Bad idea

" ... in a move designed to address public fears that allied troops could become bogged down in Afghanistan for years to come," reports The Daily Telegraph (and others), Gordon Brown has announced that he plans to hold a summit for the Nato allies to discuss a timetable for withdrawal starting in 2010.

He is to offer London as a venue in January and wants the conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished. "It should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010," he has said.

The idea of a conference is good. But Brown is inviting the wrong people. The key "players" in the conflict – apart from Afghanistan – are Iran, Pakistan, India and China, plus the northern "stans". If there is a solution to this problem, it is only going to be brokered by talking to the governments of these countries, addressing the regional issues, of which the conflict in Afghanistan is but one small part.

Within this group, however, the central players are Pakistan and India, the latter playing a very dark role, alongside Afghanistan in the conflict.

There are several elements here. Firstly, since before even partition, Indian politicians have supported Afghanistan's ambition for a united Pashtun homeland, but only in order to unbalance Pakistan.

Secondly, for the same reasons, India is offering extremely generous aid to the Afghanistan government, in the hope of building an alliance between the two nations, effectively to enable a second front to be opened in the event of another Indo-Pakistan war, crushing Pakistan in a pincer movement.

This is by no means an untoward proposition. Right from the very earliest days of Pakistan's existence, there have been tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the Afghan government actually deploying several divisions of its troops to the border in March 1949.

Less than two years after the US invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban, the transitional Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai was launching raids into Pakistani-held territory along the border, with exchanges of fire being reported between rival troops, the Afghans claiming that they were trying to reclaim what they described as territory taken by Pakistani forces.

Even with the wreckage of a country around him, and barely able to move out of Kabul, Karzai nevertheless made it his priority to renew the dispute over the Durand line, claiming that, not having been formally ratified by the Afghan government in 1893, the treaty ceased to have any effect in 1993 – its hundredth anniversary.

The Afghan government was then asking the US to mediate in resolving the border dispute, something which the State Department was reluctant to do, claiming it did not have the expertise or the desire to intervene. "We are not there to re-write the history," a senior US official said.

Further clashes erupted in March 2004, but these were tribal conflicts between the Taniwali, a Hazara tribe displaced from the Swat Valley, pitted against the Madakhayl, Wazir, Zeli Shakh, and Badarkhayl tribes residing in northern Waziristan.

In April 2007, however, the situation got really serious when Pakistani troops started erecting fencing along the Durand line. Afghan troops were despatched to tear it down. They were fired on by Pakistani troops, whence the clash escalated, with the Afghan National Army deploying hundreds of troops and heavy artillery, the fighting leaving 13 soldiers killed and 51 wounded.

Just over a year later, in June 2008, there was another clash after Pakistani tribesmen and soldiers reportedly tried to stop security forces from Afghanistan from setting up a mountaintop post in a disputed border region. This time, at least 10 Pakistani troops died after a US air strike was called in by Afghan forces, after the Pakistanis were mistaken for insurgents.

With this level of tension on the border – which has by no means diminished – the ultimate irony is that coalition plans to strengthen and enlarge the Afghan Army could well backfire. Instead of being used to fight the Taliban, they could well end up being ranged along the border, their guns aimed at Pakistani troops.

In some senses, the Afghan government sees little difference between the Taliban and the Pakistani government, the one being heavily funded by the other, specifically intended to destabilise the Karzai government, which is thought to be far too close to India. Then, it is also claimed that the Indians are financing South Waziristan tribesmen, in order to promote terrorist attacks in Pakistan proper, its objective being to destabilise the Pakistani government.

Indian money is also said to be sponsoring the Balochi separatists, ostensibly in an attempt to destabilise the Pakistan government. But some have adopted the Taliban franchise and are currently fighting US forces in south Helmand, in an attempt to destabilise the Karzai government, which the Indians are supporting.

Then, of course, there is still the unresolved issue of Kashmir, with the Indian government troubled as much by its own Hindu extremists as is the Pakistani government its extremist Islamic groups.

Such is the tension that, with the bulk of the Indian Army ranged on the Pakistani border, most of the Pakistani strength is positioned to oppose it, leaving only one of its Corps available to deal with the frontier area (see map).

To thus pretend that the problem in Afghanistan can be solved by the Afghan government alone, or even that there is an AF-PAK solution, is the height of folly. A coalition conference, of the type announced by Brown, therefore, will achieve nothing. The Western powers, including President Obama, leading the US, and Britain, have to bite the bullet, and open up talks with the regional players, otherwise there is absolutely no chance of a resolution.

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Partition

The end of the Second World War had not only left Afghanistan in a weakened state, with its development and modernisation stalled, there were new events to intensify the pressure on the country, most of all the partitioning of India, its independence and the creation of Pakistan. Obviously traumatic for the two nations involved, they had a profound effect on Afghanistan as well.

The year before partition, in May 1946, had seen Hasem Khan resign from his post as prime minister, to be replaced by his younger brother Shah Mahmud Khan, in whose hands the management of the nation resided until 1953. It was he who had to deal with what became known as the "Pathanistan Affair" which became a long-running dispute with his new neighbour, Pakistan.

This started on 3 July 1947, a month after Lord Mountbatten had announced his plan for the partition of India, The Afghan government sent a formal letter to British and Indian officials pointing out the desire of many hill tribes in the Northwest frontier and in Balochistan to break away from India and called upon the British to allow these groups to freely decide to associate themselves with India or Afghanistan or seek independence.

This approach earned a sharp rebuff from the interim Indian government, which told Afghanistan not to interfere in their "internal affairs". This, however, did not stop the leaders of the frontier tribes calling for the planned referendum on whether the frontier region would join Pakistan or India to include a proposal on complete independence for "Pathanistan".

This was rejected by both Pakistan and India, whence tribal leaders called for a boycott of the referendum. Pakistan responded by sending 15,000 troops to the area and, when the referendum was held, it had the heavily Islamic NW Frontier province voting overwhelmingly for union with Pakistan over India. However, due to the boycott, the turnout was only just over 50 percent, although the vast majority who did vote sided with Pakistan.

The refusal to include an independence option angered Mahmud's government, which had hopes of a united Pathanistan within the Afghan border, and reignited tribal unrest, souring Afghan and Pakistan relationships, to the extent that the Afhghan government refused to recognise the Durand line, and voted against the entry of Pakistan into the UN.

Nor was the frontier district the only bone of contention. With the absorption of Balochistan into the Pakistani state in 1948 – against the wishes of its peoples – Afghanistan sought a corridor from its southern border to the Arabian sea, a request that was firmly refused by the Pakistanis.

Later, the Afghanistan government sponsored a Pashtunistan government in exile, led by the Fakir of Ipi, who had caused so much trouble to the British in 1938 and who was now fomenting unrest against the Pakistani government.

At a time also when Pakistan was fighting the first Indo-Pakistan war in Kashmir, the Afghan government was entertaining the idea of linking with India along the axis formed by the Hunza valley, Nagir and Gilgit in northern Kashnir, to create a 50 mile contiguous border, with India recognising the establishment of an autonomous tribal state, at the expense of Pakistan.

By mid-1948 the Pakistani government was dealing with major episodes of unrest in the tribal areas, having to implement emergency powers to prevent an insurgency spreading, and launching a major military offensive against suspected rebels.

The following year, the situation had deteriorated even further as reports circulated of "atrocities" by the Pakistanis against the frontier populations. The Afghan government launched a major war of invective against Pakistan, calling for the right of self-determination for all groups in the frontier and tribal territories. It moved several divisions to the Pakistani border in late March and on 27 April 1949, Mahmud Khan threatened Pakistan with "strong action" if the atrocities did not cease.

In the June, the Afghan government convened a loya jirga which repudiated all treaties that had been signed between former Afghan governments and British India, including the Durand Treaty. It also declared the Fakir of Ipi the "president" of "independent" Pashtunistan. That month, Pakistani aircraft bombed an Afghan border village killing 23 people and injuring 24, subsequently claiming it had been a mistake.

Against this atmosphere of growing hostility, in July 1949 the British government, increasingly alarmed over the growing unrest in the area, intervened in the dispute, in support of Pakistan.

This had no effect on the level of hostility, with tribal incursions from Afghanistan into Pakistan taking place in 1950 and 1951. So bad did the situation become that, at one stage, diplomatic relations were severed and Pakistan imposed a blockade on petroleum products destined for Afghanistan through the port of Karachi.

With Western support coalescing around Pakistan, Afghanistan turned to the old enemy, the Soviet Union, which showed a willingness to help. In 1950, the Afghan government and the USSR concluded a major trade agreement, which allowed Afghanistan to barter wool and cotton for petroleum and other commodities, on highly favourable terms. As a result, the Soviet Union lodged a major foothold in the camp of its old adversary.

