Investment in Blood: The True Cost of Britain's Afghan War
Investment in Blood: The True Cost of Britain's Afghan War
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300194883 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 527 KB |
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INVESTMENT IN BLOOD
THE REAL COST OF BRITAIN'S AFGHAN WAR
By FRANK LEDWIDGE
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Frank LedwidgeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-19488-3
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Helmand and the 'Angrez'
Here in this extraordinary piece of desert is where the fate of twenty-first century world security will be decided.
Background to the Afghan War
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Afghanistan was a well-loved stopover on the hippie trail. And Helmand - for those who ventured to such a backwater - was a very pleasant, quiet spot that had a potential for real growth and wealth, thanks to the huge American investment that had been ploughed into the province.
On my own first trip to Kabul in 2007, the woman sitting next to me on the plane had been on that trail. Still wearing a floaty 1970s dress, she told me how relaxing and pleasant the whole experience had been; how Chicken Street had had much of the same appeal (and indeed clientele) as any of the dozen chilled-out locations in Asia that are today favoured by young people trying to 'find' themselves. Helmand province, with its lush, fertile orchards, had been regarded as a particularly chilled-out place, where marijuana could be smoked in the shade of the pomegranate trees. My companion's stories ended abruptly when the pilot of our UN aircraft warned us on our approach to Kabul that we were about to start a corkscrew movement to avoid anti-aircraft missiles. Things have changed radically since the 1970s.
For us, the war and all its attendant chaos and atrocity started on that unforgettable day in September 2001. Of course, for the inhabitants of Afghanistan it started long, long before that. For many of its people there had been constant war, struggle and displacement since 1979, when the Soviet army intervened to stabilize the new regime of Babrak Karmal after a somewhat Byzantine power struggle that threatened to drag Afghanistan into civil war.
The Soviets, unlike their Western successors, had in fact been invited by what passed for the legitimate government. That government was composed of an alliance of squabbling quasi-Marxist officers who had seized power from King Zahir. The Russians were not at all pleased with their would-be protégés, as Zahir had at the very least presided over a stable and peaceful country. They were not at all happy with the idea that Afghanistan might return to the kind of chaos that had been the norm in their southern neighbour earlier in the century. The Soviet leadership - advised by the pragmatic and experienced spy Yuri Andropov - was well aware that the cabal that had installed itself in Kabul had no popular basis at all. The last thing the Soviet Union needed was a country riven by internal conflict on the southern frontiers of its Muslim Central Asian republics. Like the Western invasion of 2001, the key objective in 1979 was to guarantee stability - in this case to ensure that any conflict between modernizers and traditionalists did not turn seriously bloody and begin to infect the potentially fractious Central Asian republics with ideas unpalatable to socialism. Alongside (and in Soviet eyes complementary to) that ambition was perhaps eerily - a desire to create a more modern country. A former UK ambassador to the USSR and Russia, Rodric Braithwaite, has written the classic study of that period, entitled Afgantsy? He takes the view that: 'The Soviets came in believing they could re-engineer other people's societies, releasing Afghans from their medieval backwardness. They didn't transform Afghan society any more than we are going to.'
Against them was ranged a ragbag of militias and tribal groups that called themselves the mujahedin - 'holy warriors'. These were supported by Pakistan, which had been given carte blanche to channel US funds to whatever group it thought should have them. Contrary to popular belief (and such largely fictional films as Charlie Wilsons War), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had little idea of what was actually going on in Afghanistan. What the CIA did do, however, was contribute to what amounted to an Islamic international brigade of enthusiasts, feckless youth and fanatics to assist the mujahedin. The leader of one of these Arab groups was Osama bin Laden.
As with so many such interventions - from the British in the nineteenth century to Bush and Blair in the twenty-first - good intentions paved the way to hellish outcomes. There followed a decade and a half of resistance, counterinsurgency Soviet-style (i.e. savage) and civil war. Over a million people were killed, four million lost their homes, and Kabul - which had, let us recall, provided a popular and very pleasant backpacking destination in the 1970s - was wrecked.
After the Soviets pulled out, the government they had installed, under Mohammad Najibullah, lasted until 1992. During that time, though under attack by the mujahedin, Kabul still had functioning institutions such as universities, schools and hospitals. After the fall of Najibullah's government in 1992, civil war and large-scale gangsterism brought chaos, fear and insecurity to most Afghans. Kabul became a battleground for warlords (mostly former mujahedin), at the cost of tens of thousands of ordinary Afghan lives. These are the same men who today rule Kabul and those parts of Afghanistan not under Taliban control. Under those warlords, the country descended in the early 1990s into a form of Hobbesian chaos.
