Military

Friday

David Blackburn

Interview – Patrick Hennessey, Kandak: Fighting with the Afghans

“It always struck me that it was a much easier war to support the closer you got to it,” says Patrick Hennessey of the war in Afghanistan. Hennessey, who served in Helmand with the Grenadier Guards in 2007, continues: “It was so obvious that we were making the country better and that we were broadly supported by the locals, certainly in a way that we weren’t in Iraq in 2006. I know that most Guardsmen preferred Afghanistan to Iraq in that respect because they felt they were doing something tangible and positive and that it was being appreciated by the people in the country, if not necessarily the people at

Tuesday

Shiraz Maher

The death of Osama bin Laden

Everyone knows something of what happened the night American Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad. Frenzied reports followed the news of his death as information, much of it erroneous, flooded the public domain. Bin Laden was armed and engaged the Seals in a fire fight; he was cowering behind his wife when Seals stormed his room and pushed her towards them; there was a stand-off where he looked into the Seals’ eyes before they shot him. The New Yorker published a controversial account of events by Nicholas Schmidle where some of those untruths were advanced. Schmidle’s piece is so thick with atmospheric actualities

Wednesday

Humphrey Hawksley

Hot War in the South China Sea?

Like the deserts of the Middle East, the barren islands of the South China Sea now loom as a new theatre of war.  Asian countries, indeed America, too, are at odds over how to deal with this power-play by a rising China — if that’s what it is; or scramble for maritime minerals; or as recently witnessed in Chinese cities a resurgence of nationalism and loathing of Japan. The South China Sea brings in China, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, little Brunei and unrecognized Taiwan. They represent the glittering success story of the developing world, the Tiger economies, the shared goal of wealth and education, the peaceful transitions to democracy

The Spectator

Shelf Life: Patrick Hennessey

Patrick Hennessey was a founder member of the Junior Officers’ Reading Club, formed when the Grenadier Guards toured Iraq in 2006. He is the author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club — the story of how a ‘wise-arse Thatcherite kid’ became a thoughtful soldier. It is among the best examples of British military witness written since 1945. Hennessey, now a barrister, has recently penned a sequel of sorts, called Kandak: Fighting With Afghans. It is published by Penguin tomorrow. He has answered this week’s Shelf Life questionnaire.  1) What are you reading at the moment? I’m finally getting round to reading Life and Fate which is, so far, living up

Tuesday

Richard Freeman

Midway: The overlooked battle

For many of us the Battle of Midway is just one more Hollywood spectacular in, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, a far-away sea of which we know little. But having recently taken a closer look at the battle I am struck both by what was at stake and what the consequences of the American victory were for the Allies at the time and geopolitics since then. When the Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 they sank four battleships, destroyed 188 aircraft and damaged 159 other planes. Because, by sheer chance, there were no American carriers at Pearl Harbour on that day, the Japanese failed in

Wednesday

Richard Baxell

General Franco’s British foes

David Lomon was one of the lucky ones. While fighting in Aragon in south-west Spain in the spring of 1938, the former salesman from Hackney was captured by one of the 100,000 Italian soldiers sent by Mussolini to fight for General Franco’s forces. Incarcerated in a Francoist concentration camp, his experiences were horrifying — brutal guards, starvation rations, insanitary and verminous conditions and a decidedly uncertain future — but he did at least survive. Many of his compatriots did not. Almost one in five were killed and most were wounded at least once in their fight to defend the Spanish Republic in the civil war of 1936-1939, in what some

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

The Syrian tragedy continues

Last Friday, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, produced a gloomy 13-page report about the situation in Syria. ‘The overall level of violence in the country remains quite high,’ he wrote, before adding that ‘there has been only small progress’ on Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan. And then, as if to prove his point, around 90 people — children among them — were killed in the town of Houla. The government has denied responsibility for the atrocity, instead blaming ‘terrorists’. But, whoever or whatever it was, you get the picture. It’s a bloody and terrible mess. The question that has loomed across this weekend is: what now?

Wednesday

Clarissa Tan

Chinese whispers | 21 March 2012

China’s rumour mill, hyperactive even in the calmest of times, has been in overdrive in the past two days. Monday evening and early Tuesday in Beijing, the country’s Twitter-like microblogs were abuzz with speculation there could have been a military coup, possibly linked with the recent demotion of Communist official Bo Xilai. There hasn’t been a coup, nor is there likely to be. Crazy rumours swirl in China every day (though not always of this level of seriousness). It’s said that authorities are now banning the word ‘coup’ on microblogs.   The bigger issue for China is that its policy of controlling information, while trying to catapult itself into the

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Stopping Assad

The situation in Syria grows worse by the minute. President Assad seems to have taken the UN Security Council’s deadlock as carte blanche to launch an all-out attack on Homs. Russia looks like she wants to mediate, while Turkey is preparing a new initiative with countries who oppose the Syrian government, a sort of anti-Assad group. Meanwhile, the Gulf States have expelled all Syrian ambassadors.   The chances of a ceasefire are low, as are the prospects of a military intervention. Russia has an interest in persuading Assad to abdicate, but can Assad be persuaded? Syria still has friends in Iraq and Iran, where the governments are supporting the regime

