Our leaders now recognise the Afghan folly

By David Talbot / @_DaveTalbot

The silence over the war in Afghanistan during the general election was deafening. The three main parties’ election manifestos amounted to more than 80,000 words on their grand visions for the country, but they managed to mention Afghanistan only 19 times between them. This stifling of the issue might have been due to the fact that all the main parties know their policies are entirely at odds with the feelings of the population. The central tenet that British and US forces must remain resolute in Afghanistan has been axiomatic on Capitol Hill and in Westminster since Nato forces launched the war on October 7th 2001 but, slowly, the tectonic plates have been moving.

Obama has publicly committed to withdrawing US troops from next July and yesterday David Cameron told the liaison committee this:

“The British public deserve to know there is an end point to all this. It’s 2015.”

This is to be applauded. Not so long ago Cameron and his defence secretary, Liam Fox, merely talked of leaving “when the Afghan forces can defend themselves”, which would see our forces engaged in Afghanistan for decades to come, or “when the streets of London are safe”, which is never. Most absurd of all has been oft-cited government claim that the Afghan war is preventing terrorism on the streets of Britain. The exact opposite is the case. There were no al-Qaeda-style terror attacks in the UK before 2001. And Britain’s role in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq – cited both by the bombers themselves and a string of intelligence reports – has been a central factor in motivating would-be jihadists.

Everyone involved in this wretched war knows it has failed, yet until now our leaders have told us to the contrary. We are accustomed to the idea that Iraq has been a disaster; now we are getting used to seeing the war in Afghanistan in the same light. This was a war, after all, launched with the stated aim of killing or capturing Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar – and destroying al-Qaida. Nine years later, not one of those objectives has been accomplished. It has failed in every one of its ever-changing objectives – from preventing the spread of terrorism and eradicating opium production to promoting democracy and the position of women.

The British public are sick of the carnage, not because they have no stomach for the fight, but because they can no longer fathom what the fight is for. Support for our troops remains widespread and undiminished. What has cracked, however, is support for their task, largely because too few of us have the faintest notion of what victory in Afghanistan looks like. The idea that after a bloody military campaign we can leave behind a stable, democratic Afghanistan tests credulity to destruction.

Military commanders are still busy talking up the effect their military operations are having. General Sir David Richards, the head of the British army, recently said they were “hammering” the Taliban. Whilst giving Johnny Taliban a damn good thrashing may placate some, it cuts no ice with the public and now increasingly our political representatives are catching up. 77% of the British public want troops out of Afghanistan within a year and Cameron has at last brought himself to admit the obvious; that Afghanistan cannot be won militarily.

Labour should support the phased, orderly withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan. British soldiers should never be sent to fight and die because ministers will not face a simple truth. Withdrawal should not be viewed as the appearance of defeat, but rather the acceptance of the inevitable.