John Humphrys discusses plans to withdraw British and US troops from Afghanistan
On his way to Washington this week the Prime Minister said: “I think everyone wants an endgame.” He was talking about Afghanistan. “They want to know that our troops are going to come home.” The issue is when that should happen. In their talks Mr Cameron and President Obama hinted that the date for ending the combat role of NATO troops in the country might be brought forward but that the overall timetable for withdrawal would not change. So is the endgame in Afghanistan too long or is the continuing presence of our troops there necessary?
Ongoing casualties
It is not hard to see why both British and American public opinion wants us out as soon as possible. Last week the number of British servicemen and women to die in the country since 2001 reached four hundred when six soldiers were killed by a single roadside bomb. Even as Mr Cameron was arriving in Washington a stolen car burst into flames as it was driven at speed on to the airfield at Britain’s Camp Bastion in Helmand province where the American defence secretary, Leon Panetta, was about to arrive. It looked like an attempt on his life or on the lives of British troops waiting to greet him.
The Americans themselves have seen almost two thousand of their troops killed in the country, more than half of them in the last two years. Even their supposed allies are killing them. Last month an American major and colonel were murdered by an Afghan police intelligence officer in the heart of the Interior Ministry in the Afghan capital, Kabul, a place that ought to be one of the most secure in the country.
But perhaps even worse for the Americans than the melancholy sight of body bags returning home is the sense that relations between American troops and those they are supposed to be helping have deteriorated beyond repair not least because of the actions of individual American soldiers. Video clips have circulated of US marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. Copies of the Koran were found burned by American troops. And then last weekend an American staff sergeant walked off his army base in Kandahar in the middle of the night and cold-bloodedly murdered sixteen innocent Afghan civilians, nine of them children.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, condemned the atrocity as “impossible to forgive”. And although President Obama said that America regarded it with the same seriousness and horror as if the victims had been American he will know that the massacre makes their task in the country infinitely harder. An Afghan farmer, quoted in the British press, said after the killings: “Americans have lost this game. The only option is for them to leave.”
Completing the mission
But during his talks with David Cameron President Obama ruled out any “sudden” pull-out of troops from the country. “We are going to complete this mission and we are going to do it responsibly,” he said. A meeting of NATO leaders in Chicago in May is due to review strategy and the timetable for the ‘endgame’.
What, though, does ‘completing the mission’ mean? It is a very long time since anyone seriously believed that all the original purposes of the mission could be accomplished. Back in 2001 when American and British forces invaded the country after the 9/11 terrorist assault on the United States the aims were clear. The Taliban government which had sheltered those responsible for that assault, al-Qaeda, were to be removed; democratic government was to be established in the country; its dependence on the drug trade was to be ended; and the country’s own security forces were to be built up so that western forces, now under the control of a NATO force, Isaf, could ultimately leave the country.
The first task was quickly accomplished. But the Taliban did not go away. Their continued ability to fight back against NATO forces prompted President Obama, back in 2009, to increase the number of US troops in the country by 30,000. This ‘surge’ was supposed to make the crucial difference but it hasn’t. No one now thinks the Taliban can be decisively defeated. Attempts instead to negotiate with them have made a little progress with the Gulf state, Qatar, offering them the chance to open an ‘office’ in their country as a prelude to talks. But most commentators think the Taliban are playing a long game: they know the Americans will leave sooner or later so there is little incentive to negotiate seriously.
As for the other initial aims there is even less progress. President Karzai’s government in Kabul is widely regarded as lacking real democratic legitimacy and riddled with corruption. And although there have been real attempts to build an economy independent of opium production, the narcotics trade has never been stronger.
Only the efforts to build up Afghanistan’s own security forces can be said to be still roughly on track. Indeed Mr Cameron and Mr Obama hinted this week that the date for handing over to them responsibility for security in the country might be brought forward from the end of 2013 to the summer of that year.
That is the case for staying and seeing things through. Unless that can achieved, it is sometime said, the lives of NATO forces already lost will have been wasted.
But those pushing for a much swifter exit argue that even more lives will inevitably be lost by staying on any longer. Hard as it may be for politicians to admit this, they say, but the lives already lost have already been wasted. Whenever NATO leaves, they claim, the departure will be followed by what will in essence be a civil war. No viable Afghan state has been created despite all NATO’s efforts in the last ten years. Instead the country remains riven on ethnic grounds and once foreigners depart the Tajik warlords of the north will fight with the Taliban Pashtun of the south and east. The West has already failed in Afghanistan, just as the Soviets failed in the 1980s and the British way back in the nineteenth century.
Politics of the west
The real logic for staying, such critics say, has nothing to do with what’s going on in the country but with the politics of western countries, especially the United States. President Obama has to stick it out because the Afghan war is ‘his’ war. After he pulled the US out of Iraq, domestic political factors required him to show himself as a tough leader by cranking up the Afghan war, hence the ‘surge’. Now he faces an election in which his Republican opponents charge him with weakness, especially over Iran. He cannot afford to cut and run. Even after a successful election, the argument goes, he will have to be careful in choosing the moment when he can claim a victory even as he leaves the country to its fate. All this means a slow endgame.
As for Britain, the need to keep our 9,000 troops in Afghanistan has (according to this analysis) nothing to do with what they may be able to achieve in that country and everything to do with our relationship with the United States. Only this week that relationship has been grandly feted in Washington, with 19-gun salutes welcoming the Prime Minister. Having followed the Americans into Afghanistan we have no option but to follow them out only when they decide and for whatever reason.
Supporters of the British government’s policy on Afghanistan would strongly dispute this analysis, arguing that progress can still be made even during the ‘endgame’ Mr Cameron openly speaks of. Whatever the truth on that issue, though, many people will be looking beyond Afghanistan at another country which poses a pressing political question: Iran. Should Britain follow America’s lead there, whatever it may be? Or should it be ready to take an independent line?
What’s your view?
- Do you think the endgame in Afghanistan should be short or long?
- What do you think can still be achieved, if anything, by keeping British forces in the country until the end of 2014?
- Do you think NATO has chalked up real accomplishments in the country in the last ten years or not?
- Do you think the timetable for the endgame is being determined by the needs of Afghanistan itself or by political factors in America?
- Should Britain simply follow an American timetable of withdrawal or be ready to have one of its own, irrespective of what Washington might think about it?
- And should Britain be ready to take a view of what to do about Iran independently of the United States or simply follow the lead of our closest ally?
Let us know what you think.