Wednesday

Matt Cavanagh

The MoD wastes another opportunity

Today’s White Paper on defence procurement makes disappointing reading for the UK defence industry — and for anyone who believes that one of the lessons of the last few years is that we need a more active industrial policy. IPPR set out the case in a recent report on globalisation, arguing for sustained support for industries, like defence, which have high potential for growth, for exports, and for high-skill manufacturing jobs. We need robust safeguards on the sale of defence equipment to repressive regimes, as well as greater transparency on government lobbying to avoid a return to the bad old days of the Pergau Dam — or minor embarrassments like

Sebastian Payne

The politics hovering over the Falklands

With HMS Dauntless and now Prince William gliding across the Atlantic to reinforce Britain’s claim on the Falklands, there’s no denying that tensions with Argentina have been raised. But let’s not get carried away. As Admiral Sir John Woodward reminded us last week, the latest round of defence cuts rules out, or at least undermines, a British counter-invasion. The deployment of our shiniest boat is, in reality, the sum total of what Britain can do to scare off any invasion. And there could be another barrier to the government’s hawks, other than resources: namely, the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg did try to rally support for our cause on a trade

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Libya still hasn’t found peace

Guns blazing, Libya’s various militias are showing little sign of laying down their arms and giving authority to the Libyan state. Even Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, has said that Libya faces a risk of widespread conflict, after a gun battle between militias in one of Tripoli’s busiest streets killed four fighters. Publicly, the militiamen are reluctant to lay down arms for fear of a rearguard pro-Gaddafi takeover. In reality, they like their newfound power and want to ensure that they swap their weapons for status and influence. How many of these groups exist is not clear — some estimate 100, with over 125,000 armed Libyans

Friday

Daniel Korski

Will Israel bomb a near-nuclear Iran in 2012?

An Israeli strike on Iran has to be the most over-predicted event of recent years. It was meant to happen last year. And the year before that. But now there are reasons why 2012 could, indeed, be the year when Israel will find it propitious to take overt military action against Iran’s nuclear programme. (Everyone assumes that a range of covert activities, from assassinations to cyber attacks, are already ongoing). The Iranian government is moving closer to having the requisite capabilities, and can reasonably be expected to take the final steps towards nuclearisation. What better way for Tehran to distract attention from their burgeoning problems — including sanctions, economic hardship,

Monday

Daniel Korski

Stopping Maliki’s coup

The year is ending not with a successful US withdrawal from Iraq — as President Barack Obama claims — but with what amounts to a coup d’etat by the country’s Shiite prime minister (and former ally of the US) Nouri al-Maliki. Less than 24 hours after the last US soldier left Iraq, the country’s Sunni vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi was wanted on charges that he led death squads, in a case most observers think could reignite the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07. Violence in Iraq has subsided since 2006-07, when Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen killed thousands of civilians each month — but, without U.S. troops to act as a buffer, many

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: The Christmas truce

Christmas is but a day away, and with it a chance to remember when British and German troops clambered out of the trenches to declare impromptu ceasefires in December 1914. CoffeeHousers are no doubt familiar with the specifics: how the Germans started by singing carols, and finished off (according to some letters from the time) by beating our soldiers 3-2 in a game of football. But I thought you still might care to see how The Spectator wrote it up a week later. So here is the brief report that appeared in the ‘News of the Week’ section of our 2 January issue, 1915: ‘The news from the western theatre

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Fog around the Falklands

For the populist president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, the ban on Falklands-flagged ships agreed by the Mercosur summit in Montevideo is a diplomatic triumph. It comes after a string of similar moves throughout the region aimed at tightening the noose around the Falklands. For example, HMS Gloucester was denied access to Montevideo in 2010 and, in an effort to strengthen Brazilian-Argentinian ties, Brazil did the same when HMS Clyde sought to dock in Rio de Janeiro. In reality, ships from the Falklands can switch flags before they enter any regional ports, but Argentina’s intent is to isolate the islands — and bring fellow South American nations along with them in

Thursday

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Hammond: New front opening in Afghanistan

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was in the Commons this afternoon, discussing, among other things, the spate of attacks on Shia Muslims in Afghanistan. At least 59 people have been killed in sectarian atrocities over the last week or so, a chilling a new pattern of violence as Western powers begin to contemplate withdrawal. Hammond denied that there is a link between the forthcoming transition and these attacks. Instead a ‘new front’ is opening in Afghanistan. What is this new front? Hammond was vague, but Lahore-based journalist Ahmed Rashid explains, in tomorrow’s edition of the Spectator, that the sectarian attacks are the hallmark of a now desperate al-Qaeda. As happened in

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: A world at peace

To mark last year’s Armistice Day, we republished The Spectator’s editorial reponse to the end of the first world war. This year, here is the editorial from the end of the second world war: A world at peace, The Spectator, 17 August 1945 The world is at peace. That assertion is possible at last. The war that most concerned this country and Russia ended in May. The war that most concerned the United States and parts of the British Commonwealth has ended in August. It has laid unequal strains on various Allied Powers. Britain and America have been at war with Japan for nearly four years, Russia for no more

Nigel Jones

At the going down of the sun

Vernon Scannell, a poet who fought in North Africa in the Second World War, observed in his poem ‘The Great War’: ‘Whenever the November sky Quivers with a bugle’s hoarse, sweet cry The reason darkens; in its evening gleam Crosses and flares, tormented wire, grey earth Spattered with crimson flowers, And I remember, Not the war I fought in But the one called Great Which ended in a sepia November Four years before my birth’. Everyone in Britain, to an extent barely believable across the rest of Europe, has grown up in the shadow of the Great War — and particularly the trench lines that cut across the fields of