Nato’s leadership is now united in readiness to surrender Afghanistan
The leaders of the 50 or so countries attending Nato’s spectacular jamboree in Chicago this weekend will arrive knowing that they can at least agree on one issue: ending Nato’s ill-fated mission to Afghanistan at the earliest possible opportunity.
Normally Nato summits have a habit of degenerating into unseemly squabbles between the 28 member states over important areas of policy. Only last year, there was an open rift among the big Nato powers over Libya, with pro-regime-change countries such as Britain and France falling foul of the more pragmatic Germans, who questioned the wisdom of removing the Gaddafi clan when the West had no clue as to who might emerge as the new masters of Tripoli. It is a question that remains as valid today as it did last summer.
No such misgivings, though, will distract the delegates’ deliberations in Chicago. While the Taleban and their al-Qa’eda allies pose an immeasurably greater threat to our daily wellbeing than Gaddafi’s mob ever did — particularly after the mad colonel gave up his nukes and lost interest in backing the IRA and other terror groups — Nato is effectively giving up on its decade-long campaign to subdue the insurgents and turn Afghanistan into something approaching a stable and functioning state.
This mood of defeatism will not, of course, be reflected in the official communiqués. On the contrary: expect to hear lots of spin about how well the Afghans are doing at taking care of their own security, how Nato forces have done a splendid job in destroying the Taleban and al-Qa’eda as credible threats, and why it is now time for our brave men and women to pack up and head for the exits.
If only it were that easy. After more than 400 British dead — another two British soldiers died this week after being shot by ‘friendly’ Afghan police — no one in their right minds wants our soldiers, sailors and airmen to remain in this basket-case of a country a day longer than necessary.
But the problem is that, for all the wishful thinking we’ll undoubtedly hear expressed at Chicago, our mission is far from complete. When I visited the country earlier this spring it was quite clear to me that the Afghans still have a long way to go before they can take on and hold their own against the Taleban’s resilient and well-organised insurgency.
You would expect the new recruits to the Afghan army to be good fighters — that’s what being an Afghan is all about — but it is unlikely they would make much headway against a determined foe without the allies’ input. In a country whose geology is defined by forbidding mountain ranges and vast expanses of desert, the lack of indigenous air support constitutes a formidable handicap.
Similarly, it is unlikely the Afghans’ newly created special forces would enjoy much success conducting their own night raids against Taleban fighters if they did not have access to the live intelligence feeds that have enabled their American and British counterparts to decimate the ranks of the insurgents’ mid-level commanders.
So what is going to become of these much-vaunted Afghan fighters once Nato’s combat operation ends at the end of 2014, leaving them bereft of the support they have enjoyed these past ten years? Well, unless we are careful, history will simply repeat itself, and the main bulk of the Afghan army will disband and return to its former warlord employers. Only this time they will be better trained and better armed, and the next round of Afghanistan’s interminable civil war will be immeasurably more bloody.
It is to avert such a catastrophe that the Chicago participants want to sign off an aid package for post-2014 Afghanistan. But this is nothing more than tokenism of the worst kind. To start with, countries like Britain and America that are prepared to make a modest contribution are struggling to persuade other contributors to come forward with the rest of the $4.3 billion needed to keep the Afghan government afloat after we’ve gone.
This reluctance to make a post-2014 commitment to Afghanistan is symptomatic of a deeper antipathy towards the conflict that has taken root since President Barack Obama came to office. For a brief moment, when Obama sanctioned the military surge strategy devised by General Stanley McChrystal, it looked as though Washington would see the mission through. But Obama was never comfortable with such a substantial body of American forces deployed overseas, and soon reverted to the less contentious counter-terrorism policy advocated by Vice President Joe Biden.
As for Britain, I wrote for this magazine right at the start of David Cameron’s premiership that he had no interest in sustaining the Afghan mission, and so it has proved. The primary focus now for Mr Cameron and Philip Hammond, his Defence Secretary, is how to spend the ‘peace dividend’ they will receive when British troops finally leave.
The shame of the matter is that it didn’t have to end like this. For a brief moment we had a perfectly good strategy for defeating the Taleban and bringing peace to Afghanistan. But the politicians simply did not have the staying power to make it work, a failure of collective will that has worrying implications for our future ability to confront those who mean to do us harm.
There was a time when Britain and her allies used to win wars. No longer. As our recent experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, the moment the going gets tough the political classes orders the retreat, encouraged by a general public which, having enthusiastically backed the initial declaration of hostilities, loses faith the moment the casualty rates start to rise.
There might be votes in steering clear of military conflict, but abandoning costly and difficult missions before they have achieved their goals only lends encouragement to our determined and resourceful enemies.