Winning the war - Part VIII: Hearts and mines

Captain Andrew Brosnan, commander of Alpha Company, 25th US Army Infantry Division, was a frustrated man. Having established his force of 140 soldiers in "firebase Ananconda" on the fringes of Uruzgan town – 100 miles north east of Kandahar – he gathered hundreds of local men in a circle around him.

Capt Brosnan then delivered a stern message. He had come to the townspeople "in friendship", he said, and outlined Alpha Company's development projects. He also appealed for information about the Taliban attacks. Despite that, he admonished, "not one person here has helped me."

Moments later, a US jet cracked across the sky in a choreographed show of force. "Together we can build a better Afghanistan," he concluded. The townsmen, listening carefully as they hunkered under the morning sun, stood up and left.

This is an account offered by The Guardian in September 2004, demonstrating, as its headline put it, "Frustrated US forces fail to win hearts and minds." Troops hunting Taleban, ran the strap, "run into wall of silence."

After a quiet welcome, the base had come under sustained attack. Suspected Taleban had fired rocket-propelled grenades at the camp three times, though most of them exploded off the perimeter wall, and planted at least ten roadside bombs designed to destroy passing US convoys.

Although the attacks had caused no serious injuries, they had infuriated Capt Brosnan. His troops, he said, had built schools, dug wells and erected latrines in the town. His medics had treated the sick and called in helicopter evacuations for patients in mortal danger. Yet, he was frustrated by "a wall of silence" about the attacks.

Even though some of the attacks had been launched from the busy town bazaar, nobody, it seemed, knew anything. "They wave, they smile. But someone out there knows what's going on - and they're not saying anything," said Specialist Melvin Krambule, a gunner atop an armour-plated Humvee.

Nearly three years later, we get a British perspective from The Daily Telegraph, which reported that, "Afghan hearts and minds refuse to be won". Troops fighting in Afghanistan, we were told, "are meeting resistance not only from the Taliban, but from the people they are there to support."

The report narrates the experience of Col Simon Marr, of the 1st Bn Fusiliers, leading a "senior Allied delegation" on a hearts-and-minds mission to the town of Ghowrak in Kandahar. He is told by the headman, Haji Pasha, "You do not need to be here in town … With your soldiers standing looking over us, watching our women and driving their vehicles destroying our land. Go into the hills to find the Taliban, don't disturb us."

Far from being enticed into repudiating the Taliban, the report adds, elders lined up to complain about the foreign troops in their midst and, more bitterly, the lack of assistance from the Afghan government. "Why are we not with you?" asks another villager rhetorically. "Why are we not thanking you for our security? Why should we do anything at all for our government when it does nothing to help us? Please do something for us but do it in Kandahar to make our government give to us not to themselves."

Militarily, control of Ghowrak is vital. It is a strategic outpost on the Hashingar Pass, a Taleban corridor to Helmand province. Fighters crossing smuggling routes travel unchallenged through Kandahar to strongholds from Helmand to Pakistan. Without troops on the ground, the military cannot hope to disrupt the Taleban's supply lines, but without the support of the local population, they cannot prevail.

Now fast forward to June 2008 and Time magazine reports how the Taleban took away the school-books, the flour and cooking oil from Kajaki Olya. This is a village on the banks of the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, a few miles from the strategic Kajaki dam, where works are continuing to bring electricity to 1.7 million Afghans.

But here, the writ of the Taleban prevailed. It warned the farmers of the village not to accept any other gifts from the British troops. As a result, Ghulam Madin, an opium-poppy farmer, begs the soldiers to stop coming through his village. He does not want any more food or cash, "even though his gaunt face and bare feet indicate that he needs both."

"Last time you brought us shoes as gifts, and it made big problems for us. The Taleban came and took them away," he says. "This time if we take the gifts, the Taleban will finish us for sure."

He is speaking to Major Mike Shervington, commander of a company of British troops stationed in the hills above the village. For the past few weeks, the Taliban has been following in his footsteps, stealing by night the gifts his soldiers gave out during the day.

But the villagers cannot or will not fight back. "We are afraid," says Madin. "The Taleban has force. It has power." Shervington, who leads about 200 men, asks, "More than me?" Madin shrugs. "You will come down and fight, and you will win," he concedes. "But you will win only for one hour. Then you will go back to your base. The Taleban will return."

Around the same time, the Commander, Field Army Headquarters Land Command in southern Iraq, was expressing his opinion of developments. This was Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb, who declared that, "Winning hearts and minds" in Western-occupied nations like Iraq and Afghanistan is an impossible goal.

"There will of course be circumstances where we can earn the trust of local people, where we can prevail amongst the national leadership, establish a constructive dialogue with religious authorities, but I doubt we will (be) or maybe ever have been in a position to win their hearts and minds," he said.

"To suggest that good intentions will cross fundamental cultural, social and religious differences and win over a damaged population is at best dangerous and wishful thinking. The image of winning a heart or a mind is almost ridiculous."

Lamb added that the best an occupying army could hope for was the consent of local people, and this required delivering tangible benefits like electricity, water, health, education and security. Among the locals were "some who need us, albeit for a short time, others that will accommodate us, albeit for a short time, and others that will hate us simply for all time".

While some opponents could be brought back from the brink by addressing underlying grievances, others were irreconcilable. "They are simply the architects of chaos. You have to expel them, incarcerate them or kill them."

Warming to his theme, Lamb then held: "I would contend that the (U.S.-led) coalition just being in Iraq presents to a proud and ancient civilisation abject humiliation, visible shame … Every day and in every way we outsiders are seen to be interfering in their affairs - albeit with the best possible interests, and making a difference - but nevertheless foreigners to their culture, their faith, their way of life."

The news agency report at the time noted that Lamb's comments on "hearts and minds" marked a sharp departure from what had become a cliché of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, often used by politicians and the media.

And indeed, "hearts and minds" was and still is very much a cliché, attracting the acronym "WHAM" – standing for "winning hearts and minds". This is the driver of much of the military activity in Afghanistan, where Lamb's remarks were just as applicable. Rather than involve itself in longer-term projects (although there have been exceptions) the military focuses on what are known as QIPs – quick impact projects, activities which produce an immediate dividend, supposedly to present a human face to populations in military occupied areas.

Thus, you get Capt Brosnan's schools, wells and latrines, plus food aid and gifts, when what the populations really want is longer term infrastructure projects like roads and electricity.

Worse still, as one recent study pointed out, such aid is implemented largely on the basis of a "charity paradigm", which can be perceived as "patronising, instrumentalist and unsustainable by local populations". The study adds:

Afghan populations are sceptical about military intentions, and are not fooled by simplistic material incentives designed to ‘win hearts and minds’. Crude and unsophisticated methods, such as badly designed and implemented projects to combat Taliban efforts on the non-kinetic front, to ensure force protection or to win support for the Afghan government are not currently helping build credibility or trust.

