Afghanistan exit has torpedoed Anglo-American trust
Rhetoric and reality have drifted apart with the news from Afghanistan and the wordplay continues in London, Washington, and the capitals of Europe.
“This is what defeat looks like” the Army veteran MP Tom Tugendhat declared in the most powerful speech in the special debate in the House of Commons. The most powerful reality check, however, came from the former prime minister Theresa May, spelling out how America had consulted no ally about the manner in which they abandoned Afghanistan.
What does this mean for “Global Britain”? She asked pointedly, rightly focusing on the disastrous state of the UK’s relationship with its principal ally, America, and the attitude of both to their closest collective alliance, Nato.
Biden didn’t speak to a single major leader, and not even the Ghani government squatting in Kabul. He seemed desperate to take the Taliban at their word – that they would keep in peace, wanted a deal with the Kabul regime and would respect all kinds of individual rights – provided it was in line with their view of Sharia law and its interpretation by their inhouse crew of “Islamic scholars.” So their view seems the same as in 1996 on mass stonings, executions, rape and exclusion of girls and women from education and jobs.
Biden, in his recent petulant bouts of self-justification, claimed that America was never in Afghanistan for nation building and the Afghan people should have learned to fight for themselves. This appears to be a more than senior lapse of memory. The ever-vigilant Bruno Macaes has pointed out on Twitter an article from the Atlantic by the ace reporter George Packer referring to a conversation about policy between the late Richard Holbrooke, then special envoy in the region, and the then Vice-President Biden. The two agreed that Afghanistan needed development, stabilisation, reform and bringing up to date and this was all part of the US-led mission to the country.
It seems Biden’s new motto reads “O Senectus et Amnesia”. But the amazing aspect is how the younger members of the team – Blinken, Sullivan and Lloyd Austin – have gone along with the shoulder-shrugging. If they calculated both the intended and unintended strategic consequences of what they have just done, they are not telling. If they didn’t make a serious audit of the effect on regional and global stability. They should be fired.
Theresa May is right, Britain has lost perspective of its position in the world, given the insouciance and mistrust of its senior ally. By some accounts this is being mirrored on the ground at Kabul Airport – where 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment have had a less than cordial exchange with their nominal allies in the US 82nd Airborne. The 2 Para contingent commander is reported to have warned off his opposite number against cutting and running without notice to allies and the Afghans. It might be known as “doing a Bagram”. They quit the huge base outside Kabul without notice, leaving the lights on a 20 minute timer to switch off after all the Americans had flown off. Britain has put in a further 800 troops today – with 2 Para sending patrols into Kabul itself to pick up potential passengers for the British refugee flights – all with the approval of Brigadier Blanchard and Ambassador Laurie Bristow, who are very much in charge on the ground.
The Anglo-American alliance is at its lowest point since the Suez crisis in 1956, and the levels of mistrust may even be worse now. I doubt if it will improve at all under the Biden presidency. With the Johnson administration’s declared Europhobia, the UK seems more isolated than since 1940. Quite what may be the geopolitical value of the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier group trundling across the Pacific is hard to fathom in the current crisis.
The Afghan project was subject to American distortion from the first in October 2001. Once the bin Laden cell and the Taliban regime were expelled from Kabul the following month, the superego of Donald Rumsfeld, abetted by Tony Blair, indulged in a muddle of strategy and policy which has persisted.
America wanted to push the Global War on Terror through Operation Enduring Freedom and wanted Europe to lead on the stabilisation and reconstruction of Afghanistan. Blair wanted to be in the top team for both. Rumsfeld didn’t care what happened – provided any representation of Taliban and Islam wasn’t involved. So the kleptocracy of the Karzai and Ghani years began. The Taliban were fighting their corner in rural Afghanistan within months.
Rumsfeld famously pulled the same stunt in Iraq two years later when through his vicar general in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, he disbanded the Iraqi army and the Baath Party administration and civil service, including all state primary school teachers. The result was sectarian mayhem, insurrection and the rise of the Islamic State – Daesh – and al Qaeda affiliate hoodlums such as Abu Musab al Zaqarwi.
In Afghanistan, the international forces under America decided from 2004 to extend their regimen and remit for the new, reformed Afghanistan across the country. This, amongst other things, took the British to the main opium growing province of Helmand. The aspiration, planning, and execution of this operation was pure confusion. The military, diplomats, aid experts and politicians talked past each other. Raw intelligence from people who had worked the region for years, such as FAO agronomist Anthony Fitzherbert, warned that if they put troops into Helmand “it would be a hornet’s nest. They would be in a fight as soon as they arrived.” He was ignored – and the UK faced eight years of sporadic civil war, costing a large number of the 457 military casualties taken in Afghanistan these past 20 years and a completely botched and corrosive counter-narcotics campaign.
The Brits and others did bring new learning, training, education, better hygiene and medicine – and a lot of that legacy is now at risk. But they couldn’t break the heavy legacy of Pashtu tribal society – sanctioning rape in marriage, the abduction of minors and trade in pubescent brides. The politicians – including those in Westminster – set the military impossible targets of civic regeneration for which they provided neither the resources nor manpower, nor time have any hope of lasting success.
The Americans didn’t much like the way the British went about their exercise in civics reform, either. In a way not fully catalogued yet they tilted persistently to the kinetic approach. Post the 2004 expansion, the first international force (ISAF) was led by Britain’s General David Richards. The Americans were dying to replace him and grabbed the steering wheel by putting in General Dan McNeil. His unfortunate sobriquet “Bomber McNeil” says it all. From 2006 it was to be war – and the Taliban began to hone their skills and tactics in rural and urban guerrilla warfare to new levels.
The guerrillas commanded the land, the night, and the imaginations of their fellow countrymen – for whom the foreigners, however well-intentioned and generous with cash, were always an alien presence. Men in tanks, with helmets growing from their bodies, with drones and rockets, seemed at times to be non-humans from another dimension.
Against this the Afghan national forces were no match. The Americans may have given billions of dollars to security forces that in reality were never near the 350,000 Biden now proclaims. The fighting strength of the Afghan Army was about 50,000 of demoralised under-funded, under-fueled and even unpaid troops. There has been a relentless cycle of defections, mutinies even, and desertion – so however good the equipment, there was little inclination or ability to use much of it.
America of course is not the only culprit in this sad story – but its terrible mistakes and misunderstanding of the realities of the crisis of Afghanistan has been critical in the current deficit of trust. The trust deficit corrodes old friendships such as the alliance with Britain and Europe, and between the Western partners and the majority of Afghan people.