Then, in 1953, Mahmud Khan was deposed as prime minister by Lt-Gen. Mohammad Daud Khan. Sources variously describe this as a "bloodless coup d'état" and an "orderly transfer of power". Either way, this former commander of the Kabul Army Corps and then defence minister was the older half-brother of Nadir Khan, cousin and brother-in-law to the king. Under his tenure as prime minister, he was to take Afghanistan even closer to the USSR and, as a prominent Pashtun nationalist, he was to antagonise Pakistan still further.

Thus, in the space of less than six years, when – through Britain – Afghanistan had enjoyed cordial relations with the West, the country had turned completely. As the Cold War intensified, it was well on its way to becoming a client state of the USSR, at odds with its neighbour and a major destabilising factor in the region.

But then, in Helmand, the area currently giving us so much grief, there were the Americans.

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A missed opportunity

See also the update here.

Our romp through Afghan history now brings us to the reign of the last king, Mohammad Ẓahir Shah (pictured). As Nadir Shah's only surviving son, he took the throne in 1933 on the assassination of his father, thus continuing the Barakzai Durrani dynasty.

Then only nineteen years old, Ẓahir was not in a position to exert his will and the real power was held by two of Nadir's brothers, Mohammad Hasem Khan and Shah Maḥmud, who held the position of prime minister from 1929-46 and 1946-53 respectively. In fact, Zahir Shah was not able to govern on his own in 1963.

Under Hasem Kahn's rule, a man who, during a period as the country's ambassador to the USSR, had developed an "intense dislike" for all things Soviet, relationships with Britain improved substantially, with Hasem agreeing to coordinate action on the borders to prevent tribesmen participating in hostile acts towards the British. There was even talk of Indian assistance to help Afghanistan set up a border police force.

This was certainly needed as the border area with India was plagued by a series of uprisings from 1932 to 1935, including a group known as the "Red Shirts", which became so troublesome to the British that it prompted a punitive expedition of 30,000 troops in 1935. In 1938, the British then had to deal with another uprising in Waziristan, fomented by the Fakir of Ipi,

During this early period, Afghanistan sought to take a greater part in the affairs of the "international community" and had joined the League of Nations in 1934, also in that year settling a long-standing frontier dispute with Iran, assisted by Turkey as the mediator. Three years later, Kabul concluded the Saadabad Pact, a non-aggression treaty with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.

A preoccupation of the Zahir government during this time was the modernisation of its armed forces, primarily to defend its territories against Soviet incursions, for which purpose it looked to the UK for assistance.

Already, in 1931, Nadir Shah had looked to Britain for protection in the event of a Soviet attack. But military authorities considered the northern borders as "absolutely indefensible" and a cash-strapped British government, in the throes of the Great Depression, refused to give the Kabul government any firm assurances or assistance.

Increasingly, therefore, the Afghan government turned to a new player on the block, Nazi Germany, for economic and military modernization. As a relationship built, by 1936 Hitler's Germany was not only hosting the Afghan hockey team and officials as special guests at the Berlin Olympics, it had also massively increased trade and weapons deliveries to Afghanistan.

In 1938, a weekly air service, the first of its kind, was established between Kabul and Berlin. The Organization Todt provided plans and supervision for major infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, airfields, and industrial plants while German officers undertook a programme designed to equip and train the Afghan armed forces to Western standards. In two years German trade with Afghanistan increased tenfold.

In August 1939, Afghanistan and Germany signed a ten-year comprehensive economic agreement, in which the German government became Afghanistan's chief supplier of economic and military assistance. Later, some attempts – largely unsuccessful – were made by the Germans to exploit the tribal conflicts, in order to keep British troops tied up in the frontier area.

Despite German agitation, on the outbreak of war, Afghanistan maintained a policy of strict neutrality. With the Nazi-Soviet pact in place, however, Hasem briefly entertained allowing British troops to be stationed in Herat and Kabul. The British authorities, considering a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and India a distinct possibility, secretly considered integrating Afghan forces into the Indian defence plans.

Interestingly, about that time, two British officers, Brigadier GN Molesworth and Major AS Lancaster, conducted an evaluation of the Afghan Army, concluding that leadership was in "short supply". Molesworth claimed that the officers were afflicted with "oriental chicanery, indolence, ignorance and incapacity".

Their "idiotic" war plans, he said, seemed to have been composed overnight and were wholly inadequate. Their armament requests seemed but "a stupendous and fantastic list of war material" and their attraction for modern equipment amounted to "children playing with expensive and half-comprehended toys". He dismissed the army as "little more than a facade and of little value off the barrack square", declaring that, "to expend time, energy and money on such a concern ... is sheer waste".

Following the fall of France, however, Stalin withdrew most of his forces from central Asia and, with it the threat of a Soviet invasion. Hasem renewed his enthusiasm for German assistance, which soured Anglo-Afghan relations. The Nazi and other Axis links caused some nervousness and, for a short time, the British feared a German invasion of India, through Afghanistan – even mining the Khyber Pass as a precaution

After the launch of Operation Barbarossa, though, October 1941, the British and Soviets, acting together, insisted on the expulsion of non-official Axis nationals from Afghanistan. Despite continued attempts to foment trouble, the German threat was to come to nothing. During the war period, the northwest frontier was remarkably peaceful, with the Pashtuns on the Indian side of the Durand line expressing support for the war, and even offering gifts to stricken Londoners during the Blitz.

The war left Afghan development programmes in a shambles. Most German-sponsored development programmes had been terminated shortly after ground-breaking. With popular discontent rising, the ruling family recognised the necessity for modernisation, without which their very hold on power would be threatened.

Military weakness further necessitated cooperation with the West. In 1945, an uprising of the Safi tribe, caused by government attempts to enforce conscription, erupted in southern Afghanistan. Though a minor revolt by most standards, the army experienced great difficulty in containing it. Ultimately, the government had to arm other tribes and abandon the idea of conscription in order to supress the rebellion.

The aftermath of the war saw strengthened US involvement in South Asia, while the Cold War in Europe heightened in Europe. The Soviets, perturbed over Anglo-American inroads into Afghanistan – with Afghanistan having appointed its first ambassador to the USA in 1943 - thus stepped up pressure on the Afghan government to make economic concessions, at the same time increasing border tensions and espionage, seeking also to foment tribal uprisings in the border areas.

In response to the renewed Soviet threat, the Afghan government again sought closer military relations with British India, to which Britain – this time - responded positively. Even then, it was acknowledged that the Afghan Army was inadequate, and would not be able to meet a Soviet invasion head on.

Contemporary reports noted a lack of the technical and administrative skills necessary to wage a modern war. Officers lacked professionalism, the logistics system was rudimentary, most equipment was obsolescent and the illiterate and poorly disciplined Afghan conscripts were largely ignorant of modern warfare techniques.

Nevertheless, through what was known as the "Lancaster Plan", the Afghan government was offered substantial quantities of military equipment, discounted by 50 percent, sold on easy credit terms. By early 1947, Afghanistan was largely dependent on Britain for supplies, instructors and technical assistance. The entire Afghan air force was equipped with British aircraft and all the pilots were British-trained.

This was to prove the pinnacle of British – and indeed Western relations - in the immediate post-war period and for some many decades. On the near horizon, though, was Indian independence, partition and the creation of Pakistan.

With partition, Britain was no longer able or willing to assist Afghanistan, or even interested in so doing. The successor states of Pakistan and India were equally disinterested, leaving the US as Afghanistan's only potential Western sponsor. Britain lost its only opportunity to bring order to a chaotic post-war settlement.

In 1946, however, a project was launched in Helmand, initially as a commercial venture by a US firm, which was later to become part of an increasingly elaborate and expensive US government aid programme, which lasted until 1979, in competition with the Soviets in the North. Aghanistan became a surrogate battlefield in the Cold War, the weapon civil aid rather than military might. This, we will explore in a future post.

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Wrong end of the stick

As a not infrequent commentator on the state of the Ministry of Defence, it might be thought that I would welcome the considerable media scrutiny to which this lacklustre department is being exposed. However, the current focus on the bonus issue does nothing but fill one with despair, as the media chases after the wrong issue, firmly grabbing the wrong end of the stick.

Highlighted, of course, was £47 million paid so far to MoD civil servants as bonuses, but the other side of the coin is put in a letter today from their union, Prospect.

Written by their National Secretary (Defence), Steve Jary, it tells us that the bonuses represent 2.8 percent of the pay bill, "removed from basic pay over the last eight years". This, Jary continues "is in line with 20 years of government policy to increase use of performance pay in the Civil Service."

The reference to "20 years of government policy" is extremely revealing, as the current system of bonus payments stems from a much-hailed (at the time) Conservative government initiative in the mid-eighties – under Margaret Thatcher – in an attempt to bring the civil service more into line with the private sector, linking pay with performance.

The way this has been implemented has been that a proportion of negotiated pay increases have been converted into bonus payments, rather than core salaries, and linked to personal performance assessments. That they are paid, virtually as of rote, is another issue, but the fact is that the bonuses have been subtracted from salaries, to be paid separately, not added to them.

