News values

In projecting the progress of the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, metrics most commonly by the media are the deaths of British soldiers and, more generally, the deaths of other coalition troops. Further "downstream" are reports of the deaths of Afghani citizens, both civilians, members of the security forces and such categories as security guards.

In the hierarchy of death, however, we have long been aware that there has been a ranking applied by the popular media – the emphasis (quite understandably) given to British troops. Much less attention is given to other nationalities and, down the scale, are incidents involving Afghanis, which are often completely unreported.

Much the same applied to the campaign in Iraq, to the extent where the death of even quite prominent Iraqis went unreported, sometimes dropped in favour of more prominent events, especially those with a domestic political content.

This, I remarked upon in Ministry of Defeat, in one instance noting that the murder of a prominent Sunni and his son in Basra – and the kidnap of five others - had gone unreported. The British media had focused on Tony Blair giving evidence to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, where he had been asked whether life was then better for the citizens of Basra than it had been pre-war.

This came up during the Frontline Club meeting yesterday, as an example of my unreasonable criticism of the media, the argument being that the news value of the Blair evidence far outweighed the murder and kidnap of a few Iraqis, even if these crimes had been committed by men in civilian clothes and police uniforms, in a fleet of 10 "official" cars with no number plates.

This, incidentally, had coincided with a six-hour curfew being imposed in Basra in an attempt to stem the growing tide of violence and a report that oil smuggling in southern Iraq had reached epidemic proportions, costing the country an estimated $4 billion a year, followed by yet another report of a rocket attack on a British base – none of which were reported in the British media.

What I had not realised, however, was that the ranking was quite formally structured. In the early days, of the occupation, one news organisation imposed a "tariff", reporting events only if they involved one dead British or American soldier, or five Iraqis. But, as the violence increased, the bar was raised where, to qualify for inclusion in a news report, three US soldiers or 25 Iraqis had to be killed. A British military death, of course, was always reported.

This, in my view, undoubtedly distorted British public perception of events – and indeed misled journalists. Relying on the metric of British military deaths as a comparator, in May 2005 Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele actually wrote that the insurgency barely existed in the south, it having been "quiet for months". British troops could pull out immediately, he declared.

Undeterred, the media is playing the same games in Afghanistan. We know, of course, that the reporting of British troops has been extremely high profile, with the toll reaching 22 for the month.

Yet, in the last two days, four Afghani soldiers have been killed in Helmand, their lives ended by an IED which hit their vehicle, and – in two separate incidents, eight and then four Afghani private security guards were killed, also by roadside bombs in Helmand, the first incident injuring four others. None of these incidents have been reported by the British media. You will have to turn to the official Chinese news agency Xinhuanet for details.

This news, however, is highly significant, for several reasons. First, it points up the perilous insecurity of the roads, where the death toll is actually far greater than the British media would indicate. Secondly, it reminds us of an important, but again ill-reported dynamic – that the Taleban is by no means confining its attacks to foreign security forces. The Afghan forces are at greater risk than our own.

Nor indeed are just the security forces are risk. There is also a steady and largely unreported toll taken of construction workers, another incident recently reported in Khost. And just over a week ago, 13 Afghan road construction workers were kidnapped in Paktia.

All these issues have a much wider significance. On the one hand, the strategic plan for Afghanistan is progressively to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces and, on the other, much depends on the coalition and aid agencies being able to deliver reconstruction. Where both the security forces and construction workers are so much at risk, neither is going to happen, even discounting the unreliability of the local police.

The other significant issue here – one we have noted before – is the media-supported demand to increase helicopter lift for British troops, to enable them to be transported without using the road network, to keep them out of harm's way. Yet, that very process – effectively abandoning the network to the Taleban – could delay progress, by exposing local security forces and others to greater risk.

Meanwhile, in Lashkar Gah, in the city's main bazaar, turban seller Haji Lala says Taleban black is still the most popular colour. "Everyone wants black, like the Taleban. I sell 40 or 50 a month." It may be an indicator of where ordinary people think the province is heading, notes Australian writer Jerome Starkey.

Whichever way the province is heading, it seems not unreasonable to aver that we will not find out from the British media. Whether it is even reasonable to suggest that they should tell us is another matter. The very firm view I heard expressed on Wedenesday was, effectively, that it was not. What matters, it seems, are news values – not the actual news.

COMMENT THREAD

Not even a whimper

As of Friday, the British military presence in Iraq comes to an end. There will be no flags, no parades, no speeches and not even a formal withdrawal – just an administrative mess.

The warning signs were there in June when plans for Britain's final military mission in Iraq were in disarray, with no formal agreement finalised to maintain in place a Royal Navy detachment and upwards of 400 troops after the 31 July deadline, when the bulk of British forces were required to quit Iraq.

On the back of the ejection of the main force, this was the one diplomatic fig-leaf which enabled the British government to keep a toe-hold in the country and thus continue the pretence that we were still welcome.

However, even that has fallen apart. A "draft accord" which had been approved by Iraqi ministers in June allowed only 100 personnel to remain and that had to be ratified by the Iraqi Parliament. But, according to The Guardian, using an agency report, the Parliament has gone into recess without ratifying the instrument, forcing the remaining British personnel to leave the country by Friday.

Officially, of course, they have not left. They are being stationed over the border in Kuwait, pending the resumption of parliamentary business, whence it is hoped that the British detachment will be allowed to return in late September.

Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth is saying that the government has been "deliberately keeping a low public profile" on the issue - so as not to increase the risk to UK forces, he says. It is nothing to do, he might say if asked, with trying to conceal the humiliating prospect of British personnel having to scuttle over the border to avoid physically being ejected.

An MoD spokesman said US troops would stand in for British troops while they were out of the country, and explains that the "pause" is due to a "procedural delay," leaving the MoD website to laud the heroic work of the removal men, as the last ship sails for England with a batch of Mastiffs (pictured), there to be refurbished and sent to Afghanistan.

The Daily Telegraph tells us that the ratification was opposed by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr who stalled the process. That opposition should have come from that source is hardly surprising. But prime minister Maliki cannot have invested a great deal of political capital in trying to push the agreement through, if Muqtada's men were able to stop it going ahead.

The New York Times notes that the other two small remnants of the coalition, the Romanians and Australians, will also be gone on Friday, if not before, leaving the Americans as the sole members of a multi-national force which has seen contributions from 38 separate states.

My guess is that is how the situation will remain. Come September, the ratification will be quietly parked and the well-rested British personnel in Kuwait will be quietly found a flight home, where there will sneak in anonymously, with nothing more said. And that truly will be the end of what has been one of the more inglorious episodes in British military history in recent times.

And we leave not even with a whimper but ejected by a "procedural delay" which even the British government wanted to keep "low profile". Our presence lasted from 20 March 2003, when British troops crossed into Iraq, to 31 July 2009. And, in two days time, it's over.

COMMENT THREAD

We don't know the half of it

Two more deaths have been added to the growing list of fatalities arising out of operations in Afghanistan. According to the MoD, one was a soldier from The Light Dragoons, killed "as a result of an explosion that happened whilst on a vehicle patrol in Lashkar Gah." In the other incident, a soldier from 5th Regiment Royal Artillery was killed by an explosion whilst he was on a foot patrol in Sangin district.

Not untypically there is little extra detail, and the vague description of a "vehicle patrol" offers no clue as to the type of vehicle involved. The Light Dragoons operate Scimitars, Spartans and Jackals so it could have been either. If it is a Jackal, that would bring to 12 the number killed in this type.

But, if we get very little detail about the fatalities – although more information often seeps out – we know much less about the wounded and their circumstances – unless they themselves tell the media. One such is 2nd-Lt Guy Disney, also of The Light Dragoons, who lost a leg in the same incident in which Pte Robbie Laws was killed.

Disney's story is told in last weekend's Mail on Sunday, from which we also learn during the first phase of Operation Panther's Claw, the spearhead 700-strong Light Dragoons Battle Group suffered 55 casualties of all kinds, including heat exhaustion and battle shock.

The Mail journalist Richard Pendlebury, in his piece about Disney, estimates that the killed to wounded ratio – as high as 1:3 in Vietnam – has now plummeted to 1:8. This is the result, in part, of speedy evacuation and the heroic medicine performed by the highly skilled military surgical teams.

While the MoD claims to withhold the details of wounded soldiers for reasons of "patient confidentiality" there can be no doubt that that the absence of any reports is extremely convenient in concealing from the public the carnage happening daily, at a rate far higher than the fatality rate would indicate. If, for instance, if the Vietnam ratio applied to this theatre, we would be looking not at 160 killed in action, as the figure now stands, but at well over 400.

For those of us whose grim task is to monitor the welfare of troops in the field, and to ensure that they are a best protected as possible, the lack of broad casualty data may also distort perceptions, when the only metric available, to which any detail is attached, is the fatality.

Often, the difference between a death and a "very severely injured" is a matter of pure chance while, on the other hand, when the enemy is "trying out" a vehicle in the field, early attacks may be – in their terms – less successful, yielding only injured, rather than the deaths for which they are aiming. Only later, when they get the measure of the vehicle, does the death rate climb.

This was definitely our perception – based on anecdotal reports and other evidence – that in al Amarah in 2005, there were a considerable number of injuries in Snatch Land Rovers before a significant number of fatalities were experienced.

Equally, in Afghanistan, there have been a significant number of attacks about which we have known nothing, although details of two have recently drifted into the public domain.

One report told of Carl Clowes, 23, from Bradford who in July 2007 was in a Land Rover in Helmand when it drove over a mine. Both his legs were crushed and he suffered more than 20 injuries. His left leg was amputated below the knee 10 months later and he still suffers pain in his right leg. He can now walk only short distances without the aid of crutches.

Another told of Lance Corporal Jonathan Lee who, in October 2007 in Afghanistan, was riding in a Snatch Land Rover when a bomb blast threw him 50 yards into a minefield. He lost a leg.

Knowledge of such incidents would help inestimably to judge whether specific vehicles were too fragile for deployment, as indeed would information on near misses, where no injuries or even damage occasioned. Here, though, there are serious operational security implications. The Army is naturally reluctant to give free after-action reports to their enemy, only to have this vital information used against troops as attacks are refined and strengthened on the basis of the details supplied.

Nevertheless, we note that the MoD is quite willing to release details when there is a propaganda advantage to be gained, witness a recent MoD-inspired report on a failed attack involving a female Jackal driver.

From this we learn, incidentally, that the Jackal was "guarding a supply convoy", the very antithesis of the purpose for which this vehicle was designed - as a Special Forces "raider", relying on speed and mobility rather than armour for protection. Tied to a predictable convoy route, this type of vehicle is a highly vulnerable target.

Elsewhere, we learn, via Lt-Col Stephen Cartwright, CO of The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, that Jackals were used in the Panther's Claw operation, to seize ground at the top of the Shamalan Canal in preparation for the link up with the Welsh Guards. This is, again, not the purpose for which these vehicles were designed or procured. They are effectively performing the role of light tanks or armoured cars.

Then, also, we learn of a serious injury in a Jackal, from the Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News. It tells us that, on 16 July, L/Cpl Wayne Cox, of The 2nd Battalion the Rifles, was seriously injured by an IED while driving a Jackal in the Kajaki area. This, of course, is not within the Panther's Claw operational area, and amounts to yet another guerrilla-warfare type of ambush, against which the Jackal is ill-protected.

The paucity of detail, where details have to be culled on an almost random basis, has another effect. Recently, we learned of a court case taken by a civilian engineer wounded in a bomb blast in Basra in late October 2003, while riding in an unarmoured Land Rover Discovery.

This was Graham Hopps who lost a shoulder in the incident and was claiming for damages against the Ministry of Defence and his employer, arguing that he should have been provided with a better-protected vehicle,

The judge, Mr Justice Christopher Clarke, however, ruled that he did not believe that an armoured vehicle would have prevented Mr Hopps from suffering the same injuries. He also concluded that the security conditions in Iraq at the time were not bad enough to require his employer to issue its workers with armoured vehicles.

Considering that there had been three bomb attacks against vehicles that week – that we know of – and Army vehicles had also been attacked with fatal results, it is hard to see how Mr Justice Clarke could have come to that conclusion.

But it is also fair to say that, had we the information on all the incidents that had occurred, Mr Hopps might have stood a better chance of winning his case, especially as the route down which he was being driven was known locally as "bomb alley", which suggests that attacks cannot have been completely unknown.

If, of course, we had confidence that the Army was collecting the information and using it to effect, upping protection as vulnerabilities became apparent, then there would be no need for us to have any information. But we know this not to be the case.

Furthermore, on our own forum, we had an anonymous contributor – the authenticity of whom we have no cause to doubt – who informed us that, prior to its introduction, he had been asked to write an assessment of Jackal for a government department.

Then he had assessed it as a "death trap", saying in his report that he would not be prepared to risk his own life in one. His report, however, was discounted and his judgement considered flawed "because the manufacturers were able to make a convincing case as to why Jackal was the answer to everything."

Issues at the time which had influenced its acquisition were essentially political, based on a need to be seen to be ordering new equipment, the price (cheaper than a Mastiff) and industrial factors, maintaining employment in the UK defence sector and reducing imports. On top of that, there was the Army's obsession with the Land Rover, whence it wanted, "for some unfathomable reason" a replacement for the WMIK.

As more and more detail emerges, we find that the MoD (and Army) are being less than frank with the reasons for the purchase of many of their vehicles, the reasons they are deployed, the casualties incurred as a result and the reasons why deployment is continued, even when the evidence suggests they should be withdrawn.

Effectively, we don't know the half of it, that very lack of knowledge used against us by an MoD which cites our "ignorance" as a reason for ignoring our findings, claiming greater knowledge of a situation which it will not share.

That is unlikely to change but even the simple and crude death rate is sometimes telling a devastating story. If this latest fatality is related to a Jackal, it will add further to the growing evidence as to its dangerous vulnerability. We may indeed not know the half of it, but what we do know is occasionally enough.

COMMENT THREAD

Another review - The Ministry of Defeat

Colonel Blimp, you're still fighting the wrong war.

by Philip Jacobson

The Daily Mail, 24 July 2009

Although Richard North sets out to make the "case for the prosecution" of the British military and the political establishment for comprehensively bungling their conduct during the Iraq War, it is events in Afghanistan that make the book so timely and thought provoking.

The parallels between the two conflicts are inescapable, from the failure to learn from tactical mistakes to the desperate need for more helicopters.

Where North accuses the Ministry of Defence of an Orwellian attempt to spin an ultimately disastrous campaign in Iraq into a resounding triumph, an unspoken question hangs it the air: is history repeating itself in the wilds of Helmand Province?

The launch pad for North's withering assault on the MoD is the emblematic story of the Snatch Land Rovers, lightly armoured vehicles originally developed for riot control in Northern Ireland and pressed into service in the British zone of operations in Southern Iraq with the approval of General Sir Mike Jackson, then head of the army.

Under fierce attack by the well-armed militias, the snatches rapidly acquired the grim reputation as "four-wheeled coffins". North was one of the first military analysts to highlight their extreme vulnerability to the enemy's roadside bombs, known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

In North's view, shared by other knowledgeable observers, the initial success of the allied invasion was squandered by the MoD's inability – some would say pig-headed refusal – to grasp the true nature of the Shi'a insurgency that followed and adapt tactics accordingly.

Equally damaging, he argues, was the failure of the procurement system – the unglamorous but crucial business of ensuring that British soldiers had the best weapons and equipment for the kind of war they were being asked to fight.

While the Snatch vehicles were going up in flames and commanders pleaded for more troop-carrying helicopters, billions of pounds were being lavished on high-profile projects designed, in North's words, to fight imaginary wars of the future". The admirals were determined to have their giant new aircraft carriers, the air marshals their Eurofighters; meanwhile the army "was getting palmed off with wholly unsuitable, second-hand equipment".

In stark contrast, when IEDs began killing large numbers of US soldiers in Iraq, the Americans rushed into service hundreds of lumbering armoured troop-carriers specifically designed to withstand roadside bombs.

The result was a swift and substantial reduction in the body count. A US Marine officer who survived a massive blast told me reverently: "We just love those big ugly mother f*****s."

The MoD's tactical fallibility was rooted in the fateful assumption that the undoubted expertise acquired by the Army in Northern Ireland could be applied more or less wholesale to the radically different circumstances of Iraq. North cites the toe-curling meeting at which the senior British officer in Basra was dispensing lofty advice to US commanders on how to defeat the militias at the very moment they were forcing his troops into a humiliating withdrawal from the city.

"It's insufferable, for Christ's sake," raged one of the Americans present. "He comes in and lectures everyone in the room about how to do counter-insurgency. The guys were just rolling their eyebrows [as] the notorious Northern Ireland came up again."

Littered with military acronyms with obscure technical data, North's prose rarely rises above the utilitarian, while the crop of footnotes on practically every page reflects his heavy reliance on published sources (it appears he did not interview any of the senior military and political players, British or American).

He might also have examined more closely whether the strategic, tactical and organisational failures he identifies in Iraq are being perpetrated in Afghanistan.

It is hardly reassuring when an acute shortage of helicopters obliges the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, to borrow and American Black Hawk for a visit to his increasingly hard-pressed "grunts" on the ground.

For years, the default response of the MoD to criticism from civilians, however well-informed, has been to rubbish them as "armchair generals" pontificating from the comfort of the living room.

North will probably get the same treatment but, as he mischievously points out, only a couple of years ago some £2.3 billion was spent on upgrading the MoD headquarters in Whitehall – money that could have paid for two dozen of the troop-carrying Chinook helicopters so desperately needed in Afghanistan today.

And what that show up on the final bill but the purchase at £1,000 each, of more than 3,000 Herman Miller Aeron chairs, advertised as "the most comfortable in the world".

COMMENT THREAD

A tale of two armies

Primitive British mine/IED clearance methods, compared with their US counterparts, may have been responsible for the death of Private Robbie Laws, 18, of the 2nd Mercian Regiment – to date, one of the youngest soldiers to die in Afghanistan.

On 4 July, Private Laws was attached to a squadron of the Light Dragoons which were operating Scimitar light reconnaissance tanks taking part in operation Panther's Claw. Laws was part of a four-man "dismount" team carried in a Spartan armoured personnel carrier (pictured below right), his and his comrades' task being to carry out mine/IED sweeps on foot, using hand-held detectors, ahead of the armoured vehicles, whenever their commander suspected a possible trap.

Recounted in detail by The Daily Mail, after Laws and his comrades crossed the start line in their Spartan on 4 July, they were soon called into action but, as they dismounted, Taleban fighters opened up with small arms. A Scimitar armed with 30mm Rarden cannon moved up to engage them, setting a pattern for the operation. The advance thus continued in a stop-start fashion as Laws and his comrades painstakingly cleared the route with their detectors.

Come the late afternoon as the light and intense heat began to fade, Laws and his comrades had been resting by the side of the vehicle for an hour or so, then helping to unload another Spartan which had come in from a water resupply run. Small arms fire started coming in and the Light Dragoons started their vehicle engines. Laws and the three other dismounts piled into their Spartan, which began to move.

Some 200 yards on, the squadron commander ordered two men to dismount to carry out a sweep ahead. Laws with one other completed the task and remounted. As the Spartan started to move off, there was a "massive bang" and the cabin filled with smoke. The vehicle had been hit by a Taleban RPG. Laws was killed instantly, another soldier was very seriously injured and one other was slightly injured.

It is of course the case that the Spartan could have been targeted at any time during the operation by a Taleban PRG, with fatal consequences. But the main defence of this lightly armoured vehicle is its speed and manoeuvrability over a wide range of terrain. Its constant stop-start progress, and pauses to allow manual sweeping, thus made it a predictable and highly vulnerable target while it was stationary.

Compare and contrast, however, the experience of the US Marines further south, confronted by multiple IEDs impeding their progress. In terms of delays, their clearance team was no less impeded. But, unlike the British using lightly armoured personnel carriers with infantry using hand-held detectors, working on foot, the Marines were properly equipped.

Their 10-vehicle clearance team included a vehicle equipped with a mine roller, pushed ahead to detonate pressure-pad actuated mines and IEDS, a Husky mine detection vehicle (pictured below) and a number of MRAPs, all manned by specialist combat engineers.


After 72 "tough hours" on the road, the first IED destroyed an anti-mine roller being pushed by the convoy's lead vehicle. The explosion sent the roller's pieces flying into the air, and flipped the 17-ton onto its side, nearly toppling it into a canal that ran beside the dirt road. The crew, however, escaped unharmed.

After an overnight wait, a recovery team with specialist lifting equipment was despatched along the same route, only to hit an IED that had appeared to have been planted overnight specifically to strike them.

The explosion wrecked their vehicle but fortunately, it was another MRAP and the crew escaped unharmed. Then, and only then with the scene secure, did the Marines used hand-held mine-sweepers to check the road between the two blasts and then destroyed burnt damaged equipment to stop it falling into Taleban hands.

The convoy finally got back on the road by the evening but within an hour it was hit by a third IED that destroyed the Husky. The crewman survived. In between that point and the first of the blasts, the team had covered only a couple of miles of road and had discovered and dismantled seven further IEDs.

Said the convoy commander, Lieutenant Dan Jernigan, "Vehicles are being blown apart but the Marines inside are being kept safe. Not to sound cavalier, but it is better we take the blast than Humvees or someone else such as villagers." He was surprised that there had been no Taleban ambushes targeting his convoy when it had been stranded, but the vehicles were well armed and armoured – unlike the Spartan – and able to protect themselves.

The clearance process here was being applied to a supply route, but exactly the same process could have been applied to the route taken by the Light Dragoons. Typically then, the route is kept under observation after clearing – by UAVs or even infantry stationed along the route. As a final safeguard, an MRAP precedes the tactical convoy – a process known as "route proving" – to take the blast from any device that has been missed, or where emplacers have managed to evade observation and plant another bomb.

With a route almost guaranteed free from emplaced explosives, light tactical vehicles can then exploit their mobility and speed, without being tied to the stop-start routine that dogged the Light Dragoons, making their vehicles such vulnerable targets.

With such procedures in place, even the lightly armoured Vikings could be used with impunity, their routes through danger areas cleared, allowing them to exploit their off-road performance once they safely reach open country.

Ironically, the clearance and proving procedures – and the equipment to carry them out – were pioneered by the British – and used with great success in Bosnia in the early 90s, being copied by US forces and applied to both Iraq and now Afghanistan. Since Bosnia, however, the specialist equipment acquired by the British has been sold or otherwise disposed of. The need for such now again belatedly recognised, more equipment was ordered last October under the "Talisman" project, but deliveries are not scheduled to commence until next year – although the vital Husky is not being procured.

That is the measure of the shortfall in the British operation, but this is not a shortage of finance – clearly, as the equipment is now on order. More likely, it reflects the failure of the British Army to recognise and pre-empt the threat of mines and IEDs, with tragic consequences which stretch back into the Iraqi campaign, where troops in Basra and elsewhere faced similar threats and were similarly ill-equipped.

In this day and age, while there is still a valid and extensive role for the hand-held detector, there is no excuse for the excessive reliance on dismounted teams to do a job which could often be done more safely with armour and machines. That they are not available is yet another of those scandals, for which there should be a reckoning.

COMMENT THREAD

The situation is serious

One truly wonders whether Bob Ainsworth is aware of the cynicism with which his statement is greeted in informed circles when he blithely tells us that conditions are improving in Afghanistan, based on the "message" he got "in Afghanistan when I visited last week".

One recalls the then newly appointed defence secretary Des Bowne visiting Basra on 18 May 2006, when he declared, "Basra is calm and British forces are working hand in hand with their Iraqi and coalition partners. Suggestions that the city is, in someway, out of control are ridiculous." Two weeks later, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a state of emergency in Basra, in a bit to contain the escalating violence.

Recalling also Stephen Grey's evidence to the Commons Defence Committee last week, one thus simply speculates how long the "lines-to-take book" was this time. The new defence secretary will have been told what he wanted to hear, and shown that which was convenient to show him, upon which basis he delivers the "upbeat" message that he was always going to deliver anyway – whether he had been to Afghanistan or not.

So taken with Grey's evidence was Jim Greenhalf that he was moved to write his own post on it, observing that much of what was said was worthy of the front page of The Sunday Times.

Anyhow, Ainsworth has delivered his own message to Chatham House today in a keynote speech which was delivered shortly after death of another soldier had been announced, the seventh in a week and the 176th to die since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001.

His response to those casualties is charted by The Daily Telegraph which tells us, "More British soldiers will be killed in Afghanistan and there is no end in sight to the campaign, Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary has warned." He adds, "Let us be under no illusion. The situation in Afghanistan is serious - and not yet decided. The way forward is hard and dangerous. More lives will be lost and our resolve will be tested."

So much of the rest of the speech is the usual FCO/MoD extruded verbal material that the only rational thing to do is to glide softly by, although there is some merit in comparing the defence secretary's views with the critique by Matt Waldman, who has some sensible and realistic things to say but, in other ways, is part of the problem.

Of special interest to this blog, however, is Ainsworth's frontal assault on the media criticism of the Viking and other poorly protected vehicles in theatre. "Every effort is being made to increase protection - such as the introduction of Mastiff and Ridgeback troop carriers, the improved armour on Viking and Jackal vehicles, and the more heavily armoured Warthog vehicles coming in 2010," he says, continuing with the "line-to-take" supplied by the military:

With this suite of vehicles military commanders will deploy their assets according to the tactical situation on the ground. But as we develop measures to counter a threat like IEDs, so our enemies adapt - for instance by building higher yield bombs to overcome heavier armour. So let us be clear, sacrificing manoeuvre for heavy armour in every circumstance is not the answer.

We are doing everything we can to counter the IED threat at source. Our forces are finding and diffusing these bombs. But tellingly, they are also concentrating on the networks and the people building them and supplying the technology, the parts and the know-how.

We are getting inside the production process - some in the military call this approach 'getting left of the bang'. When we target the bomb makers and take out the capacity to produce, we cut the threat. Getting left of the bang will save lives - of our troops - and of the Afghans themselves.

This is part of a sustained counter-offensive which has also seen a formal attempt at rebuttal by the Ministry of Defeat, which once again falsely frames the debate as one between protection and mobility, as favoured by the BBC. This is not a ministry that its prepared to learn lessons. Rather it is one that will invest its resources in supporting its existing decisions, however wrong they might be, for want of acknowledging any error whatsoever.

Similarly, Ainsworth is not prepared to admit that which Waldman accuses the government – of miss-spending or wasting aid – not that he could since that involves attacking the FCO and DFID (which we must now learn to call UKAID). Instead, he cites the UK's non-military aid, amounting to £740m since 2001, with a further £500m is planned to 2013. We wonder whether he is aware of the Ferris wheel so generously provided by the British taxpayer, and how that fits in with this general scheme.

What immediately strikes one, however, is the disparity of spending on the military, with over £3 billion in the last three years and £3.5 billion forecast for this current financial year. If the military effort was directed towards civil aid, one might see a wholly different situation in Afghanistan than we see today.

It is rather odd, therefore, that Ainsworth concludes his speech by warning "us" to be under no illusion. "The situation in Afghanistan is serious ... " he repeats. One is tempted to ask: who is this "us", white man? The illusion rests with the secretary of state ... whose policy is not dissimilar to this bridge in the region, which has yet to have the attention of western aid officials. But then, Ferris wheels are so much more useful.

COMMENT THREAD

Savagely vindicated

Two days ago, Yorkshire Post columnist Bernard Dineen ventured his opinion on Snatch Land Rovers and the court case to be mounted by families of soldiers killed in these vehicles.

"The Government" and "the MoD", he ventured, are too diffuse a target. "Lawyers acting for the families should instead be suing Gordon Brown personally because he is directly responsible. Five former Chiefs of Staff stood up in the House of Lords and laid the blame on his behaviour during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer."

This is a classic example of the low-grade personality politics to which we referred in a recent piece, where the media relies on a pre-determined narrative in order to analyse and comment on events, rather than develop arguments based on objective evidence.

Looking at the broader issues, there are more serious problems in the military than the Snatch - or its deployment - and, if we accept that the UK and its military are at a critical moment, then there are two options for dealing with the situation. One is precisely that taken by the bulk of the media, embodied in the Dineen approach – the "route of least resistance". This is to pass blame for all shortcomings onto a lame duck government, specifically Gordon Brown as the embodiment of the government.

That is certainly the view of Major Patrick Little, a recently retired infantry officer and Advanced Command and Staff graduate. His second option, though, is obviously to be preferred. That is for the British Army specifically and defence more generally to turn the critical mirror on itself. This mirror, he writes in the current edition of the RUSI Journal ...

... will lead to an acknowledgement of shortcomings. It will demonstrate unequivocally a willingness to learn, pay the price of failings, and a determination to adapt.

The first of the choices fits a public appetite for blaming this government; it is convenient and follows a well worn military tradition and narrative. The second begins, and only begins, what may be a long and painful journey. It would be deeply uncomfortable for many senior officers – as it should be. It may, if mishandled, deflect some of the blame from government – but this is no excuse for failing in this critical exercise.

These options are contained in a 4,000-word thesis with the heading "Lessons unlearned", where Little offers as his opening gambit, "a challenge for those who share the fear that, behind the façade, all is not well in the British Army and has not been for some time."

The big problem, Little believes, is "the absence of public reflection by the military on what it has done well at and badly at" in Iraq and Afghanistan," in contrast to the US military which has been both receptive and responsive to criticism. This, he argues, led to "a quite remarkable transformation" and a turnabout in almost every aspect of the US Army's performance in Iraq.

Referring to the same absence of informed debate that we have remarked upon, Little also calls in aid John Nagl’s recent comments to Stephen Grey about the British Army: "Until you admit that you have a problem, until you admit that you are not doing everything as well as you can, it's really, really hard to get better."

Adds Nagl: "I haven't seen that same spirit of self criticism in the British Army. That sort of rigorous analysis would be enormously helpful … The British Army which has such a proud history in counter-insurgency campaigns has not done everything right in Helmand Province, did not do everything right in Basra. It needs to think hard about these lessons. I believe it needs to think publicly."

On Dannatt's "frequent controversial comments to the press on overstretch and valuing the nation’s soldiers," Little observes that these will seem to many external observers to represent a useful pressure valve. Equally, he says, the steady outbursts by retired senior officers on similar issues will also come across as not unwelcome. But, in and amongst the noise generated by retired senior officers sounding off about resource shortages, there has been too little equivalent internal reflection on and acknowledgement of command failures within the Army.

Furthermore, within that Army, middle ranking officers are heavily constrained in what they can say – especially to the media - even those with considerable operational experience, indicating a quite extraordinarily defensive attitude by senior military officers with less operational experience.

Equally, complex decision-making, policy formulation and doctrine writing are under pressure. Documents travel along complicated web-like chains of command, hitting repeated road blocks, and suffering delays. Senior officers are capable at any stage of reversing the advice of their staff. On occasion, this is paralysing and has been responsible for the delays in producing the UK's own counterinsurgency doctrine.

On top of that, there is a command climate in which bad news is routinely camouflaged and where the ability of junior officers to influence a future which they will be inheriting is distinctly limited. It is one described by Tim Collins as one in which "obsequious behaviour by career-conscious senior officers on the ground’ contributes to a sadly muddled picture in Whitehall." That culture is, amongst other things, driving out far too many high quality middle-ranking officers.

Inadequate senior officer performance, notes Little, is a real obstacle to learning and adapting. It plagues the UK military every bit as it does many other militaries.

Part of the solution, he believes, is to invite outsiders to look in, and he wants to see writing on the strengths and weaknesses of British strategy, tactics and doctrine from unique foreign perspectives. The standard of critical writing in military professional journals also needs to be re-invigorated, with the conformism erased.

Most of all though, Little warns that the Army needs "intellectual integrity" – which it currently lacks – in order to survive and succeed in tomorrow's environment. Hiding behind tradition is no answer. In short, if the British Army wishes to recover its former pre-eminence, it must stop evangelising and start reflecting more deeply on the outsiders' view.

From this outsider's viewpoint, I feel savagely vindicated. Recently, I wrote on this blog:

The military, as currently constituted, is a deeply dysfunctional organisation, not least evidenced by its state of denial over its performance in Iraq. It is also one which – as CDS Jock Stirrup admitted in January - was "smug and complacent" about prosecuting counter-insurgency warfare, relying too much on its experiences in Northern Ireland – the lessons of which it did not even apply properly.

It is also a military which, as Stirrup also admitted, has yet to complete a "fundamental reappraisal" of Britain's counter-insurgency training and structures and which, as we have seen recently, seems unable to foster a "spirit of informed debate" when it comes to reviewing its own performance.

Furthermore, despite some reputed high-fliers and intellectual heavyweights in the middle ranks, this is a military that has been unable to come up with a coherent strategy for the prosecution of the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, is (still) making a complete mess of its equipment procurement and is unable to mesh with US doctrines.

I add ...

General Sir Richard Dannatt ... has presided over the diminished reputation of the Army of which he is so proud. He needs to look to his own lack of strategic leadership, and his failures to grasp the nettle of turning the Army into an effective counter-insurgency force.

As for the Army generally (and the military as a whole to a lesser extent), it needs to come to terms with quite how much its reputation has been diminished and how much goodwill it has lost – and is losing through the inept handing of the "information war" which is so much part of any counter-insurgency campaign.

The worst is, the longer and deeper the military remains in its current state of denial, blaming anyone and anything but itself for its own shortcomings, the worse it will get. Already, the MoD publicity effort is a parody of itself. The way it is going, the rest of the military will follow, to become a tarnished asset and a shadow of its former glory.

That we get an effective endorsement of this message from an insider is a significant development, and one which needs to be built upon. Crucially, Little wants to see a public debate – and so do we. But this was precisely the message of Ministry of Defeat. So far, the response has not been particularly encouraging. The media "narratives" are, it seems, too firmly emplaced for a real debate to begin.

Little's contribution is another step in that direction. We hope he has more success.

COMMENT THREAD

Narratives

It is Max Hasting's turn in The Daily Mail to pick up on General Richards' speech – and much else – using the topical hook of Armed Forces Day which is being celebrated today for the first time.

However, in common with most of the commentariat, Hastings distils complex arguments into a "biff-bam" knockabout routine about shortage of resources and underfunding, laying the entire blame at the door of Gordon Brown as the source of all ills.

It is very much these personality politics which blight the entire defence debate, as they neglect entirely the role of the military top brass in defining the shape of the armed forces and their equipment. Thus in the world inhabited by the likes of Hastings, the politicians are always the villains and the military the blameless victims.

This was the line taken by Patrick Mercer and embraced enthusiastically by James Forsyth, web editor of The Spectator. Commenting on Gen Dannatt's speech but relying exclusively on a report in The Times as his source, he writes on the Coffee House blog with his own views.

There, he gleefully picks on but one issue highlighted by Dannatt, declaring that "Dannatt makes clear that the reason the British operation failed in the south was that there were not an adequate number of troops on the ground." And, on that slender basis does this intellectual giant conclude that:

... we either properly fund and equip our armed forces or we retreat from our role on the world stage. If the Conservative party believes that this country should be more than just a peace-keeping nation, then it will have to be prepared to increase defence spending. The problems in Iraq demonstrate that fighting wars on peacetime budgets is not sustainable.

As it happens, we agree that the original occupation force in southern Iraq was undermanned, but it is not necessarily the case that more "boots on the ground" would have improved matters. As Dannatt himself said on a different occasion, specifically of Basra, "It's a city of huge size, however many British troops or coalition troops have been there we would never have been able to impose a regime and we had no intention of doing that."

Bearing in mind that US forces further north had considerably higher manpower levels, and were no more successful in the initial stages in containing the insurgency, Dannatt does have a point. More British troops might simply have led to more conflict and a higher casualty rate.

What must be remembered, of course, is that when the US finally mounted the surge, the extra troops operated in a different political environment, with new, theatre-specific equipment and to an entirely revised doctrine. Without those changes, it is arguable that the surge would not have succeeded and, as none of those preconditions were present in the early phases of the British occupation, the chances are that more troops would have had no measurable effect.

Here, one must again recall the observations of US General John Craddock, who noted – albeit in respect of Afghanistan - that the priority was the provision of transport (particularly helicopters and mine-protected vehicles), intelligence and medical capabilities. "Too often," he said, "the forces there now are relatively fixed, because we don't have adequate tactical mobility to move them around to be able to do the jobs we need them to do."

There, was the singular problem with the British in Iraq. With the absence of the right kit, they lost tactical mobility and, even with the troops strengths that they had maintained, ceased to be effective. Yet, when US forces came to the rescue in aiding the Iraqi forces recover al Amarah, they fielded only a fraction of the forces then available to the British.

Despite this, on the rare occasion that sites such as ToryDiary take on the issue of defence, the same trite agenda prevails. We get pleas for more funding (or the protection of current funding levels), with the charge here that Brown and Blair sent our armed forces to war on a peacetime budget, again calling in aid the same superficial analysis of Dannatt's speech, using The Times as the source.

So it is that "underfunding" is locked into the narrative, with not the faintest recognition that, in blocking new equipment for Iraq, Dannatt was in fact protecting a funding allocation of £16 billion for his pet project, FRES – to say nothing of the Future Lynx helicopter. Money was never the problem. What mattered was the way it was spent.

What makes all this so topical and important though is the expectation of a new Conservative administration within a year, which will be confronting exactly the same problems with which the Labour administration had to struggle.

It is Hastings in his Daily Mail piece, however, who puts his finger on a problem of which too many are painfully aware. "There is a deafening political silence about defence, because the Tories do not think the issue wins votes," he writes, adding that: "They have notably failed to hammer the Government as it deserves about its disgraceful treatment of the Armed Forces."

The nostrum about votes should be taken with a pinch of salt. Defence invariably attracts more electoral support that is given credit by the politicians. More likely, the reluctance to engage on defence stems from David Cameron's efforts to re-brand the Conservatives as a "caring" party, hence his determination to avoid hard-edged "macho" issues such as Armed Forces equipment.

But, if in the absence of such engagement, the Tories stand by the narrative of "underspending" – all in the context of Cameron admitting that he cannot realistically plan to increase defence spending when in office - then the option of cutting some big ticket projects begins to look extremely attractive.

Hastings targets the Trident nuclear deterrent, oblivious to the fact that this does not come out of core defence funding. Scrapping this would not necessarily increase the flow of cash to other defence projects.

Whether Trident, or some other project, the big problems will come if the Tories see the liberation of funds by this means as the answer to the current problems in the Armed Forces. We need a much more sophisticated and comprehensive narrative if we are to emerge from the strategic defence review that the Tories are promising with anything like effective Armed Forces.

COMMENT THREAD

Another review

The odd thing about the American defeat – if such a word can be used – in Vietnam is that it came about through internal problems, not military defeat. The Viet Cong were beaten. The North Vietnamese Army was beaten. The bombing of North Vietnam was shockingly effective (although this was not appreciated at the time.) The US effectively won the war. It was defeated by the home front and an astonishingly effective propaganda campaign. Not for the first time, the communists probably didn’t believe their own success.

The odd thing about the British "victory" in Southern Iraq is … well, it was a defeat. Worse, it was a defeat that came about because of flawed political and military decisions, taken not by the men on the spot, but men in Whitehall. The scale of the disaster was never understood by the home front – even I didn't know the half of it, and I am as well-informed as any civilian could reasonably hope to be – due to a compliant media and a sheer lack of comprehension. The British government preferred to believe its own "spin" rather than the truth. In doing so, they betrayed the British soldiers who went to war without the right equipment and no clear plan, and the country itself. Charges of treason would not be inappropriate.

That is the conclusion, one I strongly endorse, of this remarkable book. There are actually relatively few British writings on the subject of Iraq, although Sniper One and Eight Lives Down provide some insight into the lives of the soldiers there. It should be noted that Sniper One paints a picture of Basra – and Iraq – that was at variance with the official government-promoted version of events. Ministry of Defeat provides an overall history of the occupation – something that has been sorely lacking – and details, in a very "take no prisoners" attitude, just went wrong in Iraq.

The core of the matter, North writes, is that the British Government refused to recognise that it had a serious problem on its hands. As the militias gained power in Basra, the government preferred to believe that it wasn't a serious issue – little more than a public order issue – and convinced itself that Britain's expertise from Northern Ireland gave it an advantage over the US. That might have been true if the expertise had actually been used (it wasn't) … but in any case, Basra was not Northern Ireland. This little piece of self-delusion cost lives, Mr Blair! The troops in Ireland had far better intelligence and much higher troop levels. Much has been made of the shortage of American troops after the Fall of Baghdad, but the British had the same problem and, unlike the US, the MOD learned fuck-all from the experience.

If that wasn't bad enough, the equipment procurement process was badly screwed up. When the RAF was being allowed to spend billions on the Eurofighter, the Army had to make do with the Snatch Land Rover – which Northern Ireland experience had shown was badly under-armoured – which caused the deaths of many British soldiers. The issue was not that the British Army was under-funded – although soldiers were being underpaid for their role – but that the money was being spent on long-term programs that would not provide useful equipment (if that) in time to be useful.

It is quite typical, as Donald Rumsfield pointed out years ago, that countries go to war with an army that is unprepared for the task. It is rather less typical that a country would go to war, find itself in serious shit … and then continue blithely developing technology that was effectively useless, prepared for the wrong war. Instead of fighting the last war, the UK was looking towards a hypothetical European RRF, one of Tony Blair's pet projects. Billions have been spent – for nothing. Common sense would tell someone of Blair's intelligence – surely – that a European force wasn't on the cards. When has the EU ever agreed on an enemy?

The British media also comes in for bashing. Not, it should be noted, for the largely American left-wing media army bashing, but for being the dog that didn't bark. The MOD generally tried to spoon-feed propaganda to the British TV, which largely ate it up and came back and begged for more. Early signs of trouble were ignored, or taken out of context, and even when the media did pick up on signs of trouble, they never understood the underlying factors behind the war. The media did pick up on problems with the Snatch vehicles, but took the "under-funded military" line rather than realising the truth. Reporters who questioned the Army line, such as Christina Lamb in Afghanistan, found themselves blacklisted.

The core reason for British "success" in Iraq, North notes, was that the UK never really had control over Basra. The Shia inhabitants of the area, after the events of 1991, preferred to organise themselves rather than trust the coalition. Iran was seen as a better ally by some, a deadly threat by others, but always as a far more significant player than the coalition. Under constant attack, the British forces were slowly withdrawn from the area, conceding control to the militias, who started to loot, rape and slaughter at will. The inglorious end to the story – the retaking of Basra by Iraqi forces with American support in 2008 – was barely a footnote in the British media.

The contrast between Iraq and the Falklands is staggering. The Falklands were another "come as you are" war, one fought by a far more determined PM for limited goals … and one that Britain came closer to losing than anyone would like to admit. After that war, the lessons were learned and incorporated into new developments. Iraq seems, instead, to be the forgotten war. If that wasn't bad enough, most of the mistakes are already being repeated in Afghanistan.

This is an angry book, written by an angry man. It isn't pleasant reading for anyone with a British heritage, but it is necessary reading. God help us.

Lifted from Crucis Court. Thank you.

COMMENT THREAD

Will the real General Dannatt please stand up?

With remarkable candour, a General Sir Richard Dannatt is now admitting to failures in the campaign in Iraq - but others have not always agreed.

Currently, this General is telling us that Britain missed the opportunity to stabilise Iraq after the 2003 invasion and was too quick to shift resources to the conflict in Afghanistan. But that is today's view delivered to the Royal United Services Institute.

In December 2008, however, a General who goes by the name of Sir Richard Dannatt – and may be some relation – was telling the BBC, "We have achieved what we set out to achieve" in Iraq. "We have been quite clear about what we had to do and we have done it ... The job is done and Basra and southern Iraq is a much better place now than it was under Saddam Hussein in 2002."

Now, we learn that the failure of coalition forces to take advantage of the "window of consent" in the immediate aftermath of the invasion had opened the door to the Shia militias and then they had not kept enough troops on the ground - particularly as the focus of operations switched to Afghanistan.

Thus does today's Gen Dannatt say that one of the key lessons from the conflict was the need to achieve a "decisive effect" early on. "Our failure to deliver this through proper investment and a comprehensive approach and our early switch to an economy of force operation in favour of Afghanistan sowed the seeds for the dissatisfaction that followed and the rise of the militias supported so cyncially by the Iranians in the south."

He goes on to say that the coalition had also failed to ensure it had enough troops on the ground, "surging" the numbers when the situation demanded. "In truth," he adds, "we failed to maintain the force levels required, either of coalition forces or Iraqi forces, and particularly towards the later end of the campaign, by which time we were already committed to a new operation in Afghanistan."

However, there seems to be another General Dannatt, the one who gave an interview to The Daily Mail in October 2006, after we were "already committed" to a new operation in Afghanistan.

That Gen Dannatt seems to have had rather different views. Iraq was an unpopular war and "our presence exacerbates the security problems". He goes on to say: "I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war-fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning".

Then this General ruminates, "History will show that a vacuum was created and into the vacuum malign elements moved," adding that, "The hope that we might have been able to get out of Iraq in 12, 18, 24 months after the initial start in 2003 has proved fallacious. Now hostile elements have got a hold it has made our life much more difficult in Baghdad and in Basra."

The October 2006 model continues with the view that: "The original intention was that we put in place a liberal democracy that was an exemplar for the region, was pro-West and might have a beneficial effect on the balance within the Middle East"

"That was the hope," he says. “Whether that was a sensible or naïve hope, history will judge. I don't think we are going to do that. I think we should aim for a lower ambition." And so did he conclude that we should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".

"We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear. "As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited into a country, but we weren't invited, certainly by those in Iraq at the time. Let's face it, the military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in."

"That is a fact. I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing around the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them."

So, from the mouth of three Generals, all with the same name, we have various views.

In 2006, Dannatt number one was saying that British troops should get out of Iraq because their presence was exacerbating the security situation. Two years later, the second Dannatt was saying: "We have been quite clear about what we had to do and we have done it." Now the third Dannatt currently tells us that the coalition failed to ensure it had enough troops on the ground, "surging" the numbers when the situation demanded.

One of these Dannatts is Chief of the General Staff – the professional head of the British Army, which means the other two must be imposters. No one person could possibly hold such disparate views of the same campaign. The question is, which is the real one?

COMMENT THREAD

It's started

Already, the media is second-guessing the Iraq inquiry, with The Times leading the fray.

Of four questions posed by defence editor Michael Evans, however, only one relates to the occupation, confirming that the media is going to be obsessed with the run-up to the war, rather than the occupation. And even then, the single question directed at the occupation is so limited in scope that it indicates nothing more than the narrowness of the perspective. Thus does Evans ask:

Why was the size of the British force in Iraq progressively reduced even though the troops there were coming under daily attack by an increasingly well-armed and well-trained extremist militia?

During 2005, 2006 and 2007 there were never enough troops to protect the Iraqi citizens living in Basra, and control of the city began to fall into the hands of the Iranian-backed Shia hardliners. By September 2007, the 500 remaining troops based inside the city were under such pressure that there was little alternative but to withdraw them to the relative safety of the airbase northwest of the city, leaving Basra to the mercy of the extremists.

What debate was going on in Whitehall at this time? Who, if anyone, was arguing that more, not fewer, troops were needed to safeguard the lives of Iraqis living in Basra, let alone the British soldiers themselves? Was anyone warning that the withdrawal of the last troops inside Basra might lead to a take-over by the Shia extremists and that this would be interpreted — by the Americans and by historians — as a defeatist move by the British, one which did no favours for the reputation of the British Army?

The questions, superficially, look sound enough, but they miss the point. In common with most of his contemporaries, Evans focuses unduly on Basra. Yet, any careful analysis of the campaign will suggest that the rot started not in Basra but with the desertion of al Amarah in August 2006. Arguably, had the base at Abu Naji been held, and the training and support of the 12th Division continued, Iraqi forces backed by the British could eventually have recovered the city.

For the British to have retained their foothold in the Abu Naji, however, two things were needed: the Army had to restore tactical mobility and then had to acquire the capability to deal with the indirect fire which was making that base untenable. Both were essentially equipment issues, reflecting procurement failures and High Command decisions rather than a lack of troops.

In this context, it is germane to note that, when the Iraqi Army subsequently recovered al Amarah in the operation called "promise of peace", starting in May 2008, it was heavily supported by US troops, without which the operation would not have been possible. The total commitment of US troops to Maysan province, however, never exceeded 2,500 – a fraction of the number of troops available to the British.

This demonstrates that troop numbers, although an issue in the early stages of the occupation, was not the decisive factor. What mattered was the equipment, the tactics and the timing, particularly in respect of the political developments which enabled prime minister Maliki to take on the Mahdi Army and defeat it.

You can, of course read the full story in Ministry of Defeat, without waiting for the outcome of the inquiry. This is the book that the media and the military are determined to bury.

Our publicist, appointed by the publisher and highly experienced in marketing books, has never before known such resistance to a book. And before committing his time an effort to the book, he made his own enquiries, sending copies to "senior ministry persons" for comment.

One told us that the book should be "compulsory reading" for all students at Sandhurst. They should be invited to state their reasons why the book was wrong, our source said, but they would find it very difficult to do. Most Army officers, he said, would agree in private with the thesis of the book, but none would admit it publicly. "There is a major cover-up going on," he added.

Although some details may be wrong, the book tells the substantive and hitherto untold story of the Iraqi occupation. That it should be told by an outsider is intolerable to the media, which comprehensively called it wrong, just as Evans is doing now. The inquiry is faced with a difficult job as there are many vested interests keen to see it get the wrong answers.

It will be interesting to see whether they prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

Ministry of Defeat

The Army is in "denial" over Iraq, claims Richard North, author of Ministry of Defeat, a startling new book published today, the first comprehensive history of the British occupation of southern Iraq.

Charting the progress of the occupation, relying on "open source" material, the extensive official and Arab media coverage, and high level sources, he finds that the military made many serious blunders which led to an irrecoverable position. This eventually forced the retreat into a single base in Basra, leaving the city and its surrounds to fundamentalist Islamic milita.

Although under-resourced and without clear political objectives, the Army nevertheless failed in early-mid 2003 to recognise the signs that a full-scale insurgency was developing. The military then treated the growing disorder around Basra and other provinces primarily as a "public order" issue, similar to that which they had faced in Northern Ireland.

This led to the fatal decision to deploy second-hand Snatch Land Rovers imported from Belfast, and the failure properly to equip for the vicious battles which were to follow.

When a full-blown insurgency developed in 2004, however, the militias mistakenly confronted the Army head on – and lost. This in turn led to a false sense of security in the Army, where military commanders believed the insurgent strength was broken.

However, the militias adopted classic guerrilla war tactics, using sophisticated bombs against which the Army, with its vulnerable Snatches, was ill prepared. The new tactics forced the Army onto the defensive, giving time for the militias to rebuild their strength.

Faced with the prospect of a long-drawn-out campaign which it was not equipped to fight, the Army decided to pull out and then made the mistake of revealing to the militias its intention to withdraw altogether. It thus gave the militias a signal that all they had to do was maintain the pressure and they would prevail.

Having lost the initiative, the two major cities of al Amarah and Basra descended into chaos, ruled by the fundamentalist militias, with the Army losing control. This led to the major strategic error in 2006 of abandoning the key city of al Amarah, which became the insurgents' bomb factory and armoury, feeding the insurgency in Basra and Baghdad. Without interference from the British, bombs were being manufactured on an industrial scale.

Against the increasingly well-equipped and aggressive militias, the Army made a last-ditch bid at the end of 2006 to regain the initiative in Basra, amid growing violence and disorder. When this failed, it adopted a policy of progressive retreat, leaving the militias in virtually complete control of the city. This culminated in the Army being permitted by the militias to beat a peaceful but ignominious retreat to the comparative safety of Basra airport.

It then took the Americans and the Iraqi government to transform the situation in southern Iraq, during which time the Iraqi Army successfully recovered first Basra and then al Amarah. During this period, through 2007, the US forces committed less than half the troop numbers than the British yet, working with Iraqi divisions, managed to defeat the militias.

Although the military were badly let down by the politicians, says North, the campaign could have been won with the resources available, had the right tactics and equipment been adopted. Contrary to popular belief, the Army was not overstretched. Rather, it failed to utilise the Iraqi Army properly and lacked the right equipment to support the campaign.

In the equipment stakes, the Army was the victim of successive procurement failures. But, relying on high level sources, North found that the Army contributed to its own problems, resisting the introduction of equipment needed to fight the insurgency because it feared that ambitious plans for future, high-tech equipment might be scrapped. It traded its capability to fight the insurgency for a promise of future capability, says North.

The Army, as a corporate body, let down men and women on the ground, who performed admirably, fighting a vicious and unprincipled enemy. They were handicapped by poor strategy, inadequate equipment and insufficient resources. Without their perseverance, their skills and in some cases quite extraordinary courage, things might have been far worse.

The sad fact though is that the Army failed. More dangerously, it is refusing to acknowledge that failure and risks making the same mistakes in Afghanistan, particularly in terms of equipment procurement, where it is clear that lessons have not been learned.

In researching the book, North visited the MoD's luxurious office block in Whitehall. Despite the vast expense on its refurbishment, he says, it boasts an atrium that has the look and feel of a public lavatory. This is not inappropriate, considering what it does with much of the public money entrusted to it, he reflects. And, while the politicians bear their share of the blame for the defeat in Iraq, the finger must also point at the Ministry of Defence, which North has renamed the Ministry of Defeat.

COMMENT THREAD

The risk of failure

By linking the final stage of our ignominious retreat from Iraq with a memorial service, honouring the British troops who were killed (but not the others under British command), the military and government both thereby achieve the effect of blunting criticism of the war.

Any such criticism, especially of the military, can easily be dismissed as heartless or insensitive, given that so many have put themselves in harm's way and many have paid the ultimate price.

Given also that this current government is in a terminal stage of decay, it is thus easier to focus attention on the political failures – of which there were many – staying any criticisms of the military, for fear of offending the sensibilities of those who knew or were related to the fallen.

There is also a strong political element here as well. The manifest failures in Iraq serve as a useful stick to beat the current government and to enjoin the military as partners in a collective failure dilutes the attack on the politicians. It is thus tactically advantageous the position the military as innocent "victims" of political machinations, rather than clinically to apportion blame where it lies.

The fact is though, however much it is spun, the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq was a British failure and the responsibility for that failure lies both with the politicians and the military.

Where exactly that dividing line lies has yet to be determined and it will be many years and take much study and argument before all the issues have been rehearsed and the final resolution reached – if ever. I have made an attempt at an analysis in my book, Ministry of Defeat, due out in June.

In it, I readily acknowledge that, as a second draft of history, it will have flaws, but it is an honest and so far the only attempt to chart the complete history of the British occupation of Iraq.

Of the coverage in the media today, the Evening Standard best cuts through the cant, with a comment piece headed "Our inglorious retreat from Iraq", noting that, even allowing for the professionalism of British forces, innumerable acts of courage on the part of individuals and high aspirations from their commanders, the reputation of the Army has been diminished, not enhanced, in southern Iraq.

This supports a piece by Andrew Gilligan under the title: "The lessons of Basra are: do something properly or not at all". In this piece, however his focus is on the events of Basra, and thus lacks the historical context of the campaign as a whole, where the seeds of defeat were not sown in Iraq's second city but earlier in al Amarah.

Thus does Gilligan aver that Basra was a historic humiliation for the British Army a shaming contrast to the behaviour of the Americans, who also suffered reverses in their sector of Iraq but reinforced, fought back strongly and eventually prevailed.

In this blinkered fashion, he then argues "It wasn't the Army's fault: our soldiers are no cowards. It was the politicians in London who gave up, not the frustrated troops on the ground. Where there is, however, fault on the military side is in their current attempts, publicly at least, to deny the reality of the operation that ended today."

Gilligan is wrong in one sense. It was the Army's fault – in part at least. Although the politicians seen the framework for defeat, the situation up to mid-2006, with inspired leadership and more intelligence and flexibility than was shown, was recoverable.

But where Gilligan is right is in pinpointing the attempts of the military to spin the operation as a success. That denies the opportunity of conducting a frank, open and searching post mortem and thus limits the ability of the military to learn the lessons from its own mistakes – some of which it is currently repeating in Afghanistan.

Acknowledging failure, as Aaron Wildavsky once wrote, allows for the concept of "useful" failure. Citing the engineer Henry Petrovski in his support, in the context of civil engineering disasters, he noted:

...the lessons learned from (those) disasters can do more to advance engineering knowledge than all the successful structures in the world. Indeed, failures appear to be inevitable in the wake of prolonged success, which encourages lower margins of safety. Failure in turn leads to greater margins of safety and, hence, new periods of success.

What applies to engineering applies to the military, as it does all other walks of life. The absence of information on failure leads, in the long run, to increased risk of failure. The risk of failure in the future is too high for us not to acknowledge and learn from the failures of our past.

COMMENT THREAD

Our secret society - Part 1

Increasing government control of information – and its control of the agenda – has been almost the defining developments of the New Labour era, characterised by the oft-repeated accusations of "spin" levied at our masters.

But "spin" is only the most visible and obvious part of a huge government machine, which employs a vast range of subtle – and some not so subtle – tools to keep control. All government departments use these tools, from agriculture (DEFRA), through environment to defence and beyond.

Whenever you start probing government activities, you will come across the machine. Mostly though, at the receiving end, you will only see only tiny pieces of the jigsaw – or feel the effects. Most often, when you bump up against the restraints, so subtle are they that very few even recognise them for that they are.

However, while they do indeed affect the whole range of government activities, they are perhaps most visible (or detectable) in the defence establishment – not least because it has a valid reason for keeping some of its activities secret. But this also reflects that, of all the departments, it is one of the best practised and most developed in the art of dissimulation.

Nevertheless, in following the defence agenda – and latterly in writing the book Ministry of Defeat - I have become more aware of some of the techniques used. In what is going to have to be a series of posts, therefore, we thought it might be useful to identify some of them, used – with or without variations - in all departments of state to maintain our "secret society". In this post, we will look at some of the mechanisms for controlling the media.

Taking it from the top, the most obvious way of controlling the flow of information is to say nothing. This is still a standard technique. Even to this day, it is massively effective, to whit the events in the city of al Amarah in Maysan province, Iraq, in May through August 2004.

Throughout that period, there were a series of intense battles going on, amounting to all-out war between the British and the Mahdi Army, yet the massive scale of the conflict went completely unreported at the time – unreported because the MoD simply said nothing about it.

However, the truth – as they say – will always out. With such events, someone will always know something, and there will always be leaks. These cannot be prevented, so they must be contained. And it is here that the machine works at its most effective, with an increasingly subtle range of strategies employed.

The first and most effective tool is outright denial, close-coupled with the age-old device called "lying". Thus, when the fighting did break out in al Amarah, and word began to leak out, the first response of the MoD was simply to deny that there was heavy fighting, dismissing the fragmented reports as "isolated incidents", and downplaying their importance.

Here, choice of words become vital, as part of the overall technique. An attack on a convoy, for instance, becomes described as a "security incident", it is always an "isolated incident" and the duration limited. Thus, whenever the news leaks out – and however bad it was – the then current situation will always be described as being "calm and stable" or in similar terms.

One of the great advantages the MoD and the military have here is the control over access. In the al Amarah affair, with the city being in hostile territory some 200 miles or so north of Basra, journalists were totally reliant on the military for the physical means of getting there. And those journalists who asked to be taken to al Amarah were simply told there were no transport resources, or even more bluntly, simply "no".

For those journalists who persevere, the "big stick" can be used – and it is used. The first is the Official Secrets Act. Information will be classified and the journo will simply be told they cannot publish it or they will be in breach.

More often though – where the OSA cannot really be justified - a system called the "D-advisory" is used, the system which replaces the D-Notice system. journalists (or their editors) are "requested" not to publish certain information. Most editors will abide by this and, even if they do not, they will check out the options and that will often delay publication past the danger period and reduce the impact.

If a journalist still perseveres, the military can then invoke the "green book" which is "produced in consultation with editors and press and broadcasting organisations", where they can be required to "submit their material for security checking and to undertake not to publish any operationally sensitive material". And, of course, all journos are required to sign the declaration illustrated above.

It is here that the MoD has the ultimate sanction, as any breach of this "voluntary" agreement means that the journalist concerned will lose accreditation, whence all facilities are withdrawn. We will discuss this further in later posts, but it is something of a blunt instrument which itself can make a story, as the journalist then has nothing to lose.

More generally, therefore, other more subtle layers of controls come into play. One of these is the "trade", of which there are many variations. The most straightforward is to trade delay for detail. A journo may have only a small part of the story so the deal is that, if publication is held up, a "full" briefing will be given and the journo is then free to publish, on the basis of what they have been told.

Sometimes, this will be further sweetened by a promise of exclusivity, or a head start over the competition, so that the journo can break an "exclusive" days before his rivals.

The trade, however, often extends to content as well as timing. The exclusion of embarrassing rather than operationally sensitive material can be traded for access to high level contacts. Omission of a paragraph about a cock-up, for instance, can be swapped for a juicy "insider" quote from a field commander – or higher – on an exclusive basis.

For a journalist that is prepared to resist such blandishments, however, there are other techniques. One is pre-emptive publishing. Other journos may be given carefully tailored details early, which are withheld from the offender, allowing the rivals to go ahead with a sanitised version of the story, thus spiking the "scoop".

These, though, are only the more obvious controls. There are many more, and we will look at some of those in the next post.

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