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War Is Boring: Afghanistan Casualties Could Portend British Pull-out

DAVID AXE | BIO | 19 AUG 2009
WORLD POLITICS REVIEW

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On Thursday morning, a bomb exploded in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, injuring a British soldier. Two days later, the soldier died at a hospital in Great Britain. He was the 200th U.K. fatality in the eight-year-old Afghanistan war. British newspapers marked the milestone with a flurry of grim news reports. And in short order, fighting claimed four more British troops.  Great Britain has around 9,000 troops in Afghanistan -- the biggest national contingent, after the U.S. British forces are concentrated in the restive south, especially in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the U.K. military had "more than stepped up" in Afghanistan, in contrast to other NATO armies, that mostly keep their forces confined to heavily fortified bases.  But Britain's vital contribution to the Afghanistan war is increasingly undermined by weakening public support -- and by equipment shortfalls resulting from inadequate investment in the British armed forces. A poll of 2,100 people found that 57 percent wanted the U.K. out of Afghanistan, the Herald reported on Monday. "There is no longer any appetite for this war," wrote Richard North, author of the book "Ministry of Defeat: The British in Iraq 2003-2009."  There's an eerie parallel, between Britain's involvement in Afghanistan, and its history in another U.S.-led war. Britain was America's strongest ally in Iraq, until weapons shortages and declining public support amid mounting casualties precipitated a withdrawal this year. American troops were forced to redeploy to fill in for the retreating British in Iraq -- a process that is already repeating itself in Afghanistan.  Originally, the British army and marines manned four "platoon houses" in southern Afghanistan districts, in addition to the main British base, Camp Bastion. U.S. Marines took over the platoon house at Now Zad last year, and are now in the process of taking over a second platoon house in Musa Qala. U.S. President Barack Obama this year ordered an extra 20,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, to bolster the roughly 50,000 soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen already in place.  The British military's retreat from Iraq was set in motion by a furious string of skirmishes. In May 2006, insurgents hit the British outpost of Abu Naji with hundreds of mortars and rockets. In the aftermath of the attack, Lt. Col. David Labouchere recommended the army abandon fixed outposts and revert to lighter, mobile patrols -- "removing the irritant," he called it. While the patrols represented a useful tactic, abandoning the Abu Naji base represented the first step in a gradual contraction of British forces to a handful of bases in and around Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.  In 2006 and 2007, insurgent attacks on the downtown Basra outposts claimed scores of British lives. By late 2007, British dead in Iraq numbered around 175, and public support for the war was at an all-time low. In September, remaining British troops "slipped out of the city overnight," according to the Times of London. Several thousand British troops remained at a single "mega-base" outside Basra until April this year, but they no longer contributed meaningfully to counterinsurgency operations.  As early as December 2007, engineers were building new facilities at the Basra base, to house U.S. forces that would eventually replace the British. That handover was hastened in early 2008, when Iraqi troops launched an attack on Basra-based insurgents. British forces played only a minor role in the fighting. Instead, hundreds of U.S. troops raced south to coordinate resupply, air strikes, reconnaissance flights and artillery barrages.  An absence of political will underpinned Britain's early departure from Iraq. But British operations were also hamstrung by equipment shortages. During the much-touted 2007 "surge," which saw an extra 30,000 U.S. troops deploy to Iraq, the Pentagon invested billions of dollars in specialized bomb-resistant trucks and all-seeing aerial drones. The British Ministry of Defense never matched that commitment, even when investment is adjusted for the smaller size of the British army. Today, the Pentagon operates some 220 Predator and Reaper drones to support its roughly 700,000-strong active-duty land forces. As of early 2009, the U.K. had just two Reapers for its 100,000 soldiers and marines.  During the media frenzy resulting from the 200th British death in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth urged patience. "I just want to urge people -- this is difficult, it isn't going to be a short engagement, it's going to take time," Ainsworth told the BBC. "We have to get behind our people, we have got to get behind our forces, and because we have lost 200 makes that even more important, not less so."  But public dissatisfaction could drown out Ainsworth's plea. North, for one, sees Afghanistan ending for the British, the same way Iraq did -- "by slow, progressive moves." "British involvement -- at least in terms of the areas occupied -- could gradually be scaled down, leaving a situation where one can imagine that the force is concentrated on Lashkar Gah and then Bastion, before retreating entirely to barracks and thence onto the ramps for the final airlift which will take them back home -- and military oblivion."  David Axe is an independent correspondent, a World Politics Review contributing editor, and the author of "War Bots." He blogs at War is Boring. His WPR column, War is Boring, appears every Wednesday.  Photo: British soldier in Helmand province, Afghanistan, Aug.6, 2009 (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. James Purschwitz).