Left on Afghanistan's Plains

BBC

Afghanistan: Street fighting rages as Taliban attack key city

Ferocious fighting is taking place in a major Afghan city, amid fears it could be the first provincial capital to fall to the Taliban.

Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand province is under heavy assault from the militants, despite persistent US and Afghan air strikes.

https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search?q=helmand will show you what I have written over the years.

Read the heartbreaking Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan about Helmand. What did those boys give their lives for?

John Reid, Secretary of State for Defense, committed 3,300 troops to Helmand province, Afghanistan in January 2006. Speaking to the media Reid said "We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction." In the first year about 4 million bullets and 25,000 artillery rounds were fired by the British armed forces.

John Reid is was and ever shall be a sanctimonious prick, as widows and orphans can attest.

Not Sanguine

The report went a little under the radar due to blanket coverage of last week's Westminster attack, but the Taliban have recaptured the crucial south Afghan district of Sangin.

456 British troops were killed in Afghanistan. Of those, around 114 died in the city of Sangin.

Back in 2010 when British forces in southern Afghanistan handed responsibility for security in Sangin to US forces, David Cameron, the British Prime Minister said:

Our troops have performed magnificently in Sangin and I pay tribute to the thousands who have served, to the over one hundred who have given their lives, to the many who have been wounded.

They did not die in vain. They made Afghanistan a safer place and they have made Britain a safer place and they will never be forgotten.

They did die in vain. They didn't make Afghanistan a safer place and they haven't made Britain a safer place, and they are being forgotten if the deafening silence around this latest development is anything to go by.

Sangin is considered the bloodiest battleground of Afghanistan by both the British and the Yanks. Both nations lost over 100 killed in action there along with several hundred moderate to severe casualties. Here is a dated list (US format) of the Americans who died there when they took over from us and after Cameron's boast of "huge achievements."

9/28/2010 Lance Cpl. Ralph J. Fabbri - USMC 1stMarDiv, HQBN, H&S, Combat Camera. Was an attachment to 3/7.

10/08/2010 LCpl John T. Sparks USMC 3/5

10/13/2010 PFC Victor A Dew USMC 3/5

10/13/2010 LCpl Joseph E Rodewald USMC 3/5

10/13/2010 LCpl Phillip D. Vinnedge USMC 3/5

10/13/2010 CPl Justin J. Cain USMC 3/5

10/14/2010 LCpl Irvin M. Ceniceros USMC 3/5

10/14/2010 LCpl Joseph C. Lopez USMC 3/5

10/14/2010 LCpl Alec E. Catherwood USMC 3/5

10/15/2010 LCpl James D. Boelk USMC 3/5

10/16/2010 Sgt Ian M. Tawney USMC 3/5

11/04/2010 LCpl Mathew J. Broehm USMC 3/5

11/04/2010 LCpl Brandon W. Pearson USMC 3/5

11/06/2010 LCpl Randy R. Braggs USMC 3/5

11/09/2010 1stLt Robert M. Kelly USMC 3/5

11/10/2010 LCpl James B. Stack USMC 3/5

11/24/2010 LCpl Ardenjoseph A. Buenagua USMC 3/5

11/25/2010 1stLt William J. Donnelly IV USMC 3/5

12/02/2010 Sgt Mathew T. Abbate USMC 3/5

12/06/2010 Cpl Derek A. Wyatt USMC 3/5

12/06/2010 PFC Colton W. Rusk USMC 3/5

12/07/2010 Sgt Jason D. Peto USMC 3/5

12/17/2010 LCpl Jose L. Maldonado USMC 3/5

12/24/2010 LCpl Kenneth A. Corzine USMC 3/5

12/28/2010 Cpl Tevan L. Nguyen USMC 3/5

01/20/2011 Sgt Jason G. Amores USMC 3/5

02/22/2011 Cpl. John Taylor USMC 2/8

04/24/2011 - LCpl Joe M. Jackson, USMC 1/5 (Alpha)

04/28/2011 - LCpl Ronald D. Freeman, USMC 1/5 (2nd Combat Engineers)

06/09/2011 - LCpl Nicholas S. O'Brien, USMC 1/5 (Bravo)

06/12/2011 - LCpl Sean M. N. O'Connor, USMC 1/5 (Alpha)

06/12/2011 - LCpl Joshua B. McDaniels, USMC 1/5 (2nd Combat Engineers)

