Fitaloon at MicroShaft

Today in Afghanistan the UK, along with it’s allies, is fighting a a war against the Taliban Insurgents. It’s a war that has been ongoing  since  7th October 2001 when Operation “Enduring Freedom” was launched by the United States with the United Kingdom, and NATO-led, UN authorized ISAF in response to the September 11 attacks. The stated aim of the invasion was to find the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al-Qaeda members and put them on trial, to destroy the whole organization of al-Qaeda, and to remove the Taliban regime which supported and gave safe harbour to al-Qaeda.

It is important to note that there were, and even now are,  two military operations in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is a United States combat operation involving some coalition partners and currently operating primarily in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistan border. Approximately 28,300 U.S. troops are in OEF. The second operation is the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was established by the UN Security Council at the end of December 2001 to secure Kabul and the surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003. By January 12, 2009, ISAF had around 55,100 troops from 41 countries, with NATO members providing the core of the force. The United States has approximately 23,300 troops in ISAF and the UK has currently about 9,000 mainly based in the Helmland area. ISAF is also being backed by the 90,000 troops of the Afghan National Army and 80,000 Afghan policemen. Ranged against them are the Taliban whose numbers at any one time are unlikely to exceed around 10,000 of which possibly 2-3,000 are fully trained Insurgents, of which perhaps 2-300 are foreign based fighters often bringing considerable skills to the Taliban.

So what’s that told us. Basically that the combined forces that can be turned on the Taliban is large and would be able to cope easily with the forces of the Taliban if this was a straightforward war. We also know that the UK’s original straightforward role was as part of ISAF ensuring  the security of Afghanistan rather than as a force to attack the Taliban.

Unfortunately we are not fighting a straightforward war, where victory in a few battles or operations mean that you have defeated the enemy, and you can disperse your forces and go home. We are instead, fighting a counter Insurgency war, a war where your enemy can disappear within seconds, often hidden by a frightened or supportive local population,  and the might of your forces can mean little.

This is where much of the past near 8 years has been wasted, we have been fighting a mainly military war rather than a mainly political war. The victories we have had, like regaining control of Kabul, are hollow as this has been more a case of the Taliban retreating to safer havens ready to strike back when the time was right for them. It is the age old problem of having achieved one objective and not had further realistic or even possible objectives. Little or no thought had been put into what was required to fill in the vacuum left by the departure of the Taliban. A vague objective of destroying the Taliban and putting the leaders on trial was not going to be fulfilled as they disappeared from view and retreated to the many and various hidey-holes available to them, both locally and further afield.

For the period 2002 -2005 the situation in Afghanistan was relatively quiet (I use the term loosely) as we searched for the leaders of the Taliban who had effectively disappeared. They were biding their time and training new recruits, particularly those who had suffered at the hands of the various allied forces in Afghanistan, or who had lost power as the allies gave power to rival factions in a disputed area. They were also reorganising, setting up small cells of 50 or so fighters to attack and harass outposts and small convoys, before splitting up and disappearing typically back across the border to Pakistan to their training camps. This was a time of phoney war where the West’s attention was concentrated on Iraq. Instead of helping to build up Afghanistan as a nation and rebuilding the infrastructure we forgot about it as a possible source of danger. Instead we started to create new and “improved” objectives for Afghanistan, ones where we wanted to impose a western like civilisation on one of the poorest nations in the world.

Since 2006 though the war has rapidly  taken off as more and more of the resurgent Taliban are on the attack, harassing the troops and aid workers and inflicting casualties and then slinking off. They also have insinuated themselves with the local population by a variety of means, in particular encouraging the poppy crop that helps fund al-Qaeda.

This then seems like just another Insurgent war, where a small number of enemy combatants take on the might of their enemy by using any and all forms of attack without regard for the effect on the bystanders. In the past most of the Insurgent wars fought by NATO or the US have been against a Communist foe, a foe driven by ideology rather than a  religious fervour. Now though we have an Insurgent war driven by a religious fervour, Jihadists driven by a belief in the one true way.

This makes the war so much harder to fight, we are fighting a foe who has little or no regard for human life, either it’s own, its enemy or those who are mere bystanders. Let us remember that only once has an insurgent war been won against a Communist foe and that was over 50 years ago in Malaya. Now we have a foe who has even stronger reason to fight, and fight to the bitter end, driven by a fervour that few in history can match since the Crusades. A foe who also has  a large resource in the local area and an even larger resource to draw on around the world.

It is difficult to see how mere military strength can hope to be the victor in this Insurgent war, the military cannot hope to win if they haven’t got the political will behind them, both inside the host country, and also in the allied countries who are fighting against the Insurgents. The coming elections in Afghanistan are supposed to mean that there will be a democratic will in the country, but even now, we know that the current regime is corrupt and is poorly supported, yet it is able to suppress its opponents because of its relationship with the allies who have shored it up  through the past years.

