Sadly, against this backdrop, the coalition is increasingly putting the viability of that mission at risk. A short-sighted defence review, an inflexible withdrawal date with aid budgets being used to cover this up, and an inability to tackle the root cause of Afghanistan’s insecurity: corruption.
The government’s new defence review raises questions about the long-term purpose of our military at a time when a high number of British troops are fighting in Afghanistan. Spending by the Ministry of Defence is not an easy nut to crack; the investment needed in long-term projects and the rising in-year budgets for troop deployments make attempts to cut spending hard to balance between long- and short-term priorities. But the coalition (which celebrates its six month anniversary this weekend) has taken the risky step of cutting our armed forces to the extent that any future military operations will be severely limited, affecting our security and our ability to protect ourselves.
This isn’t an insignificant decision: a total of 17,000 soldiers, pilots and sailors will be cut from the armed forces as a result of the review. Any new military operations will be limited to a 30,000 personnel short-term deployment. This falls 15,000 short of our deployment to Iraq in 2003 and in the event of a major war-fighting situation limits our defensive capability.
This has implications for our operation in Afghanistan. The flexibility of the British and American missions in Afghanistan has centred around multiservice capability with a strong interface between the police, Afghan National Army (ANA) and the international forces. The intensity of the international military presence has allowed for the training of ANA troops, and for the ability to ‘surge’ and build-up heavy military capabilities of international forces for short-term operations.
More importantly, the defence review cuts mean that for ‘enduring operations’ such as Afghanistan the UK will only be able to deploy a force of 6,500 personnel. This falls over 3,000 short of the UK’s current deployment to Afghanistan. The coalition has been attacked by senior military figures for threatening the entire viability of the mission there, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former head of the army has called for more troops, not less, stating: ‘To go on with a routine deployment of 10,000 is unsustainable. The pressure on our people is huge’.
But the review isn’t the only aspect of our mission in Afghanistan the coalition are putting at risk. David Cameron has committed to removing all UK forces from Afghanistan by 2015 – regardless of the security situation. There are pros and cons to an arbitrary withdrawal date, but when the outcome of the conflict is far from certain any decision to withdraw must be made for the right reasons. It certainly shouldn’t be covered up with the diversion of over £200 million from the DfID budget into preparing for a full UK troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is what is happening. If funding from aid budgets is to be invested in Afghanistan it should done so alongside a military and security investment for the long-term stability of the country, not a short-term fixer to allow UK troops to withdraw.
Finally, as the current instability in Afghanistan has led the US Senate to put on hold a $4 billion aid package due to fears of massive state-sponsored corruption, the coalition government here has done nothing to tackling the endemic problems of corruption at the top of the Karzai regime. In recent months President Karzai has admitted to receiving millions of dollars from the Iranian government, he has blocked an independent investigation into allegations of international aid being flown out of his presidential residence in suitcases, and has failed to implement his commitments made over a year ago at the London Conference to tackle corruption in the armed forces, and regional government in Afghanistan.
The new Liberal Democrat and Conservative ministers who are looking forward to the Christmas period for a break from the gruelling ministerial workload should rethink their Afghanistan policy, or lack of one, and remember the importance of our mission there to our own security, and support our armed forces.
I’ll back the coalition, sorry but never again should a British leader send this country to war so he can make millions. I’m sick and tired of people telling our lads how brave they are when we pay them the min wage, we tell the parents wive sons daughters they will never be forgotten, as I asked my MP to name ten dead soldiers when they came out with they will never be forgotten of course they will most people would not be able to name a single dead soldier. Wars to protect this country Iraq was sod all about protection the US troops raced full pace to protect the our fields that was sod all about protecting the UK. Afghanistan is not the problem for the UK most of these people are uneducated and would not know where the UK was, they do now, the problem is Pakistan . So sorry this is rubbish
‘ They ‘ are our brothers and sisters,of the world.There are uneducated people everywhere ! rich or poor ,trapped and defined by culture and not.
Please remove the word ‘progressive’ from everything relating to your name Mr. Chaplin. Go read something about war, democracy and imperialism and have a go at rethinking this whole issue outside of your labour hack mindset. For example, the coalition cannot do anything about corruption in the Afghanistan government because it was formed as a top down, technocratic, coalition approved system of government. So there is no relationship with the ordinary people, everything is done behind locked doors, so of course there is going to be corruption. How about let a grass roots movement shape and create democracy in Afghanistan, thereby allowing people to actually form mechanisms for accountability?