British forces in Afghanistan

And the soldier home from the hill

The British public is honouring its fallen troops as never before. But for how long will it support the war in Afghanistan?

FIRST came the tolling bells of St Bartholomew’s church. Then the traffic disappeared and the throng on both sides of the road fell silent. The order for the members of the Royal British Legion to dip their standards was shouted out. The undertaker, in a black top hat, began his slow march, followed by eight gleaming hearses, each carrying the coffin of a fallen British soldier wrapped in the Union Flag. Their passage was punctuated by faint thuds of flowers being thrown on the bonnets. Hesitantly at first, then vigorously, a ripple of applause rose from the onlookers. Finally came the sound of muffled sobbing.

The village of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, close to RAF Lyneham, has honoured British servicemen killed in war dozens of times since the first impromptu show of respect in 2007. But never has there been a public salute such as the gathering on July 14th. It became a national day of mourning, broadcast live on television, with thousands of people from across the country—veterans of wars past, and citizens who have never known war—honouring the dead soldiers. It was not a day for politics. But there was a clear sense of anger with the government, whether for sending boys to die in a distant war, or for trying to fight that war on the cheap, without the right manpower or equipment. “I’m here to respect them young lads that have lost their lives over what I consider an unnecessary war,” said a former soldier wearing three campaign medals. “They [the Afghans] thrashed the Russians, and they’re going to thrash us again.”

The British public has long been accustomed to the deaths in action of its servicemen. Almost every year since 1945 has seen military fatalities in some corner of the world. Indeed, Britain prides itself on being a nation of fine soldiers. It invaded Iraq with America, and provides the second-largest contingent of forces to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. But something is shifting in the attitude of the British public towards the war in Afghanistan, and it will be watched closely by America and other allies. President Barack Obama has been quick to praise the “extraordinary” work of British troops, recognising that he needs to help keep them in the fight.

It has been a particularly bloody month in Helmand province, where British troops have been slugging it out with the Taliban for three years for limited gains. Fifteen soldiers have died so far this month; more have now lost their lives in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The eight who arrived at Wootton Bassett died in the space of 24 hours. Five were killed in a double bombing in Sang in that all but put their platoon out of action. The rest died in the district of Nad Ali, where the British forces are trying to push the Taliban out in Operation Panchai Palang, or Panther’s Claw. The operation has been making slow progress through a maze of irrigation canals—a terrain as hard as the bocage of Normandy in the second world war, mixed with Iraq-like fighting around civilian compounds and countless home-made bombs. To a growing number of critics, it is the British who are caught in the Taliban’s claws.

The war in Afghanistan has, until recently, had an oddly low political profile in Britain. One reason is that it was long overshadowed by the conflict in Iraq. With the withdrawal of Britain’s last combat troops from Basra, that is no longer the case. The other reason is that, unlike the conflict in Iraq, the Afghan war has commanded broad political support. Whereas the Liberal Democrats, the country’s third party, opposed Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq, all the main parties have supported the country’s involvement in Afghanistan since the outset. At least, they have done so until now.

Ministers against generals

The cross-party consensus on Afghanistan is under more strain than ever before. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems still say they back the deployment, but they attack the government’s perceived lack of strategy and its parsimony towards the armed forces. Liam Fox, the Tory shadow defence secretary, has accused the government of “the ultimate dereliction of duty”. The Tories have concentrated their fire on the shortfall in the helicopters available to British forces—though the criticism is undermined by their reluctance to promise extra defence spending if they win the election due by next year. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib Dems, has been sharper: he talks about soldiers’ lives being “thrown away”, describing the mission in Afghanistan as “over-ambitious in aim and under-resourced in practice”.

Yet the most important divide may not be between political parties but between government ministers and military commanders. Gordon Brown’s ill-judged appointment of Des Browne in 2006 as defence secretary, doubling the next year as Scottish secretary, alienated some of the top brass. Confidence has hardly been increased by the loss of his successor, the well-liked John Hutton, during last month’s crisis over the future of Mr Brown, and the promotion of the junior defence minister, Bob Ainsworth, to the main job as the least bad option.

