UK 'not convinced' by Afghan goal

 

 

The public are not convinced that the UK's Afghanistan mission is "doable," the head of the armed forces has said.

 

Sir Jock Stirrup told BBC One's Andrew Marr show it was "incredibly important that we do better at explaining the successes we are having".

 

It comes as a BBC poll found 64% of Britons believe the war is "unwinnable", up from 58% in July.

 

But Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth said the UK's presence there could not be determined by public opinion.

 

Sir Jock acknowledged that progress was "painful, slow and halting", but he said that the troops doing the fighting believed that they were gaining ground.

 

'Worth fighting for'

 

He said not nearly enough had been done to "demonstrate that over the long term that this is doable. "

 

 

POLITICS SHOW/COMRES SURVEY

I feel I have a good understanding of the purpose of Britain's mission in Afghanistan

Agree 54%, disagree 42%, don't know 4%

All British forces should be withdrawn from Afghanistan as quickly as possible

Agree 63%, disagree 31%, don't know 6%

The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable

Agree 64%, disagree 27%, don't know 10%

The levels of corruption involved in the recent Presidential election show the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting for

Agree 52%, disagree 36%, don't know 12%

Sample: 1,009 adults polled by phone on 4 and 5 November

 

 

He added: "What we see is the downside and it is a very, very painful downside, tragic losses bereaved families back home that are having to cope with that loss, people who are injured and having to deal with a complete change in their life.

 

"But, out there on the ground, talk to the people who are doing it on the ground and they will tell you that they are making real progress. We have got to do much better at describing their progress."

 

Sir Jock said the Afghan army would not be able to take over security until 2014 - a year later than the current US estimate, which he said was "a little optimistic".

 

Challenged about a front page story in The Independent on Sunday questioning the mission, he said: "It is true that al-Qeada are not operating in Afghanistan at the moment. It is also true that over the last couple of years in particular the al-Qeada core has suffered significant damage".

 

That did not mean "that they could not come back, that they are finished for good" but if pressure on them continued "they could be," he argued.

 

He rejected the argument of former foreign office minister Kim Howells that Britain would be better off pulling out its troops and switching resources to building up security at home.

 

"You can't defend just on the goal-line. That won't work," he said.

 

'Clear military progress'

 

Air Chief Marshal Stirrup's comments came as hundreds of people gathered in London for the annual Remembrance service and British troops at Camp Bastion, in Afghanistan, remembered the fallen on a day another soldier was killed, taking the British death toll to 231.

 

Turning to strategy on the ground, Sir Jock confirmed the international force (ISAF) would focus more on the main population centres in Afghanistan - but he denied Britain was planning to pull out of the key Helmand town of Musa Qala, which was retaken from the Taleban amid heavy fighting in 2007.

 

 

This campaign is directly connected to our safety back here in the United Kingdom and people need to recognise that

 

Bob Ainsworth, defence secretary

He also acknowledged there was frustration in London at Washington's delay in sending more troops to Afghanistan, saying the current strategy requires more force "and if that force is not forthcoming we will have to think again".

 

In a poll for the BBC's Politics Show, 42% of the 1,009 adults surveyed said they did not understand the purpose of Britain's mission in Afghanistan.

 

Some 63% of those surveyed felt UK troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible, and 52% agreed that levels of corruption in Afghanistan's government meant the war was "not worth fighting for".

 

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth acknowledged public opinion had been "dented" by recent losses, but added: "We cannot run a campaign like this off the back of an opinion poll."

 

He told Sky News: "We have to persevere, we have to show some resolution.

 

"This campaign is directly connected to our safety back here in the United Kingdom and people need to recognise that. Failure will be a disaster for us."

 

The government's strategy on Afghanistan has come under heavy scrutiny in a week in which five British soldiers were killed in an attack by an Afghan police officer.

 

So far, 94 UK service personnel have been killed in 2009 - the highest toll in a single year since the Falklands campaign 27 years ago.

 

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague backed calls for a better communications strategy, but said "actual military success" also had to be demonstrated.

 

He said: "Public support would not be sustained for a campaign of that length in which we could not show really clear military and political progress in Afghanistan."

 

The senior UK commander in Afghanistan, Lt Gen Jim Dutton, echoed these comments, saying in an interview with BBC One's Politics Show that the public "have to believe that we can win".

 

The number of British military personnel killed on operations in Afghanistan since 2001 stands at 231.

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Well, in the week that an Afghan policeman shot and killed 5 British soldiers, I think the question has to be asked - ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING A BLIND BIT OF GOOD? And frankly, I dont think we are.... The occupation of Afghanistan has been a disaster, all the invasion actually achieved was to see the Taliban scurry across the border into Pakistan, where they've been making very significant gains in support.. Up until 2001, the Taliban had practically BUGGER ALL support in Pakistan, but now, they're about 70 miles outside Islamabad thanks to ours and the US stupidity in even thinking we could control Afghanistan.... The full might of the Soviet war machine couldn't, what on earth made US think that we could...?? As for Bin Laden, well, he's become almost a folk hero really... Making his DVDs and generally just sticking two fingers up at NATO because, really, he knows damn fine that we just cant touch him..... What an absolute PR disaster this is for US and UK Govts....

