Leading article: Our troops in Afghanistan need the right tools for the job
The Liberal Democrat leader is justified in raising his concerns
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Independent Minds
There was a terrible irony to the fact that the seventh British soldier to die in the last seven days in Afghanistan was a serviceman from the Light Dragoons. For once again the accusation has been made that we are sending our troops into battle too lightly armed for the heavy task with which they have been charged. The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg reiterated that indictment yesterday and there is clear force to his arguments.
Early in the campaign, troops were hampered by a shortage of body armour. Now they are travelling in vehicles which are too lightly protected. Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the highest-ranking British officer to be killed since the Falklands War, died while travelling in a Viking armoured car which does not have a v-shaped hull or substantial under-body protection. A coroner, holding an inquest into another Helmand death, has this week expressed concerns that the light vehicles were unsuited to the war in Afghanistan.
There are also concerns that British troops have too few helicopters in Helmand where the ground is littered with Taliban bombs. The Army has only the same number it had in 2006 – when we had half the number of troops in Afghanistan. There are questions too about the quality of the helicopters, in one of which a soldier has died in the past week. More have been promised; some Merlin transport helicopters are being transferred from Iraq and eight Chinook Mark 3s – which have been grounded for the past eight years because of a software problem – are being converted from SAS use to basic troop carriers. But they will not be ready for operations in Afghanistan until next year at the earliest.
The conflict in Afghanistan is complex and difficult but it is, on balance, a war worth fighting to crush the camps which train terrorists for assaults on Western cities. Until now there have been serious problems about the way it was conducted. There has been a lack of co-ordination between allied troops. There has been insufficient attention on Pakistan through whose porous borders the Taliban pass unhindered. And there has been too much reliance on air power which has killed too many Afghan civilians, at a rate of three every four days last year, when US air strikes rose by 70 per cent. The Obama surge is addressing all that.
But problems remain. A massive state-building exercise is required but the promised aid has not all materialised. A large amount of what has been paid has been absorbed in the profits of private contractors and consultants. And only 5 per cent of aid has been directed at finding alternatives to the opium-poppy growing industry which provides the livelihoods of more than 70 per cent of the population. Large-scale poverty reduction is required. So is better protection of civilians; the military should not just be rooting out insurgents but establishing law and order if the credibility of Hamid Karzai's government is to be restored throughout the country.
To enable all that there is a war to be fought. We have not provided enough troops to do it properly, so that our soldiers are unable to hold and rebuild territory once they have won it. We have given them, in the words of General Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of Nato forces in the country, tasks wider than their numbers will allow them to do. In war, the old aphorism has it, old men send young men off to die. Our old men, when they do that, should give our troops the resources they need to have a fighting chance.
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Comments
And then there is this - "And there has been too much reliance on air power which has killed too many Afghan civilians, at a rate of three every four days last year, when US air strikes rose by 70 per cent. The Obama surge is addressing all that." Under Obama, the amount of bombs being dropped on the Afghans has increased as he pours more military resources into this disgusting "war".
www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/06/12/obam
The Independent is a sick joke. We have its support for the racist state of Israel, its support for the overthrow of democracy in Honduras and now a big lie in support of the racist occupation of Afghanistan.
The Independent should change its name to The Dependent on Zionist Support.
My father served in Aden,,and I remember him showing me a photograph of a wrecked Landrover which had been hit by a roadside bomb killing 3 soldiers,,,,,MOD has done nothing to stop a problem that was happening 40+ years ago,,,
Whilst with hindsight one may question the use of "Snatch Land Rovers", the reality is that heavily armoured vehicles are unusable in many operational situations added to which, whilst the occupants of a heavily armoured vehicle may not figure on the KIA roll, don't imagine that they haven't been injured. As the latter stages of WWII demonstrated, ever heavier armour just slowed everything down and the IEDs will just get bigger and more powerful as they did in Iraq.
Yes helicopters are an issue but whether it is this editorial or Click Clack Clegg, all these comments are based on an obviously flawed acceptance of a current "orthodox view" that small groups of highly trained and motivated soldiers can "do the job". This is a parallel to what is wrong with policing in the UK - too few Bobbies on the Beat. I would suggest that the most important extra kit you could give our troops in Helmand is more troops, period.
The answer is as old as the hills, it is an Infantry Action - take the ground and hold the ground. There is one fatal flaw in the whole Afghanistan Strategy - not enough front line troops. We have about 9,000 troops in an area the size of Wales (?) of whom likely only 6,000 are combat soldiers and an additional 12,000 US troops would not be enough, you would likely need to put in a fighting force of 100,000 to swamp the enemy and this in addition to those troops already there. Mind you, this would take a major operation to secure the logistics and resupply routes.
The current strategy is wrong simply because both we and the Afghans are slowly bleeding to death and all the aid money is being stolen via internal and external corruption. Either we put the military resources in to create the secure space for proper civil construction which would be cheaper in both lives and cash or, we get out of there. The key question is that the public need to have put to them the reasons why such an effort is worthwhile which comes back to, do we have the staying power to finish the job ?
As to 100,000, whilst in part an arbitrary figure, the basis is the x6 calculation for the numerical superiority required for assault. Although it will vary during the course of the year, it is likely that the hardcore Taliban likely number no more than 5,000 so the required NATO superiority should number 30,000 in the field constantly on patrol and combat operations, 30,000 manning fixed local basis - holding the ground and a further 30,000 held as a reserve but also a R & R location to allow rotation of the troops in the front line.
It also follows that the 100,000 figure comprises 90,000 combat troops but still only leaves 60,000 troops in the front line.
US President Barack Obama praises prise makes the stupidest man hero i say i say i say isay Britain's 'extraordinary' contribution towards the Nato effort in Afghanistan.No fucking shit.
Race tracker wiki: PA-Sen
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
As word spread in Minneapolis that a new group of men had disappeared, another piece of jarring news came from Somalia: Shirwa Ahmed had blown himself up. On Oct. 29, 2008, he drove a car packed with explosives into a government compound in Puntland, a region of northern Somalia.
The bombing was among five attacks that day coordinated by the Shabaab, which left more than 20 people dead in the group?s campaign to eliminate enemies and show their might. The F.B.I. investigated and sent Mr. Ahmed?s remains to Minneapolis in November.
By then, Mr. Hassan and his friends were journeying in the opposite direction. A close friend said the men were met by Zakaria Maruf, the recruiter, and taken to the southern port city of Merka, where they stayed in a ?welcoming house? run by a Somali woman whom the men called Mama.
By January, most of the men were at a training camp in southern Somalia, following a strict routine that Mr. Hassan and others described to their Minneapolis friends in phone calls. They woke before dawn to pray and study the Koran. They engaged in rigorous training, running obstacle courses and learning to make bombs.
As foreign recruits, they received special treatment. These mujahideen slept in a different bunker and were considered to have a higher status, the friend said.but they have good news the Afghanistan soldiers I mean. The world's biggest watchmaker Swatch Group is expecting sales to improve in the second half of this year after a difficult start to the year, group's CEO Nick Hayek said in remarks published Sunday. Give them the Swtch and they will come back to sell these to UK. Pun meant sorry but i see nothing to more ecxept that sorry Polticians lied we cry...
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla