The same old mistakes

The Times ignores the obvious irony that, on this day of all days – the 70th anniversary of the declaration of war on Germany – it should come up with a headline: "The Army is making in the same old mistakes Afghanistan, say soldiers."

The irony is there in plenty as the first phase of the war against Germany was characterised by the Army making the "same old mistakes", starting with the disastrous campaign in Norway, the chaos which led to the retreat at Dunkirk, the shambolic Greek campaign, the unnecessary loss of Crete and the sequence of defeats in the Western desert, remedied only by el Alamein in 1942 when the 8th Army, fortified by huge stocks of US materiel, managed to prevail against a German force which had over-reached itself.

From a historical perspective, it is probably fair to say that we did not win the Second World War so much as Hitler lost it, not least by his determination to invade Russia, thus tying up 150 divisions which, had they been deployed in Northern France in 1944, would have thrown us back into the sea.

Almost – but not quite repeating history - in Iraq in 2003 – a victorious British Army, having so easily won the war – went on to lose the peace, not having learned, or retained the lessons of previous campaigns, culminating in our abject retreat from Basra and the expulsion of British forces earlier this year, the final act of which has yet to be played out. As before, only the timely intervention of the Americans saved us from a more humiliating rout, which has enabled us to pretend that our occupation actually achieved something.

But now, seeping into the public domain is the slow recognition by the Army that the occupation of Iraq was not "a glowing success, as some within Whitehall and PJHQ [the MoD’s Permanent Joint Headquarters] may try to claim."

That is the view of Daniel Marston, a former senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, articulated in the current edition of the British Army Review, a "Restricted" magazine that is not published openly but which Michael Evans of The Times has managed to obtain and report upon.

Thus does he convey the essence, that the Britain Army is failing to learn from the "military mistakes" made in Iraq in developing ways to defeat the Taleban in Afghanistan, according to a series of critical articles published in an internal army journal.

Dare we say it, but that is exactly the thesis we offer in Ministry of Defeat which, from the limited review that Evans offers us, goes far beyond that which the Army is yet ready to admit.

We do get from Marston, though, that "Observers expected that the British forces going into Afghanistan and Iraq, given their history of success in counter-insurgency, would automatically be better suited to waging wars among the people than their American counterparts."

But then he says that: "The British Army, in practice, appeared to be losing its way in terms of practical application of key facets of COIN [counter-insurgency] ... Many officers and NCOs ... were apparently unaware of important operational and strategic aspects of COIN. The British Army cannot turn its back on a difficult campaign and disregard lessons, some of which are admittedly very tough to swallow ... ".

We also learn from Evans that there is condemnation in the journal of Britain’s strategy in Iraq, particularly the decision to withdraw troops from Basra in September 2007, leaving the city to be taken over by extremist Shia militia. This, we are told, echoes criticisms made by senior American commanders at the time, which were rejected by the Government.

But, if that is as far as the criticism goes, then they are not there yet. As we never tire of saying, the strategic rot started with the decision to abandon al Amarah in 2006 (the picture is from 2005 in Alamarah), which set the pattern for the retreat which continued into Basra. Yet so few people – even amongst the troops who were in theatre at the time – knew what was going on that it is unsurprising that the full implications of that decision are not yet fully understood.

Even with the limited and highly controlled criticisms in the journal, however, Gen Dannatt admits in a foreword that the articles "make uncomfortable reading" but, we are told, "he welcomes the debate." Of course, the debate has barely started and, if it was that welcome, the brave General might have done more to promote it while he was still in office.

He does "reveal" though that a review of doctrine applied in Iraq and Afghanistan, called "Operation Entirety", has already helped "to focus the Army on the enduring campaign in Afghanistan". That review will be published soon, we learn.

Yet this is the review that has been six years in the making and, to judge from the lacklustre strategy being applied in Afghanistan, by no means all the lessons from Iraq have been either acknowledged or learned. But since it would appear that only now is the Army beginning to allow muted criticisms in a "Restricted" document, it has a long, long way to go before we get to the bottom of the failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

With historians still chewing over the entrails of the Second World War, it may be some time yet before we get to grips with the extent of those failures, leaving Trooper David Maddock in the current journal to put down a marker.

He declares: "British forces in Afghanistan today are fighting an asymmetric war, a war we have fought many times before in Arabia, Malaya, Northern Ireland and Iraq ... If we have such a vast amount of experience, why are we not implementing the lessons learnt by those who have fought and died before us?"

But the last word has to go to US Colonel Peter Mansoor, who says that, "Only through a thorough appreciation of the mistakes it made in Iraq can the British Army turn defeat into victory as it fights the untidy wars of the early 21st century. It should not ... gloss over its recent experience in Iraq ... Although the conditions [in Afghanistan] are different, the lessons of Iraq are still relevant."

"The British failure in Basra was not due to the conduct of British troops, which was exemplary. It was, rather, a failure by senior British civilian and military leaders to understand the political dynamics ... in Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to an unwillingness to learn and adapt, along with increasing reluctance to risk blood and treasure to conduct effective counter-insurgency warfare ... ".

That arrogance is still there, in spades, and all we are seeing is the smallest of cracks in the edifice. But it is a start, even if it risks being too little, too late. We cannot afford 70 years before we finally admit that mistakes were made. And nor can we afford the luxury of dwelling on those events all those years ago, while ignoring the present.

COMMENT THREAD

Media management

Considering that the news of the 200th fatality arising from our expedition in Afghanistan was released only about 7pm last night, it says something for the technical skills of the print media that the news made most of the front pages of the Sundays today.

However, such was the timing that only hasty re-jigging got the news in, without sufficient leeway for the editorial and comment pieces that would have accompanied such news, had the details been available earlier.

The same also applies to the 201st fatality. Although incurred – in Sangin again – earlier on Saturday, the release was held back until the Sundays had gone to press, thereby robbing them of the news "hook" which would have cleared the front pages and most of the rest of the "book".

Even in the grisly arithmetic of battlefield casualties, therefore, news management plays a central part in the drama, the controlled release thus enabling Gordon Brown to hit the TV studios today (featuring on the Andrew Marr show) in a carefully planned exercise in damage limitation, before the Monday papers get to chew over the issue.

This was always going to be the case. As long as the media is intent on using the completely artificial "milestone" of 200 deaths as a trigger for a torrent of (largely hostile) coverage – the government will attempt to manage the news, to mitigate the adverse effects.

In fact, the KIA stand at about 170, others having been killed in accidents, illness or suicide, directly or indirectly related to the action in Afghanistan. But, as we pointed out in the forum, Service-wide non combat deaths far exceed those experienced in combat, the largest single cause being vehicle accidents. These, however, escape under the media radar. Until recently, they were not even recorded centrally.

The distinction between total fatalities and KIAs, however, leaves it open to the media to come back for a second bite at the cherry, recording the event when the KIAs reach 200. By that time, total casualties will be close to the "magic" figure of 255 – the number lost in the Falklands War. That, in turn, will trigger more press comment.

There is no point in decrying this dynamic. That is how the media works and to expect it to do otherwise is like expecting the archetypal cat to bark. But what today's media response – and the response in days to follow – does illustrate is that media management is as much a part of modern warfare as is engaging with the enemy, and just as important.

What is not as clearly recognised is that media response also has tactical and strategic implications. With the headline treatment of fatalities, commanders have been known to adjust tactics – contrary to theatre requirements – in order to minimise casualties, or even delay operations which might give a casualty spike, in order to avoid politically sensitive events, such as domestic elections.

Both these dynamics were evident in the Iraqi campaign, with the retreat to the bases in Basra (and the evacuation of Camp Abu Naji outside al Amarah) dictated more by the need to keep casualties down than for any sound tactical reasons.

Similarly, the decision to abandon Musa Qala in 2006 was very heavily influenced by the increasing difficulties experienced in re-supplying the platoon house by helicopter, and the fear that it was only a matter of time before a Chinook was lost, the casualties arising having a devastating political effect.

The problem confronting the military, however – and also the politicians – is that they need to square the circle: they need to be able to keep the casualty rate down, without compromising operations or strategic aims. And that requires something in which neither the politicians nor the military have shown any great skill – forward planning.

It is highly significant in that context that the 201st fatality reported today is the 100th to die from an IED. Take those (or a substantial number of them) out of the equation and the media storm that is about to break would not be occurring. But, to have been able to deal with the IED would have required a whole new set of equipment and tactics, which neither the politicians nor the military have been able to devise in time.

Thus, in the absence of effective battle management, all the government has left is media management and, as we write, there is evidence that this is not going to be enough. New Labour is at last beginning to discover that even the most skilful "spin" cannot trump reality for ever. The body bags are telling their own story.

COMMENT THREAD

Frontline – first impressions

One of the penalties of being exiled to Bradford, 200 miles from the metropolis is that for what is a Londoner, an evening with an early return home becomes a major expedition – requiring forward planning, considerable expense and much exhaustion, not least because one tends to cram in as much as possible into the day to make the trip worth it.

Thus, the Frontline Club talk yesterday, which started at 7 pm began for me at 6.30 in the morning and ended up, after a grueling 400-mile round trip, with me falling into my pit at 5 am this morning, having driven through atrocious weather, a barrage of road works and a thicket of speed cameras, the verdict from which has yet to be delivered.

Inevitably, therefore, such a concentrated diet of impressions takes a considerable amount of digestion before a coherent view can be formed. It says something though, that earlier in the day, I had given a talk about the book to a small gathering at a private lunch and my attempt to give the "short" version, with some insight into the political ramifications, took an hour and a half. Yet there I was at the Frontline club expected to give an overview in 20 minutes and then take part in a panel discussion for an hour or so, covering the same territory.

Originally billed with General Sir Mike Jackson on the panel, he pulled out at the last minute, for reasons unexplained (apparently he has a reputation for that). The meeting was thus chaired by Bill Neely, foreign editor for ITN News, with the panel comprising myself, Kim Sengupta from The Independent and with Deborah Haynes, defence correspondent from The Times standing in for Gen Jackson.

To a packed audience, with standing room only (close to a hundred people), I chose to focus the talk very tightly on just one aspect of the British occupation of Iraqi – the lack of appropriate equipment – which, I averred, contributed significantly to the military defeat. Much to the concern of the management, who discourage the use of Powerpoint presentations, I chose to illustrate the presentation with pictures of key equipment and despite the reservations, it seemed to work well enough.

Memory then is a faulty instrument; players always find it hard to describe the action. But, of the contributions from the audience – including two passionate Iraqi expats – there is and will continue to be that difficulty in unravelling those two separate (albeit linked) episodes of the invasion and the subsequent occupation. Many of the questions were thus focused on the invasion and issues related to that.

That further reinforced by the response today to the launch of the Chilcot Inquiry, where it is clear that Tony Blair is to be the star of the show in what looks as if it will become a media three-ring circus.

As to my general thesis – that the occupation of Iraq was a military failure – there was in fact a strong measure of agreement from the panel and the chairman, and indeed a view that many of the same mistakes are being repeated in the campaign in Afghanistan, about which there was very little confidence expressed. It there was a consensus view, it is most definitely that the Military is paving the way for another glorious defeat.

The impressive Kim Sengupta disagreed that the lack of equipment was the primary factor in the failure of the British, arguing that the root cause was the arrogance in the Military, a belief that they knew it all, and a rooted obstinacy in refusing to learn any lessons from the experience.

A former soldier in the audience added his voice, referring to the retreat from al Amarah - which I had identified as the pivotal moment in the failure of the campaign – saying that the campaign had been lost long before. By then there was no political will to continue with an aggressive prosecution of the counter-insurgency action.

Not disputing any of these views, I made the point that the lack of equipment was symptomatic of that greater malaise. I offered my own thesis - not unfamiliar to readers of this blog – that military equipment is the window into the soul of the Army.

Look at the equipment an army fields (and does not field) and that will tell you how they intend to fight. You do not need to interview the generals as to their intentions – they are revealed in the order of battle, in which context the continued use of the Snatch Land Rover told a story more eloquent than a brace of self-serving memoirs.

The Army, in effect, was telling you its own story, there to see if you understood the language. It illustrated the points made and was symbolic evidence of them.

Chairman Bill Neely neatly put Deborah Haynes on the spot, asking her why the media did not pay more attention to equipment. Her view, if I have recorded it accurately, was that equipment alone was not "very sexy" and it was not until there were "body bags" to go with it, as had been the case with the Snatch Land Rover, that it became a story.

This precisely accords with the impression that I have formed of the way the media thinks. If I did hear correctly, then it is a stunning confirmation of part of my thesis on media behaviour.

Neely himself invited me to explore by broader thesis on the failure of the media, noting that, while I had criticised the British media, I had relied extensively on British sources for my book. My point was that, while much of the information supplied was valuable, I had found that I had not been able to assemble from the British media any sense of a narrative of the conduct of the occupation. I had had to trawl many different sources, the most valuable – in helping me construct a framework – being the Arab press and insurgent sources.

Thus, as far as it goes, the British media offered many reports, but failed entirely in presenting a factual narrative which would put the material in the broader context. In that sense, I told Neely, Sengupta and Haynes afterwards, a rounded account is like a string of pearls. They had provided many pearls (and some dross) but not the "string" with which to bind them into a coherent whole.

Anyhow, those were my first – or at least, abiding – impressions of the meeting. There was much, much more and I hope that, should the video of the meeting become available, I will be able to do a much more comprehensive review of what was a fascinating event.

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

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

Lies about lies

It was never the case that the MoD was going to take the charge of lying without attempting a comeback and, sure enough, after Stephen Grey's piece in The Guardian that we looked at last week, Nick Gurr, the MoD's Director of Media and Communications, has tried his hand at a rebuttal on the MoD website.

Addressing the issues that the "MOD is restricting access to conflict zones" and that journalists have been "lied to and censored", Gurr deals with each in turn.

The points he makes on the access issue look eminently reasonable, stating the obvious – that air transport to theatre is limited and that there is an increasing demand for media access, which cannot be met. Gurr would have it that the MoD is doing its best, the number of media visits to operational theatres (Iraq and Afghanistan) having increased from 152 in the year to Oct 2007 to 246 in the year to May 2009. For Afghanistan during the same period they rose from 90 to 116 - an increase of more than 25 percent.

What Gurr does not say though is that much of the increase is through a programme of encouraging reporters from regional and local papers to follow their home regiments – ranks of very often inexperienced and compliant journalists, many of whom (not all) who lack specialist knowledge and thus are easy prey for the military propaganda machine.

An example of this comes with a recent piece from Harry Miller of the Surrey Comet, writing about a re-supply mission to a patrol base 2km west of the Musa Qala District Centre.

He travels with the 3 Scots in "some of the newly delivered Jackal armoured vehicles, used for reconnaissance, rapid assault, fire support and convoy protection." These, presumably, are the Jackal 2s, the virtues of which Miller extols, telling us that, "The new design of the vehicles has meant that Improvised Explosive Devices are having less of the desired effect and crews are much more likely to survive the impact with only minimal injuries."

Following on from Harding's piece on 1 June, expressing "safety concerns" about the Jackals, no self-respecting specialist defence correspondent would have written such an uncritical piece.

For the MoD to have got Miller to have written such a glowing testament – which could only have been repeating what he had been told – was, therefore, something of a coup, representing hard core propaganda from an unwitting journalist.

Yet, four days after the piece was published, Major Sean Burchall was killed – the most senior British Army officer to date in Afghanistan – in a Jackal. It may well have been a Jackal 2. Yet, while the MoD is happy to see "puffs" for the Jackal, when it comes to bad publicity for the machine, the MoD website is curiously silent.

Throughout the piece on Burchall's death, there is no mention of the Jackal, reference being made only to "armoured vehicles", a description which would not normally be applied to this equipment.

To favour relatively impressionable reporters, which then justifies restricting more frequent access by experienced journalists, and then to omit details of the Jackal in the press release, cannot be called lying or anything so obvious. But these are nonetheless classic examples of how the MoD seeks to manipulate the message to the public.

Gurr, however, claims that the MoD "wants the media to see first hand the efforts of our forces in Afghanistan", to which effect he argues that "our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are our best advocates," on which basis it is "in our interests to get the media there to see it for themselves." We owe it to our forces to ensure their story is told, adds Gurr.

In fact, though, the MoD's prime concern is to get the media to report the "story" it wants them to report. Those journalists who are compliant find that the MoD cannot be too helpful. Those who question the official line find that all sorts of difficulties arise when they want access to theatre or want to talk to people on the ground.

If this is the subtle – and deniable – end of media control, the plain lie is also a tool of the trade. But, to be credible, the lie must be denied. Thus does Gurr aver, "We don't tell lies. We are not allowed to." Of course, this is a lie.

We have far too many examples of outright lies from the MoD to believe otherwise – from the denial that there was major fighting in al Amarah during the height on the Mahdi uprising in 2005, to the false expectations raised on the conduct of Operation Sinbad in late 2007 to the falsehoods perpetrated over the recovery of Musa Qala, pretending that it was an Afghan-led operation.

The strict definition of the lie, however, encompasses more than just the telling of an untruth. It takes in not only the act, but default or sufferance – the processes of allowing untruths to be perpetuated for want of interventions that would correct them.

These are the common fare of the MoD but its tenuous grasp of the meaning of truth leads it further down the path of deception than can be imagined. One classic – and frequently employed stratagem – is to keep quiet about operations which would be of interest to specialists, using its own staff or journalists to cover the events and then only to publish the details if they go to plan – whatever the plan was.

That was the strategy adopted with Operation Sond Chara (Operation Red Dagger), over Christmas last. No embeds were present through the whole operation and only a very carefully sanitised version was released to the public.

The same goes, of course, for the deaths of individual soldiers. Stephen Grey complained that there was less coverage of British deaths than they deserve because the MOD was not getting journalists to the front line. Gurr disagrees, declaring that his organisation produces detailed eulogies "for all our people who are killed in action." That might be the case but, as we have seen with Major Burchall, the releases published by the MoD rarely include any significant operational detail.

For all Gurr's protests, though, he himself is most revealing about the real agenda. "There is a good story to be told in Afghanistan about all the things our forces are achieving in the toughest part of the theatre," he writes. "We want this story told and we want journalists there to help tell it." The journalists are there to tell the "good" story, and it is Gurr's job to make that happen.

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

A most abject failure

Today, there is considerable celebration amongst a small, badly neglected group of people at the Appeal Court ruling handed down on Monday. This has determined that soldiers on operations overseas retain their protection under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which safeguards the right to life.

The result of the ruling, as The Times records (and others here and here), is that families of British troops killed in war zones may be able to sue the government for a breach of human rights.

That "badly neglected group" who are so pleased with this ruling comprises the relatives – including the mothers, fathers, husbands, wives and even grandparents – of soldiers killed in action, almost all of whom feel let down by the system and deserted by the very people who are supposed to be there to help them.

Amongst them is Sue Smith, mother of Pte Philip Hewett who was killed with two others in a Snatch Land Rover in al Amarah on 16 July 2005, the circumstances of which we have recorded in several posts (such as this one, plus this).

Sue – like many others - has since spent many years battling to seek justice for her son and has a court case pending, suing the MoD for negligence, a case which was awaiting the outcome of this judgement. The way is not clear yet, as permission has been given to take the case to the House of Lords - granted on condition that the Secretary of State for Defence pays the legal costs whether the plaintiffs win or lose. But this is a significant step forward.

Sue's point – which I heartily endorse – is that the Army, for local political reasons, knowingly and with "malice of forethought" sent men out in highly vulnerable Snatches, fully aware that these vehicles provided no protection whatsoever against the weapons that were being deployed against them, in circumstances where there was an extremely high risk that they would be attacked and killed.

This goes way beyond the normal risks of war where commanders at all levels failed in their most basic duties to protect the lives of the troops under their command, when simple, basic precautions and adequate equipment could have protected them.

As with the original decision handed down in April 2008 by Mr Justice Collins sitting at the High Court in London, there will probably be talking heads bemoaning this judgement, arguing that the Courts have no place in the battlefield. Already, some senior commanders are complaining that they will lose control over their own men, as tactical decisions – and orders – are questioned on "health and safety" grounds.

In principle, it is hard not to disagree with these sentiments but the upshot is that the Army and the MoD have largely brought it on themselves. Had they responded intelligently – and decently – to the very real and well-founded concerns of relatives, instead of "dead batting" them and then relying on their presumed exemption from human rights law, none of this would have happened. Not one of the relatives wanted to go to law, but the attitude of the authorities left them with no choice.

In that context, we see a very measured and sensible response in The Daily Telegraph.

But there is another player here, which also failed the relatives – and the men and women who died, and will die. That is Parliament. There will be few, I vouch, who will make the connection with this case, but the fact is that Parliament has a responsibility here.

Uniquely, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are bound by law to put their lives at risk and occasionally forfeit them, in serving the interests of the state. In so doing the state – as represented by the government – has a duty of care, moral if not legal. But the primary body charged with scrutinising the government and bringing it to account is Parliament. Given that service personnel are unable to speak openly on their own account, Parliament thus has that special duty to look after their interests.

Unfortunately, almost without exception, where bereaved relatives have gone to their constituency MPs for aid and some succour, they have found them to be useless. For sure, they get the ritual expressions of sympathy and promises of help, but nothing ever materialises.

At another level, never has the defence committee specifically looked at the issue of mine protected vehicles, or force protection in general and, in respect of many of the substandard vehicles used or bought by the Army, the committee has actually welcomed uncritically their introduction.

Then, at the higher political level, there has been an infuriating and utterly irresponsible tendency of the opposition to use equipment deficiencies as a stick with which to beat the government, scoring political points rather than seeking to resolve problems.

To understand why this is so objectionable, one has to get past the Janet and John view of politics – the one that has the secretary of state in total control, making all the decisions and taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong.

Many former ministers will attest to how little power they actually have in office and often how difficult it is to impose even minor changes in their departments. This is especially so with the Ministry of Defence, where there are powerful vested interests, in the civil service, in the military and in the defence contractor lobby. It is rare that ministers can take on the combined weight of their own departments and win, if there is embedded an outright refusal to change. That is real life.

Here, one of the greatest allies a minister has is Parliament – both his own MPs and, especially, the opposition. While his department might seek to frustrate his wishes, when there is a strong sentiment from parliament that things should change, the hand of the minister is immeasurably strengthened. If, however, the MPs insist on turning criticism into party, partisan scoring points, that is of no help at all.

For sure, politicians are there to score points off each other, but in terms of defence – where the lives of service personnel at risk – the duty of MPs as parliamentarians should transcend party interest. Their duty to those at risk comes first. That is why, indeed, we maintain the title of "Her Majesty's loyal opposition".

In all respects, Parliament – at an individual level, with a very few honourable exceptions - has failed to step up to the plate. At an institutional level it has completely failed. This is an abject failure.

So, for want of Parliament doing its job, relatives today are rejoicing that a court of law has done it for them. In the end, we hope justice will be done, but the fact that it will have to come from the courts rather than Parliament is another – and very serious – indictment of that failing and increasingly useless institution.

COMMENT THREAD

Different realities - 2

If the reality of Michael M Phillips – for a short period at least – was Jalrez Valley in western Afghanistan, defence correspondent Michael Evans has been living a different reality with "our boys" in Helmand.

Published in The Times on 5 May, Evans gives as a quirky insight into one of the incidents briefly mentioned in the USAF "airpower summary" for 30 May.

The bare bones of that incident, as reported by the USAF, were that "a coalition aircraft" strafed an enemy improvised explosive device team. The aircraft engaged after detecting anti-Afghan personnel setting up a "daisy-chained," multiple-explosive IED. The aircraft used guns rather than a precision bomb to prevent damage to the roadway.

Behind that lies a fascinating story, headed in the newspaper as "Wandering Afghan goatherd holds up lethal attack on Taleban roadside bombers". The location is Garmsir and the narrative begins with four Taleban insurgents appearing at one end of a bridge on what is called by British troops "Route Cowboys". They begin to dig a hole for an IED (Evans calls it a "roadside bomb").

This is a scene that must have been repeated thousands of times, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Far too many times, the outcome has been fatal for British or other coalition troops. But not this time.

Flying above them at a height of 9,000ft, we are told, is a Hermes 450 UAV, relaying pictures of the scene to British controllers. They call in air support, which materialises in the form of two Belgian F-16s. Evans calls them "Belgian Air Force" aircraft, unconscious perhaps that the BAF was disbanded in 2002, to be replaced by the "Air Component" of an unified armed force. It is a small detail, but a telling one.

The F-16s prepare to attack but they are warned off as a young Afghan goatherd with a few goats around him is seen walking towards the bridge. By the time the goatherd has cleared the scene, one of the Taleban fighters, apparently the leader, has left on a motorcycle while another has began to walk backwards holding a wire and disappeared from view.

Then, and only then, the F-16s are cleared to attack. Rather than dropping a 500lb bomb that would have damaged the bridge, one strafes the area with, Evans says, a "30mm cannon", killing the two bomb emplacers. Our reporter is thinking, presumably, of an A-10 which is thus equipped and the figure he offers does not immediately register. But the F-16 is equipped with a 20mm M61 cannon. Another small detail wrong from the man who "was there".

Anyhow, the remaining insurgent mounts a motorbike and leaves, but the UAV follows him south, observing him as he enters a compound to change clothes and drives off to a rendezvous spot known to be a Taleban command centre. "He was allowed to escape," Evans tells us, without further explanation. Not for long, we suspect.

In this piece from Evans, there is a distinct difference in style, compared with the offering from Michael M Phillips. Both have a narrative of the events they observe but Phillips also works in an element of analysis and something of a "strategic overview". This is entirely lacking from Evans – as it is so often from British media pieces. His is a straight "Boys Own" narrative with nothing of any depth which might trouble the reader.

What Evans does do, however, is demonstrate – perhaps unwittingly – the vital and devastatingly successful role of the UAV in counterinsurgency warfare and, in particular, its "battle-winning capabilities" in the fight against the IED.

Therein lies a further story, one which Evans does not tell – the fact that, had British forces been equipped with the Hermes 450 in Iraq, and in particular in al Amarah, history could have been different. Instead, as we recounted at length in an earlier post, the Army there was equipped with the useless Phoenix, thus requiring patrols to be mounted in Snatch Land Rovers, with the tragic results which we have also recorded.

Even then, the availability of the Hermes 450 was a close-run thing. The original plan was for the Phoenix to be replaced by the more sophisticated Watchkeeper system (a heavily modified Hermes), as part of the FRES capability. Although this was not due to be introduced, and then incrementally, until 2010, the Army initially resisted the idea of acquiring the more basic version off-the-shelf, for fear that it would prejudice the Watchkeeper programme.

It was not, therefore, until May 2007 that the issue was forced, and an Urgent Operational Requirement was issued for the Hermes, too late to affect the outcome in Iraq but in time, as Evans now attests, to do good service in Afghanistan.

Even then, when we could use as many of these machine as could be supplied, even last year, the defence committee was retailing the view of industry that the provision of UAVs for "current operations" could undermine future industrial capacity.

Fortunately, as the political emphasis has shifted from "future capacity" to support of current operations, the Hermes has been bought but, had it been left to the Army and the defence industry caucus, the situation described by Evans might have had a less happy outcome for British troops.

To give him his due, Evans's narrative did not stop with this one episode. He goes on to describe a foot patrol, where more traditional methods of IED detection and disposal are witnessed, but with the Hermes in the air providing persistent overwatch.

A bomb is found using methods which our forefathers would have recognised, illustrating that the battle is now being fought with a meld of the old and the new, the answer – such as there is one - being a combination of tactics and techniques, with no "magic wand" that will deal with all eventualities.

Partly – but only partly – illustrating that point, Evans offers a separate analytical piece, telling us that "Helmand's improvised explosive devices exact a terrible toll".

In this, he actually tells us nothing we did not already know, but he also underlines the utility of "protected vehicles", recalling an earlier incident he had reported. This was where a Mastiff had successfully withstood a "donkey bomb" - two buckets hanging on either side of a tethered donkey filled with an estimated 20 Kg of explosives and set off as the vehicle was passing. No one was seriously hurt.

One additional detail is interesting. To help in the hunt for IEDs, we are told that "every aircraft with photographic capabilities roams the skies to look for Taleban fighters digging up the ground. Even the US Air Force B1B bomber has been used because of its advanced cameras."

Despite all this, the IED is still regularly claiming victims. Elsewhere, however, we learn that the successful countermeasures, and especially the use of better armoured vehicles, is – as we would expect – provoking a Taleban response.

The conventional wisdom is that the insurgents would simply build bigger bombs, but in fact the Mastiff has proved so resistant to attack that, even despite six stacked mines being used, no soldier has yet been killed in one.

What seems to be happening is that Taleban bombers have shifted to attacks on Afghan soldiers and police, who do not have the MRAPs or other countermeasures. Thus, with about as many Afghan personnel as there are coalition troops, the Afghans are taking higher casualties because they are more vulnerable.

In Iraq, the US found it necessary to equip the Iraqi Army with its own fleet of MRAPs, and with IED investigation equipment, and it looks as if a similar programme will have to be mounted in Afghanistan. But, for the moment, at least some progress has been made.

More and better technology is still needed. Some is on its way but there are still gaps and glaring deficiencies in an Army which should have been better prepared but which has been behind the curve throughout the campaign.

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.

COMMENT THREAD

You really could not make it up!

Despite being sent early drafts (at their request), at the eleventh hour - and as the book is about to go into production, fully typeset and indexed - we get a formal "request" from the MoD to remove several passages on the grounds that they breach "OPSEC" (Operational Security).

One passage to which the MoD took great exception recounted how a soldier discovered an IED (aka roadside bomb) in al Amarah, detailing what he saw that made him suspicious. We have been asked to remove this because, "As it stands it may lead to IEDs being placed in less obvious locations hindering detection."

And the source of my information - referenced in the book? Ah! The MoD website. (I wonder how long that link will remain active - its only been up since 2005.)

Nor must I tell people that the Jackal (pictured) has armour "around the cab and the sides". This "may lead to increased targeting in that area." But, as someone said to me, these Taleban are really cunning - they've got this new equipment ... called "eyes".

Is it any wonder the MoD are losing the war?

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The abolition of "defeat"

Another landmark in the British defeat in southern Iraq was reached today when Major General Andy Salmon, of the Royal Marines, formally handed command in Basra to his US Army counterpart Major General Michael Oates.

With that, the Royal Marine flag was lowered for the last time at Basra Air Station, when the flag of the US 10th Mountain Division was raised to replace the Marines’ colours.

The symbolism of this has been entirely lost on the commentators, but it was elements of the 10th Mountain Division which assisted the Iraqi Army in the recovery of al Amarah last June in operation Promise of Peace, after it had been abandoned by the British Army in August 2006, thus leaving the Mahdi Army free rein to turn the city into the bomb-making centre for the rest of the Shi'a insurgency.