This study goes on then to advocate the use of civilian aid agencies, arguing that:

Despite force protection being one of the top priorities of commanders and a key factor inherent within the operational planning process, the military cannot establish relationships that put them in touch with the knowledge and experience that can yield in-depth insight into communities and their workings. Efforts such as patrols "engaging" with the population – by exchanging niceties with children, for example, although necessary and palliative for soldiers on the ground, are manifestly not in the same league.

Notwithstanding that the civilian agencies are not delivering the goods either – and in their agricultural aid activities are focusing on "food security" and production improvements rather than marketing, thus exacerbating problems – the point made by Lamb is amply reinforced: the pursuit of a "hearts and minds" strategy is largely valueless.

In a hostile environment, our military struggles for the "hearts" and, in return, they get "mines". The strangest thing is that anyone ever thought it would be different. Yet, we still see arguments for the use of "Snatch" Land Rovers and open topped "WIMIK" Land Rovers – as being more conducive to the "hearts and minds" approach. We expose our troops to greater danger in the hope that the populations will reciprocate. Instead they, or the forces they support, exploit our weakness.

In that context, the watch words should be: "get in, do the job and get out" – minimising our own casualties in the process. We should leave the "nicey nicey" to the local politicians and the Afghan agencies for, if in the unlikely event that a "hearts and minds" strategy ever worked, it would undermine rather than enhance the development of the Kabul government.

This, we will explore in a later part.

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Winning the war - Part IX: Reality check

By the end of this month, less than ten days into our journey, the number of British casualties in Afghanistan has increased to 110, reported as the highest number of British deaths in the land campaign in any one month, since the start of operations in 2002.

Despite that, Gerard Baker of The Times wrote a bullish column telling us to: "Cheer up. We're winning this War on Terror". Covering both the Iraqi and Afghani campaigns, he breathlessly announced that Al-Qaeda and the Taleban were "in retreat", the surge had worked in Iraq and Islamism had been discredited.

Quoting the famous words of Marshal Foch at the Battle of the Marne: "My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!", all that was needed, opined Baker was for our political leaders and opinion-formers to display just "a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory".

The problem was, according to Baker, was that "timorous defeatism is on the march." In Britain, setbacks in the Afghan war were greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror was unwinnable. The answer, therefore, was "confidence".

Concluded Baker: "We are prevailing in this struggle. We know it. And everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and among Muslims around the world, the enemy knows it too."

With the analysis so far done on this blog, one was minded of the boy who stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled – but not in the strict terms of Hemans's poem. Instead, one recalls the cynical rejoinder, oft quoted but with no acknowledged author: "Obviously, he had no idea what was going on". The comedian Spike Milligan put it more succinctly, parodying those opening lines of the poem by adding the single word: "Twit."

Cutting across the heroism of Hemans's subject, the cynic will argue that that it is easy to be brave when you are unaware of the peril faced. But, more to the point, it is easy to be bullish and optimistic about a situation when you have no clear understanding of what is going on.

It is in that "fog of war" that our earlier commentators operated, Messrs Parris, Jenkins, Harding and Mercer – plus the many others, including this blog author.

We can all look at the bits of the story that either attract us, or reinforce our innate prejudices, and draw whatever conclusions we wish to see. Those who would wish to see us lose Afghanistan can find evidence to support that thesis and those who, for whatever reason, wish to argue that we are prevailing, can find any amount of material to support that view.

Casting the net wider than have most, however, one finds an unusually blunt paper written for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in December 2007, Anthony H Cordesman complained of "an uncertain war with far too few metrics".

Although an American writer, his focus is not entirely on his own country, embracing as he does, "virtually all the Western governments involved" in Afghanistan - as well as NATO/ISAF.

What they have in common, he writes, is that they provide little meaningful data on progress in the conflict in military, political, economic, and ideological terms. There also is little effort to analyse the length of effort required, the ratio of resources available to resources required, and treat the conflict as what is almost certain to be a long war and a long exercise in nation building. He continues:

Part of the problem may come from the fact that so many governments and official bodies are involved, and there is no central authority that provides comprehensive reporting. Most of the official reporting on Afghanistan – whether US, NATO, or allied country - is little more than public relations material. NATO and national web sites provide almost no meaningful "metrics" for measuring progress, and there have been few meaningful government reports.

The United States government, which provides the bulk of the military and financial resources for the war, is a good case example. Unlike Iraq, the US government has never attempted to provide any structured metrics or analysis of the fighting.

The US Department of Defense has largely halted detailed reporting on the war. It has not provided any recent formal reporting on the course of the war. The web site for Operation Enduring Freedom has been replaced by a general heading for Afghanistan that is almost useless in providing meaningful information on the war.

The US State Department provides some data on aid spending, but no meaningful data on either the detailed justification for that aid or measures of effectiveness of aid beyond some data on projects completed as distinguished from the level of requirements met and impact on war fighting. The White House web site is little more than a morass of slogans.

What, in effect, Cordesman is saying is that no one really knows quite what is going on in Afghanistan and, in particular, whether the massive inflow of funds, resources and manpower is have the effect intended.

On the other hand, enough seemed to be known for an ad hoc Afghanistan Study Group, under the aegis of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, to make its own report a month later. And the findings do not make for happy reading. "The mission to stabilise Afghanistan is faltering," it says, then telling us:

Following the rapid successes in toppling the Taleban government, passing a new constitution, and electing a president and parliament, the long road to reconstruction, reconciliation, and institutional development has grown hazardous.

Despite a significant increase in the number of foreign troops and the amount of aid to Afghanistan since 2002, violence, insecurity, and opium production have risen dramatically as Afghan confidence in their government and its international partners falls. The year 2007 has been the deadliest for American and international troops in Afghanistan since US-led coalition forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

As we struggle to build an Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, suicide attacks against Afghan security forces have also surged.

The most immediate threat to Afghanistan comes from an anti-government insurgency that has grown considerably over the past two years. It has become apparent that the Taleban cannot fight the U.S. and coalition forces head-to-head, and coalition forces have had success in targeting Taleban leadership over the last year, capturing or killing several senior commanders.

Therefore, the Taleban rely on terrorism and ambushes, launching over 140 suicide bombings in 2007, with numerous attacks in the heart of the capital, Kabul. Over 80 Afghan civilians reportedly lost their lives in suicide attacks in September 2007 alone.

The Taleban have been able to infiltrate many areas throughout the country, especially the south and the southeast where the government is weakest, intimidating and coercing the local populations and occasionally holding territory. As a result, the prospect of again losing significant parts of Afghanistan to the forces of Islamic extremists has moved from the improbable to the possible.

This sober analysis, however, was itself not entirely objective – or, at least, without political motivation. Published in the late January of this year, it had in mind the April Nato summit in Bucharest, when the US intended to jolt coalition members into providing more troops and releasing some of the restrictive caveats which reduced the effectiveness of the Nato mission.

In part that was successful but only partly so – with the French committing to send an additional battalion of troops and some agreement that the troops in the more peaceful northern regions of Afghanistan could be used as a "theatre reserve" in the event of serious (but unspecified) problems.

But, if the Afghanistan Study Group was trying to make a point, it was not the only one to take a pessimistic view. In 2006, award-winning journalist Fariba Nawa had written a penetrating report on the reconstruction programme in Afghanistan. In her epilogue, she writes:

Afghans are losing their faith in the development experts whose job is to reconstruct and rebuild their country. While the quality of life for most is modestly improved, they were promised much more. What the people see is a handful of foreign companies setting priorities for reconstruction that make the companies wealthy, yet are sometimes absurdly contrary to what is necessary.

This is against the background of US spending of an estimated $140 billion since 2001 on military spending in Afghanistan, with another $10 billion spent on "reconstruction" (out of a total of $25 billion allocated from all sources).

Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that the value of Afghan opium exports in 2007 rose 29 percent over the previous year and was equal to 53 percent of the country's legitimate gross domestic product. A follow-up report issued on 6 February predicted that opium production this year would be at or near 2007 levels.

In addition, the report noted, "another disturbing trend is the steady rise in cannabis cultivation, giving Afghanistan the dubious distinction of being one of the world's biggest suppliers of cannabis in addition to providing over 90 percent of the world's illicit opium." Afghan farmers are diversifying, but not in quite the way intended.

Thus, when Cordesman complained of "an uncertain war with far too few metrics", he could have put it differently. Too many of the "metrics" that are available point in the wrong direction. Baker's "confidence" – with which we started this part – is definitely that of the boy on the deck of the burning ship.

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Winning the war - Part X: Outsourcing the war

Throughout this dissertation runs the central theme that the active "shooting war" and the reconstruction programme are not (or should not be) separate activities but an integral part of the whole, the two dovetailing together and feeding off each other.

We have also made the point that restoration of the agricultural base is the key to success: fix the agriculture and you fix the nation, we wrote. To that extent, military priorities – and all others – should be directed at that endeavour.

In terms of policy, however, the reality was that, at the beginning of the reconstruction programme, agriculture was so low down the pecking order that it was not run directly by the US government – or even the Afghani government. Instead - like many of the reconstruction activities in both Iraq and Afghanistan - it has been subcontracted to a private company under contract. In effect, a vital part of winning the war has been outsourced.

Here, it has to be said that there is no rooted objection to the use of private contractors – they often being more efficient in the provision of services than any government agency. But their effectiveness – and value for money – depends entirely on their working within a sound policy framework, which should thus determine a tightly define (and achievable) contract specification. It then should go without saying that the contract process should be entirely open, with awards based on merit first and then cost, and that there should be good supervision and then proper accountability.

For the redevelopment of Afghani agriculture, the contract was awarded to a company called Chemonics International, Inc. (known more commonly by its short-form: Chemonics), a 3-year cost-plus, fixed-fee contract for $153.4 million under a programme labelled the: Rebuilding Agricultural Markets Program (RAMP). It took effect in July 2003, the first phase of which was to last until June 2006.

From the outset, the strategic objective of RAMP, as defined by the company was:

…to enhance the food security and increase the incomes of Afghanistan’s rural population by a) increasing agricultural productivity and output, and b) increasing incomes by making the linkages between producers, processors and markets more efficient.

Not only does this appear fundamentally sound, the programme structure on paper also look adequate, comprising management, administration and technical assistance; physical infrastructure reconstruction or repair; rural financial services; and agricultural technology and market development. Nor could there be any objection to the overall philosophy (as explained in a company report). It was precisely that which one would expect to see:

The programmatic starting point for increasing marketable value is the final market (demander), not the farmer (supplier). The following sections support the "produce what you can sell" principle by first describing the contractor's accomplishments to date with regards to identifying markets and developing market systems, enhancing processing facilities, and increasing the quality and yield of production – and then briefly explaining RAMP/Chemonics' 2006 planned activities related to these value chain elements.

There was, however, to prove a difference between paper and practice. In March 2006, the Office of the Inspector General published an audit of the programme, giving what amounted to a damning indictment:

USAID/Afghanistan did not properly administer its contract with Chemonics with regards to updated work plans, changed scope of work, and annual evaluations of contractor performance. A contractual relationship between USAID/Afghanistan and Chemonics required both parties to fulfill specific responsibilities in order to manage and implement the contract activities. Furthermore, USAID/Afghanistan's decision to use a contract instrument to implement this program required it to follow the applicable Federal Acquisition Regulation, which it did not do. The reasons why USAID/Afghanistan did not properly administer the contract were because other tasks took priority, and the Mission did not enforce the contract terms with Chemonics. As a result, USAID/Afghanistan's contract administration could result in the inefficient use of U.S. government resources. Additionally, the Mission did not have timely updates on the performance of Chemonics—updates which serve as a relevant, important source of information in responsibility determinations and future contract awards.

Crucial in that condemnation were the words, "The reasons why USAID/Afghanistan did not properly administer the contract were because other tasks took priority …". In effect, the US authorities, having subcontracted the vital task of regenerating the Afghani agricultural system, then took very little interest in the progress of the work. It became, "out of sight, out of mind".

One of Chemonics' more important failures was that it did not meet a target set for 30 September 2005 for rehabilitating the number of kilometers of farm-to-market roads. Originally, it had been tasked to rehabilitating 555 kilometers but by that time had actually completed only 391Km. The reasons cited were: "security and poor subcontractor performance issues" but the cumulative delays meant that the end-of-contract target of rehabilitating 900 Km was no met by 2 July 2006.

More to the point – but not questioned by the Inspector General was the relationship between production orientated and marketing work. While Chemonics had declared that the "starting point" for its programme was the final market and not the farmer, in the contract period it has spent $12,207,587 on "combined contracts" for canal rehabilitation and farm to market roads, $20,476,970 on rehabilitation of canals and $3,800,759 on rehabilitating roads.

The point, of course, is that the canals, as part of the crop irrigation system, were devoted to increasing production, whereas the roads were the related to improving marketing. Because of the combined contracts, the exact proportion spent on each type of project cannot be estimated but, despite that, it is clear that by far the bulk of the expenditure went on the production side of the equation. And, out of the $153,163,766 directly spent on projects, the only other market-orientated works were "market centres", which attracted a mere $3,964,585 and a vegetable dehydration factory which cost $3,022,887.

