The newspapers, television and other media are covering the war in Afghanistan with increasing vigour and today we learn of the death of eight soliders in the past 24 hours. The bravery of these young men and women from all walks of life and military rank is remarkable; few of us can even imagine what they face daily in Afghanistan in our name.
The Secretary of State for Defence, Bob Ainsworth, warned days ago that a major joint operation with the United States is under way to provide the opportunity in Helmand Province for the Afghan authorities to govern if and when the Taliban are cleared out. The United States is providing the main force but we have significant numbers of troops deployed. It seems, yet again, that we are deploying troops without sufficient back up and resources in terms of equipment – and this, if true, is not the fault of the military. It is the fault of government and, ultimately, whether we like to face this or not, it is our fault. The government governs in our name and we have the right to speak in protest at the way the government is acting.
There will, we are told, be more soldiers killed.
I read in the Independent this morning…
The Government will, however, face questions about the way it has responded to the call from military commanders to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
The senior command had wanted to send about 2,500 extra troops, but Gordon Brown refused the request, agreeing to the temporary deployment of 700 just for the period of the Afghan elections scheduled for August.
One of the senior officers intimately involved in drawing up the reinforcement plan said last night: “What has happened has shown the sheer danger our forces face out there day in, day out. We know the force levels needed for safety. This was not a spurious request and there is sincere hope the Government will think again.”
The prime minister is reported as saying…
Mr Brown acknowledged: “This is a very hard summer and it is not over.” He sought to justify the conflict, stressing: “We knew from the start that beating the insurgency in Helmand would be hard and dangerous but it is vital. People in Britain are safer because of the courageous sacrifice of British soldiers.”
If Mr Brown refused to deploy the 2500 troops requested, the question is why? We are committed to a bloody and dangerous war to preserve the security of our nation and other nations. This is the line being taken by our government. I would have thought that equipping troops properly – not promises to do so in the future – is far more important than spending in many places and other projects elsewhere. This is a war. It is not a peacetime training exercise and if military commanders feel that they do not have adequte support, sufficient equipment and kit, then it is our duty – surely? – to ensure that the troops get it by asking searching questions of government.
This is not a party political issue anymore, even if it may have started out that way. This is a matter of conscience. We ask troops to act in our name. It is not enough to honour their deaths with hastily rushed words in Parliament and funeral corteges and medals. We must, as a country, do everything in our power to minimise the risk for the men and women on the ground and ensure that our troops are effectively deployed with proper resources and equipment.
A final thought… I don’t know how you feel, but I feel a bit uncomfortable that those in our society who are making very high profits from the law, business, entertainment and the like – because we do enjoy freedom and security as a result of military action in Iraq and Afghanistan should enjoy such high profits when soldiers on the ground are not properly equipped. I am told that US troops have far better equipment and resources.
Maybe a voluntary fund to get donations from lawyers, entertainers, bankers, estate agents, television personalities and everyone minded to help would be a way of providing money for this extra equipment. Of course, I am being naive. A fund for military equipment?
Why not, we raise millions for Tsunami victims, earthquake victims, starving children in Africa, cats, dogs… why not our forces?
Any Celebrities out there who are prepared to help on this one? Perhaps we could ask on Twitter and on facebook?… even if you just want to lobby the government to tell us the truth on the matter. Is the government right or are the soldiers on the ground right?
This article in The Independent makes stark reading.
Meanwhile, a former head of the Armed Forces yesterday accused the Government of putting UK forces at risk and spending the “minimum they could get away with” on defence.General Lord Guthrie, chief of the defence staff from 1997 to 2001, said commanders on the ground were struggling with too few troops.
He told the Daily Mail: “I spoke to an officer the other day who said that the Treasury had affected the operational safety of our soldiers, by preventing an uplift in our numbers.”
It is “very likely” that fewer soldiers would have been killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan if ministers had provided funding for more helicopters, he added.
Sorry Mike, don’t agree.
As you know I served in Iraq so speak with experience. It’s less the case of the money being available for kit, more about where it is being spent.
I would also deeply question whether we enjoy any freedoms as a result of Iraq or Afghanistan. I would argue the opposite.
The issue is that if army commanders on the ground have asked for extra support and didn’t get it – is the government right to refuse it?
I can understand your point about the value of these military operations – but that is not controllable by the soldiers on the ground either. As you know from experience… they have no choice, given their membership of the forces, but to fight the war.
Your issue about us enjoying freedom may well be right… but if the forces are not being adequately supported or equipped is it fair on them?
I know you served in Iraq. Would you be happy to serve now if under equipped, under resourced?
It may be that the government is right of course and the army commanders are not.
I don’t know – but I suspect the commanders on the ground have a pretty clear idea of their needs. That is, I understand, what they are trained for.
Having been at Canary Wharf this past week, and sensing that the culture of self absorbed twattery has now returned to the investment banking community, how about a bankers for soldiers campaign ?
