By Peter Oborne
23 Oct 2014
Leaving Afghanistan may mark the moment Britain lost her influence as a global military power
3rd Bn The Parachute Regiment mount an operation by Chinook helicopter in the Mizan district of Zabul in southern Afghanistan Photo: Christopher Pledger/The Telegraph
Britain’s 13-year stay in Afghanistan is almost over. Already, the British military presence is essentially confined to one base, Camp Bastion. Within a few weeks we will have gone for good. The courage and fighting spirit displayed by our servicemen and women has been beyond praise and a matter of permanent national pride. Some 453 soldiers have died, while many hundreds of others have lost limbs or been mutilated in other life-changing ways. They will always carry Afghanistan with them.
Maybe this heroism and blood sacrifice has held the rest of us back from analysing our Afghan engagement. By contrast, the Iraq war has already been the subject of four official investigations. The fifth and longest such study, the Chilcot Inquiry, now looks almost certain to be published early in the new year, and thus before the next general election.
There are some sound reasons for this contrast. The case for invasion in Iraq was quickly tainted by claims of lying and fabrication, augmented by doubts about the integrity of the government information machine. There have been far fewer accusations of bad faith in Afghanistan. In addition, voters have tended to see Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, as a relatively virtuous conflict.
Nevertheless there are important questions that now scream to be asked. These do not, as a whole, concern the original invasion of Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the twin towers in 2001. This was a brilliant and cleanly executed operation. The questions concern what followed.
Specifically, why was there no serious attempt to rebuild Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban? This failure created the power vacuum that British forces sought to fill when they took charge in Helmand five years later. In retrospect, it is obvious that neither the politicians nor the generals who reported to them knew what they were doing. Britain had no serious knowledge or understanding of southern Afghanistan. As a result, we were blind to the difficulties which we were about to confront, and did not send in nearly enough troops.
This fundamental ignorance was well expressed when John Reid, as defence secretary, notoriously stated that Britain’s involvement in Helmand was about reconstruction and that he would be happy if we left without firing a shot.
Britain started out with an “inkspot” strategy. We hoped to concentrate our efforts in a tiny area between Camp Bastion and the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. This was doomed to failure and soon we were sucked into the problems of the entire province, meaning that British forces were far too thinly spread, and became targets.
This weekend, Afghanistan: The Lion’s Last Roar, a series of BBC films, will break the culture of relative silence that has surrounded the military presence in Afghanistan. I have had a preview of this fascinating and complex study, which exposes a great deal of the muddled thinking that fatally undermined the decision to send troops to Helmand.
The film establishes that as early as 2004, the British presence in Afghanistan had surprisingly little to do with what was going on within the country itself. Our presence there was determined by powerful external considerations.
The first of these was the Iraq war, which by 2006 the British military detested. Our troops were bogged down and surrounded in Basra, and the generals wanted an escape route. The politicians, however, were determined to maintain the visceral British partnership with the US – the mountains of Afghanistan appeared to offer a far more romantic situation than the urban squalor of Iraq.
A second consideration was even more significant. British generals were terrified of budget cuts. In their quest to avert them, they needed to prove to politicians that the Army was useful. The BBC film strongly suggests that senior military figures may have played down the risks of the Helmand entanglement as a result.
One crucial piece of evidence concerns the small reconnaissance team that was sent into Helmand ahead of the main body of troops. The BBC obtained an interview with the official in charge, Mark Etherington, who tells viewers: “We found a tremendously backwards province… largely lawless, corruption was endemic. The chief of police was illiterate, and I seem to remember the director of education was also illiterate. There was a single tarmac road, the areas were vast, it was clearly an extremely challenging environment.”
After two weeks there, Mr Etherington bleakly concluded that the British objectives of establishing security, good governance and economic regeneration “were not going to be substantially possible”. But this warning was ignored. He suggests this was because the British Army didn’t want to listen. He recalls being told by one officer: “Don’t raise too many issues, or they won’t let us come.”
This view is confirmed by Ed Butler, former head of the SAS, who commanded British forces in Helmand: “My view was that the train had already left the station.” General David Richards, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in 2006 and later Chief of the Defence Staff, remembers that: “We were actually hoping for the best and planning for the best.”
To sum up: British forces were ill-equipped, underprepared and, at the most senior strategic level, atrociously led. The men themselves were nevertheless brave as lions. The conflict in Helmand will be remembered for centuries as a shining example of astonishing heroism combined with pointless sacrifice.
The province is now formally under the control of the Afghan army (ANA). Those who have been there recently, though, tell me that “the ANA are in charge during the day, but the Taliban are in control during the night.”
It is doubtful that British generals bear all the blame. Neither Tony Blair nor John Reid, defence secretary when the deployment was made, agreed to be interviewed for the BBC programme. I suspect they were very sensible.
Mr Blair’s wars, which have dominated the first decade of this century, have collectively been a disaster. They even failed in their key strategic objective of maintaining our alliance with America. Basra and Helmand have caused the United States to lose faith in the capability of the British Army.
It may very well be that historians will look back on Helmand and conclude that it marked the moment when Britain’s ability to act as a global military power came to an end. They will marvel, too, at the stoicism, patience, resource and raw courage of ordinary British soldiers, doing their best in the face of appalling odds.
Let’s always remember those who have died and let’s always acknowledge the terrible scars, both mental and physical, which must be borne by those who have survived.
Let’s also remember the Afghans themselves, so many of whom have been entirely innocent victims of the dreadful conflict of the past 13 years. Have we made their lives better? It is still impossible to say
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