As always, though, the bland figures do not tell the whole story. It is interesting that the "farm-to-market" road rehabilitation programme was managed by Chemonics. The strategic road programme, however, was contracted out to a completely different group and there was not always any co-ordination between the two programmes. Thus, a farm-to-market road could end up being a "road to nowhere", the "market centre" lacking communications with the wider market.

Nor indeed were the "market centres" always of any great value, journalist Fariba Nawa describing one as "a small patio with a pitched roof built on the main road in Parwan where farmers from the co-operative were supposed to sell their harvest". It was, she noted, "vacant and covered with dust."

This example is one of many which reinforces a sense of unease about the use of contractors in Afghanistan, one other being more recent concern expressed about the amount of aid money which is being spent on expatriate salaries – typically 200 times the average annual salary of an Afghan civil servant.

Complaints have also been aired that some 40 percent of the aid pledged to Afghanistan returns to donor countries, spent "on corporate profits and consultancy fees," inviting the image of "fat cats" creaming off money intended for the poor who are forced to rummage in waste dumps for their livings (see picture at top of post – used in precisely that context).

For their money, though, Chemonics most recently points to a piece published by the IHT in November 2007. This retailed news of a development on marketing pomegranates in Kandahar, where USAID was spending $6.6 million on agricultural and marketing assistance programs.

This had involved the construction of a new cold storage facility and the implementation of quality control programmes, doubling the price of pomegranates to 54 cents per pound. The programme, we were told, had helped ship 690 tons to India, 600 to Pakistan and 36 to Dubai, mostly on outgoing military flights. Furthermore, a sample half-ton shipment had been sent to the United States.

Oddly though, as Kandahar is in the sector administered by the Canadians, they too are claiming credit, describing the project as Canada's Afghan legacy. First there, however, were the Indians with a $1.5 million cold storage investment in 2005.

Nevertheless, in 2007, according to Time magazine Afghani farmers had harvested between 33,000 and 44,000 tons of the fruit, of which some 1,102 tons had been exported, most to India, Dubai and Singapore. Tiny quantities had found their way to London and Vancouver, while "strict phytosanitary requirements" had kept them out of the US. And, with this year's harvest expected to reach 68,000 tons, with exports rising "to as much as 3,000 tons", this was regarded as a success.

It says something that USAID was driven to announce that in February, 6,000 kg of end-of-season pomegranates had been sold to India - a mere six tons.

Then, at the end of May, success came, from an unlikely source, without USAID involvement. An agreement was signed with two Japanese companies to export up to 20,000 tonnes of pomegranates to Japan this year. Strangely, the provincial chamber of commerce head, Razaq Rafiqi, complained that the central government was not doing enough to help fruit farmers in the province.

Nevertheless, with officials claiming that fresh and dry fruits worth US$35 million were exported last year from Kandahar province – mostly to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - they are now confident of a considerable increase this year.

Long before this had happened, though, journalist Fariba Nawa reminded us that, among the primary goals set out by USAID in the Chemonics contract was the establishment of reliable domestic and international markets for Afghan agricultural goods. By nearly all accounts but its own, she wrote, Chemonics has been a failure in this regard.

It is hard to disagree in principle, but some of the fault must lie with the State Department and its own USAID organisation for taking its eye off the ball. Bureaucracies, the world over, it seems, are universally incapable of anything which could be considered approximating efficiency. Even private enterprise in conjunction with a state apparatus hardly seems better.

For pomegranate growers, unfettered private enterprise seems to have offered a better deal, coming from outside the protective cordon of the European and American trade systems. In this one, important instance, Japan has done more than either to advance the global war against terror. And, in the final analysis, it is more of the same that is eventually going to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan. A supermarket buyer, waving a substantial contract, is probably worth more than a thousand troops – and certainly more than 10,000 aid officials.

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Winning the war - Part XI: Vacuum at the centre

Habib, the labourer, looks at the new mansions in Shirpur and sees injustice. "These people are very bad people. That money was for us and they took it," he said. "The Taleban time was very bad and now it is very bad for the poor. Where is the difference?"

So runs the concluding paragraph of a piece written in November 2006 by Associated Press staff writer Kathy Gannon, published in The Boston Globe and no doubt elsewhere, now archived on an Afghani web site.

It makes the point, as do many other pieces over the years, that much of the aid money that has flowed into Afghanistan has done little to alleviate poverty, ending up instead financing expatriate salaries and expenses, and funding the extravagant lifestyles of ministers, high officials and contractors, all with their hands in the pot.

This was precisely the point to which we alluded in our previous part, airing complaints about high salaries, and the huge amount of aid which was siphoned off before it got near the people for whom it was intended. According to the Kabul-based Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA), of the $25 billion in aid to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2008, only some $15 billion had been spent and, for every $100 spent, sometimes only $20 actually reaches Afghan recipients.

In this context, the reference to Shipur is an interesting one – a suburb of Kabul which was forcibly cleared of impoverished squatters, and small businesses (pictured) with plots of land then sold at bargain-basement prices to "ministers and commanders", for development of palatial residences. The picture at the top shows one such, which just happens to belong to the minister of agriculture – funded from the aid budget.

Although occasional, critical references to the huge disparity of wealth do find their way into the media, they are relatively rare – and represent only a tiny proportion of the overall coverage.

But the story of conspicuous wealth in Kabul, with its high-priced shopping malls, prestige hotel developments, apartment rents approaching those of London and Paris, and streets choked with SUVs, is one that has been told at length.

The hopelessness of the situation is summed up by a a Chemonics worker, recently back from Helmand. She was left troubled "by a foreign aid process in which an idea is hatched in a nest of good intentions and self-promotional spin in Washington and implemented, at least in this case, without a comprehensive situational assessment." She added: "The combined results of policy hubris and the for-profit's reckless mismanagement of the project made me less proud to be an American, and glad to get out alive."

The picture is almost uniformly bleak, with rampant corruption in high places, supporting and protecting the opium trade and gun running, failed aid schemes and even teachers going on strike over low wages.

Here, the story is a familiar one. Ostensibly, the developments in education have been a success story: almost six million children are now in school compared with 2001 when there were maybe a million, but no girls. But, behind that headline figure is massive underfunding of the system. Teachers complain that their incomes have barely changed since the Taleban regime was overthrown and, with basic living expenses increasing, they are struggling to survive.

A diagnosis is articulated by Aziza Khalil, a chemistry teacher, who complains: "The problem is with the people in high positions. They steal the money given to the ministry of education and build themselves a house, a beautiful castle."

That story needs to be re-told and heavily emphasised to illustrate that the flood of aid money pouring into Afghanistan is actually doing more harm than good. With over 70 percent of the spend devoted to just two of the 31 provinces, Kabul and Kandahar – where president Hamid Karzai was born – the rest of the aid is spread so thinly as barely to have an effect, giving rise to growing discontent, the nature of which can only help fuel the insurgency.

