Is climate change losing us the war in Afghanistan? - by Richard... Thursday, March 11, 2010

Is climate change losing us the war in Afghanistan? - by Richard... Thursday, March 11, 2010

The short answer to this seemingly off-the-wall question is yes. British political and diplomatic efforts on the region are not focused on securing the political deal necessary to secure peace. Instead, they are being subsumed by the more important need to secure an international climate change agreement. 

To explore this in more detail, a good starting point is to visit a commentary in The Guardian by Seumas Milne on the war in Afghanistan. His headline is: "Voters are far ahead of the elite – so they'll get no say", with a fairly descriptive strap line which declares: "Afghanistan should be at the heart of the election campaign. But it won't be because the main parties all support the war."

Particularly intriguing, though is his observation that, "in the coming general election, this ever more bloody conflict is unlikely to intrude into the heart of the campaign, except in well-rehearsed spats about equipment and funding."

Milne then argues that, "For all the promise of a great national debate, don't expect one about the life-and-death struggle on the plains of Helmand. The reason is that, unlike in the case of Iraq, all three main parties are signed up to carrying on with a war the public has decisively rejected."

You can take that latter comment with a pinch of salt – Milne is quite clearly "anti war" and that obviously colours his argument. But the overarching point made is sound. Political arguments – as yesterday at PMQs – are corralled into the narrow confines of "well-rehearsed spats about equipment and funding."

Almost certainly by design, the parties have decided not to debate the "big issues", amongst them being whether we should be there or not. But, between the narrow focus on equipment and funding, and the question of whether we should be in Afghanistan at all, there is another level of debate – as to our strategy in the region. That too is not being debated.

Thus, as with so many issues, there is a leaden, unspoken consensus, where a wide range of issues which could help voters distinguish between parties are simply not aired, reinforcing the impression that they are "all the same", except in that tiny, claustrophobic patch that they have chosen for their battleground.

As far as Afghanistan goes, this leaves us with the bizarre situation where the leader of the opposition rails against the prime minister over things for which he is not directly responsible – or, at least, culpable – while ignoring the bigger issues, such as strategy, for which he is.

However, even that might be a fond hope. The UK line appears to be to adopting the US strategy, while pretending all along that it is one we thought of as well – if not first – and are perfectly content to follow. Forging an independent strategy could well be above Brown's pay grade, as indeed it would be for Cameron if he ever got into No 10. Hence, it is perhaps best not to talk about it.

If that really is the case, then it is a complete dereliction of duty – to the British nation and the troops who are fighting in our name. The United States is relatively new to the south Asia region, has little feel for the subtleties and has no in-depth experience of the politics.

By contrast, as an ex-colonial power, in theory at least, the British have a wealth of experience and an institutional memory which goes back centuries. The policy lead, if it is to come from anywhere, should be provided by the British.

Where this is particularly appropriate and necessary is in our relationship with and understanding of India, the great elephant in the room of Afghan politics. Already, Indian officials are preparedto admit privately that which is obvious to informed observers – that there is a proxy war being played out between India and Pakistan on the canvass of Afghanistan.

Some will aver that this is the main driver of the present conflict and it is certainly the case that there will be no long-term (and therefore any) resolution to the instability in Afghanistan until relations between India and Pakistan are normalised.

With that, one might expect British diplomatic activity to be intensively focused on regional conflict resolution. But what is very evident in the Brown administration is the relatively light footprint and for the fact that the emphasis is completely elsewhere.

Informed observers in the region note that the primary policy objective of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the region – and that of its partner in crime, the Department for International Development (DFID) seems to be climate change. Far more resource, in terms of manpower and aid, is going into India to address that issue than is being devoted on Afghanistan, even to the FCO having an official on permanent detachment to Dr Pachauri's TERI in New Delhi.

That this should be the case is hardly surprising. While the resolution of the Afghan conflict is an important regional objective, it is mostly seen in terms of an expression of support of the US, and thus an extension of Anglo-US relations. Thus, the foreign policy objective is to do enough to maintain credibility with the US. Winning is not an imperative.