06/21/2011 - Cpl Jared C. Verbeek, USMC 1/5 (Police Advisor Team One)

06/22/2011 - Cpl Gurpreet Singh, USMC 1/5 (Bravo)

06/26/2011 - LCpl John F. Farias, USMC 1/5 (Bravo)

06/26/2011 - GySgt Ralph E. Pate Jr. USMC 1/5 (EOD)

06/30/2011 - Sgt Chad D. Frokjer, USMC 1/5 (Alpha)

06/30/2011 - Cpl Kyle R. Schneider, USMC 2/8 (Echo)

07/10/2011 - LCpl Norberto Mendez-Hernandez, USMC 1/5 (Bravo)

07/12/2011 - LCpl Robert S. Greniger, USMC 1/5 (2nd Combat Engineers)

08/06/2011 - Sgt Daniel J. Patron, USMC 1/5 (EOD)

08/07/2011 - Sgt Adan Gonzalez Jr. USMC 1/5 (SSP)

08/07/2011 - Sgt Joshua J. Robinson, USMC 1/5 (SSP)

09/15/2011 - Cpl Michael J. Dutcher, USMC 1/5 (Bravo)

09/24/2011 - LCpl Frankie Watson, USMC

10/13/2011 - LCpl Scott D. Harper, USMC 1/6 (Animal)

10/23/2011 - LCpl Jordan Bastean, USMC 3/7

10/24/2011 - LCpl Jason Barfield, USMC 3/7

11/5/2011 - LCpl Nickolas Daniels, USMC 3/7

11/18/2011 - LCpl Joshua Corral, USMC 3/7

11/21/2011 - Cpl Zachary Reiff, USMC 3/7

1/21/2012 - Cpl Christopher Singer, USMC 3/7

3/27/2012 - SSgt Joseph D'Augustine, USMC 3/7 EOD

More matter with less art

Paul Flynn MP says, "on Thursday last, 14th April, the Commons was treated to the best speech made in this Parliament.

"An unrivalled authoritative source as a soldier and a politician, Adam Holloway revealed the truth on the shared conspiracy that led 634 UK soldiers to the deaths and left 2,000 others to survive, maimed in mind or body."

The three paragraphs below are the meat in the sandwich as far as I am concerned.

From what I have seen on the ground since I became an MP in 2005—in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and last week in Syria with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden—I believe that the full panoply of the Government machine has become dysfunctional in four overlapping parts. First, we have suffered from having a narrowly focused class of professional politicians who understand politics, not leadership, and who have almost no understanding of the complexities or realities on the ground. Secondly, we have ambitious civil servants who know that careers advance by staying close to what the rest of the group think. Thirdly, we have military officers with a civil service mindset who have also learned that the right answer is “we can do it” rather than “we can’t do it without…”. Finally, we have experts who are ignored or marginalised.

No experts were present at President Bush’s Prairie Chapel ranch when Prime Minister Blair agreed to support a US-led invasion of Iraq. Of course, Prime Minister Blair was determined to uphold the US-UK alliance, but he does not seem to have made even the slightest attempt to stop his friend President Bush from driving us drunk into Iraq. Back home, we needed to find reasons to go into Iraq, and we created the infamous dossier in a sort of late-night essay crisis. So late into ​the night did they work in Downing Street that they managed to read the bit from the top-secret, single-source report about missiles but failed to read the “analyst’s comment” section of the CX. They failed to see the comment that there was no way in which the missiles referred to could still be in the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Most of the public, as well as many people in Parliament, were in good faith convinced by the Prime Minister. Later, we convinced ourselves that we were in Afghanistan to “fight them over there” so that we did not have to “fight them over here”. Several years ago, after I had given a presentation to an immensely senior person in a previous Government, he asked me, “Adam, are you really saying that the Taliban are not a threat to the UK?” That revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda; it almost beggared belief. That difference between a local xenophobic tribal traditional movement and a death cult was not, and is still not, understood.

I recommend you read the whole thing at http://paulflynnmp.typepad.com/my_weblog/2016/04/best-speech-in-this-parliament-ignored-by-media.html.

I must try and pay attention to this Holloway fella, bearing in mind I blogged my bafflement over afghanistan only eight days ago (Icons passim).

Update: http://www.cps.org.uk/publications/reports/in-blood-stepp-d-in-so-far-towards-realism-in-afghanistan/ might be a good place to start.

My Afghan triptych

I have finished reading The Lightless Sky: My Journey to Safety as a Child Refugee.