Furthermore, that situation is being made worse by the return of an estimated five million refugees since 2001, some forcibly repatriated from Iran and Pakistan, which is imposing considerable stress on already inadequate services, and adding to the growing unemployment.

Worse still, because of the uneven distribution of aid, and the flood of money into Kabul, there is considerable rural drift to the city. The population was estimated at around three million in 2004 but is currently growing at about five percent a year, representing a yearly increase of 150,000 people. This growth has led to proliferation of "informal housing" – i.e., slums – which now shelter a staggering 80 percent of the city's population and cover over two-thirds of its residential land area. Most lack basic infrastructure, including access to water, sewerage, and drainage.

Therein lies an intractable problem for the coalition forces and their member nations. Heavily involved in the counter-insurgency, they rely – as we have pointed out earlier on several occasions – on a sound political framework in which to operate. Then, crucially, in terms of "nation-building", the absolute requirement is gradually to build the capacity of the central government, enabling it to take over the functions of the external agencies – including their armed forces.

The ultimate "victory" is one that will then allow the bulk of the coalition forces to be withdrawn but, as pointed out in the US Army counterinsurgency manual, written by General David Petreus, "Victory cannot be gained until the people accept the legitimacy of the government mounting COIN and stop actively and passively supporting the insurgents."

As it stands, there is no immediate prospect of this happening. To the contrary, the central government is weak, ridden with corruption and largely ineffective. Its reach is so limited that president Karzai is mockingly referred to as the "Mayor of Karbul" - his priorities so far adrift that his personal website fails to offer anything on rural development (pictured left).

In that environment, even the most effective military action cannot prevail. As Petreus himself noted in his manual:

When Col. Harry Summers allegedly told a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," the reply supposedly was, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant." Military actions by themselves cannot achieve success in COIN. Tactical actions must not only be linked to operational and strategic military objectives, but also to the essential political goals of COIN. Without those connections, lives and resources may be wasted for no real gain.

And we are almost back in a Vietnam situation, where the US backed the anti-Communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem, who proved likewise to be corrupt, ineffective and unpopular.

The current problem – as with Vietnam – is that if the outsiders interfere with the national leadership then they are seen as meddling, and any new leader is then dubbed a "puppet", losing any chance of gaining legitimacy. Already, Karzai is thus considered by many, but there is little to be gained by replacing him. There is every chance a replacement could be worse, and any attempt to depose Karzai could completely destabilise an already fragile situation.

As for the options presented to the coalition forces – and especially the UK – these appear to be very limited. The advice of former Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Michael Jackson is, essentially to "hang in there" – expressed in these terms:

We must understand that it will take time, and we must have the will to achieve what we have set out to do. It follows that we must, therefore, be willing to provide the means required.

The means required, however, in the absence of the support of the population, is the massive domination of the territory, requiring troop levels that are inconceivable high. Even given the will, the coalition forces could not provide enough men. And, with lower force levels, over time, we face the continual attrition, mounting casualties and decreasing public support. Something more tangible must be done.

Following our own narrative, the obvious first step would seem to be a complete reappraisal of the aid provision. Given an Afghani government which is manifestly incapable of managing its distribution, means need to be found of by-passing the central apparatus and getting it directly to the places and people where it is needed.

However, with that must come a complete reappraisal of priorities. The focus of aid – short of satisfying immediate humanitarian needs and undertaking important public health works to minimise epidemics of infection disease – should be solely directed at wealth generation. Given that the country is primarily agricultural, the only way it can do this is to concentrate on high value produce and, since there is no domestic market which could absorb the capacity, this necessarily requires the rapid development of export markets.

This, in fact, was pointed out in 2003 in a comprehensive report by the Asian Development Bank which, with remarkable clarity, stated:

The recovery process outlined in this report has a 5-year timeframe. In this period the emphasis will be on achieving a large measure of self-sufficiency, especially in cereal production. This is a household priority, given the legacy of the past 25 years, which has left so many families unable to feed themselves. However, while self-sufficiency is a household and social priority, economically it may not be the preferred option, because achieving a high level of dependency on domestically grown cereals would depend on using high-cost irrigation systems. A longer-term development framework might involve the importation of most cereals, while Afghan agricultural production systems focused on a range of cash crop exports. Achieving this potential will depend on the outcomes of the medium term development framework.

That "5-year timeframe" has now expired and the country has vastly improved its own self-sufficiency. It is time to move on to the longer-term development framework. Here, the Bank states:

In 1978, Afghanistan's population of 14 million was self sufficient in cereals and had a flourishing export market in horticultural products. The present population is estimated at about 20 million, with a rural population of around 16.5 million. In the past 20 or so years, agricultural technologies have advanced substantially, enabling agricultural systems to more than keep pace with population increases. On this basis, and assuming a stable and secure political environment, it would be realistic to expect Afghanistan's return to its 1978 status in the not too distant future.

The process of recovery has started, but requires further elaboration to ensure that all concerned are contributing constructively to this common goal. Recovery of the rural sector will depend upon balancing sustainable natural resource use and population pressures. As the economy remains overwhelmingly rural and agricultural - 80–85% of Afghans depend upon natural resources for their livelihood - the pace of recovery in the rural sector will largely determine the overall rate of economic recovery.

That last sentence says it all, yet the lesson has not sunk in. The current "recovery" is completely dependent on the continued flow of aid which is sustaining an entirely artificial economic boom. The main growth industry is servicing the aid and NGO communities. This cannot continue.

Here, I am reminded of my own experience in the early 70s, when I spent a prolonged period working on a Kibbutz in northern Israel. Although surrounded by orange groves, I noted that the one fruit we never seemed to have were oranges. Commenting on this to my hosts, I was told rather sternly that they were solely produced for their thriving export market, which the State of Israel had assiduously developed. "When we are rich", my host said, "we can eat oranges – for now, we sell them". That is how it should be in Afghanistan – which could learn many lessons from Israel.

As to the wider development of the country – with the generation of wealth comes a tax base. The next priority, therefore, is to develop a taxation system which can call in a share of that wealth, which can then be used to reinforce wealth generation and also fund public services.

Thus, the order of play should be to concentrate aid on wealth generation, from which the government can benefit through increased tax income which it can then use to fund further development.

Therein also lies the elements of "nation building". As long as non-essential (i.e., non wealth creating) development is undertaken by agencies other than the central government, that government is marginalised.

If the government is cut out of the aid loop and is forced to earn its keep through its tax system, it must engage with its own people, upon which it will depend. As it stands, Karzai's main paymaster is the donor community. For as long as the money keeps flowing, he does not need his people and – sheltering behind the protection of the coalition forces – he can afford to ignore their needs.

