Staying power

This piece was first published in Progress Magazine on 13 July 2009. 

Popular support for Britain's involvement in Afghanistan is, for the first time, showing signs of fraying. Nick Clegg broke ranks with the other party leaders last week, and this weekend the total number of British deaths went beyond the number of soldiers killed in Iraq. In an alliance of convenience, neo-isolationists, opportunistic opposition leaders and the usual anti-war crowd have sought to muscle in on the understandable grief of the parents of fallen soldiers to argue for a full British retreat.

But many of the arguments put forward seem based more on prejudice than fact. Four misconceptions are particularly problematic. The first is that there is no strategy. The second is the view that Britain is bound to loose the Afghan war because it lost in a few wars in the 19th century and the Soviets lost in the 20th century. The third is that Britain needs to do more to get European allies engaged. The final misconception is that the war is unwinnable and anyway a war of choice not necessity (mainly fought to keep the US administration). Let me deal with each of these in turn.

First of all, claiming there is no strategy is the refuge of the sound-bite hungry politician. There is a strategy. It has been articulated by Barack Obama and goes like this: the West needs to defeat al-Qaida affiliated insurgents and build up the Afghan state and its security apparatus to keep such groups which threaten our security on the back-foot in the long-term. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a strategy. As a proposition it is no worse than the strategy of containment during World War II. The rest is planning and execution.

The second point is that Britain is not doing enough to get Europeans involved. Let me assure you that HMG has done all it can to get others involved, including direct lobbying, making representations and so forth. If the situation changes elsewhere it will because of internal dynamics, like the German election, not UK prodding. Berlin will change its view as a result of UK diplomacy as quickly as London will change its Middle Eastern policy following a Spanish demarche. Wishing for German troops in Helmand, anyway, is wishing for more allied casualties and a large compound with little outside activity. I'm not sure that will help the war effort.  

What about the history? Was the Soviet Union not defeated in the Hindu Kush and Britain before it? Let me knock these two on their head(s). Britain won the Great Game. British forces may have suffered losses that have reverberated through the ages but they accomplished their strategic objective - to keep Russia out of India. One may disagree with this aim or believe it was not worth the lives of British soldiers. But to conflate tactical defeat with strategic intent would have earned poor marks in my history classes.

What about the Soviet experience? There are some similarities, no doubt. But the differences are greater. The Soviet invasion and the attempt to impose communism on a rural and largely illiterate Islamic country with a history of xenophobia produced the predictable result: a mass national uprising. In contrast, polls show most Afghans still support the presence of international forces (though this is declining) while the Taliban are not widely popular. To put it simply, while the Soviets faced a national uprising, the US-led NATO forces face a minority insurgency that is segregated from much of the country.

There are other differences too. Though civilian casualties are terrible and must be avoided at all costs, nothing approaching the level of Soviet horror is happening on today's battlefield. Second, the campaign to assist the mujahidin, enjoyed the backing of regional powers China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. Today's insurgency is only backed by elements of the Pakistani state.

Successive Labour governments thought not only that they could fight wars without tears, but also war without costs. They were wrong on both counts. But just because Gordon Brown backs an idea does not make it wrong. Helping to stabilise Afghanistan is the right thing to do for Britain's security. Backing down will not make it easier to defeat home grown terrorism, or deal with al-Qaida in Pakistan; it will make it harder. Make no mistake: a withdrawal will boost the extremist ego, which will have repercussions everywhere al-Qaida and its affiliated groups seek to recruit supporters. "Look at Afghanistan", they will say. "We defeated NATO and can help you defeat the West on your patch too." In a world where the "battle of narratives" is as important as the real battles, this will represent a serious setback for the West. Ceding Afghan territory to the Taliban will lead to new terrorist training camps as sure as night follows day.

I knew a US general who said the most important quality in warfare is something he called "stick-to-it-iveness". If BBC had been reporting live from the beaches of Normandy how long would the D Day invasion have lasted? Think about the experience of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades, who on 6 June 1944 were dropped behind enemy lines and encountered the German 716th Infantry Division and were attacked by the 21st Panzer Division, experiencing heavy causalities. No doubt their mission would have been called into question and demands for a retreat grown loud if online, real-time information had been available. But it wasn't - and by the next evening the paratroopers had established a defensive perimeter surrounding the bridgehead and the Normandy landings could continue.

The general's motto seems apt today. Britain needs to stick with it. That said, there will have to be adjustment in both strategy and resources. It is not Britain's role to help build a modern Weberian state in Kabul that has a monopoly on the use of violence across the whole of its territory and a self-financing, service-providing administrative apparatus; the task is to midwife a pre-Westphalian state that acts against existential threats, like al-Qaida, when necessary, but seeks to contain rather than defeat the insurgency while having to negotiate its power and ability to deliver (limited) services. That task, however, is both right and in Britain's interest.

Daniel Korski is senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)