'To risk my life had to mean something. Otherwise what was it all for?' Gulwali Passarlay was sent away from Afghanistan at the age of twelve, after his father was killed in a gun battle with the US Army. Smuggled into Iran, Gulwali began a twelvemonth odyssey across Europe, spending time in prisons, suffering hunger, making a terrifying journey across the Mediterranean in a tiny boat, and enduring a desolate month in the camp at Calais. Somehow he survived, and made it to Britain, no longer an innocent child but still a young boy alone. In Britain he was fostered, sent to a good school, won a place at a top university, and was chosen to carry the Olympic torch in 2012. Gulwali wants to tell his story - to bring to life the plight of the thousands of men, women and children who are making this perilous journey every day. One boy's experience is the central story of our times. This memoir celebrates the triumph of courage and determination over adversity.

Before that I read Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan.

This is the gripping story of the men of the Welsh Guards and their bloody battle for survival in Afghanistan in 2009. Underequipped and overstretched, they found themselves in the most intense fighting the British had experienced in a generation. They were led into battle by Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, a passionate believer in the justness of the war who was deeply dismayed by the way it was being resourced and conducted. Thorneloe was killed by an IED during Operation Panther's Claw, the biggest operation mounted by the British in Helmand.

Dead Men Risen draws on secret documents written by Thorneloe, which raise questions from beyond the grave that will unnerve politicians and generals alike. The Welsh Guards also lost Major Sean Birchall, commanding officer of IX Company, and Lieutenant Mark Evison, a platoon commander whose candid personal diary was unnervingly prophetic. Not since the Second World War had a single British battalion lost officers at the three key levels of leadership.

Harnden transports the reader into the heart of a conflict in which a soldier has to be prepared to kill and die, to ward off paralysing fear and watch comrades perish in agony. Given unprecedented access to the Welsh Guards, Harnden conducted hundreds of interviews in Afghanistan, England and Wales. He weaves the experiences of the guardsmen and the loved ones they left behind into a seamless and unsparing narrative that sits alongside a piercing analysis of the political and military strategy. No other book about modern warfare succeeds on so many levels.

In 2014 I read The Places In Between.

Rory Stewart's moving account of his walk across Afghanistan in January 2002 was immediately hailed as a classic. Caught between hostile nations, warring factions and competing ideologies, at the time Afghanistan was in turmoil following the US invasion. Travelling entirely on foot and following the inaccessible mountainous route once taken by the Mogul Emperor, Babur the Great, Stewart was nearly defeated by the extreme, hostile conditions. Only with the help of an unexpected companion and the generosity of the people he met on the way did he survive to report back with unique insight on a region closed to the world by twenty-four years of war.

After all this reading and concerning the problem of Afghanistan I am (to paraphrase F. E. Smith) "none the wiser, just better informed." This is a very depressing conclusion.

How did I get here?

I finished reading Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride yesterday. Coincidentally, as the BFI noted on Facebook, the great American director's birthday.

Today, I will be starting on Toby Harnden's Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan.

This is the tale of the Welsh Guards in Helmand in 2009. Underequipped and overstretched, guardsmen from the coal mining valleys and slate quarry villages of Wales found themselves in Helmand in some of the most intense fighting by British troops for more than a generation. They were confronted by a Taliban enemy they seldom saw, facing the constant threat of Improvised Explosive Devices and ambush. Leading them into battle was Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, destined for the highest ranks. He was a passionate believer in the war but was dismayed by how it was being conducted. Dead Men Risen will unnerve politicians and generals alike. In chilling detail, Toby Harnden reveals how and why Thorneloe was killed by an IED during Operation Panther's Claw. Harnden, who had known Thorneloe since they met in Northern Ireland in 1996, was on the ground in Helmand with the Welsh Guards. He draws on a trove of military documents, including many written by Thorneloe, the first British battalion commander to die in action since the Falklands war of 1982. Major Sean Birchall left behind an unvarnished assessment of the shortcomings of the Afghan forces that represent Nato's exit strategy. Lieutenant Mark Evison wrote a diary that raises questions from beyond the grave. It was more than half a century since a British battalion had lost officers at these three key levels of leadership. By the time the fighting was over, almost no rank had been spared. A visceral and timeless account of men at war, Dead Men Risen conveys what it is like to be a soldier who has to kill, face paralysing fear and watch comrades perish in agony. Given unprecedented access to the Welsh Guards, Harnden conducted more than 300 interviews in Afghanistan, England and Wales. From the searing heat of the poppy fields and mud compounds of Helmand to the dreaded knock on the door back home, the reader is transported there. Harnden weaves the experiences of the guardsmen and their loved ones into an unsparing narrative that sits alongside a piercing analysis of military strategy.

jolt for democracy

This blog is on record in approving of Tory MP Rory Stewart, and Labour MP Paul Flynn, which makes it gratifying to read Paul Flynn's comments on Rory Stewart's election as chair of the Commons defence select committee.

