John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor, is a distinguished broadcaster whose career spans seven decades, from interviewing the exiled King Mutesa II of Buganda to covering the post-Gaddafi civil war in Libya. Like any of us, however, he is not immune from a poorly considered opinion. This week, on Twitter, he stumbled awkwardly over the notion of recruiting former Afghan soldiers into the British army:
The British Army is in serious need of recruits. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of highly motivated, SAS-trained Afghan soldiers who want to join up — but can’t because British officialdom insists they have to live in the UK for five years first. Not very sensible, surely?
— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) August 14, 2024
Simpson is not wrong in identifying a pressing crisis facing the army. Since 2012, recruitment has been managed by professional services provider Capita, and it has been a woeful experience. In a damning report earlier this year, the House of Commons Defence Committee revealed that Capita had only recruited 68 per cent of the numbers the army needed to maintain its workforce in 2022-23, and aimed to bring in 70 per cent in 2023-24. The Ministry of Defence admits that for every eight people who leave the armed forces, only five are recruited.
This is clearly an immediate threat to the army’s ability to conduct operations, and comes at a time when even the theoretical headcount – which is not being achieved – is the smallest the British army has been since we faced Napoleon more than two centuries ago. Superficially, therefore, it is easy to sympathise with Simpson’s frustration that ‘officialdom’ is standing in the way of welcoming eager, motivated, ‘SAS-trained’ soldiers from Afghanistan who would readily step into the breach.
There are three principal objections to the seemingly simple solution presented by Simpson. The first is a practical matter: when he refers to ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of Afghan soldiers, what kind of number is in his mind? There is a difference between a few hundred new recruits and a few thousand, in terms of training, housing and deployment. The Times reported on a former major-general in the Afghan National Army who claimed to know ‘as many as 30 or 40 Afghans who would… sign up’, then referred to ‘hundreds of former members of the Afghan special forces who are in hiding are awaiting a decision on whether they can come to the UK’.
Added to this vagueness around numbers is a lack of clarity on the training and capabilities of these potential recruits. Simpson refers to them as ‘SAS-trained’, while the Times describes ‘those who have previously worked for UK forces – as special forces soldiers, interpreters or in other roles’. While the British army was heavily involved in the training of Afghan security forces, much of this was very rudimentary instruction; squadron-sized units of around 65 from the SAS were deployed in Afghanistan but their overall contribution was modest.
A second reservation is simple effectiveness. Without casting aspersions on the resolution or valour of individual Afghan soldiers, the combat record of the Afghan National Army against the Taliban was dismal, exacerbated by widespread inefficiency, corruption and desertion. The fall of Kabul in 2021 was so shockingly sudden in part because the Afghan National Security Forces simply collapsed when deprived of coalition support and firepower.
There is a deeper issue, however, which is one of commitment, loyalty and identity. Over the past centuries, states have in general turned away from recruiting foreign soldiers and have developed standing national armies drawn from their own populations. There are exceptions, and the British Army has benefited enormously from the outstanding service of the Brigade of Gurkhas, recruited from Nepal. But gurkhas have been serving the crown for 200 years and are still commanded in many cases by British officers. They have a sense of esprit de corps and a record of service that cannot be manufactured.
These putative Afghan recruits are not labouring under a particular disability. With the exception of the Brigade of Gurkhas, it was only until very recently that Commonwealth citizens had to have lived in the United Kingdom for five years, and that seems a very modest ‘insistence’, in Simpson’s terms, for those who are foreign nationals. Armed forces personnel are inevitably required to undergo stringent security checks and vetting, and this should not be swatted away as ‘officialdom’.
The old legal maxim is that hard cases make bad law. A coincidence of an urgent recruitment need and the eagerness of some earnest-seeming former Afghan soldiers is a flimsy and perilous basis for discarding basic security procedures. A few hundred new personnel, from a force that disintegrated when required to be self-sufficient, will not solve the British Army’s recruitment problems. This is not about plugging a gap but finding the men and women to sustain a professional army for the next 20 or 30 years. Yes, John, that is ‘sensible’.
Comments