And so it drains away ...

Monday, July 13, 2009

And so it drains away ...

The heat is off. The Afghan issue, for the moment, will slide down the agenda, its force spent with nothing resolved.

Completing the government's counter-attack was David Miliband who, according to The Times "rebuffs generals and endorses UK's strategy in Afghanistan."

The trust of his push was to "brush aside" complaints from the country's most senior generals and opposition leaders that "lack of helicopters and insufficient troop numbers had hindered the campaign and contributed to the deaths of 15 British soldiers since the start of the month." 

Narrowing down problems in the campaign to these simplistic issues did – as we predicted - present no great challenge to the government, not least because neither of them represent the critical failings over there.

Instead, the narrow focus enabled Miliband to deny that the mission was poorly manned and poorly equipped. "We're not going to be able to do our mission in Afghanistan through tanks and helicopters alone. The great danger that our troops face is on the ground," he parrots.

Note how Miliband uses the word "tanks", raising a straw man, thus to be able to demolish it. And, with Ainsworth (pictured) making the same points (also referring to "tanks"), the opposition and the media have nowhere to go. They have said all they have to say on, and have nothing more they are capable of saying. 

Interestingly, at defence questions, Ann Winterton asked whether some of the problems in the campaign stemmed from the failure of the development programme. By way of an answer, she was told how HMG had funded new schools and clinic. Funnily enough, there was no mention of a Ferris wheel – and definitely no mention of roads, thereby exactly making Ann's point.

More and more, I am convinced that we should NOT be funding schools, clinics and all the rest of the "touchy-feely" goodies that are so close to the heart of the FCO, DIFID and its bunch of left-leaning, gender equality luvvies.

On this, I am absolutely at one with Paddy Ashdown who tells us "to abandon the notion that we can make Afghanistan into a well governed state, with gender aware citizens and European standard human rights. It raises expectations we cannot fulfill and wastes resources better deployed elsewhere."

One of our tasks, he says, is gently to lower expectations in the Western world and bring our ambitions back into the range of the achievable. This will certainly be difficult and may well make those who attempt it, unpopular.

Although Ashdown does not say it, lowering expectations would fit well with seeking to achieve the doable ... building roads and basic infrastructure, opening out the country to enable governance and kick-starting the economy, paving the way for later improvements.

The trouble is, the Army can't do it. It hasn't got the money and, in truth, doesn't want to know. It sees its job as thundering around the countryside in its boy-racer kit, shooting up the bad guys. DFID and FCO do have the money but, in the absence of the "security" that the Army is never going to provide, cannot get stuck into a serious infrastructure programme.

In any case, neither department is interested. They will content themselves with funding the digging of latrines and wells in the countryside and supplying explosives fertiliser to the Taleban farmers, while they busy themselves in the urban "security bubbles", spending a fortune on "security consultants" to ensure their personal safety, developing their right-on gender equality agenda and building Ferris wheels for wimmin.

With Miliband defending his turf, DFID defending its (I neither know nor care who is the secretary of state), and the Army mowing the grass at ever-increasing cost, while the Taleban periodically slaughter its troops, nothing has changed or will change.

But, until the next time a newsworthy quantity of dead soldiers is loaded onto yet another C-17, the media can all go back to sleep and the politicians can go on their all-expenses-paid hols. Then, they can start over, making exactly the same points they made last time, to the taxpayer-funded backdrop of flag-draped coffins.

Me cynical? Nah!

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Of course they need more helicopters ...

Challenged by Liam Fox as to why the defence secretary was not bringing more helicopters into Afghanistan, Ainsworth trotted out the "usual statistics" and then rounded on the shadow secretary, declaring, "I have yet to hear how he thinks we can get more helicopters in ... ".

Yet Ainsworth, in common with his predecessors, is fighting with his hands tied behind his back. He could bring more capacity into theatre within weeks – it could already be there, and could have been for years. But, for he or his predecessors to have done so would have been in the teeth of opposition from the military itself, which has blocked endless attempts to bring more machines into use.

Options on the table have included the leasing of Mi-8 MTVs and Mi-26s (pictured), of purchasing Blackhawks off-the-shelf from the American manufacturers, or buying and refurbishing US Huey-type machines – in use by US Marines and Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

Each time proposals have been made, they have been blocked – sometimes for good reasons, but none of the problems insurmountable. Mainly the blockages have been inter-service rivalry or because the military have been holding out for "better" machines, sometime in the future, as in the Future Lynx.

Maybe in 30 years time, historians will be able to get access to the government records and tell the full story of what has been going on, but the Future Lynx story also involves a strong element of "pork barrel" politics – keeping Augusta Westland in business – the future of the Army Air Corps, of which Dannatt is commandant general, and protecting Navy requirements for a light ASW airframe.

Perhaps a more robust, Churchillian prime minister could have cut through the maze of competing priorities and sectional interests and issued an "action this day" directive. But such is the febrile atmosphere that it would be a very brave – and foolhardy – politician who over-rode his "defence chiefs" and imposed his own choice on the military.

Any of the alternative options would have involved extra risk – over and above that of buying a fully kitted-out helicopter of a type already on the British forces inventory.

The Russian-built helicopters are not as reliable or as safe as the European and American machines, and there are problems integrating the full defensive suites into these airframes. Nevertheless, Mi-8s are in use with special forces in Afghanistan, flown by serving RAF pilots, and the users speak highly of them.

The Huey airframes are old, and have relatively limited capabilities, but they are better than the Lynxes in that they can operate in "hot and high" conditions, albeit with reduced payloads. As for the Blackhawks, they are currently on the US forces inventory, but even then there are problems with integrating the electronics and defence systems with the British fleet.

Thus are ministers handicapped. The British military has acquired a rare ability for finding "reasons" for not doing things it does not want to do, and then deflecting blame onto the politicians when the consequences become apparent, briefing all the while to a media willing to "out" ministers who "put troops at risk". They would just have to wait for one of the "minister's" helicopters to crash, and he would be toast.

The politicians have yet to find a way of dealing with this – a disease which was apparent in 1996 when Douglas Hogg deferred to his "experts" over BSE – which means government has become a process of ministers allowing their "experts" free rein, then acting as their spokesmen and taking the can when things go wrong.

Ainsworth is following in this long tradition and, in time, his successors will do the same. Fox could have put him on the spot, offering alternatives. But he too knows that, to promote them, he would have to take on the military – something he would not do, conscious that he would also be at risk of being denounced.

That in some way explains the current unreality of politics. Ministers and their opposition counterparts are emasculated, and cannot even explain why.

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