 

So, should we pull out...? I really dunno, there's the argument that yes, we fukked things up, so we have a responsibility to sort it out, but on the other, what CAN we possibly do in a country which is so rife with corruption that members of the Police and Security forces are doing deals with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and then do deals with NATO troops in order to play them off against one another... And, also, is the Karzai Govt REALLY that big an improvement on the Taliban anyway...? His own Parliament actually voted IN FAVOUR of Marital Rape, it was only overturned after strong objections from UK and US.... So, exactly WHO is it we're out there supporting...? Taliban-lite by the sounds of it.... Is it worth the deaths and grievous injuries of our servicemen and women to defend a bunch who are pretty much almost as bad as the last lot...? WHAT IS THE FUKKIN' POINT????? Seriously, I want answers to this, because our Govt sure as hell isn't telling us everything..... <_<

 

It comes as a BBC poll found 64% of Britons believe the war is "unwinnable", up from 58% in July.

 

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Well, in the week that an Afghan policeman shot and killed 5 British soldiers, I think the question has to be asked - ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING A BLIND BIT OF GOOD? And frankly, I dont think we are.... The occupation of Afghanistan has been a disaster, all the invasion actually achieved was to see the Taliban scurry across the border into Pakistan, where they've been making very significant gains in support.. Up until 2001, the Taliban had practically BUGGER ALL support in Pakistan, but now, they're about 70 miles outside Islamabad thanks to ours and the US stupidity in even thinking we could control Afghanistan.... The full might of the Soviet war machine couldn't, what on earth made US think that we could...?? As for Bin Laden, well, he's become almost a folk hero really... Making his DVDs and generally just sticking two fingers up at NATO because, really, he knows damn fine that we just cant touch him..... What an absolute PR disaster this is for US and UK Govts....

 

So, should we pull out...? I really dunno, there's the argument that yes, we fukked things up, so we have a responsibility to sort it out, but on the other, what CAN we possibly do in a country which is so rife with corruption that members of the Police and Security forces are doing deals with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and then do deals with NATO troops in order to play them off against one another... And, also, is the Karzai Govt REALLY that big an improvement on the Taliban anyway...? His own Parliament actually voted IN FAVOUR of Marital Rape, it was only overturned after strong objections from UK and US.... So, exactly WHO is it we're out there supporting...? Taliban-lite by the sounds of it.... Is it worth the deaths and grievous injuries of our servicemen and women to defend a bunch who are pretty much almost as bad as the last lot...? WHAT IS THE FUKKIN' POINT????? Seriously, I want answers to this, because our Govt sure as hell isn't telling us everything..... <_<

About 70% are in favour of the death penalty, that doesn't necessarily mean it's right...it IS winnable, but not in the way we're approaching it. We're supporting a government made up of tyrants who voted a female MP out of parliament, Malalai Joya, for criticising the government for merely giving the warlords a title for paying their way into parliament. We're going about it in ENTIRELY the wrong way...we need to instead prevent people from turning to the Taliban and the fundamentalist authorities and construct alternatives to the disgustingly ubiquitous madrassas that are indoctrinating the vulnerable Pakistanis and Afghans...two useful articles I found:

 

"I am not sure how many more days I will be alive," Malalai Joya says quietly. The warlords who make up the new "democratic" government in Afghanistan have been sending bullets and bombs to kill this tiny 30-year-old from the refugee camps for years – and they seem to be getting closer with every attempt. Her enemies call her a "dead woman walking". "But I don't fear death, I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice," she says plainly. "I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: 'I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.'"

 

The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and – when they were toppled – cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists.

 

But she says: "Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is]what your soldiers are dying for." Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.

 

The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan – the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda.

 

 

I "We are our sisters' keepers"

 

I meet Joya in a London apartment where she is staying with a supporter for a week, to talk about her memoir – but even here, her movements have to be kept secret, as she flits from one safe house to another. I am told not to mention her location to anyone. She is standing in the corridor, small and slim, with her hair flowing freely, and she greets me with a solid handshake. But, when our photographer snaps her, she begins to giggle girlishly: the grief etched on to her sallow face melts away, and she laughs in joyous little squeaks. "I can never get used to this!" she says.

 

Then, as I sit her down to talk through her life-story, the pain soaks into her face once more. Her body tightens into a tense coil, and her fists close.

 

Joya was four days old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day, her father dropped out of his studies to fight the invading Communist army, and vanished into the mountains. She says: "Since then, all we have known is war."

