“You
have the watches, but we have the time”
Taliban commander
to Canadian former Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier
In an article for The Times on March 7th, entitled “Our Afghanistan heroes
died for nothing”, respected columnist Matthew Parris placed much of the
responsibility for what he believes to have been British hubris in Afghanistan squarely
on Britain’s deployed military commanders. Parris was responding to a letter,
also in The Times, from the same
military commanders expressing concern that a hastily agreed peace deal between
the Americans and the Taliban could compromise the Afghan people, the many
gains they have made over the past nineteen years, and again risk Afghanistan
becoming a base for terrorism. The right of Parris to write what he thinks is
his stock in trade and a core freedom in a free society. However, his influence
and standing also imposes upon him a particular responsibility to be fair and
factually correct. On this occasion Parris failed both those tests.
Fairness and Fact
British military operations in Afghanistan
must be seen against the backdrop of then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s concept
of liberal humanitarianism and the post-911 Global War on Terror. Indeed, Britain’s support for the US-led
Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) was a politically-driven merger of the two agreed to by all Allied
countries, many of which committed forces; Britain being prominent among
them.
Then General Sir David Richards, now Lord
Richards of Hurstmonceux, one time commander of ISAF, comes in for particular and
unfair criticism. First, it was not General Richards who used the phrase, “use
it or lose it’, implying a gung-ho disregard for reality. Rather, Richards fought
hard with London to secure the vital additional forces and resources which he
counselled were critical for the Helmand campaign. Second, Richards allegedly
told then US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, that not only was the
overall campaign under-resourced, but that the coalition was failing to meet
the expectations of the Afghan people.
Rumsfeld’s reply was “I don’t agree general, move on”. Third, to quote US General Dan McNeil’s
description of the British strategy in Helmand as “dysfunctional” and its
reconstruction effort as “fraudulent nonsense” is profoundly misleading. Some
US commanders viewed non-American efforts through a ‘not invented here’ prism.
General McNeil succeeded Richards as COMISAF and was dismissive of many of his
predecessor’s innovations. Fourth, many
of the in-country challenges faced by the deployed commanders were caused by political
box-ticking in London.
The most stinging criticism by Parris is that
Britain’s generals wish to continue fighting a failed campaign. This is plain wrong. Richards and other
commanders repeatedly called for a peace deal with the Taliban. However, for such a deal to succeed it had to
be driven by progress in Afghanistan rather than electoral calculations in
Washington. 2020?
Ends, ways and means?
Matthew Parris is right to highlight the
tensions between the ends, ways and means of the British campaign in
Afghanistan, and the many lessons that need to be learned. He is wrong to deflect
responsibility from London onto Britain’s deployed military commanders for what
he now perceives to have been a failed campaign in Afghanistan. First, only time will tell whether the campaign
was a failure. Second, responsibility for any such campaign must ultimately fall
on those who commissioned it. Yes, the costs associated with buying military
equipment off-the-shelf in the form of urgent operational requirements was
exorbitant. Yes, there were failures on the ground and profound mistakes were
made. However, Afghanistan is a complex place, Britain was subject to policy and
strategy made elsewhere, and many of the problems faced were the result of defence
planning assumptions in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review. Put simply, Britain’s
political leaders failed to adequately plan for the attrition of a
long-campaign at a high-level of operational intensity in a complex place far
from home, let alone two - Iraq.
Therefore, to suggest that the 500 British
servicemen and women who died and the 4500 who were wounded, many of them
grievously, did so for nothing is to demean them and the force they were proud
to serve. As for Richards, three
characteristics defined his leadership – humanity, support for the well-being
of the Afghan people, and a desire to get the campaign over as quickly and as
effectively as possible so that the men and women under his command could
return home.
“You have the watches, but we have the
time”
As that Taliban commander said, “You have
the watches, but we have the time”. The
inference being that for all the technology and capability Western powers
brought to Afghanistan, ultimately a lack of strategic patience would ultimately
defeat the coalition. Hopefully, I am wrong. It would not be a first and I can
only hope Afghanistan find relief from the extremists, warlords and strategic
predators that border it. Forgive my
cynicism, but I am not hopeful.
As for Britain, Parris betrays the
thinking that informs much of Britain’s contemporary elite. For him, Little
Britain is a small country lost in a post-imperial fantasy about imagined
power. His notion of the British ‘interest’ is for a still significant
regional-strategic power to withdraw onto its nuclear-armed island and leave
dealing with danger to others. Nothing would make the world more dangerous,
more quickly than such strategic irresponsibility.
Julian Lindley-French
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