It was the Taliban, led by Mohammed Omar, an obscure cleric from the southern Pashtun Uruzgan province, and heavily supported by the Pakistani intelligence service, that brought some semblance of order in 1994. ('Taliban' means 'students' in Persian: these men saw themselves as religious scholars.) By the end of that year they controlled most of Southern Afghanistan. While they established the most basic and severe form of justice and order, which had been seriously lacking over the previous two decades, the Taliban made the fatal error of allowing those former Arab fighters against the Soviet occupation to stay and base themselves in the country. One of those groups was run by that same somewhat dilettante scion of a wealthy Saudi family who had shown up in the mid-1980s. This group now called itself 'the Base' ('Al Qaeda' in Arabic), and the rest is - if not yet history - most certainly well-established current affairs. In October 2001, with the assistance of US and (to a lesser extent) British special forces, the 'Northern Alliance' of various largely Tajik and Uzbek warlords took Kabul. Following a Loya Jirga (grand meeting) of selected Afghan leaders, Hamid Karzai - quite the darling of the international media at the time - was installed as president. He surrounded himself with many of those leaders - war criminals by any standard - who had ruined Afghanistan in the early 1990s.
For perhaps two years, the international presence, including the military group known as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), conducted a low-key programme of reform. With the Taliban licking its wounds in Pakistan and biding its time, casualties were few and hopes were high.
The British in Afghanistan, 2001-06
Ever since September 2001, Britain had been the key ally of the United States in Afghanistan. The country had, as its leader Tony Blair said shortly after 9/11, stood 'shoulder to shoulder' with the US in its fight against 'terror'. UK special forces and British marines had played a major part in the failed hunt for Osama bin Laden (who, it turned out, had decamped to Pakistan). In December 2001, the British agreed to 'take the lead' on counternarcotics in Afghanistan. The Germans would train the police, and the Italians would, it was planned, lead justice development.
The British army and marines deployed units to Kabul from 2002 in order to assist in the newly constituted ISAF. At this stage, the US armed forces were not heavily involved in the NATO effort, as they were conducting their own Enduring Freedom operation without the assistance of the rest of NATO (and indeed without much mutual awareness).
British troops in those early years were primarily involved in patrolling the streets of an essentially benign capital city. Hopes were high that the foreign presence would significantly improve the country, and the foreign soldiers were tolerated - and indeed welcomed by many people.
British focus shifted from Afghanistan in 2002 when Prime Minster Blair decided to support the US in what was a somewhat more controversial campaign.
The Iraq factor
In March 2003, following a long lead-in, the United States and UK invaded Iraq. In the first phase of the operation, thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed throughout the country, as were possibly tens of thousands of often helpless Iraqi conscript soldiers. After a brief but effective battle, the British army established itself in Basra city and the four provinces of Southern Iraq. Unfortunately, in those provinces of Basra, Muthana, Maysan and Nasiriyah some 1,694 civilians were killed and 6,184 injured. As Britain's disastrous campaign in Southern Iraq unfolded, at least another 3,334 civilians were to die in its 'area of responsibility' and more than a thousand were wounded. Meanwhile 179 British soldiers were killed.
The material damage sustained by the Iraqis (and indeed by the 'coalition' soldiers) was bad. From the perspective of Afghanistan, there were two consequences, both of which were seriously (if not terminally) damaging to the Afghan campaign.
First, there was the diversion of military, civilian and technical resources from Afghanistan to Iraq. From being a priority in US foreign policy, Afghanistan quickly slipped to being seen and treated as something of a sideshow to the real campaign, which was being ramped up in Iraq. For a crucial five years, the Iraq campaign sucked military and civilian resources away from Afghanistan.
The second consequence was more insidious, but equally damaging: the invasion of Iraq changed Afghans' perception of the Western presence. By 2003, Afghans were beginning to realize that it was not quite the panacea it had initially seemed. It was evident to many that much - indeed most - of the vast amounts of money being thrown into Afghanistan was ending up in the bottomless bank accounts of Western consultants and Afghan politicians. As author Nadene Ghouri, a long-time resident of Afghanistan, remembers:
anger was building, but attitudes changed overnight with the invasion of Iraq. Before that, the Western soldiers were not regarded as invaders or even occupiers. In 2003 for the first time even Afghan intellectuals started talking about the 'invasions' of Iraq and Afghanistan. Prior to that there had been no talk about it in these terms. Iraq was a huge factor in changing the perception of the Western intervention. Suddenly people started talking about oil and energy. They felt there was a link between what they perceived as an energy grab in Iraq and what they were doing in Afghanistan.
For six years, the British army engaged in what would turn out to be an ill-fated and ultimately humiliating battle in the southern Iraqi city of Basra: by 2006, it was hunkered down in an airfield and one remaining base in the city, occasionally fighting its way in and out of its other bases for supplies - and being attacked every time it did so. The following year, the British retreated to the huge base at Basra airport and did a deal with a ragtag set of militias: now they ventured out of their base only with the permission of those groups. In the eyes of Britain's American allies, its reputation for effectiveness in so-called 'low-intensity wars' lay in tatters. Defiant, quixotic references to successes in Northern Ireland and Malaya were treated by US army officers as just 'so much tripe'.
In 2009, the US Marine Corps took over from an embarrassed British military presence. In US eyes, the long battle for Basra was something of a fiasco. The embarrassment engendered by it would have consequences far beyond the borders of Iraq.
