Nov 07 2009
Does the war in Afghanistan make us safe in the UK?
The Establishment’s view that we need to be fighting a war in Afghanistan to keep us safe is not shared by that many voters any more. Under pressure from public opinion and interviewers, the government now says that of course they need good border controls and anti terrorist surveillance here at home. They accept that we have home grown terrorists.
They go on to say that we need to fight in Afghanistan because some terrorists are trained there, and because the terrorist plotters in the UK often have links there. They link Afghanistan to Pakistan by calling the area the border badlands. Under questioning, they admit that most of the training and links are to the Pakistan side of the border, rather than the Afghanistan side. They seek to imply that the position in Pakistan would get worse if we removed troops from Afghanistan.
This argument will not wash. It is clearly not strong enough to impress the President himself, so he dithers over reinforcing his exposed positions instead of committing the personnel for the task. In so doing he undermines the idea that the allied troops will be in Afghanistan for the long haul.
The truth is the US and UK cannot commit sufficient troops to fight and win all of Afghanistan for allied control, and cannot keep enough troops there to garrison the whole vast country. As allied troops move on from village to village, so insurgents reappear in once captured territory. The rebels can use the presence of foreign troops to recruit more.
Surely a first step for the allies should be to cease fighting to control new territory, give what troops need to remain strong areas to live in, and use them to support the civil power and to pursue selective targets identified by the anti terrorist surveillance. At the same time much more work should go into the political side. Given the weakness of the central authority and the tribal and local nature of power in Afghanistan, maybe the attention of the allies should turn to helping Afghanistan create stronger local government. If the main worry is the Pakistan border, maybe that is where we should concentrate efforts, and work closely with the Pakistan forces who should conduct what warfare needs waging.
If the Establishment is determined to stay, it needs to define its tasks more precisely, and then put in the trained personnel and equipment necessary to carry them out. Lecturing the Afghan President on how he should run a western style democracy is not going to work, and leads people to wonder how committed the PM and the President are to the current regime.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
The fact of the matter is, the more the Afghan President ties himself to Western powers, either Politically or for support, the more he seems to be loathed by his own population and current enemies.
Your thoughts have some merit with regard to squeezing the Taliban between our own troops in the border regions of Afghanistan and that of Pakistan, but the Taliban are not a conventional army, they will find a way to infiltrate through other routes.
The fact of the matter is you will need millions of troops to defend Afghanistan in a conventional way due to its sheer size. Such a force would then look like a force of occupation, and as such would loose most of the limited support it has from the existing population.
The way forward must be for the Afghan people to decide what exactly they want, and if its tribal leadership, then so be it.
We cannot forever try to act as the worlds policeman when the UN cannot or will not act, its too expensive in both monitary and human life terms, and is also not helping in our relations in dealing with other many other countries who are growing more anti UK as they seem to think we are acting like some sort of a colonial power again.
Yes if asked, we should help them train troops and policeman, but we should not be in the front line full stop.
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Brown’s speech, scheduled at the last minute, was meant to clarify the need for our troops to remain in Afghanistan. Normally with Brown’s speeches a few moments consideration renders them useless; this was no different. He claimed that the presence of our troops was essential to protect us from terrorism and then went on to say “I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption”. He has been doing the latter for years but how can he now say that the troops are essential for our security and at the same time threaten withdrawal if Karzai doesn’t do as he is told? The truth is that Brown is awaiting instructions from Obama and will obediently carry them out. Just what is planned for Pakistan, or may even be happening already, is something that the public will learn at a much later date.
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You’ve written the best summary that I’ve read on the Afghan campaign.
I’m sure that Al Qaeda cells don’t all congregate in Afghanistan to make a “frontline” against our troops.
As to Mr Brown’s call for President Karzai to eliminate corruption, or “we won’t help hint” how can Karzai achieve this?
To overcome an entire culture at the wave of a wand. That’s one huge goal to set. The government’s influence in the outlying regions is virtually nil.
If we are going to carry out our declared aims in Afghanistan then we are going to have to put in massive resources and aid… at least Iraq had the benefit of oil revenues
Maybe the 9/11 terrorists trained in Afghan camps, but they originated from Saudi and Egypt…
While our frontline is in Afghanistan, what plots are forming in Sudan, Yemen…Somalia? I subscribe to the belief that most Afghans couldn’t find the UK on a map.