Despite this senior British generals are celebrating the "enormous success" of UK troops in Iraq, having coined yet another term for "retreat". Such is the language of propaganda that the earlier retreats from al Amarah and then central Basra became "tactical moves" while the retreat from Basra Palace became a "repositioning". But the spin doctors have excelled themselves today, describing the current humiliating hand-over to the Americans, as a "Change in coalition command structure in southern Iraq".

If only Lt-Gen Percival had been so agile with terminology in February 1942, he would perhaps have gained his knighthood instead of ignominy, and gone on to greater things.

Certainly, the Orwellian decay of the language does not allow for the use of the words "surrender" or "defeat". We have achieved a glorious "change in coalition command structure" and now our troops can be "repositioned" elsewhere, where they can repeat the process all over again. Now that the word "defeat” has been abolished, there can be no stopping them.

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The wages of neglect

One gets exceedingly weary of the hole-in-the-corner way the MoD is "playing" the war in Afghanistan. Its strategy is to keep us largely uninformed as to what is really going on, while devoting its resources to a steady trickle of propaganda which serves to obscure rather than reveal the truth.

It played exactly the same game in Iraq, feeding us with glowing "puffs" about the "derring do" of "Our Boys", and happy little "touchy-feely" pieces about how our caring-sharing troops were engaging with those nice Iraqis and how things were getting better all the time – when the whole campaign was going down the pan.

We saw the propaganda technique in full swing last week when, out of the blue, we get a graphic account of an operation in the Upper Sangin Valley "which has struck severely at the narcotics industry in Helmand".

"Waves of helicopter-borne troops caught the Taliban by surprise," we were told, "in a meticulously planned assault which helps finance the Taliban's insurgency." And then we got the political pay-off from defence secretary John Hutton, who happily twitters:

Our dedicated and professional forces have once again taken the fight to the enemy. Their bravery, coupled with the size and sophistication of our firepower, has cleared the enemy from large areas of Helmand bringing security and governance to more of the province. The seizure of £50 million worth of narcotics will starve the Taliban of crucial funding preventing the proliferation of drugs and terror on the UK's streets.

It is funny how military operations are always "meticulously planned", and no doubt this one was – like all the rest, although one suspects the MoD would not be publicising it otherwise. They leave those to their Boards of Inquiry and then keep schtum about the results.

Putting this operation in perspective, the local value of the Afghani heroin trade is in the order of £3 billion (as export income). By the time the drugs get on the streets at their destinations, they are worth ten times that – and sometimes more. Hutton's £50 million is in fact worth about £5 million as export value in the form of heroin. As crude opium in situ it is probably worth one tenth of that – about £500,000. That is not even chump change compared with the total value of production.

Even then, the figure is meaningless. The "industry" in Afghanistan is vastly over-producing. It is thus keeping back considerable stocks in reserve, to keep the price buoyant. It will simply replace this amount from stock and won't even miss it. That is one of the more sinister activities of the Taleban, they way they are manipulating the market. Thus, the loss of this small quantity of drugs will have no impact on the overall income and cause very little more than a minor, local inconvenience. It will certainly have no effect on the amount of heroin reaching the UK.

Without in any way downplaying what our troops achieved – they put their lives on the line for this operation - this is typical MoD spin. They talk up every "success" while never giving us the overall picture.

We saw them doing exactly the same in Iraq, talking up weapons cache seizures, which were minuscule compared to what was actually in circulation. On the other hand, they kept very quiet about major losses of equipment and wounded soldiers when, for instance, supply convoys got bounced - which was happening very frequently indeed.

The very great danger in hyping this up is that the MoD actually begins to believe its own propaganda, and starts to think it is achieving anything substantive. That again harps back to Iraq, when the Army mounted a huge programme of raids to capture weapons and bomb-making materials. When it paraded the seized material, one definitely got the sense that the MoD believed it was achieving something. But the raids made absolutely no difference to the rate of bombing and attacks.

Yet, when the US Army and Iraqis closed down the bomb-making factories in al Amarah and Maysan province, within a month, combat engineers doing mine clearance noted a sharp fall off in the number of bombs being laid. The MoD was deceiving itself that its activities were having any effect at all.

What we don't get is any sense of a balance sheet – what we are gaining in overall terms, and what it is costing us. For sure, we know that troops are killed – we know that because the MoD is obliged to tell us when a soldier dies, but it does not tell us of the injured.

What little information we get is statistically meaningless, because we can't relate to anything. The most detail we get is in "puffs" about heroic recoveries of British soldiers, who defy all the odds to overcome their injuries. This is in no way to denigrate these admirable people. It is to attack the MoD for the way it exploits their efforts as a tool of propaganda, giving a one-sided view without the bigger picture.

A little of that emerges in The Sunday Times today which publishes an article headed: "MoD hides rising injury toll of Taliban bombs". There, we are told that more than 100 British soldiers have suffered amputations and other debilitating injuries in the past year in Afghanistan, "according to previously suppressed Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures that reveal the true toll of the Taliban's roadside bombing campaign."

The number of troops losing limbs or eyes, suffering serious burns or permanent brain damage has increased dramatically since August 2007 when the Taliban intensified their efforts. During the past 18 months, 37 of the 71 British troops killed are known to have been the victims of roadside bombs or mines, but the number of troops disabled in the attacks has never been fully disclosed.