Just as politics was slipping into a coma of torpor an electrifying jolt jerks it into new life.

It could not have happened without the Wright reforms. They continue to deliver. Rory Stewart was unelectable by the whips as a Select Committee Chairman. He is not biddable, has a unique hinterland of extraordinary achievements and possesses a working brain-all traits that disqualify him from promotion by the neurotically controlling whips.

The Defence Select Committee, under Rory, will metamorphose from passive collaborating cheerleaders for the war party into a critical voice of objective reason. That's if the other establishment committee members allow him to lead. The rough democracy that the Wright reforms imposed of the election of chairs produced a range of eight Tory hopefuls with a wide spectrum of opinions.

Coincidentally, I am 81% of the way through reading Stewart's The Places In Between. (My kindle tells me 81%. This is not the kind of figure I keep in my head.) The book is about his solo walk across north-central Afghanistan in 2002, at the American invasion and occupation after the events set in motion by 9/11.

Maybe http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/defence-committee/ will be worth keeping an eye on now.

the “insurgency narrative”

I think  Mike Martin's An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict will be a significant book if the powers that be let us read it.

Telegraph

According to the “insurgency narrative” widely espoused by Western governments, a legitimate Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), which is recognised and supported by the international community, is violently opposed by a movement of insurgents, called the Taliban, who have sanctuary in Quetta, Pakistan.

Thus, the Taliban are religiously inspired insurgents who are opposed to the democratic and women’s rights that the GIRoA embodies and promotes. But this “insurgency narrative” does not fit with my experiences as an officer. I went to Helmand several times (in and out of uniform), with appropriate gaps between visits for study and reflection, and this analysis seemed further and further from the events that I was observing and participating in. In my view, the Taliban are not the main drivers of conflict; and earlier periods, including the Soviet, the civil war and the Taliban eras, have been similarly misconstrued.

Today, much of the violence is mischaracterised as “Taliban” insurgent violence, when in fact it is not linked to the Taliban or the GIRoA, but is driven by local dynamics between groups and individuals on the ground. The Helmandis describe the conflict as pshe-pshe. This literally translates as “leg-leg”, but refers to the different legs of a tribe or clan (the English term would be “branch”). So, metaphorically, the phrase pshe-pshe means group-on-group warfare. It is a (micro) civil war.

Just like Rory Stewart's "description of an absence;" Icons passim.

How we roll

From Esquire in the US:

It has been noted that March was the first month in 11 years in which no American soldier was killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The architects of this policy are now spending their 11th year of book tours, lecture fees, television appearances, and not being called to account in any serious way.

Casualties among the native populations are not noted, because that's the way we roll.

In the UK, British troops have just left Helmand Province, whence they were ordered in 2006 on a mission of pacification, construction and reduction in the opium trade and in the hope that ‘not a shot would be fired’. Only two British soldiers had died in combat in Afghanistan before this. The figure is now 448.

We leave a record opium crop and Taliban control of most of the province.

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan, who as Secretary of State for Defence committed 3,300 troops to Helmand January 2006 is available (over by yer) for After Dinner Speaking, Keynote Speaking and Motivational Speaking at £6k to £10k a pop.

How he has the nerve so show his face in public at all is beyond me.

A description of an absence

Rory Stewart is an interesting man. 2014's chastened version makes some valuably modest observations in this interview from Friday's Grauniard.

Stewart came home when he realised that even the least-educated Afghan housewife in a mountain village knew more about the country than he did. Fluent in Dari, along with nine other languages, he'd thrown himself into the coalition mission with great conviction, but had to conclude that: "In the end, the basic problem is very, very simple. Why don't these interventions work? Because we are foreigners. If things are going wrong in a country, it's not usually that we don't have enough foreigners. It's usually that we have too many." 