A defence minister said that it was necessary for our troops to conduct foot patrols to win “Hearts and minds” and “Reassure locals” this seems barmy to me…or a massive in balance in risk reward. We patrolled Ulster like this for years without winning hearts and minds.
As you indicate we should be able to carry out pin point attacks from secure bases.
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Unwise to make too many assumptions about the US attack but, if it turns out this guy was acting alone & motivated partly by pangs due to being sent to Afghanistan (& partly by not getting laid/having a pointless job like most of these regular shooting the US have) then being in Afghanistan is hardly preventing it.
The obvious solution would be to not invite (people who might disagree with our way of life as) immigrants but since this is part of Labour’s policy of “electing a new people” ending it would be not nearly as acceptable as dead soldiers.
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Do we really want Karzai to behave like Brown?
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Sorry to disagree John, but we just get the hell out of hell! Then we ’sort out’ those that try to undermine our society and kick them out!
Oh and to do that we get out of the EU and all their stupid ideas on human rights, equality, climate change and imposition of their political will!
Oh and get rid of your leader, who is no more ‘conservative’ than is Gordon Brown!
It would also help if MPs put country before party, especially when it is so obvious that the party is barking mad!
You and the likes of BIll Cash, Douglas Carswell etc have the opportunity to lead here, so one can but hope you will all grasp the nettle!
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The key danger lies in Pakistan. Were it to fall to radical Islam the west would find itself confronted by a nuclear threat every bit as dangerous as the one soon to be posed by Iran. Worse, the particular variety of radical Islam found in Pakistan has a significant number of adherents living in Britain. Instead of trying to turn the Afghans into Swedes, therefore – which seems to be the ultimate aim of this “liberal” war – we should concentrate on propping up the Pakistani state with money, equipment and advice. Interventions in Afghanistan, meanwhile, should take place largely from the air. All moneys saved by retreating from this bloated, purposeless, futile mission should be funnelled into counter terrorism, for the real threats to our society today – and they are truly mortal – can be cooked up as easily in the midlands as in the middle east.
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What a shame you are not in charge Mr Redwood!
We won an insurgency in Malaya. How did we do it? According to Mao, the terrorists swim in the sea of the people. We corralled the people they were swimming in – the Chinese peasantry – in fortified villages controlled by us. We then killed the terrorists by hunting them down in the jungles outside the villages. Perhaps someone should send Brown and Obama a history of the campaign in Malaya.
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It should perhaps not be a surprise that when the Iranians suffered a terrorist bomb in Pishin, Sistan-Baluchistan province a few days ago they accused Britain in the bordering province of Helmand, Afghanistan of providing support to Jundullah, the terrorist organisation responsible. Coalition forces have been occupying Iraq on the other side of Iran, while Western navies patrol off her southern coasts. Iran threatens to go nuclear.
US Gen McChrystal has already made it clear that he wants his troop surge to fight in Waziristan, Pakistan. In Pakistan itself, the government has largely lost control of the Swat valley, not too far from Islamabad, and radical forces threaten to capture a nuclear bomb at some point. For now, radical Islam is concerned to capture Pakistan in a civil war: making dhimmis of us can wait until immigration and comparative birth rates have worked some more. Pakistan must decide as a sovereign nation whether it wants the assistance of foreign troops – and it needs to be open about the decision, as do any governments that take up the call, rather than relying on the kind of secret mission creep that saw the Vietnam War expand into Laos and Cambodia.
None of this is in Afghanistan, which at best is looking like a forward base for dealing with problems in adjoining countries, although the mountainous geography isn’t ideal for that purpose. In particular, Afghanistan poses no nuclear threat – not even of a smuggled suitcase bomb.
Of course, we have almost no handle on terrorists coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan, since their visas are issued almost automatically by post by the commercial organisation delegated to handle them employing mainly South Asian staff from the safety of Dubai, never once seen by a British consular official. If we end up with EU embassies we will lose even that degree of control, though it has to be admitted that at least at the moment e.g. the French do insist on visa applications in person. It is a strange paradox to be arguing that the EU would give us better immigration control!