There, then, lies economic and political basis for the military strategy which must be adopted - almost. There is another source of money that must be dealt with ... the flow of money from drug processing and distribution. This, the military must deal with (with some help - about which more later) combined with devoting its resources to pursuing licit wealth creation. It must provide the security for it, and prevent interference. Everything else is secondary. More than that, it is - as the anonymous North Vietnamese officer put it – "irrelevant".

How it should go about this, we will look at in the next and what may be the final part.

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Part XII: Putting it together

In December last, we were watching events closely in Afghanistan, as strong signals started emerging that the coalition forces were about to retake Musa Qala – vacated the previous year after a deal with the elders which ended up in the Taleban taking possession of the town.

Sure enough, the action did materialise culminating in news on 9 December that British, American and Afghan forces had taken possession of the town centre. By any measure, not least in the very light civilian casualty rate, this was a major success and one which we regarded as a turning point.

Someone else watching these events very closely was Barnett R. Rubin who, with Jake Sherman have written a report - to which we referred earlier. In their view, not only was this action a military success, it was a good example of how [properly] to integrate counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency – a sentiment with which we would agree.

The recovery followed, Rubin and Sherman wrote, "the pattern of putting access and security first, followed by interdiction and alternative livelihoods." They record:

The Afghan government and international forces carried out a joint political-military operation, gaining the support of a major Taleban commander (Mullah Abdul Salaam) and then defeating the remaining insurgents. Once in occupation of the district, government and international forces seized about $25 million worth of narcotics and destroyed over 60 heroin laboratories.

Confiscating products from the upper end of the value chain depended on regaining control of the territory. Had the government and international community engaged in forced eradication in Musa Qala before launching the operation, Mullah Abdul Salaam might not have changed sides, the local people might not have supported the government or remained neutral, and the district might have remained under Taleban control.

If eradication had destroyed locally produced raw opium, the Taleban-supported heroin laboratories could have purchased opium from other sources. Having first undertaken political and military measures to establish security in Musa Qala, however, Afghan and international forces were able to interdict high-value illicit products without harming rural communities. They now can help communities break their dependence on the drug trade.

It was interesting to note that, following the recapture, genuine attempts have been made to carry out reconstruction, led by the repair and upgrading of the road. There was also an undertaking given that the current crop of poppies would not be touched, even after the coalition forces moved in. Security has also been maintained with the positioning of a forward operations base with a permanent presence of British troops and a detachment of the Afghan National Army.

Shortly afterwards, British forces, bolstered by a substantial detachment of US Marines, were able to clear the Taleban from Garmsir. Again reconstruction is in progress, with a permanent troop presence.

Whether these situation can be maintained, however, remains to be seen. But, as Rubin and Sherman note, "Winning consent for counter-narcotics requires providing greater licit economy opportunities, and providing security for people to benefit from those opportunities," underlining the importance of holding the ground until the new economy takes root. However, they also add:

Scarce resources for coercion should be reserved for targeting political opponents at the high end of the value chain, rather than farmers and flowers.

If "take and hold" forms the first part of the strategy, then this offers the direction for the follow-up. Rather than chasing the farmers, the emphasis switches to finding and destroying the processing laboratories, intercepting the smuggling routes and disrupting the trade in opium and the heroin. This has the merit of drying up the flow of money which fuels the insurgency, without damaging the agricultural economy.

That said, the "take and hold" process itself requires "boots on the ground" and, once again in early July, we heard a familiar call, this one from Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying, "We have the ability in almost every single case to win from the combat standpoint … But we don't have enough troops there to hold. That is key to the future of being able to succeed in Afghanistan."

On the other hand, in the same week, we got US Gen. John Craddock, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, making his own declaration. The key to success, he said, was not winning by military means but focusing on development and governance.

Therein lies the essential dichotomy in the battle for Afghanistan. The military cannot win without "development and governance" but both require security on the ground before they can take root. On the other hand, the presence of foreign troops and the international aid effort themselves interfere with establishment of governance, if they undermine or replace existing structures. Once again, we seem to be going round in circles, creating the foundations for a no-win situation. We need to go back to basics.

Here, the report of an "Afghan citizen" on the Salem News website is highly instructive. In respect of the 2006 campaign, he (presumably) notes:

Many terrorists can easily get logistical support and places to hide themselves in Helmand, which local government security officials are believed to be linked to. In March 2007 Governor Wafa reported that approximately 700 terrorists from different countries like Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and etc., are in Sangin district. Now where did these terrorists come from and how did they arrive in Sangin?

He then observes:

Sangin district does not have any border with neighbouring countries, so if they have entered Afghanistan from Spin Boldak on the Kandahar border they have certainly crossed through many villages before they have arrived in Sangin, or if they entered from the southern district of Dishu in Helmand they have certainly crossed through Dishu, Khanishin, and Garamseir districts before they could get to Sangin.

These people are entering Afghanistan unknown across a border which the Afghan government claims is not secured, but the local districts and villages are under the control of the Afghan Government, so when these terrorists from different nationalities were crossing so many districts where was Afghan intelligence, the ANP and ANA? It is completely impossible that unknown people should cross so many villages and that the government which has intelligence, national police, and national army, should not be aware of it!

During the fighting in Kandahar during the summer of 2006, the Taleban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades, and 1,000 mortar shells. These had arrived in Panjwai, a district in Kandahar province, from Qetta over the spring months. Ammunition dumps unearthed after the battle showed that the Taleban had stocked over one million rounds in Panjwai. Nato estimated the cost of Taleban ammunition stocks alone at around $5 million. "There is no way the Taleban could have done this on their own…", the Salem News correspondent writes.

Arguably, had the coalition forces known of these movements, they could have acted against them – and not necessarily with ground forces. The capabilities of Reaper and other UAVs armed with Hellfire missiles is well known, these assets providing excellent weapons against small, dispersed groups of men.

But, in the first instance, the coalition forces need to find out this information. The most cost-effective, if sometimes the least reliable source of that is known as HUMINT, human intelligence from local communities. The question is why they should give that information to forces which are seen to be propping up a government which has done nothing for them, and which threatens their economic survival.

Arguably, then, two issues arise. Firstly, in the absence of good intelligence from local communities, the coalition forces must generate their own. Secondly, the coalition forces must direct their activities at measures which create real growth in economic wealth for the populations in the areas in which they operate, in order promote a flow of intelligence.

This is not so much building trust or any sort of relationships between the forces, on the conventional "hearts and minds" basis. Rather, it is the more tangible process of demonstrating to local communities that their economic interests are aligned more closely with the government forces than they are the insurgents. As far as the military is involved, the activities, in the main, amount to road-building, the restoration of power supplies and then assuring the security of the road system – plus ensuring the protection of key economic assets.

As to direct intelligence gathering, the coalition forces have a considerable number of technical aids to assist them – everything from satellites, surveillance aircraft such as the Nimrod R1 and Rivet Joint, plus UAVs. The UAVs, in particular, have been introduced late into theatre and in insufficient numbers. Not for nothing did Craddock recently call for more UAVs, as well as more surveillance aircraft.

