Afghanistan…What Next?
Posted by Will Haggard on February 25th, 2007
A curious silence has descended on Britain’s political news and blogging spheres in the aftermath of last week’s announcement that another 1,000 British troops were being sent to the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. The war zone is captured in the footage found on this link. The fatalities in this largely forgotten battle zone, within the larger Middle-Eastern conflicts we currently find ourselves in, can be viewed here;
The war in Afghanistan has lumbered on since the country was invaded in 2002. Since then the country has been split up between over 37 international forces, each to differing degrees of success trying to shore up their patch of a deeply fragmented country. The aim…who knows? Whisperings of democracy have fallen dead in their tracks, as in Iraq where the heady idealistic dream of the American style ballot box went out with the bomb. To compound this sense of futility, one has only to look at Afghanistan’s history to view the enormity of the task which British troops face there. The USSR failed dismally in subduing the country in the 20th century. The Arab forces of the eighth century who conquered the world from the Atlantic shores of Spain to the foothills of the Himalayas, refused to enter the Helmand Province and Southern Afghanistan due to the tenacity of its warlords and the impregnable topography in which it lies.
Yet Britain finds itself a millennium on from its Arab counterparts, struggling in exactly the same corner of the world. Instead of salivating over the American presidential race, maybe a little more time could be directed looking east, to the lands where we are now inexorably involved in shaping their future. A discussion awaits. Pray do write and perhaps we could add Afghanistan to the list of “Categories†available on this forum?
Filed under: foreignpolicy, iraq on February 25th, 2007
Britain tried in the nineteenth century as well, as the world’s largest Empire and globe-straddling superpower….of course without success. 1000 troops will be a drop in the ocean- they should come home, like the troops in Iraq. We will have to admit failure, but we are only delaying that admission by sending more troops.
Not what Menzies Campbell thinks. I’m not an expert, but he has a good claim to be one. Furthermore, whatever ill-defined objective we might have in Afghanistan, it is surely no-where close to conquest. Is it not unsound to doom our efforts to failure merely by comparison to failures to secure very different ends?
This may ruffle feathers…but isn’t Afghanistan actually where we ought to be?
There seems to be an alarming tendency to lump Iraq and Afghanistan together; they shouldn’t be. Iraq is a disaster, a catastrophe, a war that should never have been; few dispute that now. Why did Britain and America do it? Weapons of mass destruction, Neo-Con influence, Bush senior’s unfinished business, that ’special relationship’ on our part, oil… we should all keep asking, but how many times is Al Qaeda mentioned? Never has it convincingly been argued (save for a few cringing statements from our friends across the Atlantic) that Al Qaeda had any real connection with Iraq.
Afghanistan is another matter. In 2001 the Taleban WERE harbouring Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network, and unless conspiracy theorists can be believed this network WAS responsible for the 3000 innocent people killed in September of that year. What exactly were Britain and America supposed to do, if the Taleban were not prepared to act? Furthermore, from 2002 until 2004 how much did our ‘occupation’ of Afghanistan feature in the news? Casualty figures, extensive military deployment, bombs? It was no garden party but please challenge me if I am wrong, few were using words such as ‘quagmire’ back then.
The crisis in Afghanistan is a more recent development. Will is quite right about the situation in Afghanistan today; we’re fighting a real war there and it is under-reported. As many soldiers are dying in engagements with the enemy as in terrorist attacks. Read some of the figures on rounds fired or estimated enemy kills; it’s terrifying! But I don’t remember it being anything like this a couple of years ago. Consider the casualty figures (available on the BBC website) for Afghanistan: 48 soldiers have died on duty there. But of that number only two died in 2002, NONE in 2003, one in 2004 and one in 2005. Which means from the start of 2006 to the present FORTY-FOUR soldiers have been killed - in the space of less than 14 months. Of course they were dealing with problems which had developed over a longer period of time. But two whole years without a single fatality?