On the other hand, the achievement of an international agreement on climate change is a major foreign policy objective of the UK, both on its own account and through the prism of EU policy - where the EU would probably be quite content to see the US-led venture fail. Furthermore, it has a vital economic dimension. Unless other countries can be prevailed upon to follow the same suicidal course as the EU, in the aggregation of damaging climate mitigation policies, the economic consequences could be dire.

In this, India is a key player, not only because Dr Pachauri is chair of the IPCC but because the good will of the Indian government is essential if a deal is to be brokered. And, insofar as any nation can claim such a role, India is also key to that other major player in the field, China.

The confounding factor here is Afghanistan, and more particularly, Indo-Pak relations. Fraught at best, India is extraordinarily sensitive about these issues (as indeed is Pakistan), to the point of institutional paranoia. It resents anything that looks like external interference – especially from an ex-colonial power such as Britain, of which there is still great suspicion and some resentment.

The upshot of this is that Indian involvement in Afghanistan is a no-go area for British diplomats and the government. It is simply not discussed at any meaningful level. The climate deal takes precedence and the risk of souring relations over Afghanistan is too great to be taken.

We thus end up in a bizarre position where our troops are committed to fighting in Afghanistan in a conflict which by general accord cannot be won by military means and which requires an overarching political solution. In any such solution, India has to play a major part – or it simply will not work. Yet, to protect the climate change agenda, the British government is not even prepared to address this pressing issue.

Coming full circle, this could explain the reluctance of Brown to entertain a public debate about strategic options for Afghanistan, preferring instead to conserve political capital and follow the US strategy – flawed though it may be. 

This would certainly explain the Conservatives' reluctance to engage as they also hold climate change policy in a pre-eminent position. Although they would never admit it publically, this is far more important to Cameron than sorting out Afghanistan, especially if the real objective of that adventure is maintaining "face" with the Americans.

Putting this all together, there is a case to be made that British troops out in Afghanistan are dying not for peace but for the greater cause of an international deal on climate change. In such a cause, of course, troops are expendable – a small sacrifice to make in the titanic battle to save the planet.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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A carbon neutral blog? - by Richard...

We have been enjoined to participate in another mad greenie scheme, asking us to reduce the "carbon footprint" of our blog by allowing a tree to be planted in our name.

The aim is "to raise awareness of the carbon emissions resulting from the use of the internet - specifically of blogs. A blog with 15,000 visits a month has a yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 8lb." 

Thus, to neutralise these emissions the organisers have created "My blog is carbon neutral" buttons (pictured) so that happy little bloggers can demonstrate that they care about the environment and the carbon emissions of their blogs. 

This is a small but nontheless (sic) worthy solution to contribute to environmental issues. "Our idea is to show possibilities to make a contribution to protect the environment," say the scheme organisers.

The worst of it all is that they appear to be serious. However, I suppose as a perverse incentive, readers can take some consolation from the fact that, every time they view this site, they are adding 0.000044 lb of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (provided they don't breathe while they are reading).

We are considering setting up a fund to pay al-Gore for the offsets.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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The hidden hand - by Richard...

"Foreign lorry drivers should pay for road use say MPs", blares the headline in The Daily Telegraph.

Knowing the predilection of newspapers for getting even the simplest things wrong, it was necessary to check thePublic Accounts Committee report to see if our gifted MPs had really said such a thing. And indeed they had, albeit in not such strident terms. What they actually said was:

We are concerned that foreign lorries use our roads and cause accidents here but, unlike British lorries, do not pay any tax. The Department [for Transport] should work with the Treasury to reduce this imbalance and find a way for foreign lorries to pay for their keep on our roads.

With that, one could not disagree, but – to put it mildly – the honourable members are being more than a little disingenuous. The report was actually about inspection standards for commercial vehicles and the MPs had inquired as to whether inspection charges could be imposed on foreign vehicles as a means of addressing the huge cost of policing the flood of foreign trucks entering this country every day.