Furthermore, there is another agenda here, which works very much in favour of the taxpayer. Unlike core salary, the bonus payments do not attract pension entitlement – something of which the union has been very conscious, suspecting (rightly) that the bonus system is a back-door way of reducing civil service pension costs. In that context, bonus payments actually save the taxpayer money.

Another point made by Jary is that, if civil servants did not do some MoD work, it would be done by military staff – at twice the cost to the taxpayer. The photograph at the top illustrates the point. It shows a tank workshop in Belgium in 1945 and, despite the poor quality, it can be seen that all the workers are in uniform.

Currently, that work is done by civilians in the MoD's Defence Support Group, which currently employs 3,800 staff, counted as "pen-pushers" by an agenda-driven media.

And, adds Jary, supply of military equipment is undertaken by teams of civil servants and military officers. Most teams are headed by military officers. If they are under-performing, blame the military hierarchy as well.

That latter point is a point well put. While the focus is on civilians, there has been next to no attention on the military, and in particular, the top brass. Yet, as the Army has contracted, the brass has increased. In 1997, there were 228 generals – one star and above – but by 2009 this number has increased to 255.

Included in that number are 43 Major Generals, the rank of a Divisional commander. By contrast, Land Command (UK) has only six divisions, of which only two actually have troops, of which only one is actually deployable – and then only in brigade formations, which also have their own commanders.

Further, for an Army which cannot actually field one Corps (typically three Divisions), we have 10 Lt-Generals – the rank of a Corps commander, the same number we had in 1997. And, of course, all the generals have their staffs and aides, plus their servants, chauffeurs and perks, collectively siphoning hundreds of millions from the Defence budget.

Within the Army, it has long been recognised that the command structure is top-heavy, and the same applies to the RAF and Navy, the latter having far more admirals than ships. Yet, time after time, successive defence chiefs have ducked the issue and refused to prune the brass.

Equally, from the media, we have silence on this issue. "Pen-pushers" and "bonuses" are a much easier target, and avoid the need to do any thinking and detailed analysis of where the waste – and the problems – lie.

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A common enemy

As we left our continuing romp though the history of Afghanistan, we had seen the death of the "Iron Amir", Abdur Raḥman, in 1901. From his bloody reign, we see the continuation of the tribal rivalry, the oppression of the Ghilzai by a Durrani ruler from the "new" capital of Kabul, bolstered by Tajik and other northern tribes.

We also see the enforced resettlement of Ghilzai Pashtuns north of the Hindu Kush, areas which have now become foci of Taliban activity, and we also saw the active intervention of the British which not only supported this despot, but honoured him with the insignia of the highest grade of the Order of the Star of India. The British thus became part of the problem.

There is also another dynamic, the importance of which is difficult to assess. Through the reign of Amir Rahman and his predecessor Sher Ali, British policy changed from one of laissez faire under the Liberal Gladstone, to the interventionalist policy of Disraeli and then back to laissez faire as Gladstone resumed office in 1880.

Whether the precise nature of these policy shifts were understood by the Afghan political élites is not clear, but the effects were certainly evident. When Sher Ali wanted support from the British against Russian encroachment, under Gladstone's laissez faire it was not forthcoming. But, when he treated with the Russians in an attempt to resolve the issue, he then fell foul of an interventionalist Disraeli, suffering the invasion and occupation of his county.

When the policy changed again during Abdur Rahman, one can only guess at the impression left of him and successive Afghan rulers. However, it takes little imagining to venture that the British acquired a reputation for inconstancy – to the extent even that they could not be relied upon. If that is the case, one wonders whether this reaches out to influence the current incumbent of the Afghan "throne", Hamid Karzai.

Thus far, then, we have identified a number of elements which essentially poison the political terrain in modern Afghanistan, and we are only partially though our historical exploration. The next instalment starts with the new Amir Ḥabiballah Khan, the eldest son of Abdur Rahman.

Unusually, there was an orderly succession – the previous succession had seen a brutal 6-year civil war – and, having ascended the throne without opposition, in 1905 he renewed the personal accord which tied the Amir of Afghanistan to the British government. And he governed with the same authoritarian methods as his father, a fact that cost him the hostility of a small constitutional party and a series of assassination attempts, the third of which was successful on 21 February 1919.

During the period of his reign there had grown two, antagonistic "modernising" factions. The first was the constitutionalist party, known as the "Young Afghans", who were anti-British and pro-Turk. The second was led by members of a family from the Moḥammadzai, strongly influenced by Anglo-Indian ideas.

Eventually, it was the nationalist "Young Afghans" faction which prevailed, conspiring in Ḥabiballah's assassination. He was replaced by Amanallah, one of his sons, Close to the "Young Afghans" faction, the new Amir set out to put their programme into practice, aware that, without their support, he stood little chance of staying in power. He thus demanded from the British full sovereignty in all matters concerning foreign affairs.

Confronted with British hesitations, and with the majority of the Indian Army still overseas in the aftermath of the First World War, he launched a jihad on the British and in May 1919 invaded India, starting the third Anglo-Afghan war. With an indifferent army, against still superior British forces, which by then were also able to deploy the power of the RAF (pictured), Amanallah stood little chance of victory.

Of very great interest to our analysis, however, he was aided considerably by the Waziri and Mashud tribes, now in Indian territory on the "wrong" side of the Durand line. They had last rebelled against the British in the "Mad Mullah" uprising of 1897, and it was their involvement which turned the tide.

Although the British easily contained the invasion and launched a counter-attack on Jalalabad and even launched an aerial raid on Kabul, the prospect of a new war on the heels of the 1918 armistice did not appeal to the British, and they feared a full-scale Pashtun tribal uprising along their borders. After a month of fighting, they agreed to sign an armistice and later the Treaty of Rawalpindi on 8 August 1919.

It is from then that the Afghanis date their independence, which they used to send Afghan missions to Europe and the Soviet Union, and sign several bilateral treaties with Turkey, Persia, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. In June, 1926, Amanallah symbolically completed this process by abandoning the less important title of Amir for the more prestigious one of Shah.

In between, Amanallah had been forced to put down a violent revolt of the Mangal of Paktia, between 1924-25 but this did not dissuade him from embarking on a series of far-reaching reforms, which included the suppression of polygamy, the improvement of the position of women, a battle against corruption and family patronage, and the secularisation of public affairs.

But he was not given time to enact his reforms. A minor revolt of the Shinwari tribe on the Northwest frontier in November 1928 triggered a violent campaign by religious leaders against him. In a few weeks all of eastern Afghanistan was in revolt and the royal garrisons were defeated one after another. In this atmosphere of civil war, a Tajik adventurer by the name of Habibullah-e- Kalakani attacked Kabul at the head of a band of Kuhestani tribesmen from the mountainous area north of Kabul. He eventually succeeded in taking the town on 15 January 1929 and the royal palace on the following day, proclaiming himself Amir.

Amanallah, who had abdicated on 14 January in favour of his half-brother, fled to Kandahar and tried to raise a counter-offensive on Kabul. But his appeals to the injured Pashtun sense of honour were heeded only by the Durrani of southern Afghanistan. As he started marching towards the capital, he was attacked by Ghilzai tribesmen who obliged him and his men to turn back on 19 April 1929.

Crushed by this resurgence of the old antagonism between the two main Pashtun confederations, the powerless king and his family sought refuge in India before going to Italy, where he lived forgotten until his death in 1960.

The take-over in Kabul meanwhile triggered a series of uprisings throughout the country. Hazaras in Ghazni, Dayzangi, Behsud, and Daykundi joined forces and started to fight against the new Amir. The Shinwaris, however, allied themselves with the new Amir to fight against loyalist Amanis in the Logar valley. In the North, Turkmens started attacking Hazaras around Mazar-e-Sharif.

To the rescue came Nadir Khan a distant cousin of Amanallah. Aided and financed by the British Government, he appealed to the Pashtun tribes to overthrow the Amir, on the basis that Pashtuns should not accept a non-Pashtun ruler, persuading the Mangal and Jaji tribes in Paktia to capture Kabul from the Tajiks.

Marching on Kabul, Nadir Khan briefly entertained the idea of a national government in concert with the Tajik usurper but, with the help of Waziri and Mashud reinforcements, captured and sacked the capital on 13 October 1929, arresting Habibullah-e-Kalakani and his supporters, later to have them shot. On 16 October he was proclaimed Amir by his troops.

Nadir and his loyal Pashtun tribes then attacked Northern Afghanistan, killing, raping and looting. They expropriated the fertile lands belonging to Tajiks and Uzbeks and distributed them to the Pashtuns. He then attacked Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan, where he massacred thousands of innocent Hazaras.

Nadir Khan then proceeded to reverse the liberalisation measures introduced by his predecessor. The successors of the "Young Afghans", who had joined the opposition, were tracked down and assassinated. Nadir's reign degenerating into a series of tribal feuds which led to his own assassination on 8 November 1933, by a sixteen-year-old boy as the Amir handed out prizes at a high school graduation.