The lack of control and the large numbers of visas granted does suggest that the government is not concerned about the risk of terrorists coming from Afghanistan/Pakistan, perhaps because Al Qaeda has now moved on elsewhere, or perhaps because it knows that home grown terrorists can take a training holiday anywhere – even the Lake District. They seek to face two ways on the issue, and lack (or don’t present) the true facts. Again I ask, would we ever have treated the Soviet Union this way? Do government hope our own terrorists will visit and be killed by US or Pakistani troops, rather than on the streets of Bradford, Burnley and Luton in bungled armed police operations?
When you recently posted on Afghanistan, I linked to Rory Stewart’s incisive and cogent analysis. It is good to see it gaining some traction, if not total acceptance. Afghanistan really isn’t the issue: there are much nastier problems to consider to left and right. Options for handling those problems aren’t greatly enhanced by a presence in Afghanistan, and in fact are probably hindered by it.
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I think your local government idea is the way to go, with the accent on local. Western politicians should start reading some history books.
They appear to be having trouble understanding the difference between Peasants and Bedouins; extended family peasant villages where land ownership is cherished; and, Bedouin tribes where water and pasture is imperative for their animals, regardless of who owns the land it’s on; and, best of luck if a peasant gets in their way. The trouble is westerners have spent decades buggering up the system.
Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the Emirates book. Get all the peasant village heads of family and the Bedouin tribal leaders; and their sons, on an Afghan national committee for land management.
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Why are we really there ?
That is the question and gives us our answer as to whether we SHOULD be there.
Fine to punish the Taliban for harbouring Al Qaeda post 9/11 but to try and change a whole country ?
What has followed – despite all denials – is a holy war.
The demented Bush and the demented Blair knelt side-by-side and prayed. Then they embarked on a crusade.
(goes on to blame Christianity for the war)
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The Afghan factor causing the most misery in Great Britain is the one troops aren’t allowed to touch – the poppy crop. We should either buy it at more than drugs-barons would give the farmers and turn it into pharmaceutical opiates, or drop Agent Orange or some other weedkiller on it.
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The answer to the question is “as safe as our porous borders”.
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Well said, an intelligent, and if I may, bravely stated post.
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Pipelines & poppy’s ………..Geo-political warfare…….Might have worked in the 19Th cenrty, has NO purpose in the 21st!
If ever you look like “Winning” China/Russia would give out the required Surface-to-air hardware to finish it.
Uk/US has bankupted themselves on these ” (word left out)projects”……..How long till the surpport given to stop the £ crashing is withdrawn?
When “Someone” wants to sell me the motorway network i already own !
Mike
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At least the EU might take away our ability to wage stupid wars such as the one in Afghanistan.
A letter which I read on the Lisbon Treaty recently:
“The Tories are promising ‘referendum’ guarantee’ on all future transfers of power to Brussels. If a future government tries to transfer further competences from Britain to the EU, a national referendum would be required by law before it could be ratified. Have they not read the Treaty of Lisbon ?
Article 47 gives the EU as a whole a legal personality, so the EU itself can ’speak with one voice’ to ratify any future treaties on behalf af all 27 countryies.. This includes the power to go to war.
In the UK, to date, for many things, including the decision to fight wars or to ratify treaties, our Government uses the Royal Prerogative on behalf of the British Crown.
The power of the Crown is held in trust by the executive and passed on to the next government. Article 47 of the Lisbon Treaty means our Government has handed over the Royal Prerogative to foreigners.
Yet the power fo the British Crown is the ultimate authority – or sovereignty – behind parliament, so it is not in the power of the Government to give away the Royal Prerogative to anyone – and certainly not foreigners.
By this action, not only our Government, but also the Crown, has been made subservient to the EU.
EU treaties are designed to be permanent, so given that the EU is planning for the next 50 years, the gift of the Royal Prerogative is one which cannot be taken back.
I believe this gift was not in the power of Ministers and that they could, at a future date, be held guilty of sedition against the state.
Is that clear enough for the Tories ?”
The Tory party is going to lose massively to UKIP because of this.
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And regarding me ‘blaming Christianity for the war’ at 12.55 this is not quite what I said.
Those who made the decision to wage this war were devout Christians. There is a difference.
Blair answers to no other than God himself. He justifies every of his actions as being for a greater good.
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No it doesn’t make us safer for while we are trying to stem the flow of terrorists from AfPac, the British establishment are tying to build up a resvoir of a threat from Somalia by building up the numbers from the nationality here!
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Soldiers, like my brother, are staggeringly simple people.
