Afghan Fables

“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 7^th, 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