They were in fact told that the Department had considered introducing a "European vignette scheme" under which foreign operators would be required to pay a fee for each vehicle entering the country. But the level of the fee would have been fixed by European law at a maximum of €11 and the Department's cost benefit analysis had shown that such a scheme would offer poor value for money.

The problem is that, for such a small sum, the costs of collection and administration exceed the income, so it is a non-starter. Thus, another attempt bites the dust, impaled on the altar of European integration.

A much better – and more accurate – headline, therefore, would have been: "EU blocks charges on foreign trucks," which could have been the case if the MPs had chosen to frame their report in terms of the evidence they had been given. But, as always, our representatives are never anxious to display to their adoring voters just how much power they have given away to the evil empire.

The only way, legally, the UK can impose worthwhile charges on foreign trucks is to have a non-discriminatory scheme which applies equally to domestic trucks as well, which is why the French and the Germans, with their road toll systems, can get away with it. But that would mean huge changes to the British system, which is not something the government is yet prepared to consider.

Thus, the voting public must be kept in that twilight world, a fog of incomprehension, buoyed by meaningless headlines which herald things that will never happen.

And, in the same territory, Cranmer picks up on an amendment to the law on performing rights, which is to remove the exemption currently enjoyed by charities and "non-profits" on paying license fees for performing musical works - in church halls and the like.

Set to cost these worthy enterprises some £20 million a year, no mention is made of the reason for making the change. A little investigation on behalf of Cranmer, however, reveals that the original UK rules were "non-compliant" with EU law and now, after a considerable elapse of time, the amendment is being passed through parliament to regularise the position.

Neither our gifted legislators nor the voting public are allowed to know this, of course, other than being told that the change is "a legal imperative." 

Yet, in a matter of weeks now, we are to vote in a general election, supposedly to choose our next government. You can quite understand why so many people are entirely indifferent to this event. A few individuals in Westminster may swap sides in the House, but our rulers will stay the same.

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The sinister nexus - by Richard...

The Policy Network has, very helpfully, partially updated the work we did on 18 July 2007 when we first discovered that the EU was paying environmental groups such as the Friends of the Earth Europe to lobby itself.

To that effect, we are offered a reportwhich analyses one programme of funding, in which DG Environment distributed over €66 million to environmental NGOs between 1998-2009.

Specifically, the report examines funds allocated to the so-called "Green 10" – a coalition of ten NGOs pushing for an "environmental" agenda in EU policy-making. It finds that nine out of the ten receive funds from the commission, eight receive one-third or more of their income from the commission, and five of those rely on the commission for more than half their funding. 

We also learn that, from 1998 to 2009, there was a substantial increase in funds given by the Commission to environmental groups: from €2,337,924 (1998) to €8,749,940 (2009) – an average increase of 13 percent every year. 

Details of some of the payments are given, and it transpires that in 2008, DG Environment provided the European Environmental Bureau with nearly €900,000, 52 percent of its income that year. Similarly in 2008, Friends of the Earth Europe received €790,020. This is compared with €635,000 (from all EU sources) in 2006.

From the EU register of lobbyists, we see that FoE Europe also got money from DG Employment and Social Affairs, to the tune of €37,292, as well as €92,113 from DG Development. 

FoE Europe also got finance from the German and Dutch ministries of environment, respectively €61,527 and €79,632, bringing its public sector income to €1,064,529 out of its total income of €2,143,893. Other donors included the Oak Foundation, which gave €330,274, and the James M Goldsmith Foundation which donated €55,811.

An EU parliamentary answer, which gave some of the 2009 figures, is just as revealing. The WWF European Policy Office gets €661,878, Climate Action Network Europe gets €259,762 and FoE Europe gets €813,721. FoE also gets two grants totalling just under €94,000 for the EU's "Youth in Action" programme, one for a project on "building capacity for youth participation in Friends of the Earth Europe".

The authors of the Policy Network report, however, seems somewhat surprised to discover what we were calling two years ago a vast nexus of influence. Environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have enormous influence in the European Union, they write, then telling us that the primary function of EU funding for the Green 10, it appears, is to support self-justifying propaganda, rather than to promote the wider public good. 

