Three years ago, in Helmand, I watched Nick Clegg present a battle plan to the British military. Unfortunately, it seems to be following it. The plan was a crayon and felt tip scrawl by one of his sons, who’d made his father promise to give it to the army. Handed over to amuse, it suggested that the baddies hidden beneath mountains could be fought by a few soldiers piling from a helicopter. We smiled at the juvenile simplicity.
Now, in Helmand, the military are doing just this. They call their murderous night raids against insurgents a bold strategy for success, when really the intensification of violence is evidence of failure. We are, as David Miliband will warn in a speech on Wednesday, trapped in a war with no plan other than to kill as many baddies as we can before fleeing.
At the end of my trip to Afghanistan with Clegg and Nick Harvey, now the armed forces minister, I wrote an overly optimistic piece suggesting that the army might be about to turn things around. Smart soldiers using jargon deployed PowerPoint charts to prove it. It seemed wrong not to take their confidence seriously, and allow them time to make their plans work. I did. More importantly, ministers did.
They have had the time and the plans didn’t work. Almost everybody in politics thinks privately that military involvement in Afghanistan has been a disaster. The pity is few dare say so.
Afghanistan is already yesterday’s war, though it is still to be tomorrow’s defeat. Mentally we have adjusted for the end, though there are still 9,500 British troops in action. Many soldiers and marines are on their fourth tour of duty – two years of a young adult life. Some face redundancy on return. We’ve been in Afghanistan for 10 years, and in Helmand for five – world wars were fought and won in less. It’s becoming one of those conflicts which seem to have no beginning and no end and probably no point, slipping from our enthusiasm and into history. Libya is eating up our energies instead.
Now, in Helmand, the military are doing just this. They call their murderous night raids against insurgents a bold strategy for success, when really the intensification of violence is evidence of failure. We are, as David Miliband will warn in a speech on Wednesday, trapped in a war with no plan other than to kill as many baddies as we can before fleeing.
At the end of my trip to Afghanistan with Clegg and Nick Harvey, now the armed forces minister, I wrote an overly optimistic piece suggesting that the army might be about to turn things around. Smart soldiers using jargon deployed PowerPoint charts to prove it. It seemed wrong not to take their confidence seriously, and allow them time to make their plans work. I did. More importantly, ministers did.
They have had the time and the plans didn’t work. Almost everybody in politics thinks privately that military involvement in Afghanistan has been a disaster. The pity is few dare say so.
Afghanistan is already yesterday’s war, though it is still to be tomorrow’s defeat. Mentally we have adjusted for the end, though there are still 9,500 British troops in action. Many soldiers and marines are on their fourth tour of duty – two years of a young adult life. Some face redundancy on return. We’ve been in Afghanistan for 10 years, and in Helmand for five – world wars were fought and won in less. It’s becoming one of those conflicts which seem to have no beginning and no end and probably no point, slipping from our enthusiasm and into history. Libya is eating up our energies instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment