I think we said that

I think we said that

Referring to the daily stream of truck convoys that bring supplies into the landlocked nation, Hilary Clinton said to the Senate Armed Services Committee:"You know, when we are so dependent upon long supply lines - as we are in Afghanistan, where everything has to be imported -- it's much more difficult than it was in Iraq, where we had Kuwait as a staging ground. You offload a ship in Karachi. And by the time whatever it is - you know,...

Failure in Iraq

In another valuable contribution to the remarkably sparse debate on the British occupation of Iraq, MP and former Grenadier Guard Adam Holloway has published a short paper headed, "The Failure of British Political and Military Leadership in Iraq."Holloway takes the view that the Labour Government has suborned the Armed Forces from the very top to half the way down, creating a system that often enforces what is politically convenient, not...

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Corrupt, untrained, underpaid, illiterate

The Sunday Times laments the poor state of the Afghan security forces, with a long piece headed: "Corrupt, untrained, underpaid, illiterate: the forces waiting to take over." This is by no means the first article to draw attention to the parlous state of the forces, on which the Coalition exit plan entirely depends.In fact – as you might expect – the problem is very far from new. In 1900, Afghan ruler Abdur Rahman was recalling the state...

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Drop the dead donkey

Taliban fighters are using donkeys as deadly four-legged bombs to attack British troops in Afghanistan, reports The Daily Telegraph. The paper adds that "the incident has alarmed military chiefs concerned that the Taliban are now using desperate methods to attack occupying forces." I sincerely hope that this is ill-informed rhetoric on the part of the paper. The use of a "donkey bomb" was reported by The Times in April this year, so it...

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The "nomad" war

In an attempt to unravel the mind-numbing complexity of the Afghan conflict, at the heart of the "war" is actually a relatively simple – although completely misunderstood – tribal issue, compounded by the tensions between modernity and conservatism.Simplifying this to the extent that it becomes understandable is perhaps to run the risk of over-simplification and thus distortion, but one has to start somewhere. And that "somewhere" is the...

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An absolute disaster

The time zone difference between the United States and the UK meant that the Obama speech yesterday was broadcast here in the wee small hours, allowing only the briefest of analysis (and a trans-Atlantic conference call) before Morpheus cast his spell.With the benefit of some hours of reflection, however, the "strategic review" announced by Obama looks no better than it did when he delivered it. The deployment of an extra 30,000 troops...

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Obama speaks

Yesterday (local time) president Obama spoke to cadets at West Point – and through them the nation and the world – to announce his "strategic review" which, his administration would "pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion."Revisiting the history of the 9/11 attacks, the president then described al-Qaida as "a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify the slaughter...

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The shadow of history

While the world awaits with bated breath the announcement tomorrow from president Obama on his intentions for Afghanistan, coverage of the campaign has been relatively muted – although the traditional scaling down of campaigning as winter approaches doubtless has had some influence on the flow of news.For my part, some little time ago I decided to step back from the day-to-day reporting and look at the history of the benighted land that...

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The forgotten country

Having briefly returned to the Iraqi war, we come back to our review of Afghan history. Before our diversion, we were exploring the US incursion into Helmand Province but, before that, we had left the general history in September 1953 when Lt-Gen Mohammad Daud Khan had just taken over the post of prime minister.In many ways, Daud's take-over was a classic part of the Afghan cycle which characterises the history of this nation. Not only...

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Obligations

The one thing that worried me about the emergence of more detail on the British occupation of Iraq was that the great labour in writing Ministry of Defeat would somehow be invalidated.But, with the release via The Daily Telegraph of the Army's review of operations, I need not have been concerned. So far, what I have written stands up well against the inside information now being revealed.What we have so far is a review of the earlier part...

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Recriminations

The Sunday Telegraph is carrying reports of leaked documents, attesting to the lack of preparation for the "nation-building" phase of the Iraqi conflict in 2003.In particular, we have Maj-Gen Andrew Stewart writing: "The pessimist in me says that Iraq is a missed opportunity … at the strategic level we had poor judgment, thinking there was time ... My greatest fear is that, should the political and development process fail, we may become...

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Development blues

A central part of the quest for "hearts and minds" of the Afghan peoples is the ongoing development programme. Nowhere is this more vital than in Helmand province, which sustains the heart of the Taliban-based conflict and where much of the fighting is currently taking place.Helmand, though, is no stranger to development projects. From 1946 to 1979, it was the subject of one of the largest and most expensive schemes in the history of Afghanistan,...

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Then as now

In October 2009, we saw a survey of more than 50 servicemen who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. It concluded that the 5.56mm calibre rounds used by British soldiers "tailed off" after 300 metres yet half of all Helmand firefights are fought between 300 and 900 metres. We were told that the British soldier couldn't attack the Taliban "with any certainty that if he hits the enemy he will kill or incapacitate him." The study thus claimed...

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Here we go again

... reinventing the wheel. The Times is running a story headed: "Army tells its soldiers to 'bribe' the Taleban", revealing that a new army field manual published yesterday is telling British forces to buy off potential Taliban recruits with "bags of gold".The edicts, which are contained in rewritten counter-insurgency guidelines, will be taught to all new army officers. They mark a strategic rethink after three years in which British...

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Bad idea

" ... in a move designed to address public fears that allied troops could become bogged down in Afghanistan for years to come," reports The Daily Telegraph (and others), Gordon Brown has announced that he plans to hold a summit for the Nato allies to discuss a timetable for withdrawal starting in 2010.He is to offer London as a venue in January and wants the conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military...

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Partition

The end of the Second World War had not only left Afghanistan in a weakened state, with its development and modernisation stalled, there were new events to intensify the pressure on the country, most of all the partitioning of India, its independence and the creation of Pakistan. Obviously traumatic for the two nations involved, they had a profound effect on Afghanistan as well.The year before partition, in May 1946, had seen Hasem Khan...

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A missed opportunity

See also the update here.Our romp through Afghan history now brings us to the reign of the last king, Mohammad Ẓahir Shah (pictured). As Nadir Shah's only surviving son, he took the throne in 1933 on the assassination of his father, thus continuing the Barakzai Durrani dynasty. Then only nineteen years old, Ẓahir was not in a position to exert his will and the real power was held by two of Nadir's brothers, Mohammad Hasem Khan and Shah...

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Wrong end of the stick

As a not infrequent commentator on the state of the Ministry of Defence, it might be thought that I would welcome the considerable media scrutiny to which this lacklustre department is being exposed. However, the current focus on the bonus issue does nothing but fill one with despair, as the media chases after the wrong issue, firmly grabbing the wrong end of the stick.Highlighted, of course, was £47 million paid so far to MoD civil servants...

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A common enemy

As we left our continuing romp though the history of Afghanistan, we had seen the death of the "Iron Amir", Abdur Raḥman, in 1901. From his bloody reign, we see the continuation of the tribal rivalry, the oppression of the Ghilzai by a Durrani ruler from the "new" capital of Kabul, bolstered by Tajik and other northern tribes.We also see the enforced resettlement of Ghilzai Pashtuns north of the Hindu Kush, areas which have now become...

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The duplicitous British

In our previous piece, we looked at the influence of Afghan history on the current conflict. We concluded that there were three elements which were relevant.Firstly, the war is a continuation of the tribal rivalry between the two major tribal groups, the Ghilzai and the Durrani/Barakzai, which effectively started in 1709 when the first Ghilzai dynasty was founded. Secondly, the movement of the capital from Kandahar to Kabul in 1775 positions...