Simon Jenkins: Let Cameron hasten the end of our absurd Afghan war
[Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC.]
Senior ministers are meeting at Chequers today for an urgent review of policy on Afghanistan. This is good news. President Obama staged a similar review on taking office and came within an inch of withdrawing. Perhaps David Cameron could go that extra inch.
It is idle to pretend that Britain's 2006 expedition to bring Helmand under the control of the Kabul regime has anything but failed. General Sir David Richards was sent south four years ago by the then defence secretary, John Reid, with all the gung-ho recklessness of Gladstone's dispatch of Gordon to Khartoum. There was much nonsense about inkspots, hearts and minds, and "without a shot being fired". The British were openly contemptuous of American aerial bombardment and heavy-handedness.
This week, with 289 soldiers dead and hundreds maimed for life, the mission has had to be rescued by those same Americans. This repeats a similar six-year debacle in Iraq. The British army should undertake a complete reassessment of its counter-insurgency capacity. The Taliban remains in substantive control of all but a few population centres and the British force, already increased from 3,000 to 8,500, has had to be reinforced by 20,000 Americans under a US marine general. No amount of spin from embedded journalists and others can claim that "we are winning in Helmand". This was meant to be another Malaya and it has been another Cyprus.
The British are reportedly being sent north to Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar – which, after nine years of occupation, is still under de facto Taliban control. Billed as the "next big military offensive", this prospect is awful, jeopardising thousands of civilians lives. The city is under the leadership of Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. When all agree that "there is no military solution to this conflict", what is the point of thousands of British troops marching on Kandahar?
The coalition ministers who travelled to this strategic morass two weeks ago were in disarray. The new defence secretary, Liam Fox, asserted that his troops were not in Afghanistan "to bring an education policy to a broken 13th-century country". They were there to ensure, somehow, "that the people of Britain are not threatened". The development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, read out an opposing mission, that it was indeed Britain's duty to help "build a functioning state" in Afghanistan, by creating education and health services and finding people prosperity through jobs. Meanwhile, the foreign secretary, William Hague, chanted that he would not set "an artificial timetable for withdrawal", whatever that meant.
We have been told, over and again, that such much-heralded "final pushes", as against Sangin and Marjah, are the beginning of the end for the Taliban. Each is followed by a press barrage suggesting victory. With opinion polls reporting 77% of people rejecting the Afghan war, false reporting that may do some good to troop morale is no help to public comprehension.
The Chequers meeting must do two things...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Senior ministers are meeting at Chequers today for an urgent review of policy on Afghanistan. This is good news. President Obama staged a similar review on taking office and came within an inch of withdrawing. Perhaps David Cameron could go that extra inch.
It is idle to pretend that Britain's 2006 expedition to bring Helmand under the control of the Kabul regime has anything but failed. General Sir David Richards was sent south four years ago by the then defence secretary, John Reid, with all the gung-ho recklessness of Gladstone's dispatch of Gordon to Khartoum. There was much nonsense about inkspots, hearts and minds, and "without a shot being fired". The British were openly contemptuous of American aerial bombardment and heavy-handedness.
This week, with 289 soldiers dead and hundreds maimed for life, the mission has had to be rescued by those same Americans. This repeats a similar six-year debacle in Iraq. The British army should undertake a complete reassessment of its counter-insurgency capacity. The Taliban remains in substantive control of all but a few population centres and the British force, already increased from 3,000 to 8,500, has had to be reinforced by 20,000 Americans under a US marine general. No amount of spin from embedded journalists and others can claim that "we are winning in Helmand". This was meant to be another Malaya and it has been another Cyprus.
The British are reportedly being sent north to Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar – which, after nine years of occupation, is still under de facto Taliban control. Billed as the "next big military offensive", this prospect is awful, jeopardising thousands of civilians lives. The city is under the leadership of Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. When all agree that "there is no military solution to this conflict", what is the point of thousands of British troops marching on Kandahar?
The coalition ministers who travelled to this strategic morass two weeks ago were in disarray. The new defence secretary, Liam Fox, asserted that his troops were not in Afghanistan "to bring an education policy to a broken 13th-century country". They were there to ensure, somehow, "that the people of Britain are not threatened". The development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, read out an opposing mission, that it was indeed Britain's duty to help "build a functioning state" in Afghanistan, by creating education and health services and finding people prosperity through jobs. Meanwhile, the foreign secretary, William Hague, chanted that he would not set "an artificial timetable for withdrawal", whatever that meant.
We have been told, over and again, that such much-heralded "final pushes", as against Sangin and Marjah, are the beginning of the end for the Taliban. Each is followed by a press barrage suggesting victory. With opinion polls reporting 77% of people rejecting the Afghan war, false reporting that may do some good to troop morale is no help to public comprehension.
The Chequers meeting must do two things...