Success or Otherwise?

With the pulling out of British Forces in Afghanistan many questions will be ask about if the 13 years of conflict has been, as David Cameron claims, a "Success" or something else. What will be needed, if the campaign is to be looked at properly, is some kind of independent review body which comes up with a number of measure that can be used to evaluate the success of the conflict. This will give us an understand of the approach we took and if it was the right one. Of course the real measure of success will be one that the historians come up with in say a hundred years time, when most of the official documents will be available to them and not locked behind closed doors.

The back ground to the conflict stems from the 9/11 attack on the twin towers. US President George W Bush demanded the Taliban hand over any leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban did not immediately comply but called for talks, but President Bush said there would be "no negotiations" and he ordered US Forces to attacked the Taliban controlled country on October 7th 2001. The reason we went into Afghanistan was to support US forces as part of a US-led coalition which toppled the ruling Taliban, which we did. Then we remained there for the past 13 years with the final camp in Helmand province lowering the Union jack for the last time today.

Estimates of the cost of the war to the UK economy vary according to what site you read with estimates of £19bn from the BBC while other national papers suggest the cost is twice that amount, with even the MOD admitting £25bn had been spent in the first 12 years. No real figure will ever probably exist but even using the conservative figure of around £19bn that represents nearly £1.5bn per year since the war started and we joined forces with the US back in 2001 on some American pipe dream. That is enough save to have save the Air Fleet arm and RAF Harrier fleet, a couple of Aircraft Carriers and countless front line jobs, if we had cut our losses and withdrawn sooner or had never gone to war in the first place.

In the 13 years the British Forces lost some 453 troops, with the some 2,600 troops being wounded and requiring long term care. Further to this it is estimated that there will be in excess of 5,000 troops that suffer some kind of psychological injury and will require care. Given some 140,000 troops served over the 13 year period of the war the number of deaths and causalities seems relatively low compared to other conflicts, however given the nature of the war you could ask if going into the region to back the US was the right move back in 2001.

Some experts claim that Helmand is no more stable now than when thousands of British troops were deployed there in 2006. Opium production that fell under the Taliban, is increasing, fuelling corruption and the coffers of warlords. In fact if you look through the history of the region any military action in the region has never been successful and the country has gone back to being the way it was before the action took place. Of course it hoped that the installation of a democratic government will change the region, however this will soon become corrupt and some popular uprising will occur that topples it and replaces it with some kind totalitarian rule. It is also believed by many ordinary British soldiers that idea of that the Afghan armed forces can secure the province is little short of ridiculous.

In the short term others argue there has been an improvement in the country with girls going to school and increasing access to college education. Western values and ideals have been instilled in some of the population and there has been investment infrastructure projects, although some claim a lot has been spent on  development consultant fees rather than those Afghans who need it most. What the country will need is a strong government and leader, if it can find one has yet to be seen. At the moment it is likely that a new war will break out between the drug barons and the government and with arms supplied by the international arms companies in abundance it will be a bloody war. And of course the Taliban will still be there undefeated fighting in the hills and carrying out hit and run raids on the cities.

We were told this was a war to stop al-Qaeda after the attack of the twin towers in 2001 who US believed had planned that attack from Afghanistan, who it claims was operating freely under the Taliban regime. This was achieved and al-Qaeda was driven out of the country, but only to set up training camps elsewhere and we now have a new set or radical Islamic organisations threatening the world. The action over the last 13 years hasn't made the world a safer place, in fact it is more dangerous now and there is no reasons why al-Qaeda won't return to train in Afghanistan, again paid for by the drug barons who want to protect there crops.

The US lead action hasn't changed a thing, in fact military action is probably the wrong approach altogether and it would have been better use the intelligence services to identify and take out al-Qaeda rather than invading a country were nobody has ever won a war. In fact not a single al-Qaida operative or 'international terrorist' who could conceivably have threatened the United Kingdom is recorded as having been killed Helmand province.

So why were we there so long and will it all be worth it in 15 years time, are the questions I keep asking myself? I hope so, for I have a lot respect of the armed forces in the UK, but do question the leadership of those forces by our political leaders and if we made the right move in the first place. I feel that maybe we stayed to long and risked the lives of British forces. We also spent too much on a war that could never be won.

We aren't the military nation we were back in 2001 and the armed forces have decimated my Conservative spending cuts. In fact the Conservative government have done more damage to our military capability than the Taliban could ever have done.