 

Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother's legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children alive as best she could. When the police became too aggressive, she took her kids to refugee camps across the border in Iran. In these filthy tent-cities lying on the old Silk Road, Afghans huddled together and were treated as second-class citizens by the Iranian regime. At night, wild animals could wander into the tents and attack children. There, word reached the family that Joya's father had been blown up by a landmine – but he was alive, after losing a leg.

 

There were no schools in the Iranian camps, and Joya's mother was determined her daughters would receive the education she never had. So they fled again, to camps in western Pakistan. There, Joya began to read – and was transformed. "Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are," she says. Starting in her early teens, she inhaled all the literature she could – from Persian poetry to the plays of Bertolt Brecht to the speeches of Martin Luther King. She began to teach her new-found literacy to the older women in the camps, including her own mother.

 

She soon discovered that she loved to teach – and, when she turned 16, a charity called the Organisation for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) made a bold suggestion: go to Afghanistan, and set up a secret school for girls, under the noses of the Taliban tyranny.

 

So she gathered her few clothes and books and was smuggled across the border – and "the best days of my life" began. She loathed being forced to wear a burka, being harassed on the streets by the omnipresent "vice and virtue" police, and being under constant threat of being discovered and executed. But she says it was worth it for the little girls. "Every time a new girl joined the class, it was a triumph," she says, beaming. "There is no better feeling."

 

She only just avoided being caught, again and again. One time she was teaching a class of girls in a family's basement when the mother of the house yelled down suddenly: "Taliban! Taliban!" Joya says: "I told my students to lie down on the floor and stay totally silent. We heard footsteps above us and waited a long time." On many occasions, ordinary men and women – anonymous strangers – helped her out by sending the police charging off in the wrong direction. She adds: "Every day in Afghanistan, even now, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women act out these small gestures of solidarity with each other. We are our sisters' keepers."

 

The charity was so impressed with her they appointed her their director. Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. "Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy," she says. "The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped."

 

As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced – by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, "I realised women's rights had been sold out completely... Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban – and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters."

 

The warlords "have ruled Afghanistan ever since," she adds. While a "showcase parliament has been created for the benefit of the US in Kabul", the real power "is with these fundamentalists who rule everywhere outside Kabul". As an example, she names the former governor of Herat, Ismail Khan. He set up his own "vice and virtue" squads which terrorised women and smashed up video and music cassettes. He had his own "private militias, private jails". The constitution of Afghanistan is irrelevant in these private fiefdoms.

 

Joya discovered just what this meant when she started to set up the clinic – and a local warlord announced that it would not be allowed, since she was a woman, and a critic of fundamentalism. She did it anyway, and decided to fight this fundamentalist by running in the election for the Loya jirga ("meeting of the elders") to draw up the new Afghan constitution. There was a great swelling of support for this girl who wanted to build a clinic – and she was elected. "It turned out my mission," she says, "would be to expose the true nature of the jirga from within."

 

II "I would never again be safe"

 

As she stepped past the world's television cameras into the Loya jirga, the first thing Joya saw was "a long row with some of the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known – warlords and war criminals and fascists".

 

She could see the men who invited Osama bin Laden into the country, the men who introduced the misogynist laws later followed by the Taliban, the men who had massacred Afghan civilians. Some had got there by intimidating the electorate, others by vote-rigging, and yet more were simply appointed by Hamid Karzai, the former oilman installed by the US army to run the country. She thought of an old Afghan saying: "It's the same donkey, with a new saddle."

 

For a moment, as these old killers started to give long speeches congratulating themselves on the transition to democracy, Joya felt nervous. But then, she says, "I remembered the oppression we face as women in my country, and my nervousness evaporated, replaced by anger."

 

When her turn came, she stood, looked around at the blood-soaked warlords on every side, and began to speak. "Why are we allowing criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now... It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who have brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again... They should instead be prosecuted in the national and international courts."

 

These warlords – who brag about being hard men – could not cope with a slender young woman speaking the truth. They began to shriek and howl, calling her a "prostitute" and "infidel", and throwing bottles at her. One man tried to punch her in the face. Her microphone was cut off and the jirga descended into a riot.

 

"From that moment on," Joya says, "I would never again be safe... For fundamentalists, a women is half a human, meant only to fulfil a man's every wish and lust, and to produce children and toil in the home. They could not believe that a young woman was tearing off their masks in front of the eyes of the Afghan people."

 

A fundamentalist mob turned up a few hours later at her accommodation, announcing they had come to rape and lynch her. She had to be placed under immediate armed guard – but she refused to be protected by American troops, insisting on Afghan officers.

 

Her speech was broadcast all over the world – and cheered in Afghanistan. She was flooded with support from the people of her country, delighted that somebody had finally spoken out. One dirt-poor village pooled its cash to send a delegate hundreds of miles across the country to explain how pleased they were.

 

An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons – one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: "I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear."

 

She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: "You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me."

 

But the US and Nato occupiers instructed Joya that she must show "politeness and respect" for the other delegates. When Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, said this, she replied: "If these criminals raped your mother or your daughter or your grandmother, or killed seven of your sons, let alone destroyed all the moral and material treasure of your country, what words would you use against such criminals that will be inside the framework of politeness and respect?"