As far as I can see there is a direct and natural corralation to be made and that is between the situation in Afghanistan and the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Many in the Middle East were happy to see the back of the Taleban, and respected the grounds for interference. The terror networks that were present were, according to some writers, dealt a near critical blow with the invasion. But then came Iraq. The damage did not register immediately, unpopular though the invasion was Saddam Hussein was hardly a popular hero in 2003, and supposedly the West had a reason. But since then… (I need not expand). The catalogue of errors has been the greatest recruiting agent Al Qaeda could possibly have hoped for. And it is not just Al Qaeda any more (it is perhaps foolish to ever use the term). American/British mistakes have turned it into a brand name for Western hatred manifested in countless different groups. Is it a coincidence that the Taleban are again enjoying such support? The current state of Afghanistan is collateral damage from the disaster of Iraq. We have spectacularly shot ourselves in the foot!
But back to the original statement. Should our response to this be to pull out of Afghanistan, the starting point, upon which we really did seem to have just cause for action? It seems more than likely Hamid Karzai’s regime would collapse, the Taleban would gain control of at least a section of the country, terrorist networks could operate at will; the legitimate cause for our invasion would return, and given todays climate probably in a far more intense fashion than before, and we would be powerless to intervene. What would have been the point of the whole venture? In lamenting our mistakes in the middle east we must not loose sight of the legitimate tasks we originally set about doing.
Iraq and Afghanistan are now interconnected, but it seems vital to remember that we went into Afghanistan and Iraq for very differnet reasons. Weighing the pros and cons of staying or leaving in Iraq is beyond me. But as far as Afghanistan is concerned, we went in with due cause and we are fighting an movements that would openly threaten us if left to develop. Therefore for the time being at least, as difficult as it is, British troops are needed in Afghanistan; as unfashionable as the view is - we should stay.
Alexander the Great led the fourth-century BC’s globe-straddling superpower. His armies were able to subdue the provinces which make up modern-day Afghanistan but only after several years’ effort and numerous casualties; the Greeks were then able to politically remould the region. A lesson for the NATO forces of today? Not really.
Citing centuries-old failures (or successes) tells us little: they were fought with - as matthew rightly says - different ends, on completely different terms, with different weapons and tactics… It may be that the mission in Afghanistan cannot be succesfully fulfilled, but if lessons can be drawn from the past it needs to be more considered than simply name-dropping.
O.K. Please tell me what our “end” goal in Afghanistan is? I think many have lost sight of this fact or can’t see the wood from the trees. If Patrick and Matt, you are so confident that the past predicament of foreign powers in Afghanistan has nothing to do with ours today, then please illuminate me as to how British involvement in the region differs so widely from its predecessors? As for Ed’s comment, I agree that the differentiation at the outset between Iraq and Afghanistan was clear. However is the best way to beat terrorism by trying to conduct a military ground war with external troops? Surely cases such as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last summer against Hesbola shows that you only fuel the ideological credibility of terrorist groups by alienating the country’s which harbour them. In the long run the terrorists win. By contrast look at the negotiations with Gaddafi’s Libya. A resounding success, in which political pressure from the outside has forced internal reform which has reigned in its terrorist cells. Two approaches with drastically different outcomes.
Ok, fair points…
“whatever ill-defined objective we might have in Afghanistan, it is surely no-where close to conquest.”
Our objective is much much more challenging than simply clamping a military occupation on it- aren’t we going for peace, democracy and so forth? Preferably without a flourishing opium industry.
“The current state of Afghanistan is collateral damage from the disaster of Iraq. We have spectacularly shot ourselves in the foot!”
If Iraq continues to be a disaster, and it certainly looks that way, surely the ‘collateral damage’ will continue unabated. Or, to put it another way, having shot ourselves in the foot once, the first thing we should do is to stop shooting.
I appreciate that there are differences on moral grounds between the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but on practical grounds it seems both are in severe difficulties. Menzies may well be right on the military situation, but the chances of winning over the populace seem minimal.
‘Our objective is much much more challenging than simply clamping a military occupation on it- aren’t we going for peace, democracy and so forth? Preferably without a flourishing opium industry.’
I wouldn’t agree with your assessment of our objective as more challenging than conquest. Surely the majority of a population, all other things being equal, are far more likely to embrace and encourage troops bringing the promise of self-determination than those intending to impose military rule indefinitely. The warlords of Helmand would be fighting anyone, anyone at all, who challenged their claim of a monopoly on the use of physical force. The difference between western armies and any local force for social justice is that those western armies have any chance of winning.