Yet, that is in fact only a part of it – a small part. The Commission staff working document of October 2008 could not make this clearer. 

EU legislation, it tells us, itself acknowledges that NGOs "contribute to the development and implementation of Community environmental policy and legislation." Thus, it (the legislation), "provides for funding of operational activities of environmental NGOs that are primarily active in protecting and enhancing the environment at European level".

What, in effect, therefore, has happened is that the NGOs have become an arm of the state, contributing to "the development and implementation of Community environmental policy and legislation." They are part of our system of government, subsumed in much the same way that trades unions became part of the Soviet Union.

This, of course, goes back to the White Paper on European Governance of 27 July 2001, which specifically targeted "civil society" – of which NGOs are part – as a means of getting "more people and organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU policy." This built on an initiative started in December 1997 when payments to environmental NGOs were first authorised.

However, what is really interesting is a point not made by the Policy Network authors. They assert that the majority of Green 10 members now receive considerably more money from the Commission than in previous years, but the amount allocated to the NGO funding programme increased at its greatest rate in 2003 and 2004. After 2006 the total amount has only increased in line with inflation.

By contrast, some environmental NGOs have enjoyed a considerable increase in their incomes, far above the inflation rate, with FoE Europe enjoying an increase from €1,377,430 in 2006 to €2,143,893 in 2008. 

This can be partly explained by the emergence of shadowy groups such as the European Climate Foundation, bringing a new line of money from outside the EU budget, aimed at helping "Europe play an even stronger international leadership role in mitigating climate change." Then there is the equally shadowy role of the giant charitable foundations, in the FoE's case, the Oak Foundation being a substantial donor.

This money is being used as what amounts to a force multiplier, adding to the EU's reach and extending its influence at no cost to itself. To some extent, therefore, this sinister nexus is even more worrying than the EU itself, which at least doffs its hat to the idea of accountability. Not so these organisations, which are spending money on influence and we have no idea as to its true origin.

Once again, we have "powerful vested interests" at work, and we are not even close to finding out who is really pulling the strings.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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You can't buck the narrative - by Richard... Wednesday, March 10, 2010

There are several things I try to do with this blog. In bringing you a diet of posts each day, one of my aims is to avoid being derivative. My preference is to bring genuine, new or little-known information to the table, or to add fresh thinking or analysis to current topics.

Despite that, there is value in repeating existing material, and spreading the word – and it is done exceedingly well by a large number of blogs. But, in many areas where there is a narrative up and running, it is either wrong or heavily distorted, either by act or omission. In this case, mere repetition or commentary which takes the baseline facts as read simply perpetuates the errors and the distortions, helping to lock in the narrative to the point where it achieves the aura of truth, irrespective of the actual facts.

No more so is this the case than with the Snatch Land Rover, an earlier preoccupation of this blog, and in particular the reports attendant on the coroner's inquest on the death of Cpl Sarah Bryant and her three colleagues in Afghanistan in June 2008.

The basic facts of this incident are not disputed and are well established. On 17 June 2008, Bryant and four other soldiers were riding in a Snatch Land Rover which impacted a pressure plate IED. It was blown apart killing four, including Bryant, and seriously injuring one other. By common consent, the Snatch Land Rover did not provide adequate protection and, had they been better equipped, the soldiers might have survived.

What is in dispute – or should be - however, is a claim that has become a central part of the narrative, a classic example of which is here, but one that is repeated endlessly. This is that the reason for the wholly unsuitable Snatch Land Rovers being in theatre was due to a shortage of funds and a refusal by former chancellor and now prime minister Gordon Brown to permit the purchase of replacements. We hold no brief for Mr Brown, none at all, but this narrative is wrong, wholly and completely wrong – and dangerously so. 

That said, I do not intend to rehearse all the details as to why it is wrong. I have already done that in my book Ministry of Defeat, a book well-known in military, political and media circles, and strenuously and quite deliberately ignored because it contradicts the narrative and tells people what they do not want to know.