 

She leans forward and quotes Brecht: "He says, 'He who does not know the truth is only a fool. He who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal.'"

 

The attempts to murder her began then with a sniper – and have not stopped since. But she says plainly, with her fist clenched: "I wanted the warlords to know I was not afraid of them."

 

So she ran for parliament – and won in a landslide. "I would return again to face those who had ruined my country," she explains, "and I was determined that I would stand straight and never bow again to their threats."

 

III "In every corner is a killer"

 

Joya looked out across the new Afghan parliament on her first day and thought: "In every corner is a killer, a puppet, a criminal, a drug lord, a fascist. This is not democracy. I am one of the very few people here who has been genuinely elected." She started her maiden speech by saying: "My condolences to the people of Afghanistan..."

 

Before she could continue, the warlords began to shout that they would rape and kill her. One warlord, Abdul Sayyaf, yelled a threat at her. Joya looked him straight in the eye and said: "We are not in [the area he rules by force] here, so control yourself."

 

I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. "I am never frightened when I tell the truth." She is speaking fast now: "I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me."

 

She says there is no difference for ordinary Afghans between the Taliban and the equally fundamentalist warlords. "Which groups are labelled 'terrorist' or 'fundamentalist' depends on how useful they are to the goals of the US," she says. "You have two sides who terrorise women, but the anti-American side are 'terrorists' and the pro-American side are 'heroes'."

 

Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is "a shameless puppet" who will win next month's presidential elections because "he hasn't yet stopped working for his masters, the US and the warlords... At this point in our history, the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the US government and the mafia that holds power in our country."

 

Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women – and get back in the fight. She tells me about a 16-year-old constituent of hers, Rahella, who ran away to an orphanage Joya had helped to set up in her constituency. "Her uncle had decided to marry her off to his son, who was a drug addict. She was terrified. So of course we took her in, educated her, helped her." One day, her uncle turned up and apologised, saying he had learnt the error of his ways. He asked if she could come home for a weekend to visit her family. Joya agreed – and when she got back to her village, Rahella was forced into marriage and spirited away to another part of Afghanistan. They heard six months later that she had doused herself in petrol and burned herself alive.

 

There has been an epidemic of self-immolation by women across the "new" Afghanistan in the past five years. "The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery," she says, "they are crying out for justice."

 

But she was not allowed to raise these issues in the supposedly democratic parliament. The fundamentalist warlords who couldn't beat Joya at the ballot box or kill her chanced upon a new way to silence her. The more she spoke, the angrier they got. She called for secularism in Afghanistan, saying: "Religion is a private issue, unrelated to political issues and the government... Real Muslims do not require political leaders to guide them to Islam." She condemned the new law that declared an amnesty for all war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 30 years, saying "You criminals are simply giving yourselves a get-out-of-jail free card." So the MPs simply voted to kick her out of parliament.

 

It was illegal and undemocratic – but the President, Hamid Karzai, supported the ban. "Now the warlord criminals are unchallenged in parliament," she says. "Is that democracy?"

 

We in the West have been fed "a pack of lies" about what Afghanistan looks like today. "The media are 'free' only if they do not try to criticise warlords and officials," she says in her book, Raising My Voice. As an example, she names a specific warlord: "If you write anything about him, the next day you will be tortured or killed by the Northern Alliance warlords." It is "a myth" to say girls can now go to school outside Kabul. "Only five per cent of girls, according to the UN, can follow their education to the 12th grade."

 

And it is "false" to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. "By the 1950s, there was a growing women's movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights," she says. "I have a story here" – she rifles through her notes – "from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is 'Afghanistan's women lift the veil'. We were developing an open culture for women – and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again."

 

Many of her friends urge her to leave the country, before one of her wannabe-assassins gets lucky. But, she says, "I can never leave when all the poor people that I love are living in danger and poverty. I am not going to search for a better and safer place, and leave them in a burning hell." Apologising for her English – which is, in fact, excellent – she quotes Brecht again: "Those who do struggle often fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed."

 

Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. But, she says, any Afghan democrat today is "trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns." She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. "With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it [will be] easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies."

 

If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country's war criminals to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. "Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished," she says, "from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush." Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed – many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."

 

The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 per cent of Afghans want an immediate Nato withdrawal. Many people in Afghanistan were hopeful, she says, about Barack Obama – "but he is actually intensifying the policy of George Bush... I know his election has great symbolic value in terms of the struggle of African-Americans for equal rights, and this struggle is one I admire and respect. But what is important for the world is not whether the President is black or white, but his actions. You can't eat symbolism."

 

US policy is driven by geopolitics, she says, not personalities. "Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia, so it's a very important place to have military bases – so they can control trade very easily with other Asian powers such as China, Russia, Iran and so on.