The events of this turbulent period have been compared with 1996, when the Taliban took power, in the context of a Tajik ruler in power, with a similar breakdown in public order.

In this brief period of Afghan history, though, there were a number of issues which have direct application to modern Afghanistan. Going back to 1929 and the beginning of the rein of Nadir Khan, an underlying theme which was beginning to exert its influence with increasing force was the battle between religious conservatism and modernity.

In pursuing modernity, his predecessor Amanullah had attempted a wide range of reforms, which included adopting the solar calendar, requiring Western dress in parts of Kabul and elsewhere, discouraging the veiling and seclusion of women, abolishing slavery and forced labor, introducing secular education (for girls as well as boys); adult education classes and educating nomads.

His economic reforms included restructuring, reorganizing, and rationalizing the entire tax structure, anti-smuggling and anti-corruption campaigns, a livestock census for taxation purposes, the first budget (in 1922), implementing the metric system (which did not take hold), establishing the Bank-i-Melli (National Bank) in 1928, and introducing the afghani as the new unit of currency in 1923.

In following him, Nadir Khan was faced with the strength of the religious and tribal leaders and, to maintain their support, was forced to abolished most of Amanullah's reforms. Yet still there was pressure for modernisation and, though his reign, he initiated a programme of road construction, driving the Great North Road through the Hindu Kush, introduced radio broadcasting, and helped establish Afghanistan's first university in Kabul, which first admitted students in 1932. He also paved the way for a modern banking system, and instituted a system of long-range economic planning to his government.

Alongside this were other pressures, from, over the border, where Indian nationalism was on the rise, the British in 1919 instituting reforms which gave an element of political authority to most of the provinces of India, notably excluding the Northwest frontier, where it was considered "singularly inappropriate" that the warring Pashtuns should be allowed even a small element of self government.

This led to the development of a political opposition within the frontier area, which allied itself with the Indian National Congress, the party fighting for its own national independence. From that emerged a new impetus for a united "Pashtunistan" which led to a major uprising in 1930 in Peshawar, which had British armoured cars turning their machine guns on brick-throwing crowds, requiring martial law before order was restored.

Another dynamic which Nadir Khan had to confront was the pressure of financing the ongoing campaign to keep rebellious tribes in order, leading him to accept a substantial grant from the British and a gift of 10,000 Enfield rifles. This in turn led to accusations – aired in the Indian press – that he had become a puppet of Delhi.

Anti-British sentiment, Pashtun nationalism and the forces of conservatism all had in common a strong attachment to Islam and, therefore, Nadir Khan found it necessary to pursue an overt Islamophile policy, simply to keep opponents on-side. Thus, reforms could proceed only very slowly, and co-operation with the British over the border question often had to be disguised behind a wall of Islamic and nationalist rhetoric.

Broader issues also emerge from the period from 1901 to 1933, when we see several more elements that may have a resonance in modern times. Firstly, as with the recovery of national sovereignty in the 1919 Anglo-Afghan War, the Pashtun tribes were prepared to unite against a common enemy, in this case the British – burying temporarily traditional tribal enmities.

Secondly, we see how easily attempts at liberalisation and secularisation – in this case by Amanallah – attracted the opposition of religious leaders, resulting in the collapse of the government and a period of civil war. What is striking also is how quickly the country degenerated into war.

Then we see the intolerance of the Pashtuns for a leader other than one of their own – and their violent character when dealing with other ethnic groups. But we also see how the rivalries between the Durranis and the Ghilzai are so strong that, even when a Tajik had taken power in Kabul, the Ghilzai were still not prepared to set aside historical enmities, treating the Durrani as the greater enemy.

Finally, it is perhaps noteworthy that, after the take-over of Kabul, Amanallah should flee to Kandahar, the historic capital of Afghanistan, in order to seek aid.

All of these elements, it seems, are capable of replication – as indeed is claimed for 1996, and could presage the fate of Afghanistan in the event of the withdrawal of coalition forces. Civil war is not a remote possibility in Afghanistan – even its recent history suggests that, without a strong central authority, it is a racing certainty.

COMMENT THREAD

The duplicitous British

In our previous piece, we looked at the influence of Afghan history on the current conflict. We concluded that there were three elements which were relevant.

Firstly, the war is a continuation of the tribal rivalry between the two major tribal groups, the Ghilzai and the Durrani/Barakzai, which effectively started in 1709 when the first Ghilzai dynasty was founded. Secondly, the movement of the capital from Kandahar to Kabul in 1775 positions that city as the seat of the oppressor (certainly to the Ghilzai). Thirdly, give the historic support for the Durrani, against the Ghilzai tribes, British and by association all coalition operations are seen as partisan players.

Our previous romp though the history of Afghanistan, however, only took us to 1863, with the death of Dost Moḥammad, a Durrani leader who, with the help of the British, had extended the rule of Kabul to much of the territory currently occupied by the modern Afghan state.

On the death of Dost Moḥammad, there was no clear successor, leading again to a familiar period of strife, from which emerged his son, Ser Ali. With the considerable support of the British – again highlighting the powerful role of this colonial power in the region - he fought his stepbrothers to regain the throne in 1868, to become Amir (King) of Afghanistan.

This, though, was a period during which the so-called "Great Game" was being played out between Britain and Russia, with the latter extending its territories into central Asia, its eventual ambition to extend southwards through Afghanistan, into Baluchistan and thence to the Arabian Sea on the Makran coast, giving the Russian empire a much-coveted warm water port.

This "Great Game" aspect forms the fourth layer, as it still heavily influences the modern Afghan view of the outside world, the friction arising from the determination of the great powers to treat Afghanistan as a pawn, seeking to control its external (i.e., foreign) policies, combined with a failure to respect its territorial integrity.

This period, however, cannot be understood without reference to British politics which – then as now – dominated the approach to this region. The crucial event here was the emergence in 1859 of the Liberal Party, the premiership of Lord Palmerston in 1865 and of Gladstone who led the government intermittently from 1868 until his death in 1894.

Heavily influenced by the philosophy of laissez faire, strengthened by the 1857 Indian uprising, Gladstone took the view that Afghanistan should be treated as a buffer state, with minimal British interference and support, other than the supply of money and arms. This was the start of what became known as the "Frontier Policy".

Yet this was the time of considerable Russian activism on the northern borders of Afghanistan so that, by the time Sher Ali had established control in Kabul in 1868, he found the British – still nominally bound by the 1855 Treaty of Peshawar – unwilling to assist him against the Russians.

Unsurprisingly, over the next ten years, relations between the Afghan ruler and Britain deteriorated steadily, with Russian encroachment proceeding apace. Diplomatic attempts in 1872 brought an agreement from Russia, brokered by the British government, to respect the northern boundaries of Afghanistan, which – without any commitment from the British to enforce it – the Russian proceeded to ignore.

Two years later in 1874, however, the Liberal government in London had been deposed by the Tories under Benjamin Disraeli, who adopted foreign policy that was determinedly aggressive, in terms of the Raj being described as the interventionalist "Forward Policy".

Whether Sher Ali was fully – or at all – aware of this fundamental shift in British policy does not seem to be recorded. But, with the Russians knocking at his northern gate, he accredited a Moslem agent of the Czar in Kabul in 1875, and in July 1878 General Stoletov arrived without advance notice to negotiate a Russo-Afghan treaty.

Driven by his interventionalist master in London, the British Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton ordered a diplomatic mission to travel to Kabul on 14th August with an ultimatum, requiring the Afghans to install a British mission in Kabul.

When the mission, under General Sir Neville Chamberlain, was turned back at the frontier and Sher Ali concluded a treaty with Russia, this triggered the Second Anglo-Afghan War. On 21 November 1878, the British dispatched three different columns totalling 30,000 men through the Bolan, Paywar and Khyber passes, into Afghanistan.

Only the second column met with some resistance. Jalalabad and Kandahar were occupied without fighting. With his capital threatened, Ser Ali fled, leaving his son Moḥammad Yaqub as regent. The Amir went to Bactria where he hoped to receive aid from the Russians, but they had been diplomatically isolated in Europe since the Berlin Congress (1878) and offered nothing.

A broken man, Ser Ali died a shortly afterwards, on 21 February 1879. The new Amir Yaqub, with his country occupied by the British, was forced to sign what was regarded as the "humiliating" Treaty of Gandamak on 26 May 1879. In exchange for a guarantee of territorial integrity and an annual subsidy for the Amir, Afghanistan lost control of its foreign policy and ceded the strategic districts in what is known as the Northwest frontier area. The treaty also required that an English resident be accredited in Kabul.

However, the first holder of this post, Sir Louis Cavagnari, was assassinated by mutinous Afghan soldiers forty-seven days after his arrival, on 3 September 1879. Yaqub was suspected of complicity in the massacre of Cavagnari and his staff, was forced by the British to abdicate.