All bailed out bankers earning (cough) more than, say, £200K pa (being, I reckon, about 10 times the pay of a squaddie) should be pressurised to donate their excess pay to a forces fund.
Don’t really know what to say about this old chap, I have a friend who served in Northern Ireland who maintains that the military effort in Afghanistan is necessary to attempt to limit the amount of drug crops being grown in aforementioned land but has not actually seen any service in said country. Having said that, having said that.
So I said just that.
I, personally do not agree with expending British blokes on overseas soil as I know what lies our G’vnment tell to rake in cash for their friends who supply all the bombs, missiles and ammunition. War is big business for they in politics and human life to them, is entirely expendible.
You know I speak only the truth.
Too many http’s!
Interesting suggestion, Mike, but I don’t agree that fundraising is the answer here.
T’is a very serious business, too serious for the waffling platitudes currently being churned out by Brown et al. to be at all acceptable, although it seems there is precious little we can do about this government’s accountability.
In our age of 24-hour, real-time Twitter updates, – far removed from the hot, ditch-ridden, bearded world we see on YouTube and read about on websites when we click on the latest link – it seems intelligent thought and advice should get through to those at the top much more easily than it does. Perhaps it was always thus.
In that mountainous country more than 2.5 times the size of the UK, land-locked and with porous, unfriendly borders, no-one who matters seems to know why we’re there, what Ainsworth’s end-state really looks like or how long it will take.
On this fine Sunday morning – which all those brave souls (British and Afghan) who have died in Helmand will never see or care about again – we can click through to articles in the Guardian which have Brown agreeing to an extra 2,000 troops and articles in the Independent which have him cutting 1,500 from their current levels.
Helicopters are the answer, helicopters aren’t. More troops, fewer troops. Burn the poppies, legalise the poppies.
Confusion reigns within government and without.
If representative, soldiers’ letters published in the Guardian make it clear that they really don’t have much idea about what they’re doing there either;
An Independent article analyses no fewer than 10 different possible strategic aims that might encapsulate our reason for being in Afghanistan.
Everything would suggest we are very far from Brown and Miliband’s ‘clear strategy’.
And at 2009 casualty rates, how committed will politicians, the military and the British public really be?
With my limited maths skills, it seems we’re at a rate of about 2.57 killed, wounded or otherwise evacuated per day. With 172 days left in the year, that’s another 442 dead or wounded by New Year’s Day 2010, just shy of a whole battalion.
And if, as we are told, casualty figures are to get worse in the coming months, and the Taliban were to keep up this week’s atrocious example of 8 dead in 24-hours, that would be 1,376 dead by New Year’s Day. More than two battalions’ worth of dead, plus all the extra wounded.
The entire 8,000-strong task force would only last until New Year’s Day 2012 at that rate, the combat element of it much less.
And then what? Send the other 90,000? Bring back national service? Spend more money we don’t have fighting a war which has no clear strategy?
Endex. Everybody out.
There will be time and proper reason again for our soldiers to be brave and courageous in the not-too-distant future.
For them to continue to be so in the Sangin valley should bring shame upon our politicians and, if what Mike says about them representing us is true, perhaps upon us too for not demanding their proper diligence with our soldiers’ lives.
[...] provocado esta mañana por un post de Charonqc, un profesor de derecho en el Reino Unido, en su blog sobre la marcha de la guerra en Afganistán, después de unas noticias especialmente nefastas esta [...]
The bottom line is that we are engaged in an unwinnable war both politically and militarily. Of course decent equipment will help but to what extent? From what I can gather this conflict seems to resemble Vietnam in many ways. From a tactical point of view you have battlegroups and even platoons holding outposts but without the ability to get out and dominate the ground – a key objective to any operation. From a political point of view we have a conflict that is growing more unpopular as the body bags mount. The Taliban/AQ/whoever know that they can play a waiting game. All they have to do is chip away and while they do their tactics evolve.
The Catch 22 is that we’re struck. Pull out and you hand total control of the region to the Taliban and face an increasingly de-stabilised Pakistan. Remain and we’re bogged down in a dirty guerrilla war with no conceivable end.
OL – I think you are right. The difficulty appears not to lie in taking the ground but in holding it.
The newspapers at the weekend were reporting inconsistent information from the government with stories about more troops going in / Brown cutting roop deployment even further.
As far as I understand it, reading US newspapers – the Amercians are mounting a major push to take and then hold ground.
It may prove yet, as you suggest, to be a battleground forever…. unwinnable.
Ironically it was British forces in Malaya post WWII which proved the value of guerilla tacts against the chinese communists – suing the same tactics, I understand.
What is to be done?
Perhaps Blair and Bush may yet rue the day when they invaded Iraq…. ?
[...] brought on this morning whilst reading a post written by Charonqc, a law professor in the UK, on his blog, following an especially bad week for the British in which eight soldiers were killed in just one [...]