 

"But it can be changed by Americans," she adds. She is passionate now, her voice rising. "I say to Obama – in my area, 150 people were blown up by US troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m (£11m) to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? I say to Obama – change course, or otherwise tomorrow people will call you another Bush."

 

IV "It's hard to be strong all the time"

 

"It's not good to show my enemies any weakness, [but] it's hard to be strong all the time," Joya says with a sigh, as she runs her hands through her hair. She has been speaking so insistently – with such preternatural courage– that it's easy to forget she was just a girl when she was thrust into fighting fundamentalism. She was never allowed an adolescence. The fierce concentration on her face melts away, and she looks a little lost. "Yes, my mother is proud of me," she says, "but you know how mothers are – they worry. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, the first sentence and the last sentence are always 'Take care'."

 

Two years ago, she got married in secret. She can't name her husband publicly, because he would be killed. Her wedding flowers had to be checked for bombs. She will only say that they met at a press conference, "and he supports everything I do". She has not seen him "for two months", she says. "We meet in the safe houses of supporters. I cannot sleep in the same house two nights running. It is a different home every evening."

 

Where does this courage come from? She acts as if the answer is obvious – anyone would do it, she claims. But they don't. Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. "When I die, others will come. I am sure of that," she says.

 

She certainly has a strong sense of belonging to a long history of Afghans who fought for freedom. "My parents chose my first name after Malalai of Maiwand. She was a young woman who, in 1880, went to the front line of the second Anglo-Afghan war to tend the wounded. When the fighters were close to collapse, she picked up the Afghan flag and led the men into battle herself. She was struck down – but the British suffered a landmark defeat, and, in the end, they were driven out."

 

When she ran for office, she had to choose a surname for herself, to protect her family's identity. "I named myself after Sarwar Joya, the Afghan poet and constitutionalist. He spent 24 years in jails, and was finally killed because he wouldn't compromise his democratic principles... In Afghanistan we have a saying: the truth is like the sun. When it comes up, nobody can block it out or hide it."

 

Malalai Joya knows she could be killed any day now, in our newly liberated Warlord-istan. She hugs me goodbye and says, "We must keep in touch." But I find myself bleakly wondering if we will ever meet again. Perhaps she senses this, because she suddenly urges me to look again at the last paragraph of her memoir, Raising My Voice. "It really is how I feel," she says. It reads: "If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice." I look up into her face, and she is giving me the bravest smile I have ever seen.

 

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.

 

Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict. The populations of both countries are in close agreement. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 51 per cent of Americans say the war is "not worth fighting" and that ending the foreign occupation will "reduce terrorism". Only 27 per cent disagree. At the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are "unacceptable", and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs.

 

But there is another side: General Stanley McCrystal says that if he is given another 40,000 troops – on top of the current increase which has pushed military levels above anything in the Bush years – he will "finally win" by "breaking the back" of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida.

 

How should Obama – and us, the watching world – figure out who is right? We have to start from a hard-headed acknowledgement. Every option from here entails a risk – to Afghan civilians, and to Americans and Europeans. It is not possible to achieve absolute safety. We can only try to figure out what would bring the least risk, and pursue it.

 

There is obviously a huge risk in sending an extra 40,000 machine-gun wielding troops into a country they don't understand to "clear" huge areas of insurgent fighters who look exactly like the civilian population, and establish "control" of places that have never been controlled by a central government at any point in their history.

 

Every military counter-insurgency strategy hits up against the probability that it will, in time, create more enemies than it kills. So you blow up a suspected Taliban site and kill two of their commanders – but you also kill 98 women and children, whose families are from that day determined to kill your men and drive them out of their country. Those aren't hypothetical numbers. They come from Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, who was General Petraeus' counter-insurgency advisor in Iraq. He says that US aerial attacks on the Afghan-Pakistan border have killed 14 al-Qa'ida leaders, at the expense of more than 700 civilian lives. He says: "That's a hit rate of 2 per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It's not moral." It explains the apparent paradox that broke the US in Vietnam: the more "bad guys" you kill, the more you have to kill.

 

There is an even bigger danger than this. General Petraeus's strategy is to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan. When he succeeds, they run to Pakistan – where the nuclear bombs are.

 

To justify these risks, the proponents of the escalation need highly persuasive arguments to show how their strategy slashed other risks so dramatically that it outweighed these dangers. It's not inconceivable – but I found that in fact the case they give for escalating the war, or for continuing the occupation, is based on three premises that turn to Afghan dust on inspection.

 

Argument One: We need to deprive al-Qa'ida of military bases in Afghanistan, or they will use them to plot attacks against us, and we will face 9/11 redux. In fact, virtually all the jihadi attacks against Western countries have been planned in those Western countries themselves, and required extremely limited technological capabilities or training. The 9/11 atrocities were planned in Hamburg and Florida by 19 Saudis who only needed to know how to use box-cutters and to crash a plane. The 7/7 suicide-murders were planned in Yorkshire by young British men who learned how to make bombs off the internet. Only last week, a jihadi was arrested for plotting to blow up a skyscraper in that notorious jihadi base, Dallas, Texas. And on, and on.

