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US general fails to provide any clarity about the end result of nine years of continuous warfare
Time and reflection are supposed to induce a sense of clarity in warfare. Not in Afghanistan, which has now been running longer than the second world war, and certainly not this week.On Wednesday the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, warned that they had until the end of the year to achieve a strategic breakthrough before public support in Britain and America would crack. Yesterday the commander of US and Nato forces, General Stanley McChrystal, said he needed more time to secure control of Kandahar, the Taliban's heartland in southern Afghanistan. Is the impetus provided by the surge of US troops, triple that of the Iraq war, speeding up or slowing down?
The US general who had earlier this year boasted that he had "government in a box" ready to unpack when his forces stormed into Marjah, a rural heartland of Helmand, was now having second thoughts about the prospect of repeating the experience on a much larger scale in Kandahar: "As we did it, we found that it's even more complex than we thought, and so we need to educate ourself from that and do it even better in Kandahar." Life is indeed a learning experience, but the general appeared not to be reading the central message emblazoned in flashing neon lights ever since the first foreign troops arrived in southern Afghanistan. For he went on to say that he wanted to make sure local leaders were "on board" before launching the Kandahar offensive "“ sorry, that should read operation: "We really want the people to understand and literally pull the operation towards them, as opposed to feel as though they are being forced with something they did not want." What, like an invading force of highly armed foreign troops?
Nor was there any clarity to be found about the end result of nine years of continuous warfare. On his first visit as prime minister to Kabul yesterday David Cameron said the public needed to see "real, noticeable and marked" results. But US central command describe things differently. They talk not of victory, or success, but more modestly of progress. Gen McChrystal himself talks of the "rising tide of security". Politicians who send troops into battle should be singing from the same hymn sheet as the generals who command them. After this length of time, there should be a consensus of what they are trying to achieve. Instead, we are treated to a cacophony of people trying to talk over each other. While Mr Cameron was saying in Kabul that Britain and the US needed to move "further and faster" in stabilising the country, visiting US generals in London and Brussels were saying the opposite: nearer and slower.
These tortured phrases are revealing, and the gap between the narrative as generals tell it and the war as it is experienced by the Afghans themselves in Helmand is showing no signs of narrowing in the ninth full year of our involvement. One way to measure this gap is to listen to a popular Afghan conspiracy theory doing the rounds in Helmand at the moment: it is that British forces are deliberately fouling up the government of Helmand in retaliation for having suffered one of the worst defeats in their history at the battle of Maiwand in the neighbouring province of Kandahar. This took place on 27 July 1880 during the second Anglo-Afghan war, but memories in this part of the world are longer than ours. Maiwand has gone down in the collective Afghan memory as Agincourt, Waterloo and El Alamein combined.
The comparison of Queen Victoria's Grenadiers to David Cameron's Royal Marine commandos may seem deranged to modern ears. It is nonetheless instructive. It should instil caution into generals and civilian planners who think they are building anything remotely durable in the areas that they are clearing and holding. The most important places these wars are fought are not in the mud huts of Helmand but in the minds of their owners.
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11 Jun 2010, 12:35AM
The US general who had earlier this year boasted that he had "government in a box" ready to unpack when his forces stormed into Marjah, a rural heartland of Helmand,
And recall that Marjah was originally touted as a bustling urban centre of 80,000 or more before it was revealed that it was in fact a loose grouping of farms and houses. It was there ISAF would battle "400 - 1,000" Taliban who were "holed up" in this teeming metropolis.
ON the first day of operations 12 civilians killed, 5 of them children. Within 2 weeks a total of 28 civilians dead.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50581
11 Jun 2010, 1:16AM
11 Jun 2010, 1:43AM
Guiteau
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