Meanwhile back in Afghanistan ...
Back in Afghanistan, now regarded as something of a military backwater, most of the few hundred British soldiers were based in Kabul, where they assisted in securing the city. On 28 January 2004, Private Jonathan Kitulagoda was on patrol in the eastern suburbs of Kabul. He was 23 years old and a Territorial Army soldier, a part-time reservist who had recently graduated with a degree in marine navigation. As his small convoy overtook a taxi, the driver of the taxi detonated a bomb. It was one of the first suicide attacks ever in Afghanistan: even in the savage days of Soviet occupation the practice had been virtually unknown. In the 'war on terror', Private Kitulagoda was the first British casualty of hostile action. His death caused little comment at the time.
In July 2004, a British Provincial Reconstruction Team was set up in the northern Afghan province of Balkh. The idea of the PRT, initially developed in Iraq, was to combine civilian and military staff in a seamless cooperative effort to bring development; for two and half years it worked - if not well, then at least without serious problems. Only one soldier was killed during that mission in the north: Lance Corporal Steven Sherwood was shot in October 2005. He was the second soldier to be killed in the four years of British involvement. It was at this time that the decision was announced that there would be a large-scale deployment of British troops to the almost unheard-of province of Helmand in Southern Afghanistan.
By this time, the Taliban were beginning to show signs that they had not gone away. Since 2002, NATO had had the intention of eventually spreading out from its bases in Kabul and the north into the Pashtun provinces of Southern Afghanistan - Taliban country. At a NATO conference in 2005, it was decided that Canada, the Netherlands and the UK would each take 'security responsibility' for a province. After some argument and confusion, it was decided that the Netherlands would send troops to Uruzgan, Mullah Omar's home province; Canada would 'take' Kandahar, where Mullah Omar and the Taliban had their capital; while the British would be given responsibility for Helmand largely, it would appear, because Tony Blair liked the idea of the British visibly taking the lead on the opium problem.
Consultation on the deployment was very limited. Matt Cavanagh was part of the Downing Street team dealing with Afghanistan when these decisions were made. He is clear about who had given what advice: 'the Chiefs [of Staff] advised that ... taking on the largest and potentially most difficult province ... as part of ISAF's move into the south was an appropriate level of ambition for a country with the UK's military capabilities and its place in NATO and the world. Indeed the Chiefs came close to arguing that only Britain could play this role.' Rather more prosaically, the army had its own reasons for wanting a large-scale deployment: it was threatened with cuts - particularly to its many infantry battalions. In written evidence to the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, a former UK ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, said:
the then Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt, told me in the summer of 2007 that, if he didn't use in Afghanistan the battle groups then starting to come free from Iraq, he would lose them in a future defence review. 'It's use them, or lose them.'
This comment was later strongly denied by Dannatt.
But there was another problem. Having been seen to have failed in Iraq had dealt a great blow to the army's self-image - and, just as importantly, the image it had enjoyed in US eyes. It is vital for British soldiers to be seen to be at least as professional and effective as the Americans, towards whom the British had had a somewhat patronizing and paternal attitude - at least until matters started to deteriorate in Basra in 2004. By 2006, the British were seen to have seriously failed in Basra, and the US was presented with the distinctly unwelcome problem of trying to bail them out. General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British army at the time, put the problem thus:
There is recognition that our national and military reputation and credibility, unfairly or not, have been called into question at several levels in the eyes of our most important ally as a result of some aspects of the Iraq campaign. Taking steps to restore this credibility will be pivotal - and Afghanistan provides an opportunity.
'How the pros execute counterinsurgency'
'The British planned to show the Americans ... how the pros executed counterinsurgency.' That is how Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the author of a history of the US presence in Helmand, has put it. The British prided themselves that while they could no longer compete with the Americans in firepower or sheer combat power, they were still masters of the supposedly subtle military art of 'counterinsurgency'. Afghanistan was to provide the opportunity and Helmand the location.
Not all British officers agreed with the deployment to that particular province. As General Richards, commander of ISAF in 2006, put it: 'Where's Helmand? It's not important. Kandahar is what matters.' These were words he surely regretted in 2010, when, as chief of defence staff, he took over responsibility for running Britain's campaign there. So where indeed is Helmand, and was it important?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from INVESTMENT IN BLOOD by FRANK LEDWIDGE. Copyright © 2013 by Frank Ledwidge. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements.................... vii
Introduction.................... 1
Part I: The Human Cost....................
1 Helmand and the 'Angrez'.................... 13
2 Military Suffering.................... 45
3 Killing the Wrong People.................... 65
Part II: The Financial Cost....................
4 Military Costs.................... 101
5 Financial Element of Death and Injury.................... 127
6 Developing Afghanistan.................... 143
Part III: And For What?....................
7 And For What? - Afghanistan.................... 167
8 And For What? - Security.................... 193
Conclusion.................... 217
Notes.................... 229
Bibliography.................... 249
Index.................... 255