 

In reality, there are almost no al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan. That's not my view: it's that of General Jim Jones, the US National Security Advisor. He said recently there are 100 al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan. That's worth repeating: there are 100 al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan. Nor is that a sign that the war is working. The Taliban or warlords friendly to them already control 40 per cent of Afghanistan now, today. They can build all the "training camps" they want there – but they have only found a hundred fundamentalist thugs to staff them.

 

Even if – and this is highly unlikely – you could plug every hole in the Afghan state's authority and therefore make it possible to shut down every camp, there are a dozen other failed states they can scuttle off to the next day and pitch some more tents. Again, that's not my view. Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, says: "As we disrupt [al-Qa'ida], they will seek other safe havens. Somalia and Yemen are potential al-Qa'ida bases in the future." The US can't occupy every failed state in the world for decades – so why desperately try to plug one hole in a bath full of leaks, when the water will only seep out anyway?

 

There are plenty of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan – but they are a different matter to al-Qa'ida. The latest leaked US intelligence reports say, according to the Boston Globe, that 90 per cent of them are "a tribal, localised insurgency" who "see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power". They have "no goals" beyond Afghanistan's borders.

 

Argument Two: By staying, we are significantly improving Afghan human rights, especially for women. This, for me, is the meatiest argument – and the most depressing. The Taliban are indeed one of the vilest forces in the world, imprisoning women in their homes and torturing them for the "crimes" of showing their faces, expressing their sexuality, or being raped. They keep trying to murder my friend Malalai Joya for the "crime" of being elected to parliament on a platform of treating women like human beings not cattle.

 

But as she told me last month: "Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords." Outside Kabul, vicious Taliban who enforce sharia law have merely been replaced by vicious warlords who enforce sharia law. "The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women," she said. Any Afghan president – Karzai, or his opponents – will only ever in practice be the mayor of Kabul. Beyond is a sea of warlordism, as evil to women as Mullah Omar. That is not a difference worth fighting and dying for.

 

Argument Three: If we withdraw, it will be a great victory for al-Qa'ida. Re-energised, they will surge out across the world. In fact, in November 2004, Osama bin Laden bragged to his followers: "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen [jihadi fighters] to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qa'ida" in order to make generals race there, and we cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses – without their achieving anything of note!" These wars will, he said, boost al-Qa'ida recruitment across the world, and in time "bankrupt America". They walked right into his trap.

 

Yes, there is real risk in going – but it is dwarfed by the risk of staying. A bloody escalation in the war is more likely to fuel jihadism than thwart it. If Obama is serious about undermining this vile fanatical movement, it would be much wiser to take the hundreds of billions he is currently squandering on chasing after a hundred fighters in the Afghan mountains and redeploy it. Spend it instead on beefing up policing and intelligence, and on building a network of schools across Pakistan and other flash-points in the Muslim world, so parents there have an alternative to the fanatical madrassahs that churn out bin Laden-fodder. The American people will be far safer if the world sees them building schools for Muslim kids instead of dropping bombs on them.

 

He can explain – with his tongue dipped in amazing eloquence – that trying to defeat al-Qa'ida with hundreds of thousands of occupying troops and Predator jets is like trying to treat cancer with a blowtorch. Now, that really would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

Interesting articles Tyron... Thing is, they only server to convince me even more that the "War on Terror" is just a completely unwinnable in its present form.. The mistakes that have been made are nothing less than catastrophic IMO.... Barack Obama has basically inherited something that he cant possibly win... Unless he actually does do the "unthinkable" and sit down with Al Qaeda and The Taliban at the negotiating table.... Seriously, I honestly believe that compromise is perhaps the only way to solve this... It worked in Northern Ireland, where a equivaltent "unthinkable" thing was done and we sat down with the IRA, Unionist Terrorists and thrashed out a compromise... The ceasefire in NI has held, despite difficulties and many terrorist groups disbanded or gave up weapons.... So, I believe that that basically, negotiation is the only way to sort this out... People act as if the Taliban and Al Qaeda are just completely irrational and have no political endgame, that it's all just random... Well, that's just complete bullsh!t, those high up the hierarchy (who would be the ones to negotiate with in any case) DO have and endgame, they DO have very clearly defined POLITICAL objectives, just like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness did....