The prime minister now stands accused by many generals, more explicitly than is customary, of skimping on the men and kit needed for the Afghan campaign. In an interview this week in Helmand General Sir Richard Dannatt, the outgoing head of the army, noted that he was flying in an American helicopter because a British one was not available. He had asked in public for a reinforcement of 2,000 troops (and more in private), but received the promise of only a temporary boost of 700 soldiers, amid resistance from the Treasury and the Foreign Office. All this feeds the generals’ belief that Mr Brown does not much care for the armed forces. One general says: “Tony Blair did not understand us. Gordon Brown does not like us.”

This vocal disgruntlement is one factor that may sway public opinion about the war. Polls have offered wildly varying impressions of the support it enjoys among the electorate. One conducted this week, for the BBC and the Guardian newspaper, found that roughly equal proportions declared themselves for and against the war—and that support for it was actually higher now than it had been in 2006. Britain’s precarious fiscal position will make a difference; voters may be less inclined to back expensive military adventures as state expenditure at home is cut, as it soon must be. And, above all, the rising level of fatalities may tilt sentiment, and embolden politicians, against the war.

Matters are only aggravated by the fact that the service chiefs are not just fighting the war in Afghanistan, but are also scrapping among themselves over scarce funds and the future of defence policy. On current plans, the bill for military equipment will amount to billions more than the defence budget provides for, and nobody expects more money. Today’s wars are being fought primarily on land, but the big money is being spent mostly on fighter jets, ships and submarines. For some officials in Downing Street, the army’s request for more resources is a ploy to shore up its position relative to the other services—a policy of “use it or lose it”.

Such suspicions are not without foundation. Consultations have started for a Strategic Defence Review, the first since the one overseen by George Robertson in 1998, that both Labour and the Tories promise to set up after the next general election. General Sir David Richards, the incoming army chief, says there are two contending visions: “fortress Britain”, in which the country equips itself for a conventional all-out war against, say, Russia; and “asymmetric” warfare, in which Britain continues to involve itself in messy counter-insurgency campaigns. In his view, Britain needs to concentrate on asymmetry—by implication, cutting big programmes for planes and ships. The “risk” it would take in high-end warfare would be mitigated by NATO’s protection.

Bloodied in the green zone

Such debates seem distant from the men of the 1st battalion of the Welsh Guards, pushing grittily along the Shamalan canal. The idea behind Operation Panther’s Claw is to extend control of the populous, irrigated “green zone” by linking up the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, with Gereshk, on the main ring road. The canal would become the new defensive line, keeping the Taliban out in the west while protecting the population on the other side. By controlling the bridges over the canal, and by using biometric technology, they will keep a close watch on those crossing in and out. For now, though, the British troops are under fire from both sides of the canal. Their only supply route is the narrow road along it, where the Taliban have been planting as many bombs as they can muster. Attacks on the British positions at dawn and dusk are routine; one Welsh Guards company was attacked 15 times in a day.

Progress has been slow, partly because the troops are being methodical in holding on to their gains and partly because they are meeting strong resistance from the Taliban. The British have advanced only two kilometres in two months of fighting. It is a tough, frustrating and bloody business. One of several fatalities in the operation was the battalion’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe. The Ministry of Defence has resorted to boasting about the number of Taliban it has killed in the operation, nearly 200, even though senior officers know that such “body counts” are irrelevant.

In parallel, American marines are making a big push to extend control of areas farther south. The American overall commander, General Stanley McChrystal, has urged his troops to minimise civilian deaths, even at risk to themselves. It is easier said than done, as Major Giles Harris, a company commander, explained. “When we meet the bad guys, we win,” he said. But protecting civilians was “a continual challenge”. “It is the discipline required not to take the gloves off. You are asking my guardsman not to empty the magazine of his weapon into the compound wall from which he is being shot at.”

