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Thursday 20 November 2008

Overstretched and over there

Douglas Hurd on James Fergusson’s new book

Fergusson argues that this heroism has been largely wasted. Not in military terms, for the British troops held their own and were never overrun. Even when the Royal Irish were ferried out of Musa Qala, this was the result of a deal not a defeat. Our troops inflicted far heavier casualties on the Taliban than they suffered themselves. But then killing Taliban is not the objective of the campaign — particularly when the dead include, as they are bound to do, the brothers and sons of many of those whose hearts and minds we are trying to win over. The aim, of course, is to provide security and then development. But these twin efforts are separated by a great gulf of time and bureaucracy. Fergusson quotes Captain Leo Docherty:

You don’t win hearts and minds with soldiers; you need engineers, builders, the development people from DFID. We have embedded journalists; they risk their lives to do their jobs. Why can’t we have embedded development individuals? That’s what we need.

The original case for the war in Afghanistan was stronger than anything produced for the invasion of Iraq. We had to dislodge the Taliban government from Kabul because it was providing a base for al-Qa’eda to terrorise the world. But after that good decision was taken, two events distorted the exercise. First we greatly enlarged our objectives. We took upon us the whole burden of Afghanistan, pledging ourselves not just to abolish the terrorist base but to solve all the political, economic and social challenges of an undeveloped country, from women’s rights to the problem of the profitable poppy. This inflation of aims was characteristic of the rhetorical thinking of the Blair government. He treated aspirations and achievable objectives as the same thing.

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