 

Like it or not people, to quote Matt Bellamy - "this war, it cant be won", not in its current form, every conflict has to have a clearly defined exit strategy, do we even HAVE one of those in Afghanistan or Iraq....? No, I genuinely believe that the time has come to get to the negotiating table a'la Downing Street in the early 90s.... And really, it's only Obama who would be capable of pulling this off because he's a black US president with an Islamic background; whether anyone in America actually lets him do so, is another matter entirely.... -_-

 

If Obama were to pull this off, he really WOULD be worthy of that Nobel Peace Prize.....

polls mean nothing really... and as for the broader picture regarding this war... yep it probably is unwinnable , i have not idea if we can civilise that country or whether it really wants to be 'tamed' and westernised.

i have complete confusion on how you can win a war against people who dont even turn up on the battle field. They are trained in back yards and private camps and then one or two pop up every so often to kill a handful of soldiers. It will take a generation to allow a culture change to solve this and I dont see in the mean time anything improving drastically. Even the latest Afghan election was shrouded in talks of cheating and vote rigging. If there really is corruption in the very democratic government that is now in place they need to be left to their own devises. Right now the UK has FAR better things to be spending its money on.

polls mean nothing really... and as for the broader picture regarding this war... yep it probably is unwinnable , i have not idea if we can civilise that country or whether it really wants to be 'tamed' and westernised.

 

I'm a tad confused Rob... You say the poll "means nothing", yet you appear to agree with its conclusions...... :lol:

 

Anyway, yes, indeed, the war is unwinnable.. I just dont see what possible good it is that we're doing there... We vehemently opposed the Taliban regime for being corrupt and for the way it treated women, and, er, well, Karzai's lot are really just as bad on both of those points in many ways.... And there are very clear indications that the "elections" were even more dodgy than the last poll in Zimbabwe was....

 

So, just what the fukk we're doing propping up this regime god only knows, we got "rid" of the Taliban, and now the Warlords are in control and basically Karzai's Govt is merely their puppet.... Those in favour of the war will probably say "Oh, but if we leave, the Taliban will come back"... Yeah, like it would actually make that much of a difference.... Besides, the Taliban are having too much fun in Pakistan right now... It would frankly make far more sense for NATO to have a strong military presence in Pakistan to support the properly Elected govt of that country tbh seeing as how they have NUCLEAR WEAPONS and all..... We should never have invaded Afghanistan, simple as, all we actually did was make a bad situation infinitely worse... What SHOULD have been done was to isolate Afghanistan from the rest of the world, even build a "Great Wall of China" type structure at the Afghan/Pakistan border so the Taliban buggers couldn't actually get into Pakistan to destabilise whole regions of that country...... The facts are The Taliban had very little support in Pakistan until we, in our infinite wisdom, decided to invade its neighbour....

 

As far as I'm concerned, Afghanistan has now become our Vietnam... There are so many parallels and similarities between these two conflicts it's frankly frightening... Vietnam scarred a whole generation of Americans, we should NOT allow the same thing to happen to us..... It's high time to bring the troops home I feel, we're doing no good at all out there....

As far as I'm concerned, Afghanistan has now become our Vietnam... There are so many parallels and similarities between these two conflicts it's frankly frightening... Vietnam scarred a whole generation of Americans, we should NOT allow the same thing to happen to us..... It's high time to bring the troops home I feel, we're doing no good at all out there....

 

Totally agree with these sentiments, armies have been trying to beat the afghans in one form or another for over 150 years, and no one has managed it yet. At least if the Country had a leader who was honest and comanded respect it might be worth fighting for, but quite clearly this guy is corrupt through and through, so soldiers and civilians are dying for not purpose whatsover. Our leaders are no better than General Haig in the first world war sending wave after wave over the trenches.

 

In another news item I read that bonuses have reared there ugly head once again, this time £47m is being paid to the MOD civilian staff. Not bad if you can get it, is this danger money for possible paper cuts, or the dangerous shredding machine, or the sharp pencil sharpeners.

 

I was astounded that there are 85,000 people work for the MOD, what on earth do they all do? No wonder the front line troops cannot get supplies where and when they want, there is so much burocracy.

In another news item I read that bonuses have reared there ugly head once again, this time £47m is being paid to the MOD civilian staff. Not bad if you can get it, is this danger money for possible paper cuts, or the dangerous shredding machine, or the sharp pencil sharpeners.

 

That really is quite fukkin' disgusting... In a lot of ways, even worse than the Bankers.... How, exactly does the Govt justify this BS....? <_<

That really is quite fukkin' disgusting... In a lot of ways, even worse than the Bankers.... How, exactly does the Govt justify this BS....? <_<

 

 

I read that some of the bonuses are going to Civil Servants who have actually been out to Iraq and Afghanistan and done admin work there. They got no overtime or extra money for being there so get these bonuses instead. A lot who haven't been there are getting them too though. Some aren't getting huge amounts, no more than several thousand quid I read so nothing like the bankers.

Edited November 14, 200915 yr by Crazy Chris

I read that some of the bonuses are going to Civil Servants who have actually been out to Iraq and Afghanistan and done admin work there. They got no overtime or extra money for being there so get these bonuses instead. A lot who haven't been there are getting them too though. Some aren't getting huge amounts, no more than several thousand quid I read so nothing like the bankers.