“the majority of a population, all other things being equal, are far more likely to embrace and encourage troops bringing the promise of self-determination than those intending to impose military rule indefinitely.”
Yeah, but if you intend to impose military rule indefinitely then you don’t care about the majority of a population or what they might happen to think. Which is why it is easier.
No, I’d disagree. It’s surely easier to win a conflict with some minority if the majority support you than if they don’t. Caring might occasionally be a barrier to the most pragmatic course of action in conflict with whoever you’re in conflict with. But to have a lot of the population helping you out rather than actively hindering you surely makes the job easier overall. Conquest is much less likely to coincide with the preferences of the majority of the people in a territory than whatever ill-defined aims we have in Afghanistan, surely?
“It’s surely easier to win a conflict with some minority if the majority support you than if they don’t.”
True. But what we are trying to do is harder, because it combines the necessity of military occupation with the attempt to convince the majority of the population of our good intentions, whilst simultaneously destroying the tradition of opium growing. Whilst you are right “all other things being equal”, I’m not sure that all other things are equal.
Owen. It’s a fair cop. I suppose what I really think is that whether all those other things are far enough from equal to make our position in Afghanistan totally untenable is a difficult question to which there is no obvious answer. It seems very silly for us to be debating an issue which relies on expert knowledge and very close aquaintance with the facts of the matter. I don’t know whether we should hang about in Afghanistan, but that we’re beating the Taleban does seem to be the prevalent expert opinion. That same article highlights the obvious opium issue, but does that outweigh the likely gratitude of many people who did not enjoy Taleban rule at all? I don’t know. Claiming that our enterprise is obviously doomed seems like a high level of silliness, in this case resting on an unsound argument from analogy.
To you, Will, I say that your demand for us to ‘please illuminate [you] as to how British involvement in the region differs so widely from its predecessors’ is unreasonable. If you want to argue from analogy the burden of proof falls on you to suggest that your analogy is relevantly similar. It seems very unlikely to me, but perhaps short of a detailed historical discussion all we’ll ever have to go on is our intuition.
You don’t need a detailed historical discussion, a quick outline will suffice to show that it was a very different situation. Britain’s nineteenth-century involvement in Afghanistan was part of the Great Game, with Britain and Russia competing for influence in central Asia. During the Anglo-Afghan Wars, the British were attempting to install a puppet government in Afghanistan, so that they wouldn’t have the expense of occupation, but would be able to control, above all, its foreign policy and could use Afghanistan as a buffer state to prevent the continued expansion of the sphere of influence of the Russian Empire towards what they really cared about: the Indian Raj. They had their garrisons massacred on several occasions, but it is perhaps misleading to say they were completely unsuccessful, as they installed Abdur Rahman Khan who at least prevented the Russians getting any further, and even gained a little territory.
Needless to say, this war was not fought
with the benefit of satellites, tanks, aircraft, troop helicopters, night-vision goggles, rocket launchers - whatever it is that both sides are using.
An argument can be made for the relevance of past wars, for sure, but if you are going to base a case on that it needs to be done properly, you can’t just say ‘the British Empire failed’ as if that is conclusive.
I guess we’ll just have to wait it out- would it be incredibly tasteless to open a book on the subject? A fiver says two years down the line it won’t have improved any…
The trouble with the prevailing expert opinion is that it is presumably the senior military opinion i.e. the strongest vested interest in portraying military operations as successful. Not that we know any better, of course we don’t. But I think there are some grounds for doubting the neutrality of military opinion.
I’ll add that the belief Matt seems to hold in our enjoyment of ground support against a despotic enemy who won’t grant the Afghan people self-determination, sounds rather lovely and noble but dubious. I’d ask does the cause of “democratisation” legitimise our intervention in Afghanistan? It is easy to start judging this conflict on ideals and principals but if the reality means a 5 year war zone to date, I’m prone to look sceptically upon the do-gooders who believe we can bring positive change to Afghanistan, or for that matter other Middle Eastern countries.
Don’t get me wrong Will; I’ve not said anything about whether it was a good idea to go to Afghanistan or not. All I dispute is your claim that it’s obvious that we should leave, by analogy to past failures or not.
Fair play. I agree my over-heated history degree might have summoned forth more comparison than was useful!