However, there is also great merit in the Winterton/Harding thesis (discussed in Part I) – based on the Rhodesian experience. This requires the use of small, long range patrols backed by their own organic air power in the form of light assault helicopters – which gather intelligence on insurgent movements and guide other forces (whether air power, heli-borne or ground forces) to engineer their destruction.

While one must acknowledge that the coalition forces do already carry out a considerable amount of intelligence-gathering, they have been notoriously reluctant to employ light helicopters, or to consider allocating these resources to deep reconnaissance units. Given the success in Rhodesia arising from their use, the case for them is unarguable. The Taleban and their supporters cannot be allowed to feel that there is any territory within Afghanistan that they can consider safe enough to operate openly.

Putting this all together, we can now – at last – begin to think of a coherent force structure, and start thinking of the equipment mix to match.

Taking it, if you like, in the order in which events will unfold (and have been unfolding), the first and most obvious priority is for "conventional" assault forces to retake areas which have been seized by the Taleban. However, with the recapture of both Musa Qala and Garmsir, and with no notable towns currently held by the Taleban, the need for such forces is limited.

Secondly, there is a need for engineers to construct forward operations bases for "garrison" troops, in which to maintain a presence in retaken territories, their purpose primarily to deny their use to the insurgents. Such activities are already well established in the coalition campaign, and therefore need little further exploration – other than to say that the use of Warrior MICVs has proved invaluable and, bearing in mind the Canadian experience on Operation Medusa, we could benefit from having a medium tank on the inventory.

From here, the primary tactic which seems to have been adopted by the British forces is then to extend the radius of the occupied perimeter, launching patrols and armed sweeps into hostile territory, the aim being to bring the Taleban to battle and then, gradually to pacify the area. The idea then – as with Laskar Gah, is that the centre can then be left free of coalition forces - relatively pacified area in which development can then take place.

It is our contention, however, that this strategy is not always the most effective. Extending the "perimeter" is time consuming and dangerous, and manpower intensive. As the area expands, the demand for troops then increases and the coalition forces find they need more and more troops just to keep the ground they hold. This is the problem highlighted by Admiral Michael Mullen. And, in the meantime, the Taleban move in behind to undertake asymmetric warfare, undermining the security of the areas and thus delaying (or preventing) reconstruction.

We would aver, therefore, that this strategy should not be attempted. As we have explored in earlier parts, the military should focus on the "reconstruction" programme. This, however, should be radically curtailed, basically focusing on three things – the building of a cohesive network of roads, developing and improving electrical power, and, in the central areas, building storage and distribution hubs, with an administrative and support base for agricultural officials and technologists – all directed at facilitating the export of high value produce.

The road programme should be published, signalled clearly in advance and either executed by the Army or managed by it and under its direct protection. Crucially, it should then be carried out, irrespective of the security situation. If the Taleban choose to interfere, and have the resources so to do, then that serves the purpose of bringing them to battle and weakening them.

Here, Gen. Petreus, in his counterinsurgency manual is very clear about the principles involved. The first is about managing expectations – the second is one of delivery. The coalition forces should not promise more than they can deliver but, having made promises, they should be kept, come what may.

In this context, the building of schools, community centres, mosques, and even wells and other civil works – not directly and immediately focused on generating wealth - should not be carried out by coalition forces or international agencies. Instead, communities should be encouraged to define their own improvements and to seek financing from their own government, either at local, regional or central level.

On the other hand, at political level, aid funds should be ring-fenced for such projects and perhaps paid after completion, on a reimbursement or match-funding basis. Alternatively, the National Solidarity Programme seems to have promise and could usefully be extended.

As to and when roads are completed and/or upgraded, coalition forces should then seek to assure security of transit along them and over the rest of the network. This may include preventing intervention by local police seeking to extract bribes and informal taxes. If necessary, the coalition forces should provide transport – or manage transport contracts – to ensure that communications are maintained.

Outside the hubs, one then sees a number of independent, free-roaming reconnaissance and interdiction forces – one (of two) of their objectives being to seek out organised Taleban formations and to destroy them. Numbers are not wholly the issue here – it is more a question of equipment and structure. As Craddock observed: "An infantry battalion in Afghanistan without tactical mobility, without intelligence support, surveillance capability, reconnaissance, is very limited".

The second objective needs to be more on police lines of tracing and intercepting the flow of money, opium processing, and the smuggling of drugs and guns. Inasmuch as these activities are carried out – or protected by – armed gangs, often with the support of the Taleban, it is difficult always to separate them from military action.

However, John Sullivan recently wrote an interesting paper on "Expeditionary Law Enforcement", where he advocated a "third force" in between the military and the civilian police, along the lines of European gendarme forces. This has interesting possibilities and could relieve some of the pressure on the military, while making up for some of the inadequacies of the Afghan civil police.

So, putting it all together, we believe, in summary, that the following changes must be implemented (or at least, considered and only rejected if proved unsound).

Firstly, the whole provision of aid should be reprioritised. By far the bulk should be directed towards rural reconstruction, specifically and tightly focused on generating high value agricultural exports. Aid to other activities should be curtailed and given only where necessary for the most basic functions of government to continue – with one exception. A major programme should be developed to set up and administer a taxation system which will allow the various levels of government to fund it activities from its own population.

Secondly, in contested areas – at the very least - where the military are directly engaged with the Taleban or other anti-government elements, the aid programme should be further curtailed, to the provision of vital reconstruction of the economic infrastructure, and then executed or managed directly by the military.

Third, in areas retaken from the Teleban and generally where there is a risk from armed intervention, resources should be directed at securing the communications network, enforcing security and ensuring the safe flow of traffic.

Fourthly, the military surveillance and reconnaissance capability should be greatly enhanced, while the Taleban should be harried and destroyed wherever it operates, by highly mobile independent teams, operating with their own organic air assets.

There is, of course, then the question of the "safe havens" for insurgent in both Iran and Pakistan, and the larger question of intervention by ideologically-driven foreigners who are using Afghanistan as an opportunity to confront and weaken (mainly) American and other coalition forces.

Here, we would argue that, while ideology is a factor in this current insurgency, a drive for economic prosperity amongst the rural communities – with real evidence of delivery – would do much to weaken the insurgency, and isolate the ideologues. The road to victory, as Petraeus would have it, is the battle to convince the population to "accept the legitimacy of the government mounting COIN and stop actively and passively supporting the insurgents."

A former US president put it more succinctly: "It's the economy, stupid". Economic regeneration is not an optional extra in counter insurgency, and nor is it something separate from, or subordinate to military action. It is an integral part of the whole. The military have to learn to deploy economic weapons with the same skill and dedication as they do their martial arts. Otherwise, all their skill and bravery will be for nothing. As Petreus warned, "lives and resources may be wasted for no real gain."