The will of the allies has also been sapped in recent years after the long war in Iraq and its resultant casualties. It is also a moot point if Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were really that enamoured with our continuing role in Afghanistan, they have much more been using it as a way of continuing the relationship with the US and it is likely that they would have preferred to scale down operations in Afghanistan if it would not have been a political embarrassment. It is this  partial backing of the Afghanistan war that has meant that we are not properly equipped or manned to achieve our current objectives.

But it is not the military strength that is the main reason that we are not remotely achieving our objectives. The two main reasons we are not getting anyway close is because we have, firstly set objectives that we cannot expect to achieve and secondly we have  forgotten that the only real way to counter an Insurgency is to win over the “Hearts and Minds” of the people.

Our current objectives are over and beyond what we could expect to do in a country that is barely functioning, far less functioning at a level where it could take on Western values and Western ideas on equality. We need Afghanistan to be able to  provide the basic essentials of life before we or anyone can think of the luxuries.

Now we come onto the real problem of how we counter the Insurgency that is now going on, one that has gained rather than lost strength in the past years, after the initial “victory” over the Taliban. How do you stop a resurgent Taliban from once again overthrowing the country and allowing it to be used as a base for terrorist activities around the World?

Currently these activities have temporarily moved to other areas such as Somalia and Yemen where we can have little influence far less ability to stop what is going on. Instead Afghanistan has become a rallying point for the Jihadists for their war against what they see as the forces of evil.

It is a draw for the crackpots and extremists who see it  as their life’s aim to become a martyr to the cause. Alongside this we see the brainwashing and corruption of the local population to bring them onto the side of the Taliban and to use these people as human sacrifices for the Jihad.

Many Taliban are also those who have suffered at the hands of the allies as they attempt to stop the Taliban and they or their families have become the tragic, innocent victims of the war. Many others are blackmailed and  forced into fighting for the Taliban by threats to their family.

So now we have more than enough reasons for an Insurgent War, An ideology, poverty, hunger, an occupying enemy and a corrupt and unpopular government. In addition we have the fervour of the Jihadists who will stop at nothing to impose their views.

How can we stop this and what went wrong after the initial gains.

In many ways the initial success is much to blame, we thought it was easy in Afghanistan. We thought it would all be over in a few months and everyone could come home saying what a grand job we had done. The Taliban were being driven out and would all soon be dead or captured. History should have taught us different.

So more objectives were added to the initial list, objectives that were impossible in a country as poor and deprived as Afghanistan, but sounded like such good ideas back in the UK and US. Soon we would be able to leave Afghanistan, objectives achieved, and it would become a gleaming light for the rest of the area.

We were struggling in Iraq, and Afghanistan was forgotten about. All the investment and aid that we should have been putting into Afghanistan was forgotten. At the time when we should have been investing heavily in the future of the country we relegated it to just another trouble spot ,we forgot that we needed to lay the basis for a long term future in the country, we didn’t set up a proper intelligence network and we didn’t help the fledgling government get itself established throughout the country, and our biggest failure was not ensuring that the Afghan people did not have contact, willingly or unwillingly with the Taliban.

We left gaping holes where the Taliban could re-establish itself and win over the local people and because we did not have the resources and intelligence to be aware of what was going on, it was soon too late. So instead of creating a political solution that should have led, at least, to us gaining some of our objectives we turned back to the military objective, ramping up forces and going out to meet the Taliban in battle.

We attempted to escalate the war with military might instead of trying to win  “Hearts and Minds”. Then, what happened, was that there were the inevitable innocent victims, lives, property and crops destroyed which all resulted in an increasing hatred of authority, playing right into the Taliban hands.

So we get to the current time where we again are trying to establish our will on the country to allow them to hold “fair and free ” elections. To help this to happen, we, and our allies are having a surge across the country to allow the local people to vote. This escalation in military might inevitably brings about more allied casualties and because we  thought this would be an easy victory five or more years ago, we are under-resourced and without some of the proper equipment to achieve our objectives.

This again brings about even more more uncertainty both politically and militarily. We win the battles again but we cannot achieve a victory, the enemy will lick its wounds and wait for another opportune time to attack, whilst we ponder upon the advisability of even being in the country.

What had we forgotten to do in Afghanistan? We had forgotten that to defeat Insurgency we need an integration of a coherent political and military strategy.

This strategy needs to focus on attainable objectives rather than the current vague and open-ended objectives that we have. Once we have these then we will have a  clear political objective to underpin military action in a true comprehensive approach.

Three things are now needed in Afghanistan to ensure this. The first is a minimum use of force, force in the  Insurgent war is a sign of losing the war, minimum force means a  more legitimate government rather that one imposed by force. Second is a necessarily restrictive programme to stop access to the local people by the Taliban by greater policing, education and integration of Military and Civil authorities. Thirdly strong central leadership both from the Local Government and from allied “advisors” including  an ability to react to changes quickly and efficiently.

None of the above will be easy and it will not be a short task but only if we can do the above can we win the Victory rather than the battle.