Times writers say it's time to quit Afghanistan

Matthew Parris writes a remarkable commentary in The Times (UK):

The Taleban can't win in Afghanistan - but nor can we
By Matthew Parris

June 21 - History teaches us that British defiance always turns to compromise. Why should it be different in Afghanistan? ...

British commanders in the field are right to say that the Taleban's resort to crude terrorism marks a retreat of a kind: an acknowledgement that it cannot gain victory in set-piece battle. And nor can we. And nor can the Taleban gain victory by terrorism...

I'm only 58 years old but I remember through boyhood six huge and sustained campaigns against local insurgencies that have dominated the news in my lifetime, four of them British. They are Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, Aden, Algeria and Vietnam...

[Parris consulted the Times archives on the histories of these counterinsurgency wars and found a pattern in elite opinion:]

At first we announce that the insurgents must be beaten... We are confident that the insurgents do not represent the majority of the native population, who approve of our efforts.As the conflict drags on, we note that the insurgents are resorting to terrorist methods of the most cowardly sort. We observe that this threatens our popularity among the majority population, because of the intrusive methods we need to adopt to keep the terrorists at bay.Throughout we report successes and setbacks, the dominant tone being guardedly optimistic that the battle is being won so long as we redouble our efforts, send as many troops as necessary, and stay the course...After three or four years of fighting, we start to talk about a “settlement”, which we describe as (and genuinely persuade ourselves to be) a progressive and honourable move. We insist, in the immediate, that the military effort must be maintained, but that the battle - a battle for hearts and minds - will not be won by military means. Give-and-take may be necessary. And in the end we withdraw, never saying (even to ourselves) that we are retreating, and wish everyone well.

Take Aden:
December 31, 1964. “[The terrorist] campaign in Aden has been misconceived and mistimed and will misfire, whatever toll of innocent life the terrorists may take, and brag of, at the outset. Any appreciable reduction in the [commitment] is scarcely feasible.”

April 4, 1966. “The hope is that [regional delegates to a conference] will agree upon a combined Government with authority to treat with Britain on the transference of power. Terrorism will then come to an end, because it will have no further purpose.” ...

Or Kenya:
November 8, 1952. “There have been welcome signs that law-abiding citizens of all races are co-operating with the security forces... there can be no going back on the course which Britain set herself”

February 17, 1953. “The Armed Forces have conducted wide and successful sweeps through the affected areas the volume and accuracy of intelligence reports seem to be increasing.”

May 6, 1954. “Some 370 Africans have now been executed by hanging and 150 more are under sentence of death... anxiety cannot fail to be felt at the high number of executions”Enough. None of these cases is the same either as each other or as Afghanistan. But militarily we were in every case able to hold our own (or better) until the question “can we?” was replaced with the question “why”, as casualties and costs showed no sign of abating and the ingrained nature of our opponent's position looked harder to alter...

It is time the “why?” overtook the “can we?” in Afghanistan too... (link)

In a book review in the Times, Max Hastings (once a co-author of the reviewed book's author) observes: "A growing body of western critics such as Simon Jenkins argues that we must recognise failure in Afghanistan, and quit."

As a knighted former editor of the Times, Simon Jenkins is perhaps an unlikely advocate of the removal of western troops from Afghanistan. In the recent past he was heard moaning about taxes on second homes for well-off Brits. However, he is a specialist on the region and he is rather serious. In addition, he was an opponent of the military option to deal with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban back in 2001. He also writes in the Times:

Stop killing the Taliban – they offer the best hope of beating Al-Qaeda
By Simon Jenkins

June 22 - The British expedition to Afghanistan is on the brink of something worse than defeat: a long, low-intensity war from which no government will dare to extricate itself...

Those who still support the “good” Afghan war reply to any criticism by attempting to foreclose debate. They assert that we cannot be seen to surrender to the Taliban and we have gone in so far and must “finish the job”.

This is policy in denial...
A moment’s thought would show that any invasion that replaced the Taliban with a western puppet in Kabul would merely restore the Taliban as champions of Afghan sovereignty...

Two things were known about the Taliban [before 9/11] and they are probably still true. First, under outside pressure their leaders were moving from the manic extremism of their “student” origins, even responding to demands to curb the poppy harvest. The present Nato policy of killing the older leaders and thus leaving young hotheads in charge is daft.

Second, the Pashtun Taliban are not natural friends of the Arab Al-Qaeda, despite Bin Laden being given sanctuary by the Taliban’s Mullah Omar. Bin Laden helped the Taliban by murdering Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Tajik leader, but that put a Tajik price on his head, which no man wants. Then the 9/11 coup made the Taliban pariahs even within the region...

Seven recent books on relations between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban discussed in the current edition of The New York Review of Books scream one policy message: do not drive Al-Qaeda, set on crazy world domination, into the arms of the Taliban, set only on Pashtun nationalism...

There is much murmuring among realists that “we” should talk to the Taliban, as if we were Her Majesty’s Government dealing with the IRA. The parallel is absurd...

Hamid Karzai, the outgoing Afghan president, is the only one who can talk. He is no fool and has been attempting to do what Kabul rulers have always done: cut deals with whichever provincial commanders appear to control territory and can forge alliances with local Taliban or whoever. That may not be the grand strategy beloved of western think tanks, but it is the realpolitik of Afghanistan...

The Taliban’s chief objective is not world domination but a share of power in Afghanistan. While they cannot defeat western troops, they can defeat Nato’s war aim by continuing to build on their marriage of convenience with Al-Qaeda...

While it is implausible for the West to withdraw from Kabul at present, the attempt to establish military control over provincial Afghanistan is merely jeopardising the war aim. Security within the country now depends on fashioning the patchwork of alliances sought, however corruptly, by Karzai. It means dealing with reality, not trying to change it with guns and bombs.

It therefore makes sense to withdraw soldiers from the provinces and forget “nation-building” in the hope that Karzai can exert some leverage over local commanders to separate the Taliban from the Al-Qaeda cells in Pakistan. This is a race against the most appalling strategic catastrophe, a political collapse in Pakistan that may open a new and horrific front involving Al-Qaeda.

It is madness to prolong an Afghan war that can only undermine the most unstable nuclear power in the world, Pakistan. The war is visiting misery on millions and destroying western interests across central Asia... (link)