The same story, is told in even more detail in hundreds of posts in my much-neglected sister blog, Defence of the Realm, a blog I have largely abandoned because – as I have found to my cost – there is little value in telling people things they do not want to know, when they prefer the prevailing narrative. Nevertheless, the whole story is there and will remain so, mute testament to the power of the narrative, for the very few who are interested. 

A good place to start would be with seven linked posts, taken from my book under the generic heading "Lost before it started". The links are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6and Part 7.

Viewing the disgusting performance of David Cameron during today's PMQs, however – when he sought to make political capital out of the "narrative" on the backs of fallen soldiers (matched only by the performance of Mr Brown), it is necessary to remind readers of the last chapter of the story, which led that Snatch Land Rover down the path to destruction.

The story was set out in a DOTR post here in November 2008, with further elaboration here. The essence of the story is that a batch of protected vehicles – the Australian Bushmaster – had already been ordered and could easily have been in theatre at the time to replace the Snatches, and which could well have saved Sarah Bryant and her colleagues' lives.

From this, several crucial points emerge. The first is that, even at this late stage, funding was not an issue. The cash had been allocated, the vehicles selected and the purchase approved. Why they were not then in theatre is a question for the Army, not ministers, to answer.

Secondly, even at that time, the Conservatives knew all about this transaction. They knew because I told them – giving them a full verbal briefing - and sent a full dossier down to their defence team, with all the supporting data. 

Then, as now, they had all the information they needed to know that this episode – and indeed the run-up – was nothing to do with cash shortages. It was everything to do with a sequence of mistakes and incompetence by senior Army officers and civil servants, all of whom are currently covering their backs, using the narrative – not least in testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry – to hide their tracks.

Despite this, the Conservative chose – quite deliberately – to run with the narrative. That was not because it was the truth. They knew it was not. Simply, that was the politically convenient "attack strategy" which offered the most promise and the best prospects of short-term political advantage.

Out of the limelight, however, Ann Winterton, myself and others, have been painstakingly teasing out the truth, ignored by the political claque and the media, because it does not fit the narrative. 

Worse still, that applies to the media. The "Bushmaster" dossier has been placed before innumerable journalists and even very recently, a senior journalist from a major broadcasting organisation checked out the information. It stood up and yesterday I was asked to give a recorded interview for television news. The footage was not used. It ran counter to the narrative. Others don't even begin to see the point and have never tried.

Yet, the information is there. The information about the Vector is also there – the vehicle that the Army chose as the replacement for the Snatch, at a cost of £200 million – a vehicle that was so dangerous and so mechanically unreliable that it had to be replaced ... by the Snatch. 

Then there is the saga of the Panther, with 401 ordered in 2001 at a cost of £166 million whichthen required an additional £20 million to get 67 into theatre, eight years after they had been first ordered. No wonder the Army was short of money and vehicles.

But the Conservatives knew all that. Many journalists also knew what was going on, but chose to ignore it. The ever-staunch Booker has retailed many of the details in his column, not only for them to be ignored but censored as well. You want "powerful vested interests", look at the arms industry. There is, it seems, no way of bucking the narrative. People will believe what they want to believe – and suppress the rest.

In conclusion, I have to admit I am soured and not a little embittered by this process. When I first heard about the death of Sarah Bryant and her colleagues, I was in Paris, sitting in the shade of an armoured personnel carrier, eating an agreeable steak dinner, discussing Army requirements with a galaxy of senior personnel.

From this and other sources – some at an unbelievably senior level who have fed this blog with material most political journalists would die for – I have come to learn a great deal about the inner workings of Whitehall and the machinations of Army politics. I know what I'm talking about, and information last seen with "secret" plastered over it has found its way into DOTR. But that has been to no avail. The narrative prevails.

It actually makes writing DOTR an exercise in futility. Having neglected it for some time, I am now minded to wrap it up. I owe myself one more post, though – which has been months in the writing – on why the military adventure in Afghanistan will fail, can only fail and will lead to our eventual ignominious departure, carefully spun as a victory. That I have decided, when I get round to it, will be my swan song on that blog.

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