Figures now obtained by The Sunday Times show that 37 soldiers suffered "life-changing injuries" between April 2006, when they first deployed to southern Afghanistan, and the end of that year. There were 55 such injuries during the whole of 2007. Last year the figures more than doubled to 114 and there have been 12 cases this year.

Yet this is only one glimpse of the downside. We still don't get any details of how these troops were injured, under what circumstances, and whether – of crucial importance – they could be prevented.

One tantalising piece of information is that, while the MoD has bought better armoured vehicles in an attempt to counter the Taliban offensive, insurgents using such large amounts of explosives there is a limit on the protection afforded even by new Mastiff armoured vehicles. There have, we are told, been cases of soldiers in Mastiffs who were protected from a blast but who lost their legs below the knee as a result of the shock wave inside the vehicle.

We also learn that such is the scarcity of helicopters – which would provide a safer mode of transportation - that last week a British operation against the drug barons financing the Taliban had to use aircraft provided by the US marines. That, incidentally, is a detail curiously missing from the MoD "puff" on the operation.

Campaigners, says The Sunday Times claim the MoD is deliberately keeping the human cost of the war out of the public eye. All the MoD will admit is that 23 soldiers underwent amputations between December 2007 and November 2008, but said is was "unable to provide a breakdown of other serious injuries."

If that is what it is saying, that is a barefaced lie. The most comprehensive details of all injuries in theatre are kept, on a single computer database in Selly Oak, with complete details of all incidents. They are instantly accessible and can provide breakdowns of all the details needed.

Since the MoD is so sparse with its information, perforce, the only real way of measuring progress on the battlefield has been the death rate. This detail has traditionally been used by military historians and, of late, it has been the main metric (sometimes the only metric) on which the media rely. It there is a high number of deaths, the media get interested. If there is a period without casualties, the media goes to sleep.

The problem is that even this metric is now becoming heavily distorted. We saw recently a report in The Daily Telegraph on the extraordinary measures taken to airlift a dozen wounded servicemen out of Helmand province "in the largest and most complex medical evacuation since the conflict in Afghanistan began".

From that piece, we also learn that more than 20 troops a week are being evacuated by air from Camp Bastion and that the number of aeromedical evacuations has more than tripled since the first British forces entered Helmand in 2006 with 800 troops flown home in the past year.

Last year, we also saw a piece which reported that British battlefield casualties had been almost halved by radical new changes implemented by medics, bringing down the death rate on the front line in Afghanistan from almost a quarter dying from their wounds to one in eight.

The massive improvement in survival rates has been put down to "miracle bandages", a new tourniquet and the use of trauma consultants on board evacuation helicopters.

Significantly, the use of large Chinook and Merlin helicopters carrying an anaesthetist or emergency medical consultant plus four medics are the key factor. With most journeys in Helmand involving a two-hour round trip, the doctors can effectively set up a trauma station in the back of the helicopter keeping the patient alive until they reach the field hospital in Camp Bastion.

All this is being done for admirable reasons, and it is far too cynical even to suggest that the enormous effort made to prevent troops dying suits the MoD rather well. The fact is though, that with fewer troops being killed – when even quite recently they would have died – the war in Afghanistan is getting far less scrutiny than it might otherwise have done.

With 58 troops having died this year and last, and a ratio one death in eight applying when previously it would have been one in four, we might have seen 132 deaths but for the changes. Those extra 74 deaths would have brought the total from the current 126 to exactly 200.

These are, of course, rough calculations, but the point is made. With there having been 178 deaths in Iraq, a recorded death toll well in excess of that in Afghanistan would have drastically altered the media dynamics. There would have been far more reporting, much more comment, considerably more criticism and a great deal more political intervention.

What has escaped comment from those who have recently reported on the efforts made to keep injured troops alive is the apparently disproportionate effort being expended. From our extremely limited fleet of Merlins and Chinooks, no expense is spared when it comes to using them as flying trauma stations, but that leaves us even shorter of helicopters for operations, so we have to borrow from the Americans or send troops out in less safe forms of transportation.

Not for the first time do we observe that it would be gratifying if the MoD – as well as the media and politicians – devoted as much energy and resources to keeping troops alive and uninjured as they did to treating them and trying to keep them alive after they have been wounded.

That they could do more is indicated by a piece from Thomas Harding last week, in which he records an interview with Canada's defence minister who tells us that British forces in Afghanistan could "learn lessons" on how to properly equip troops on the front line.

This is an issue we have covered many times on this blog, noting how the Canadians are far more advanced in their force protection techniques, using equipment that we are only now thinking of buying, while still having considerable capability gaps.

With the death rate being contained by "artificial" means rather than by improved fighting equipment and tactics, the fear is that these words will fall on deaf ears. It has been difficult enough getting the MoD to focus on force protection and without constant pressure, there is great danger that we will see backsliding and a renewal of the complacency which has blighted the whole campaign.

As important, with the statistics being skewed – even if for the best of reasons – we are no longer getting any measure of what is going on, beyond the propaganda "puffs" from the MoD. Deprived of signals, we can only speculate, with suspicion that it is far worse than is painted and deteriorating rapidly.

Neither this government nor the MoD can be trusted to tell the truth, and nor can the media be relied upon to ferret it out. We can, under these circumstances, only fear the worst. We are now, in many senses, paying the wages of neglect.

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