All along the canal, a frequent refrain from soldiers is: “Do you think we are winning?” The more pertinent question, perhaps, is why the area was lost in the first place. Until 2008 Nad Ali had been held by pro-government militias financed, in large part, by the drugs trade. In 2007, when the Taliban took root around the town of Babaji, they were evicted by British forces helped by the militias. The next year, however, Toor Jan, the leader of the biggest militia, was killed, security collapsed and the Taliban took over. One factor was the influx of Taliban fighters pushed out of the Garmser district, where American marines were clearing insurgents. Another was that Nad Ali, as a government-held area, was the only part of Helmand where large-scale eradication of opium poppies took place, helping to turn the population against the government. By late 2008 Nad Ali became known as a place of tough, pure Taliban justice, in contrast with the corrupt ways of Toor Jan’s henchmen.

Haji Meshan Khail, a tribal elder from the district, says: “Before the British soldiers came to Helmand we had very good security and peace. Now we are escaping from one place to another because there is a lot of fighting and bombing. People in the Nad Ali district are tired of ISAF and Taliban. They don’t like either of them. But they think that Taliban is better. When British soldiers capture a place they start checking all the houses and arrest the civilians without any reason.”

The story of Nad Ali illustrates the unhappy experience in Helmand. British forces never really wanted to deploy there; they would rather have gone to Kandahar, the biggest city in the south, but it was allocated to the Canadians. British paratroopers arrived in Helmand in the spring of 2006, with the then defence secretary, John Reid, declaring incautiously that he would be “perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot”. The British had planned to concentrate on creating a “development zone” between Lashkar Gah and Gereshk. But under pressure from the government to stop outlying towns from falling to the Taliban, the force was parcelled out into “platoon houses” that came under severe attack. In their first six-month deployment, the paras fired about half a million rounds.

Subsequent British contingents were similarly stretched out. One aim was to clear the road to the Kajaki dam to allow the refurbishment of a hydroelectric plant. Another was to retake the town of Musa Qala, abandoned by the British in 2006 despite American protests. British tactics changed with each six-month rotation of troops. One especially damaging practice was “mowing the lawn”—raiding areas repeatedly to clear out insurgents without holding the ground, exposing anyone friendly to the British to grisly retribution. Whereas the American army and marines drew up a new manual on counter-insurgency in 2006, the British have yet to revise their doctrine. They rely heavily on American thinking, without American resources.

EyevineUnderresourced, underequipped and fired at from both sides

There were several reasons why British commanders asked for more troops last year: to “thicken” the forces available to hold central Helmand, to deal more efficiently with bombs and to release men to train the Afghan police, widely regarded as corrupt and predatory. Demand for helicopters has always outstripped the (growing) supply. Yet the British debate over military resources misses important points: heavy mine-resistant vehicles are unable to move off the roads and surprise the enemy; helicopters are vulnerable and must stay away from high-threat areas; and Britain will never have enough troops to secure Helmand province. Counter-insurgency is about engaging local populations, and that cannot be done from the air or from inside a Mastiff armoured vehicle.

In any case, the question of whether Britain should send a few hundred more troops and a dozen extra helicopters, useful as they may be, is marginal compared with the military power that the Americans are bringing into Helmand this year: 10,000 marines (more than the total number of British, who are nominally in charge) and 100 or more helicopters. But even these reinforcements are not enough.

More Afghans, not more Brits

General McChrystal privately reckons he needs about 400,000 Afghan soldiers and police, double the number now envisaged, though the proportions of each are subject to debate. In Helmand there are just 3,000 Afghan soldiers compared with around 20,000 foreign troops. “I need ten Afghans for every British soldier,” says one British commander. Worse, Afghan battalions are exhausted. They do not rotate out of the front line: soldiers fight without a break for the three years they are enlisted. Afghanistan cannot afford the army it has, let alone a bigger one. Expanding Afghan forces will cost donor countries several billion dollars a year indefinitely. But trying to garrison Afghanistan with foreign troops would be even more expensive.

The country needs a lot more than just military force, above all a legitimate and functioning government and a process to bring Taliban fighters and commanders back into the fold. For all of this, creating strong Afghan forces is the prerequisite. Without them, British soldiers will continue to die, and the people of Wootton Bassett will continue to line the road—until the day, that is, when the British public has had enough and demands that the troops come home. A retreat without securing some sort of success would be the cruellest blow for the men on the ground.