The British considered a number of possible political settlements, including partitioning Afghanistan between multiple rulers or placing Yaqub's brother Ayub Khan on the throne. Instead, they decided to install his cousin Abdur Rahman Khan (pictured) as Amir, despite the fact that the Russians supported him, reasoning that he would be stronger ruler.

Ayub Khan, who had been serving as governor of Herat, rose in revolt with an army of 25,000 men and defeated a British detachment at the Battle of Maywand in July 1880. He then besieged Kandahar. General Roberts then led the main British force from Kabul and decisively defeated Ayub Khan in September at the Battle of Kandahar, bringing his rebellion to an end.

All that was left was for the British to require Abdur Rahman to confirm the Treaty of Gandamak, leaving the British in possession of the territories ceded by Yaqub and in control of Afghanistan's foreign policy. Abandoning the provocative policy of maintaining a British resident in Kabul, but having achieved all their other objectives, the British withdrew from Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan, apart from Kandahar, where a garrison was kept until April 1881, when it was occupied by Abdur Raḥman's troops.

Meanwhile, in April 1880 back in Britain, there had been a viciously-fought general election, resulting in a route for Disraeli's Tories, in which his "expensive" and "immoral" foreign policy had been roundly attacked. Gladstone again swept into power, resulting in another change in policy. For Afghanistan, the "Frontier Policy" once again prevailed, the country resuming its role as a buffer-state between British India and Russian Turkestan.

The hands-off policy allowed Abdur Rahman free rein in his own territory. A grandson of Dost Mohammad Khan, he was another Durrani Pashtun, from the Barakzai tribe. For him, the Ghilzai were unfinished business. Faced with a rebellion of the tribes, he responded with ferocity and, by the end of 1887 had crushed the uprising.

He then set about a massive resettlement programme, dispersing their tribes into non-Pashtun areas, mixing them with other ethnic group and diluting their power and influence. He exiled over 10,000 Ghilzai families to areas north of the Hindu Kush, forcing them into areas with predominantly non-Pashtun populations, crushing more than 40 revolts in the process. He also restricted the movement of the nomadic tribes, requiring them to seek government permission before they could relocate.

By the time he died in October 1901, the "Iron Amir" was the undisputed ruler of Afghanistan, having beaten off all rivals broken down the power of local chiefs, and tamed Ghilzai. But, as a despot, stained by a reputation for unnecessary cruelty, he also left behind him a legacy of hatred.

For all that, he had been enthusiastically supported by the British, who lavished generous subsidies on him and kept him well-supplied with weapons. In return, in 1893, he agreed to the partition of the Pashtun tribal areas along the Durand line, attracting the eternal enmity of the hill tribes.

In a culture where, as we have remarked before, literacy rates are low, the tradition of oral history exerts a powerful effect. To many of the Ghilzai tribes, these events are as of yesterday. They remember a cruel, despotic leader, imposed on them by the British by the force of arms, who proceeded to crush their tribes and engage in what amounted to ethnic cleansing, then splitting their tribal heartlands and handing a huge area to the British.

Where folk memories are long, and history is a fresh as the day the narrative is delivered, the duplicitous British are as much the enemy as the Durrani they supported. And we aim to win the "hearts and minds" of these people?

COMMENT THREAD

Cowboys and Indians

With due respect to Lt-Col Gus Fair DSO, the CO of the Light Dragoons battle group, this officer has lost the plot.

That is one of the comments to his piece in The Daily Telegraph, where the Lt-Col tells us that our soldiers' sacrifice in Afghanistan "will be worth it". The progress he has seen "proves that we can win the war and help create a better society." And the commentator is not wrong.

Lt-Col Fair cites as his primary evidence the experience of the Light Dragoons, which have just finished deploying for the second time. On the previous occasion, in 2007, they were fighting for control of Garmsir, at the very edge of the Afghan government's sphere of influence. The main administrative centre was derelict, destroyed by months of fighting as they battled to assert control of the ground only a few hundred yards outside the front gate.

In April this year, they returned and the progress was "beyond all of our expectations". After the intervention of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (pictured), the area had been transformed. Some 15,000 "Afghans" now live in relative safety within an area protected by a joint coalition and Afghan team. Most importantly, it is led by an Afghan district governor "who exercised control in a fair, representative and transparent fashion."

What Lt-Col Fair does not say, though, is that Garmsir is inhabited largely by Durrani with rival Ghilzai tribes to the north and south. His district governor is a Durrani, serving a fraction of the 74,800 people in the district, the majority of whom are Ghilzai. The Lt-Col and his men have walked into a 300-year-old tribal war, weighing in on the side of the Durranis against their rivals who are fighting under the Taliban franchise.

What applies here, though, also applies to the wider Babaji area, an area of operations further north, the clearance of which was part of Operation Panther's Claw. But Fair and his troops share a "firm belief" that they will see similar if not more rapid progress in Babaji by the time the regiment next returns to Helmand.

With that, Fair believes the Taliban "is an increasingly self-serving organisation that has lost sight of its aim; it has no honour and is undermining both the reputation of Islam and the deeply honourable Pashtun traditions." In the eyes of the Afghans in Babaji, he writes, the Taliban has crossed from insurgency to running a predominantly terrorist campaign, targeting not only ISAF troops and Afghan security forces but also the Afghan population itself.

The locals, Fair goes on to say, "definitely do not want a Taliban solution if there is a viable alternative" and he thus believes "we are at or will soon approach a tipping point in the consent of a critical mass of the locals." Beyond this point, he further believes "consent will move irreversibly in our favour, provided we remain determined to exploit the opportunity it presents."

Here, one must admire the confidence and optimism, but also worry about it. Within this area, there are probably about thirty different tribal and ethnic groups, plus a smattering of settlers – mostly former itinerant workers.

Apart from the dominant indigenous Durrani tribal groups, there are – amongst others - pockets of Achekzai, some Kharoti, Chilzdai, Tajik, Wasir, Shaikhail, Mohammadzai, Uzbek, Turkmen, Waziri, Kakar, Karaish, Dartokhail, Viardaki, Hashikhail, Sulimankhail, Safi, Baluch, Alizai, Alikozai, Ilazarkhail, Numand, Alikhail, Omarkhail and Miyakhail.

That rather begs the question: who are the locals? Of whom does Fair refer when he talks about Afghans, and who amongst those are approaching the fabled "tipping point". And what of the rest?

Therein lies the problem. One gets the sense, almost of a "Cowboys and Indians" narrative, redefined as "Afghans and Talibans", with no hint that there is any understanding of the vast complexity of the tribal and ethnic mix, the rivalries, the shifting loyalties, the feuds, treachery and jealousies. The tribes, sub-tribes and clans are poorly mapped and, in contemporary literature, rarely mentioned. Yet they are the key to understanding the conflict.

Arguably, if – as definitely seems the case – Fair and his colleagues are favouring the Durrani, who will tend to be more supportive and approachable, then they will be creating enemies elsewhere, strengthening historical enmities and stacking up trouble for the future.

Yet, based on his experience in Garmsir and the progress achieved so far in Babaji, Fair is more "confident than ever" that this [the Afghan conflict] is a winnable campaign. One would like to believe this, but we are not getting any indications that the military is even close to understanding the conflict, much less winning it.

COMMENT THREAD

Fighting talk

As the Afghan conflict continues to exert its bloody effect, we have been exploring further the prospects of success of what is fashionably called a "counterinsurgency" campaign, in which the target is the people, the aim being to protect the people from the insurgents and to convince them to support the government.

Although we have already looked at some of the historical background to the conflict, it seems that its roots stem not from recent history but from events spanning the last 300 years.

From those events, one learns, the main antagonists – the Pashtuns - are not insurgents in the classic sense. They are a separatist movement, seeking to restore the boundaries of their ancient territory, the modern name for which is Pashtunistan, encompassing areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Our problem is that we have not fully understood that, traditionally, the very term Afghan is used to describe the Pashtun, who have a recognisable identity going back as far as 330 BC, if not before. The polyglot ethnic mix which encompasses the modern Afghanistan is a geographical construct rather than a nation.

Within that, though, is another separate and hugely important (and largely unrecognised) dynamic – the rivalry between the Pashtuns themselves, centred around the two main tribal groups, the Durranis and the Ghilzai. The modern history of Afghanistan is largely an account of the battle for power between two great dynasties, with the story effectively starting in 1709 and continuing to the present day.

For some time before 1709, most of what is now known as Afghanistan was occupied by the Persians and it was the chief of the Ghilzai Pashtuns - a man by the name of Mirwais Khan Hotak – with his followers, who rose against them in Kandahar City in 1709, to establish the Hotaki dynasty. This successful uprising established the basis of the modern Afghanistan and, briefly, controlled part of Persia itself.

The Hotaki Ghilzai dynasty, however, was replaced by Ahmad Shah Durrani, who founded a rival regime, the Durrani dynasty. This established a tension between the two groups which exists to this day.