Ten years ago he would have listed 10 things Afghanistan needed to build a new state: rule of law, financial administration, civil administration and so on. "And, then you would say, well, how do you do that? Well, I'd say, by a mapping of internal and external stakeholders, definition of critical tasks – all this jargon talk. And I've only now just begun to realise these words are nonsense words. I mean, they have no content at all. We should be ashamed to even use them." 

They are nothing more, Stewart now acknowledges, than tautologies. "They pretend to be a plan, but they're actually just a description of an absence. Saying 'What we need is security, and what we need to do is eliminate corruption' is just another way of saying: 'It's really dangerous and corrupt.' None of that actually tells you how it's done."

In some ways it's a companion piece to yesterday's evisceration of the thumb-on-the-till merchants pushing the internet snake-oil.

I'm against it

Telegraph: David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have arrived in Libya, their first visit since Col Muammar Gaddafi was ousted.

Rory Stewart a deputy governor of two provinces in southern Iraq in 2003-4, and the author of The Places In Between, about his 2002 walk across Afghanistan, is now a Conservative MP.

The last two decades of intervention suggest one thing: that interventions are intrinsically unpredictable, chaotic and uncertain. They can work: the international community played a prudent and constructive role in Bosnia, and the Bosnia of 2005 was far better than that of 1995. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, disorder and chaos seemed predestined. Guilt at lost lives, embarrassment, pride, fear of Islamists and hubris all prevented the West from acknowledging failure: instead of pulling back, they dived ever deeper. And their occupation bloated, warped and corrupted the fundamental structures – social, political and economic – of the countries they were purporting to help.

The lesson for Libya was that the West should not be dragged too far in and that it should anticipate chaos.

Read the whole thing.

No one is going to come out this smelling of roses.

sanguinary

Earlier this week, our commanders handed over responsibility for Sangin (the volatile town that has claimed 106 British lives, a third of the total killed in Afghanistan) to US troops.

Dozens of British soldiers were killed earlier this year when men of the 3 Rifles battle group pushed along the road running north to south of the town in Helmand province to build 22 patrol bases.

But the Americans decided to abandon the posts, instead concentrating their troops in four major bases from which they could conduct operations.

We conclude therefore that the blood spilled in setting up the patrol bases was wasted. Nothing is gained by the Prime Minister paying tribute to "huge achievements." Solemnity is required not gloss; see Icons passim.

I could not dig, I dared not rob,
And so I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue,
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale will serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Contrasts

1. First, Silence the Whistle-Blower: The United Nations' shameful complicity in this year's corrupt Afghan elections. Christopher Hitchens

2. Great Britain Loses one of its Finest: An email came today from London, from a BBC correspondent who has been to Afghanistan saying that Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid had been killed. Michael Yon

Killed for what? Killed for whom?

Busy doing nothing

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel signaled the U.S. may refrain from deciding to send more troops to Afghanistan until a “legitimate and credible government” is in place.

“The president will not be rushed to making a decision” on Afghanistan, Emanuel said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. It would be “reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop levels” without a through analysis of the country’s ability to govern itself, Emanuel said.

This announcement seems to me to be just about the least constructive contribution possible, undermining at a stroke:

1. The poor bloody infantry that are already there

2. said PBI's day to day relations with Afghan troops

3. The credibility of the US military leadership in the eyes of the world (friend and foe)

4. Afghan civilian faith and trust (such as it may be) in US commitment.

Rahm Emanuel, Kerry et al keeping their gobs shut would have been a much better response to the impasse if that is what it is.

David Bromwich: The Presidential Letdown

The pattern of the major announcement, the dilatory follow-up and the tardy self-defence has shown an alarming consistency in his administration. Obama ordered the closing of the prison at Guantánamo Bay as the first act of his presidency. Eight months later, Guantánamo remains open and unsolved. [ read more . . . ]

Whether moving from promising the earth and delivering sod all, to promising sod all represents an advance I leave to wiser heads than mine.

Pull the other one

KABUL - Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Friday that US President Barack Obama was the "appropriate" person to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

"We congratulate Obama for winning the Nobel," said Siamak Hirai, a spokesman for Karzai.

"His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at global level and global peace make him the appropriate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize," he told AFP.

We are living in a golden age of cant.

10 a.m. - Oval Office

Accept Nobel peace prize.

11 a.m. - Situation Room

"McChrystal’s proposed strategy for the war-torn country will require 30,000 to 40,000 more troops, billions of taxpayer dollars, an extremely long term commitment, and thousands more American lives--a bitter pill the American public seems unlikely to swallow.