You tell them, simply, what you need them to do. Then you LEAD them from the front like Henry V in Shakespeare.
Least of all, do you go round asking if their wives/mothers are keen that they go out and get killed in battle. (In the Iliad it is the effete, golden uniformed Paris who stays in the citadel. Lots of golden uniforms in Kabul on EU soldiers, which, of course, is going to make the EU High Representative a bit of a laugh.)
Excellent soldiers need inspiring. They cannot really do things that we take for granted: NHS, elections, education, policing, philosophy, religion, shopping malls, even safe roads. For those, you need civilians.
All soldiers can really do is frighten/kill people.
At the moment, Obama and Mr Brown seem to have absolutely no experience of military life and leadership. One is a professional socialist politician and the other is an intellectual University Prof. Neither has any experience of army life and neither is likely to have any in the near future.
Hence the fatal drift in a country where militarism is a sacred duty and a professional way of life to every red blooded Afghani.
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I don’t think us being there makes us any less safe than ever. On my own blog I had this to say:
Blair and Brown have sacrificed our troops for their own hubris and to be seen to be world statesmen. They are without shame.
If the Taliban would have handed over Bin Laden, they would still now be in power, and the training camps would still exist, and the people would still be under their yoke. I reject those reasons because of this and believe Blair and Brown did send our troops there for their own reasons, thinking there would be a quick fight; they were wrong and hundreds of our troops are paying the price.
And I believe it too. These men, and Labour in general, are totally without shame and without any real experience of the world, so will make massive mistake like this time and again. Has Blair or Brown, or indeed the Government in general, been to honour the troops as they are repatriated, either dead or wounded? No they have not, and it is not enough to claim you can’t for one and not others, because the obvious answer is then to do for others too.
Labour are without shame and have not made us one jot safer.
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There are two points I would like to make in response to your excellent article. Firstly this is supposed to be a Nato mission which we are supporting. I have not seen any recent comments from them or our partners on this matter. This would as big a calamity for them as Mr Brown is saying it would be for us.
Secondly, you may have seen Matthew Paris’s article today calling on parliament to exert itself in this matter against the establishment view. I think it is about time that MPs in general tried to re-establish their reasons for being there as our representatives rather than lobby fodder. This would also help to repair the ongoing damage from “expenses”. This should have happened even more so in regard to the Lisbon Treaty as a check on the Government for giving away their powers to Europe without a mandate from the people. These are fundamental principles of having an elected parliaiment.
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This absurd idea, that we are protecting the UK by our prescence in Afghanistan, is merely a cover used by a discredited and utterly deceitful politician ( or politicians in general) to stop the electorate asking what part mass immigration has played in landing thousands and thousands of potential and aspiring terroists into our land. Of course this government is particulary irresponsible and culpable ( left out long critique of governments of last 40 years for allowing so much inward migration-ed)Who will these politicians, and their apologists amongst the great and good, blame when we turn and demand and end to this process, and it all gets very fraught…
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I was under the impression that the troops there already weren’t fighting for ‘new territory’? Admittedly I don’t know as much about this as an MP must, I’ve read a few memoirs of troops who have served there as well as a couple of books by historians, but the impression I’ve been given is much the same as happened in Vietnam. Troops go out into Indian country, supported by helicopters and AFV’s, strike at their target, then retreat back to base. These operations are also ’supported’ by local forces.
In the meantime, other troops are ‘training’ these local forces to eventually take over control but unlike our armed forces they don’t appear to believe in the ideal they are fighting for but simply in it for the buck, if the memoirs I’ve read are to be believed most of the police are high on drugs and whenever they receive military hardware from NATO are happy to sell / give it to the insurgents at the first opportunity – whether they are motivated by money, trying to save their skin from reprisals, are sympathetic to their countrymen rather than the infidel occupiers or simply want an easy life I have no idea.
It really is very difficult to know what to do. The battle for hearts and minds can’t (and won’t) be won, the local population don’t seem to have the inclination to fight their fellow countrymen who take a belligirent attitude to us.
It’s easy to say ‘Train the locals then get out’ and I’m sure Brown & Obama know this and would like nothing better but, unfortunately, Afghanistan is a very long way from that happening.
As far as I can make out we either cut our losses and accept the whole thing is a failure a la Vietnam or we stick it out for years and hope exposure to Western values and freedoms will leave an imprint on the younger generation that they will be willing to stand up for.