What then followed is equally significant. At the time, the capital of a Pashtun-dominated Afghanistan was Kandahar. After the death of Ahmad Shah in 1773, he was succeeded by his son Timur Shar, a weak and inept ruler. Unable to govern effectively, and opposed by the fractious Ghilzai Pashtuns, in 1775, he moved his seat of government north to Kabul in an attempt to enlist the support of the Tajiks and other northern ethnic groups, better to control his own people.

This then sets the scene for another dynamic which resonates to this day. The traditional capital of Afghanistan is Kandahar, not Kabul. To the Ghilzai, in particular, rule from Kabul is forever associated with a Durrani ruler, using "foreigners" to impose his will.

And, in what is almost a repeat of history, we have Hamid Khazai, a Durrani president, ensconced in Kabul, supported by an Afghan Army composed mainly of Tajiks. To complete the historical parallel, the fighters in the Taleban "insurgency" are primarily Ghilzai tribesmen - led by Mullah Omah, a Hotaki Ghilzai.

Then, as now, Ahmad Shah failed to impose his will over the whole of Afghanistan and, by 1818, his successors controlled little more than Kabul and the surrounding territory within a 100-mile radius. By 1836, the Kandahar region and the Ghilzai heartlands were virtually autonomous.

What then appeared to change the course of history, apparently setting Afghanistan on course to becoming a modern state, was the emergence of another strong man. This was Dost Mohammad Khan, yet another Durrani Pashtun who, after the deposition of the then current ruler, Mahmud Shah Durrani - who had taken the throne in 1809 – had been "awarded" first Ghazni and then Kabul in 1826. He went on to defeat his rival in a battle under the walls of Kandahar in 1834, making him the effective ruler of Afghanistan.

By then, the British had appeared on the scene, with their own colonial ambitions, anxious to thwart Russian ambitions and protect the borders of the English Raj. Initial overtures to Dost Mohammad soured, and when he moved to entertain a relationship with Russia, this triggered the First Anglo-Afghan War.

In 1838, British forces occupied Kabul to depose Dost Mohammad and make him prisoner. However, while the retreat from Kabul and the destruction of the expedition in 1842 is part of the current mythology, on which the legend is built that no Western army can ever subdue Afghanistan, this was by no means the end of the war.

Later in 1842, the British actually launched a punitive expedition. Entering Afghanistan by the Khyber pass, an "army of retribution" under General Pollock marched on Kabul, joined there by 6,000 men from Kandahar destroying the famous covered bazaar of Kabul on 9 October. Three days later, the English withdrew from Afghanistan.

It was that which actually put an end to the war, leaving the UK victorious and the dominant power in the region but one temporarily resolved not to interfere in the internal politics of Afghanistan.

Dost Moḥammad was released and received in triumph at Kabul. He re-established his authority but, in 1846 he renewed his policy of hostility to the British and assumed an expansionist policy encroaching on British Indian territory. Three years later, though, after a series of defeats, he abandoned this policy, returning to Afghanistan where he devoted his energies to extending his control over the whole of this land.

To do so, in 1855, through the Treaty of Peshawar, he concluded an alliance with the British government, each proclaimed respect for each side's territorial integrity, and pledged both sides as friends of each other's friends and enemies of each other's enemies. By 1862, with the aid of the British – including generous subsidies - Dost Moḥammad had defeated a Persian army and had taken Kandahar, dying a year later shortly after capturing Herat. However, unity there was not. The Ghilzai refused to accept Durrani rule and control over the central mountain regions and the east was at best intermittent.

In historical context, this sets up another "folk" memory. Then, as now, we see the British, as a colonial power, supporting a Kabul-based Durrani ruler, attempting to exert control over unwilling Ghazi tribesmen.

This, of course, is by no means the end of the story – which has many more twists and turns, which we will explore in a later post. But, when we view the course of the current conflict, the historical parallels are absolute. Dealing with primitive and largely illiterate tribesmen, isolated from the rest of the world, their oral history is as fresh with each new telling as it ever was.

Whatever our grand aspirations, our intentions and our broader strategic objectives, the Ghilzai Pashtuns are reliving their own history. It should thus come as no surprise that when earnest young coalition officers solemnly tell tribal elders that they are from "the government" – i.e., Kabul – representing a Durrani president supported by Tajik soldiers, the "hearts and minds" message rather gets lost in translation.

It was Reagan, though, who is remembered for his famous quote: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But the Ghilzai were there before him. And, to them, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" is not "terrifying". It's fighting talk.

COMMENT THREAD

Murder

When rumours of a major incident in Nad-e-Ali started circulating yesterday, from which we learned that five British soldiers had been killed, the limited details available indicated that this might have been an ambush by tribesmen disguised as Afghan police.

As such this would have been an alarming development, but nothing particularly new. Even back in April 2007, CNN was reporting incidents of US patrols being attacked by Taliban donning Afghan national police (ANP) uniforms.

There had then been multiple reports of Taliban fighters impersonating ANP (Afghanistan National Police) officers and establishing illegal check points to kidnap and terrorise local Afghan civilians.

More recently, there was the attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul, where terrorists were disguised as police. And then the attack on the Pakistani Army headquarters in Rawalpindi was again led by terrorists in disguise, this time donning the uniforms of local soldiers.

As a ruse de guerre, therefore, this is a familiar tactic – although mounting attacks in the uniform of your enemy is specifically outlawed by the Geneva convention – not that such niceties would trouble these terrorist bands. Nevertheless, for troops so disguised to kill others is considered murder, and treated accordingly.

With details of this incident as yet still unclear, we now have confirmed the tragic death of five soldiers, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police. They all died of gunshot wounds after an attack by what is variously reported as a lone gunman in the uniform of an Afghan policeman, who – at the time of first reporting - may or may not have been the genuine article, or a terrorist in disguise. Another six British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded.

The Press Association is reporting a prime ministerial statement, with Gordon Brown telling the Commons that the Taliban are claiming responsibility, but that is only to be expected, irrespective of the actual circumstances.

If this was a deliberate operation, then it has all the hallmarks of a Haqqani Network operation, although the group – based in South Waziristan - would have been out of its normal area of operations.

As information becomes clearer, Thomas Harding in The Daily Telegraph is reporting that police in Helmand said the attacker attended a police academy in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, and had been working as an officer in the Nad-e-Ali area for three years.

ITV News reports that tribal elders in Helmand have confirmed that the attacker was a member of the Taliban called Gulbuddin, who had worked in two areas under different police commanders. There are also suggestions that he had animosity towards his superiors after being repeatedly moved around the country as part of his duties.

Nevertheless, a Taliban spokesman is cited as saying: "We want to sow mistrust between the Afghan National Police and foreign forces," a very obvious tactic where the coalition exit plan is so reliant on being able to pass on security responsibilities to local forces.

This issue is heavily rehearsed in The Independent, which cites Captain Haji Laljan of the ANP. He says: "Yes, some of them go over to the other side and join the Taliban we are aware of this. We try to stop it, but it will happen."

Actually, again there is nothing new in this. Churchill in his book on the Malakand expedition in 1897, retailed complaints about the duplicity and treachery of locally impressed tribesmen. Snipers who assailed the British camps during the hours of darkness were often the irregulars who, during the day, fought for the Crown.

That, in fact, is the reality of Afghanistan. But now we have Maj-Gen Carter in theatre saying that the army would develop an "understanding" of Afghan troops through the training process.

"The first point I would make is that we have to trust the uniform of the Afghan police," he said. "The second point I would make is that we will get better at this ... we will train them, and we will make sure that they are capable of doing the job in the way that they need to do the job."

The trouble is that being "capable" does not buy loyalty. The coalition forces, whatever their good intentions, are increasingly seen as an army of occupation, more so with the charade of the presidential election. Carter can do all he likes, set up any systems he likes. But, if the army does develop an "understanding" of Afghan troops, it will learn that their loyalty can never be assured.

The deaths of five soldiers, with the injury of the others, is a testament to that fact, one of which our forefathers were well aware. Murder was done, but murder is a way of life in that country.

COMMENT THREAD

Seeing the light

Adam Holloway MP is possibly a disappointed man. Having produced an excellent CPS pamphlet on our adventure in Afghanistan, the response of the media has been to "cherry pick" one small section from it, where he discusses the shortage of helicopters.

As for the broader themes entertained in his pamphlet, sub-titled "Towards realism in Afghanistan", there has been only one taker, the Press Association. No other media organisation (so far) has bothered to review his work. This is a pity, as it makes a genuine contribution to the debate.

In his pamphlet, Holloway reminds us that, in Afghanistan, soldiers and tribesmen have been dying in large numbers. Unknown numbers of enemies have been recruited to al-Qaeda directly because of a flawed and overambitious strategy, which works against the grain of Afghan society. We have been told that this is in our vital national interest in order to stop Afghanistan once again becoming an ungoverned space from which another 9/11 could be launched.