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Minister defends "Snatch" (badly)

A report by The Guardian has the government defending the continued use of "Snatch" Land Rovers in Afghanistan.

This is taken from the Defence procurement debate this morning (link to follow) where the "Snatch" came under heavy criticism for its lack of protection against roadside bombs, and armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth defended the vehicle.

The alternative, better protected vehicles like Mastiff could not go to certain places or do certain things. Even the Ridgeback, which will be "will be more capable than Mastiff - smaller and able to go to places that Mastiff cannot - will be considerably larger than a Land Rover-based vehicle." Thus, commanders, he said, needed a range of vehicles for different terrain and operations.

"Whether or not we are going to be able to take away these small platforms without taking away a whole area of capability is something that will need to be thought of very seriously," he added.

The Daily Telegraph, however, also runs a story, but its headline signals a different focus, with: "Fears of more Afghanistan deaths as 'inadequate' vehicle blamed for latest fatalities."

Defence correspondent Thomas Harding tells us that "more soldiers could die unnecessarily in Afghanistan because replacements for their 'totally inadequate' vehicles will not be ready for months", noting that the "Snatch" has been withdrawn from use in Iraq because it offers so little protection against mines.

He goes on to write that campaigners are saying that Cpl Sarah Bryant, 26 (pictured above), of the Intelligence Corps, and special forces soldiers Cpl Sean Robert Reeve, 28, L/cpl Richard Larkin, 39, and Paul Stout, 31 – the four who were killed in this latest outrage - would still be alive if they had been in an armoured vehicle.

Almost one in eight of all fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan – 34 out of 282 – have now been caused by roadside bombs targeting "Snatch" Land Rovers, and of the last 23 deaths in Afghanistan, 18 have been caused by roadside bombs.

Cited is Rose Gentle, a founding member of Military Families Against the War, whose 19-year-old son Gordon died in Iraq. She says: "How many more deaths are we going to have? The public are sick of turning the television on to hear more soldiers have been killed for not having the right equipment."

Sue Smith, whose son Phillip Hewett was killed in a "Snatch" in Iraq, said: "I don't understand why they didn't see this coming. We still haven't learnt from Iraq. "When Phillip died three years ago we knew then that Snatch was no good but we have still continued to use them."

Also cited is Patrick Mercer, who intervened heavily in procurement debate – where he recommended the much wider use of helicopters to transport troops and carry out routine patrols. His view of the "Snatch" was that it was simply "packaging our troops as compact targets". Colonel Tim Collins also comes in, declaring: "It is now either a question that we stop patrolling because we don't have the right vehicles or we take a chance."

The MoD we are then told, has justified the use of "Snatch" in Afghanistan by saying that the threat from roadside bombs there was not as sophisticated as in the Iran-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, but Harding then adds that there are already a number of armoured vehicles being used by other countries that are far superior to the "Snatch".

The Americans and Canadian forces, for instance, are equipped with South African made RG31 mine protection vehicle that can withstand a blast of 14 kilos under a wheel, the equivalent of two large mines.

Finally, of the citations, this blog author says that the: "Snatch was never designed to deal with counter-insurgency where the threat is from mines and bombs. It is totally inadequate for that purpose."

Part of the problem, according to Harding is that the vast majority of the Army's armoured vehicles, including its entire fleet of Bulldog armoured personnel carriers and the Ridgeback is not due in service for some months. But even than, an MoD spokesman counters saying that whilst safety was the "prime concern" in operations, sometimes the "agility and low profile" of 'Snatch' meant it was the most suitable vehicle available.

Here, the anonymous spokesman is being a tad disingenuous, as indeed was Ainsworth, when he told MPs that both the Mastiff and the Ridgeback were too big for some functions. We are back, after all this time, to the “too big for Basra” argument, transferred to a new locale.

When it comes to these two vehicles, these after all were the choice of the MoD – and they alone selected what must be two of the largest MRAP vehicles available. The RG31 – selected by the US and Canadian forces, is a smaller vehicle, and widely used by both for routine patrols. And, for something even smaller, there is the Force Protection Cheetah, a purpose-built protected patrol vehicle – a mere half an inch wider than the HUMVEE.

Ironically, this six-seat vehicle has been considered by the MoD for the protected patrol vehicle programme and rejected. Only after questioning by Ann Winterton (here and here) did it emerge that the capacity was considered insufficient.

Thus, we have a situation where the MoD insists that its existing protected vehicles are too large for some functions. This thus justifies the use of "Snatch" Land Rovers, but then rejects a smaller vehicle on the basis that it is, effectively, er … too small – even though its capacity is greater than the Land Rover.

Somewhere there has to be some logic in this although we have to admit that we are having a little difficulty discovering where.

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Stupid, malign fools

Another four British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, one believed to be a woman – the first to be killed in this theatre. A fifth soldier was wounded and is in a stable condition.

There is a brief report on the MoD website, a longer one on The Daily Telegraph site and the news is carried by many other media sources.

It is the DT, however, that tells us that the soldiers were killed by a "roadside bomb" (The BBC says it was a mine) while travelling in a "Snatch" Land Rover, "a vehicle originally designed for use in Northern Ireland."

Such vehicles, says the paper, have been repeatedly criticised for the poor defence they offer against roadside bombs compared to more heavily armoured alternatives. It adds: "It is thought they may have been using the vulnerable vehicle to keep a low profile and that the woman soldier, who was serving with the Intelligence Corps, may have been taken along in case female suspects had to be searched." However, the BBC reports that that the patrol was setting up a vehicle checkpoint.

For weeks now, diverse newspapers (and the BBC) have been reporting on how the Taleban were changing their tactics, resorting more to IEDs and mines, something that was reported over a year ago and predicted by us in June 2006 – almost two years to the day.

As to the "Snatch" Land Rover, yesterday when we received the reports of the deaths was the second anniversary of our post, pointing out the dangerous vulnerability of these vehicles.

There is, therefore, no excuse, no excuse at all. For two years (well over, in fact), the MoD and the Army have known that "Snatch" Land Rovers are entirely unsuitable for counterinsurgency operations, and they have had two years warning that the Taleban were going to adopt ambush tactics using bombs and mines.

The answer was then and is now, what have come to be known as MRAPs – Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. At the Eurosatory exhibition yesterday, it was clear that militaries throughout the world have got the message … a small sample of MRAPs seen yesterday follows (and yes, one is a "Panther - even that is better than a "Snatch" if used as an ordinary patrol vehicle).

That we have not enough of them, and are still using "Snatch" Land Rovers, is inexcusable. The people, at all levels, who were involved – by act of default – in failing properly to equip our Army are in part responsible for sending these four soldiers to their deaths. They are stupid, malign fools.










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