Obama’s War: what next for Britain in Afghanistan?

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

President Obama is quietly deploying a further 13,000 troops to Afghanistan this month, on top of the reinforcements the 21,000 he had already promised General McChrystal earlier in the year.

It is thought that the US will have 68,000 men and women serving in Afghanistan by the end of the year, making up a significant proportion of the 100,000 NATO presence. There are also 174,000 Afghan security forces.

Obama had always promised throughout the campaign to scale down the war in Iraq and to focus on the struggle in Afghanistan. In July, 2008, he said:

“If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.”

But what will the surge mean for British presence in the region?

Last week it was reported that Gordon Brown would send a further 500 British troops, bringing the total of British forces up to 9,500.

But as the efforts in the region are ratchetted up over the coming months – and with the continued rise in British casualties – the conflict in Afghanistan is increasingly unpopular. In July this year, 59% of poll respondents said British forces should be withdrawn.

My opposition to the war in Afghanistan was never as strong as it was to the war in Iraq; it was always a different conflict, for altogether different reasons, and looking through the blurry prism of post-2003, it’s to easy to forget the reason we are there in the first place.

Of course, there are issues regarding our ability to support our troops on the grounf, but more and more recently, my own conversations have turned to the concept of whether an international force can ever succeed with a military mission in Afghanistan.

As we consider options over the coming months, I’d echo Lyndon Johnson’s ghostly advice: careful, Prime Minister.