But, he says, the truth is that the country has become less governable. What has been happening is making the launching of 9/11s from elsewhere more likely. In that, he has common cause with Matthew Hoh, with Holloway also taking the view that, "Attempts to impose central government on a country with hundreds of deeply divided and independent communities are over-ambitious and likely to fail."

Perhaps what marks out Holloway's contribution though is that, unlike many commentators, he looks at the broader geopolitical picture. He thus remarks that the Pakistan establishment's biggest fear in the region is that a pro-Indian government in Afghanistan could open a second front in any future war with India. Pakistanis, he says, see the country through the prism of Kashmir and conflict with India. The key to the problem is far away – on the line of control that divides Kashmir.

Holloway also notes that the establishment fears of undue Indian influence have "been fuelled by India's reopening of its consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar and by the activities of the Indian Border Works organization in implementing infrastructure contracts in Afghan provinces close to the Pakistani border."

There is no mention made of the deals with Iran, but his thinking is very much in line with ours, in identifying India as one of the main problems in the region.

We would disagree though, with Holloway's assertion that "only the US could bring the sort of pressure needed on India, and long-term reassurance to Pakistan," to resolve the matter. Britain, as the ex-colonial power, has a significant role to play but probably the only answer is to call upon regional powers if there is be any hope of a settlement.

That aside, where Holloway does score is in his eight recommendations, the key being that rather than follow the McChrystal formula of reinforcing failure with yet more troops, he prefers reducing the military footprint, merely maintaining a framework on the ground and assets in the country to find, fix and strike anyone presenting an international threat.

Also crucial, we must understand the legitimate concerns at the heart of Pakistan's security establishment, but also need to be more discrete in our assistance to them. Clearly, although he does not specifically make the point, Holloway seems to understand that overt Western assistance is energising Pakistani domestic terrorism.

Then, writes Holloway, we must strike a political deal with as many of the "insurgents" that are prepared to come on board, and back up the deals with a "generous reintegration programme".

This is a little woolly, as the man earlier remarks that the Pashtun population and the Taliban are one and the same. But he talks about "multiple local fixes with local groups and tribes and sub-tribes," which seems to suggest that he is looking to re-introduce the colonial system of bribery, which is probably one of the answers. It would be far better to work with, not against, the grain of Afghan society, he says.

For his concluding remarks, Holloway tells us that we should focus on what we can actually achieve, not what we think would be rather nice to achieve. There is always, he says, going to be some level of insurgency in Afghanistan, but we need to manage it, not fuel it. We should not reinforce failure. Instead, we should have a long look at why we are failing.

He thus finishes with the sentiment that maintaining our partnership with the US is vital to the UK's national security. Protecting our population from terror attacks is our first duty: picking fights with tribesmen in southern Afghanistan is not. And that, of course, is what we are doing. On their turf, we cannot win. Holloway has formally added himself to the list of those who have seen the light.

COMMENT THREAD

The bigger picture

Developing almost into a ritual, we get a "media scoop" revealing one or other failures in equipment provision – in this case the shortage of helicopters - which is then followed by ministerial statements and the top brass, weighing in to defend the status quo.

The affair is batted about for a few days, there may or may not be Questions in the House and the occasional portentous leader and then the issue dies … until the next time.

So it is that we see today The Sunday Times revisit the Haddon-Cave Nimrod Review, one of several to offer verdicts on the report, with a leader entitled "The Defence Ministry needs a good cull".

The points it makes about the technical deficiencies of the Nimrod air-to-air refuelling are obviously sound but, reinforcing our suspicions about the treatment of the original 587-page report, it is evident that the author of the leader has not read it fully, if at all. Thus, the focus is on the one very specific aspect of "cost-cutting".

Here also, the points made are very obviously sound, the argument being made that: "It is possible to reduce costs in a large organisation and make it leaner and more effective, but the process must be implemented shrewdly." The paper then laments that "cost-cutting was in the hands of senior officers who would have been at home with a Stalinist five-year plan."

Thus we are told that orders were received and ruthlessly implemented. Promotions were awarded for objectives "achieved". Calamitous consequences, such as keeping in use a dangerous air refuelling system, were covered up. The defence industry connived at this fairy tale in exchange for buckets of cash. Warnings of disaster were ignored.

None of this can be disputed, but what the paper ignores is the bigger picture. The events described occurred within a system that had been progressively degraded, over decades rather than years, losing its ethos, its institutional memory and attracting a sclerotic burden of regulation that had long since ceased to perform any useful purpose, other than providing "handy protection against any against future criticism which might be made."

Given its superficial, one-dimensional analysis, however, it is inevitable that The Sunday Times should then offer a superficial, one-dimensional prescription for improving matters, its contribution to the debate being: "A cull of fools and knaves in the MoD is the clear place to start."

The fatuity of such a pronouncement is almost self-evident in that, if there is – as Haddon Cave identified – a massive system failure, simply replacing one set of personnel with another does nothing to address the underlying faults. Whether the existing place-holders were "fools and knaves" is moot. More likely, they were trapped by the inadequacies of the system in which any successors would find themselves equally mired.

In terms of media comment, The Financial Times does much better, noting how "Britain's armed forces have for years been dogged by stories of how troops operating in dangerous places are seriously under-resourced, lacking the equipment and training they need."

In terms of seeking improvements, this paper then makes the obvious but necessary point that the starting point should be the promised Strategic Defence Review. But, it says, the next government must do more than this. It must also reform how the MoD spends money. Safety, inter alia can only be guaranteed if money is not being frittered away elsewhere.

Thus does this newspaper come to the same conclusion that we have been urging on the defence establishment for years. For instance, on 8 November 2007, when former CDS Charles Guthrie was demanding more money for defence – to the applause of the political claque and the phalanx of media commentators - our tiny voice was asking: "How about value for money?"

What was being missed then, and has also been ignored by Haddon-Cave, is that the Nimrods about which so much has been written, had no business being in Afghanistan at all. This was a maritime reconnaissance aircraft, ill-equipped for land surveillance, and hugely expensive to operate. Flying out of Oman, at £30,000 per hour, a 12-hour sortie would cost £360,000 – three missions would gobble up over £1 million.

Yet, ill-equipped as it was, all the aircraft could offer was "full motion video" – using exactly the same surveillance equipment seen on light police helicopters in our own skies, radio-relay services and a limited command and control capability.

Those functions could have been provided far more cheaply by a variety of other assets, including UAVs and light aircraft, and it is germane to note that, since the Nimrods have been withdrawn, there have been no complaints about a lack of surveillance capability. The gap has been filled by other equipment. Why it was not there originally, and why the wholly inadequate Nimrod was pressed into service is part of another story.

Therein lies more of the bigger picture, which The Financial Times does not really address, although some of the issues might be considered in the SDR. However, experience tells us that it would be unwise to be optimistic.

This brings us full circle to the current hystèrie du jour, the shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan. For all the portentous ruminations of the media, none yet have focused on the fact that the shortfall could have been remedied, quickly and vastly more cheaply than the eventual half-hearted solution now in place, or that the Defence Chiefs conspired to prevent the cheaper solution being adopted.

The £186 million, effectively wasted on acquiring six Merlin helicopters – to say nothing of additional millions wasted on the extravagant operating costs of this machine – could have funded all the helicopters needed in theatre, with cash left over to fund many of the items which are currently subject to "penny-pinching".

The trouble is that, even in this day and age, MPs and their claque still take much of their information and opinion from the media. Thus, as long as the media fails to focus on issues like this, part of the bigger picture, we will not make much progress. We will continue to have massive problems with defence spending, and the media, with its superficial, one-dimensional analyses, will remain part of the problem.

COMMENT THREAD

"Over my dead body"

The Daily Mail is running a piece today which reveals that Lt-Col Thorneloe wrote a secret memo, a month before he was killed by an IED while riding in a Viking, complaining of the shortage of helicopters.

On June 5, reports the Mail, he had chillingly predicted the circumstances of his own death in his weekly report to the Ministry of Defence. Headed "'Battle Group Weekly Update", it reads: "I have tried to avoid griping about helicopters - we all know we don't have enough. We cannot not move people, so this month we have conducted a great deal of administrative movement by road. This increases the IED threat and our exposure to it."

This opens the way for the usual polemics about cost-cutting, etc., and one can confidently predict the howls of rage from the "usual culprits", politically motivated rather than inspired by any sentient thought.

But, buried in the piece – without the prominence that it should have (and completely omitted by The Daily Telegraph and The Times, which copy out some of the story) – is a comment from Tory MP Adam Holloway, a former Grenadier Guards officer, to whom the memo was leaked by an MoD official.

He has written a "devastating critique" of the handling of the war in a pamphlet shortly to be published by the Centre for Policy Studies, which we are told "reveals that despite clear evidence that a shortage of helicopters is killing British troops, defence chiefs are still refusing offers to supply more." Then we learn:

Only last month the Ministry of Defence turned down another offer of helicopters which could double Afghanistan flying hours for British troops fighting the Taliban. The Mail has independently confirmed that former RAF pilots offered to supply 25 helicopters within three months to back up the Chinook fleet which is stretched to breaking point.