Reply: Until recently our troops have been winning new territory. Now the argument is about whether to retain all the bases we have or not.
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Define ‘The Establishment’. How many are there? 20? 30? Possibly as many as 50?
That some may agree with ‘The Establishment’ is unsurprising, after all, some have indicated that they will vote Labour at the next election. What is so disturbing is the fact that ‘The Establishment’ has been unwilling or unable to provide a real and detailed explanation as to the rationale.
It’s no good simply repeating the mantras, what’s needed is a sound philosophical base for this ‘policy’. Of course, we will not see it, or, if we do, it will be based on fictions such as WMD.
Already we are no longer fighting Al Qaeda, we are now fighting the Taleban. Since when were these two separate entities unified? If our enemies can be so cynically ‘morphed’ by this Government there will be no victory, no end to war, no end to the deaths and injuries sustained of the fine young men and women of our armed forces.
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John
As goes the Dollar………so does the pound.
I wonder if “DC” has any idea the nightmare that awaits him in Downing st?
Mike
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The argument about Pakistan exposes the stupidity of the war in Afghanistan. The insurgents moved into Pakistan because of the Allied intervention in Afghanistan. The war has destabilised Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. Just one of the ways in which this war has undermined our national interest.
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Frugal Dougal,
We wouldn’t have to drop anything on anyone, if we made it legal for people in this country to gow their own, for their own consumption.
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As someone has already pointed out, the ‘it’s to make Britain safe’ statement fails at the first hurdle since we have an open border policy, therefore we are NOT there to make Britain safe.
Also, as someone else pointed out, there has been no attempt to stop drugs entering the UK or indeed Europe, indeed we are in worse situation now than before, with Kosovo, Macedonia.
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t we the British flood china with drugs in order to defeat them, and is the same now being done to us.
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Towards the end of the Soviet Unions folly into Afghanistan they where secretly using nuclear shells in the mountains and in Chechnya carpet bombing of cities with vacuum bombs or Daisy cutters if you like, still could not win.
Withdraw all forces and stop the Saudi’s from sending cash by financially crippling them by using the banking system, The western world does have control of this. Where do you think pays for all the thirty grand Toyota Pick ups come from that all these Afghans drive around in? Rich Saudi benefactors fighting Jihad by proxy, that’s who, and we don’t hear much about anyone tackling them. This is a country that we see as allies, but are so backward that woman are not allowed to drive cars. Some connection to the war on terror? It’s the elephant in the room.
Pay the Warlords who are on our side this week to do the fighting for us. Instead of sending a multi million pound cruise missile, send an ambassador with a case of Gold sovereigns. The only way to ever control Afghanistan is to use other Afghans and Pakistanis. Worked rather well in India with an army of about a hundred thousand controlling a population of more than ten million. In more recent times Stalin that master of the double bluff controlled the Caucuses by the same means. Mass deportation to Siberia also helped it has to be said.
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As a small addendum to several posts I have made on the visa issue for Afghanistan and Pakistan, I point to this article in the Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6907991.ece
which reveals that the government indeed did not care to protect us from rogues.
I trust that now there is proof positive of this, that rather than try to brush the issue under the carpet there will be a concerted policy from the next government to handle the issues.
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[...] Redwood on his excellent blog on Saturday posed a very interesting question: “Does the war in Afghanistan make us safe in the UK?” The Parallax Brief thought he didn’t flesh out his argument enough, or take it to its [...]
Is in not true that most Islamic terrorists in UK are home grown and acquire most of their bomb making info from the Internet? Is it also not true that the number of dead soldiers comfortably exceeds the number of UK citizens killed by terrorism? You have the answer to your question.
I thought that the original reason for going into Afghanistan was to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his associates. They are being protected by the Taliban, who are Pushtan located either side of the Afghan/Pakistan border. Joint Anglo-Pakistan intelligence may be possible and reveal his location (assuming he is still alive).
The most effective counter-terror measures are based on direct reprisal on the terrorists in person. President Reagan stopped Libyan terrorism by making Gadaffi realise that he and his family were personally at risk. Peace in Northern Ireland was not brought about by the diplomacy of Major, Blair and Mitchell, but because Loyalist gangs took out 2 republicans for every unionist that the IRA killed, and were prepared if need be to carry on doing it indefinitely.
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