girls’ schools or insist on long beards."

If Christina can believe that she can believe anything.

For defeatism - well the entire article is redolent of it.

Every can be won –but the things necessary are the material means to win and above all the determination to apply it.

I think it was a former Viceroy of India who said that there would be no peace in the Northwest Frontier areas "until the military steamroller has passed over them from end to end."

But he added that he did not want to be to person to order that. In short, the will was lacking.

And it still is lacking.

Willingness, alas, is possessed in inexhaustible measure by Islam.

And unless civilised world re-arms itself not just with material weapons, but with the same sort of will, it will itself eventually be defeated and subjugated.

grauniad

October 30th, 2009 7:15am Report this comment

Curious that Christina Lam seems to have spoken to the same Taleban member as The Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in his August Article entitled "Inside the Taliban: 'The more troops they send, the more targets we have'" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/15/fighting-taliban-in-afghanistan-war)

A. MacAulay

November 1st, 2009 7:06pm Report this comment

An interesting article which nicely demonstrates how thoroughly we have either swallowed the lies of our leaders,(the same ones who lied so shamelessly about Iraq) or have simply lied to ourselves.

What was the victory over the Taliban supposed to look like? France in 1815? Germany 1918? Germany and Japan in 1945? The idea that a war is fought until it is won or lost may not apply here because we have invaded and at best tried to provoke a civil war. Or what? And not even watching the Soviet Union over-reach itself has given us pause for reflection.

It is nice that Christina Lamb has begun to examine her premises. Keep going!

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