We are also told that the deal would have cost the MoD just £7 million a month - a relative drop in the ocean - but the offer was rejected because the RAF did not want to share a role with private contractors.

Now, on 25 October 2007, almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a piece about providing contract helicopters in Afghanistan – flown by ex-RAF pilots - to make up for the dire shortage of RAF assets in theatre.

Writing from personal experience, as I had been directly involved in trying to get the MoD to accept this solution, I observed that the wholly negative reaction to some well-founded proposals was due to "the reluctance of the military to see civilian contractors encroach on 'their' war." I added: "Some of this is fuelled by a fear of the competition, with the civilians able to operate more flexibly, sometimes in conditions where military aircraft like the Lynx simply cannot fly." I went on:

And since they are vastly cheaper, they provide an unfavourable comparison, which might have the politicians asking why they are funding expensive military operations when they can get much more for their money by using contractors.

In effect, what we have, therefore, is the military crying "hands off, it's our war" – an exercise in protecting their own interests rather than going for what is needed.

The need for helicopters was then acute, in order to meet the growing threat from roadside bombs and I concluded: "This dog-in-the-manger attitude costs lives." It remained acute, and – as we now see – it cost more lives.

There was a solution, it could have saved lives, and I was writing about it in May 2007, when all the little Tory Boys were bleating about the military being "under-resourced". Not only was it a solution, it was a cheaper solution.

Yet throughout the torrent of media and political coverage on helicopters, no one would look at this issue. After being rejected by the MoD, we told the newspapers were told about it, many times, and we approached Conservatives MPs, but they actively opposed the solution - and helped kill the deal. One senior Tory MP, who shall remain nameless, told me: "over my dead body". The shortage of helicopters was too convenient a stick with which to beat the government.

Well, over the dead bodies of many soldiers, our Tory MP got his way, and so did the RAF. Nobody listened ... and people died. And you can put money on it that very few of the claque who have been shrieking for "more helicopters" will pick up on this story, and ask why it is that the Defence Chiefs rejected a life-saving solution. Is it a surprise that we get a little angry on this blog?

COMMENT THREAD

Playing games

After three weeks of media exclusion, the Pakistani Army lifted a corner of the veil on Thursday, flying in a group of journalists to a barren hilltop in deepest South Waziristan, to explain how swimmingly well the campaign was going.

It was duly rewarded with favourable headlines, such as is in The Guardian, which carried title, "Pakistan hails progress in Waziristan", slightly marred by the addition: "But will it stop the suicide bombers?"

The answer to the question is, of course, "no" – not if the bombings are being carried out by the Punjab Taleban, which can rely on resources based in Punjab province, without having to call for assistance from South Waziristan.

More to the point, since "militant" groups in North Waziristan seem also implicated in attacks in Pakistan proper, the Pakistani Army's venture deep into the southern agency is likely to have little overall effect. Nor indeed is the ponderous progress of the Army calculated to achieve anything lasting.

Much has been made of the discovery of a stack of passports and photos said to belong to foreign militants, and in particular the German passport that appears to have belonged to Said Bahaji, a member of the Hamburg cell that orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. Another passport belonged to Raquel Burgos Garcia, a Spaniard who had converted to Islam and later joined al-Qaeda as a low-level operative.

If genuine, says Time magazine, the passports would confirm what the US has been saying all along: "that Pakistan's wild borderlands have served as a sanctuary for global jihadis who may be plotting fresh attacks on the West."

This may well have been what Hillary Clinton had in mind on her visit to Pakistan, when she rounded on her hosts, telling them: "al-Qaida has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002," adding, "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."

In that precise context, for all its deliberately optimistic progress reports about its operations in South Waziristan, the number of "militants" claimed killed by the Pakistani Army is remarkably low – especially for a three-pronged advance which is supposedly aimed at entrapping the fighters.

Bearing in mind that the Army managed to recover only the passports of Said Bahaji and Raquel Burgos, and not the persons themselves – dead or alive – one can only imagine that the deliberate pace of the operation is affording al-Qaeda, and indeed any "militant" who chooses not stand and fight, plenty of opportunities to escape.

There is much to be said, therefore, for the supposition that the fighters are simply being allowed to disperse, one fortified by reports that jihadists have been seen shaving off their beards and melting into the civilian population.

Some, if not many, will of course seek sanctuary over the border in Afghanistan, where the Pakistani Army cannot follow. This would suggest that, to ensure the maximum effect, coalition forces should be in place to block the escapees, providing the anvil for the Pakistani "hammer".

Not a few eyebrows have been raised in the Asian press, therefore, with some distinctly critical comments over the US decision to withdraw its forces from its four key bases in Nuristan, on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban.

Nuristan is strategically located in the Hindu Kush, and is now said to be under the effective control of the network belonging to Qari Ziaur Rahman, a Taliban commander with strong ties to Bin Laden. This makes Nuristan the first Afghan province to be controlled by a network inspired by al-Qaeda. It also opens the US to exactly the same criticism levelled at Clinton – that the US doesn't really want to get al-Qaeda either.

With so many nuances to the situation – with different agendas, hidden and declared – one can only wonder at the naivety of The Times in London, which offers a leader declaring: "Pakistan has taken a brave and correct stance in the battle in south Waziristan. It deserves the support and help of Western governments." Thus does the paper opine:

The Government and military forces in Pakistan merit support and gratitude for their actions, which are hugely advancing the security and peace not just of their own citizens but also those in Britain, in the United States and, indeed, anywhere — Bali, Mumbai — that lives by values other than those of apocalyptic Islamism.

By contrast, only recently, we had the New YorkTimes reporting: "Pressure From US Strains Relations With Pakistan," pointing out that which has been evident for some time, that the Obama administration has been putting pressure on Pakistan to take action, employing a combination of threats and bribes, the latter having a powerful effect on a cash-strapped country.

There are more than a few indications thus that the Pakistani government is going through the motions, doing enough to look credible but, in fact, achieving nothing of any lasting significance – more so in the absence of coordinated US military action on the other side of the border.

As to "hugely advancing the security and peace ... ", the only noticeable effect has been to brand the Pakistani government in the eyes of the extremists as a stooge of the Great Satan. This has made it a legitimate target for terrorist attacks, the results of which are creating rising instability in the country, a process which may get worse as new groups emerge to fight on this newly created front.

Heedless of this, however, The Times goes on to argue that Western governments "should extend strong diplomatic support to Pakistan's Government", but then complains of its "misguided" and "confrontational" stance with India which, for too long, they regarded as the principal battle.

What this neglects is that, whatever the historical overtones, Pakistan's stance is not illogical, and neither is India a passive, innocent party in the relationship. Some of its activities have been distinctly hostile to Pakistan and its pursuit of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan and Iran is, to say the least, provocative.

Any longer-term solution in this crisis-strewn region, therefore, is going to require the active participation of India, and central to the enmity between the two nations is the running sore of Kashmir, which seems no closer to resolution than it was in 1947, in which India is by no means playing a straight hand.

And, with both sides maintaining huge armed forces ranged in opposition to each other, not only does this impose huge financial burdens on the parties, it hampers economic development in the contested areas, and hinders regional cooperation on a wide range of matters, to the detriment of both.

When it comes to such hard issues, though, the "diplomatic support" goes AWOL. The otherwise forthright Mrs Clinton sidestepped the issue, merely observing: "It is clearly in Pakistan's and India's interest to resolve ... But it isn't for us to dictate a solution. That wouldn't last a minute."

As for the European Union, only yesterday it was telling us that it wanted to become "more capable, more coherent and more strategic as a global actor, including in its relations with strategic partners, in its neighbourhood and in conflict-affected areas."

This was the European Council in Brussels yet, when it came to is declaration on Afghanistan and Pakistan, all it could manage was weakly to tell the world that it: "shares the concern about the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan and supports the government of Pakistan in its efforts to establish control over all areas of the country."

If the EU is unutterably weak though, British foreign secretary David Miliband is not much better. His last substantive utterance on the issue was in January of this year on a visit to India, when he made the eminently sensible observation that: "Resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders."

Such was the hostile reaction of self-interested Indian politicians to this home truth though, that Miliband's intervention was widely branded as a "gaffe". He has maintained a monastic silence on the subject ever since.

Nevertheless, as this commentary makes clear, Kashmir occupies a pivotal role in the stabilisation of the region. Yet, while the pressure is on Pakistan to put its house in order, India is getting a free ride, despite being a major player and a vital part of any overall settlement.

One does not, therefore have to take sides in the dispute to observe that it is not only Pakistan which is playing games. If there is a sense of grievance at the way it is being treated by the West, this is not altogether unwarranted. A commitment by Pakistan is one thing, but a similar level of commitment is needed from the other parties – and there is no evidence that this is forthcoming.

If, instead, the West chooses to play games, we should not be surprised if Pakistan does the same.

COMMENT THREAD