Plan to withdraw British troops will go ahead, but the difficult balance between success and defeat has yet to be struck
No 10 insisted the death of the British soldier in Helmand would have no impact on David Cameron's plans to reduce the number of UK troops in Afghanistan next year, saying its overall assessment remains that security in Helmand is improving. But the confluence of a visit designed to pave the way for troop withdrawals and the death of the soldier was a dreadful reminder of the lack of progress.
The possibility that the soldier was double-crossed by a Taliban fighter in an Afghan army uniform weakens Cameron's central case that the Afghan army and police force are improving not only in numbers, but in reliability. Britain's planned withdrawal of all 11,000 combat troops by the end of 2014 is predicated on the Afghan security forces being strong enough to govern the state, with only mentoring back-up and funding from western forces.
Few British politicians think Nato is beating the Taliban, either politically or militarily, so the unspoken goal is a UK military exit with dignity intact by the end of 2014.
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has set the bar for withdrawal relatively low. He has repeatedly said the aim is not to install "a Jeffersonian democracy" in Afghanistan, but simply to ensure that the state can no longer be a secure haven for Al-Qaida to terrorise the west as it did on 9/11, the original cause of invasion.
Fox has never been a nation-builder in Afghanistan, but at the same time he is influenced by UK generals who argue that a large withdrawal now, simply to mimic the decisions of Barack Obama, would be premature. Obama last month announced a planned withdrawal of 33,000 US troops by September 2012, a decision that the US military says could embolden the Taliban.
Cameron, like Obama, has become exasperated with the UK generals, who have pressed publicly for extra cash and for the reopening of the strategic defence review. He has also become wary of excessive military optimism over operations such as the UK deployment in Helmand – the deployment of 3,000 troops in Helmand in 2006 was based on the view that they would not meet fierce resistance. Four years later, there are 20,000 US Marines and three times as many UK forces in the area and the British death toll is more than 300.
Cameron is now determined not to budge from his 2014 withdrawal date, months before a 2015 general election, arguing the Afghans will only rise to the challenge of governing their country if they must rely on their own resources.
So the Foreign Office details that by the end of March the Afghan army stood at 159,000, and the police at 125,000. By October the target is 171,600 and 134,000 respectively.
These Afghan forces are now better paid, and attrition rates and illiteracy are down. Currently, around 85% of ANSF recruits are illiterate on entry. But the proportion of Pashtun speakers from southern Afghanistan, the home of the insurgency, is tiny. Few will join if they believe the Taliban will take over the villages in three years time.
The Conservative benches, though instinctively loyal to the military, are with Cameron, as opposed to the generals.
There is little public enthusiasm for a war where the only political imperative is for the British army to leave with dignity intact after the shambles of the withdrawal from Basra in Iraq. Senior Conservative figures such as Bernard Jenkin think the war cannot continue indefinitely. The shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, concurs.
There is a small, rival, more traditional army school, led by James Arbuthnot, the defence select committee chairman, that contends withdrawal should be based on facts on the ground and not a pre-determined largely political timetable. A report from his committee due next month will urge caution.
The temptation for the Taliban is just to wait this out, and for Cameron the collapse of Kabul to the Taliban weeks before a May 2015 election would hardly be an electoral springboard. It looks as if Cameron has been persuaded to make modest withdrawals in his commons statement tomorrow. In evidence to Arbuthnot's committtee General Sir David Richards, the chief of defence staff, repeatedly suggested that decisions on troop withdrawals should be delayed. Asked if the Afghan army could take over soon, he replied: "You can grow numbers, but can you institutionalise the necessary qualities to sustain it beyond 2014? The jury is out on that. It will be a difficult thing to be certain of until about the end of next year." Or again in the same session: "It will not be until September, October, November, after this full year of the surge on the back of a pretty active winter campaign, that we will really be able to see whether it is beginning to come good."
On the political side, there is equally little sign of progress. Talks between the US and the Taliban, now officially confirmed, are barely at a preliminary stage, and relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are worse, leaving the eastern Afghan border as porous and dangerous as ever. The killing of Osama bin Laden does not seem to have damaged the insurgency, or Al-Qaida.
Patrick Wintour
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