Monday, 19th October 2009
Coalition forces must not abandon Afghanistan
Gordon Brown has finally listened to several military experts, including General Sir Richard Dannatt and announced an extra 500 British troops will be sent to Afghanistan. There are currently some 39,000 troops in the country, mainly from NATO allies.
Britain’s commitment is to send a total of 1,000 troops to the area: the other 500 are a British battle group currently in Kandahar. They will move to Helmand, where tragically British troops have suffered serious losses in recent months.
Gordon Brown has previously made it clear the continued presence of British troops in the region would be dependent on sufficient resources and greater cooperation from the NATO allies. This comes despite the fact that £20 million will be saved by suspending all the Territorial Army training for six months. The TA’s ability to deliver fully trained soldiers for Afghanistan will be severely hampered.
General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Kabul, is calling for an extra 40,000 troops to be sent from NATO.
Hillary Clinton’s trip to the UK, has once again ignited the debate about the number of troops in Afghanistan. While the UK and USA have shown their commitment to the region, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has ruled out sending more soldiers. Although he does agree it is necessary to stay in Afghanistan.
Perhaps Gordon Brown and Barrack Obama, recognise that full withdrawal would be an unmitigated disaster. We cannot allow the combined military forces of two of the world’s most powerful nations to be humiliated by a bunch of fanatics holed up in the treacherous mountains of Southern Afghanistan.
While it is understandable that public opinion is growing increasingly restive as the coalition body count mounts, it is necessary to achieve success in Afghanistan and that can only be achieved by adopting a new strategy.
The current top-down approach is not working. Much of the lavish funding provided by the US and EU is tied-up in Kabul or laundered through foreign bank accounts by the corrupt Afghan political leadership. The election in August was clearly marred with fraud, although an announcement is likely to be made imminently on the results.
Meanwhile the West continues to believe that Afghanistan can somehow be turned into a model of democracy. This is a major mistake. Afghanistan is not a country in any real sense. Afghanistan has always has been a loose collection of diverse tribes and ethnic minorities whose main preoccupation throughout the ages has been to fight each other. Historically the only thing that ever unites the Afghans is the need to come together to fight an invader.
It is not God that drives these people into the arms of the Taliban, it is poverty. Deprivation and fear has determined their loyalty to the one-eyed Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. We need to raise our flag higher than the Mullah’s. We need to rebuild the roads, schools, hospitals and basic infrastructure destroyed by decades of war.
But the country is far too large to tackle this reconstruction project in one go. We need to pick one or two districts in the heart of the areas worst-afflicted by the Taliban and invest heavily in these areas.
In each selected district we should create a model court system, a Pashtun police force heavily armed with both weapons and motivation, separate schools for boys and girls, a few hospitals, electricity, money for farming and setting up small businesses, paved roads and a decent transport system. For good measure we should build a beautiful mosque and provide a radio station that recites the Koran 24 hours a day. Let these districts become a shining example to the rest of Afghanistan. The international community can then work from the bottom up to spread this investment across the country.
Only in this way can we get the message across that the US and UK are a force for good; that Islam is not the sole monopoly of Mullah Omar; that Islam and the Koran can exist side by side with banks, schools, hospitals and businesses; and that life without constant war and bloodshed can be good and productive.
The military must throw all their resources into protecting and expanding these model districts, leaving the Taliban to fester and sulk in the un-governed, outlying margins. Right now the strategy of pursuing the Taliban everywhere leaves them surviving everywhere. They thrive on the coalition forces chasing their shadows. Relative peace in coalition-governed districts will fuel rising discontent in Taliban-controlled areas. This way, Mullah Omar and the Taliban will quickly lose their appeal.