"Biden proposed a shift in strategy that would concentrate on attacking al Qaeda and Taliban leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan using special forces and unmanned predator drones equipped with missiles."

Decisions, decisions ....

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools

My latest embed with British 2 Rifles, which began in July, was extended on at least two occasions. The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) had recently agreed that I would spend roughly one more month with 2 Rifles. My scheduled embeds with the United States Air Force and Marines were specifically arranged around the British schedule, and I was enjoying reporting on the excellent British troops.

However, on August 24th, with no warning, unseen faces of MoD discontinued my embed from 2 Rifles. The message that I was no longer embedded was emailed to me by Media Ops, just as I returned from an interesting firefight in the Green Zone. Luckily, none of our guys got hit, but I think the British soldiers may have killed some Taliban.

I do not know the reason for the embed termination. My best guess is that it relates to my sustained criticism that the British government is not properly resourcing its soldiers.

Read and think about what Michael Yon is saying.

Update: MPs' expenses leaked over failure to equip troops on front line in Afghanistan and Iraq

Expenses claims made by MPs were leaked because of anger over the Government’s failure to equip the Armed Forces properly while politicians lavished taxpayers’ money on themselves, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Important Update

I've been following Michael Yon's updates from the ground embedded with UK Forces in Afghanistan.

He tweets:

British MoD playing games after shutting me down. Perhaps they sensed I am
preparing to report that they are underreporting casualties.

See his blogged dispatches as well.

Why doesn't our media seem to be picking this up?

Welsh Guards bear brunt as Afghan death toll rises

“Do you think we are winning?”

The Welsh Guardsman was on his stomach with his light machinegun outside Checkpoint 11 when he asked this of the person lying next to him. He listened intently to the open-ended answer and quietly went back to scanning the canal bank for an expected Taleban attack.

The Welsh Guards are in the process of setting up the Welsh Guards Afghanistan appeal. Donations can be sent to Regimental HQ, Welsh Guards, Birdcage Walk, London SW1E 6HQ. Cheques may be made payable to ‘’The Welsh Guards Afghanistan Appeal.’

(Three years on from this note, what progress?)

Afghanistan

Maybe work like this is what the Ministry of Defence was trying to supress with the shenanigans I railed against.

I think you should read it.

Arithmetic on the frontier

We are on the cusp of 2008 and our troops have been in Afghanistan since 2001. Why? The video above of various people wandering about is the first shot in Musa Qula since it fell.

Gordon Brown has outlined a new long-term strategy to "isolate and eradicate" the Taliban, but I am none the wiser. It is certainly a long way from John Reid's ludicrous assertion (back in 2005?) that we might get out of Helmand without a shot being fired in anger.

I wonder if our leaders read their Kipling?

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe--
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!"
And after--ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

Lions Led by Donkeys

The Chief of the Defence Staff is quoted in the Telegraph today bemoaning the "lack of understanding shown to troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan".

"They are concerned the British public does not appreciate or understand what they do. We need to express that a bit more visibly. I welcome recent efforts to do that. We need to have a little more tangible and visible expression of our appreciation."

It is all too easy for this brass hat to scold the public. Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, has told us off similarly.

Has he ever considered that the Ministry of Defence's gagging orders - which I blogged back in September - might contribute to this lack of understanding?

I'm going to reprint the same quote I used then:

Members of the Armed Forces and MOD Civil Servants must seek prior permission from MoD media authorities] if they wish to communicate about defence via books, articles or academic papers; self-publish via a blog, podcast or other shared text, audio or video; take part in external questionnaires, polls, surveys or research projects, speak at conferences, private engagements or other events where the public or media may be present; or contribute to any online community or share information such as a bulletin board, wiki, online social network, or multi-player game...

[This] covers all public speaking, writing or other communications, including via the internet and other sharing technologies, on issues arising from an individual's official business or experience, whether on-duty, off-duty or in spare time.

Given that the troops aren't allowed to tell anyone anything, how the bleedin' hell is the public to get the understanding that he thinks they lack?

The MOD is a shower. Do you remember when Iran seized 15 British sailors and marines in the Persian Gulf back in March? The country was engulfed with sympathy and goodwill for Faye Turney et al until Des Browne and the ministry sold them down the river with the botched and undignified handling of the issue of whether or not it was appropriate for them to sell their stories to the papers.

Somebody at the top needs to get their ducks in a row, and apply a little consistency and common sense.