 

They are getting a bonus for doing a bad job and that is wrong

 

So long as troops are dying because of lack of equipment all money should be used on supplies and equipment and not bonuses

They are getting a bonus for doing a bad job and that is wrong

 

So long as troops are dying because of lack of equipment all money should be used on supplies and equipment and not bonuses

 

agree with this although its a tough call. If you dont pay some of these people they will leave. Not to forget (it is a contentious point) but they are mostly better educated than their field based colleagues. Was reading an article and there are a lot of people who go into the army as field officers with no education, just as a last resort. The same people say they should be earning more than their £17k (think that was the amount I read). But IMO thats top dollar for these people... when they get more senior and start commanding then they should expect a pay increase, they already have tax allowances.

 

If one civil servant improves for example supply chain effectiveness they deserve to be paid well...

If one civil servant improves for example supply chain effectiveness they deserve to be paid well...

 

for doing his job?....

 

 

Where are the bonuses for soldiers losing limbs? :/

Where are the bonuses for soldiers losing limbs? :/

 

 

Erm they knew the risks when they joined the army. Soldier=fighting=chance of injury/death. Hardly rocket science is it? We have no conscription now so no-one forces them to join the forces.

Edited November 14, 200915 yr by Crazy Chris

Erm they knew the risks when they joined the army. Soldier=fighting=chance of injury/death. Hardly rocket science is it? We have no conscription now so no-one forces them to join the forces.

 

pity, id support getting EVERY benefit scum being conscripted.

Erm they knew the risks when they joined the army. Soldier=fighting=chance of injury/death. Hardly rocket science is it? We have no conscription now so no-one forces them to join the forces.

 

Yet they are not adequately remunerated, for that risk, compared to other public servants. No-one forces these bureaucrats to go to these places...

for doing his job?....

 

this isnt part of their job and they are actually renumerated with a bonus. As the word bonus is synonymous with greed in the current climate maybe this should have been called overtime? There might be exceptions but the PM is looking into the amount awarded.

 

pity, id support getting EVERY benefit scum being conscripted.

 

My wife is half Greek and they have this in Greece. It helps some people in society but for others its really a drag on productivity, not everyone is meant for armed service! Something different is CCF (combined cadet force) which I did at school and you go on CCF camps at for example army bases and take part in army exercises (march and shoot), as well as having a regular weekly CCF 2 hour slot. That is acceptable while still allowing people choice.

this isnt part of their job and they are actually renumerated with a bonus. As the word bonus is synonymous with greed in the current climate maybe this should have been called overtime? There might be exceptions but the PM is looking into the amount awarded.

 

Sorry, but it's disgusting... Soldiers are losing their lives, coming back without their limbs and in some cases their sanity, where's their "overtime" or "bonuses"...? These fukkin' penpushers are considered more important that than the fronline troops???? What a insult to the intelligence this is, as well as an absolute insult to the soldiers themselves and their families, Christ, it really is a good thing for the Govt that the Armed Forces have no Union representation, I reckon a strike by Armed Forces personnel would pretty much have a 100% approval rating from the public.... The notion that a Bureaucrat's life is somehow worth more than someone who makes the ultimate sacrifice is just plain disgusting, even moreso in this case and Iraq, because they should NEVER have been compelled to do in the first place, because these wars are simply WRONG.... People join the armed forces to serve and protect their country... Just what threat was Afghanistan EVER to the UK...? Answer - ABSOLUTELY NONE, same for Iraq, oh, unless you actually believe the totally manufactured case for war..... You want to bomb terrorist training camps in PAKISTAN, yeah by all means, do so, but, again, what the fukk that had to do with Afghanistan itself or Iraq, god only knows.... Ditto for 9/11, which was committed by SAUDIs living and working in the US..... <_<

 

You know it would just a be a little bit like Churchill declaring war on, I dunno, Papua New Guinea instead of Germany in 1939, dont you think.....?

Erm they knew the risks when they joined the army. Soldier=fighting=chance of injury/death. Hardly rocket science is it? We have no conscription now so no-one forces them to join the forces.

 

That really is just such an asinine and ridiculous post, which, as usual, totally misses the point..... Soldiers may be expected to give up their life or limb to defend this country, sure, but these are not wars of "defence" that we are fighting out there, these are wars of Political expedience, completely manipulated by the Govt and the US, both the people of this country and the soldiers themselves have been lied to about these wars... My cousin served in Iraq and saw for himself the absolute shambles that resulted due to our interference.. He resigned his commission because he was simply too ashamed to serve his country anymore, and this after 12 years in the forces from the early 90s to 2005, and after service in Kosovo.. Kosovo was something happening in our own "backyard" in Europe, as Europeans we had a moral responsibility there, as we did with Former Yugoslavia.... I just do not see how Afghanistan or Iraq can be classed as "our problem", you can cite terrorism, but that's really just bullsh!t... 9/11 didn't happen here, and before we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the Taliban had very, very little support in the UK, in fact the really had no presence at all in the UK Muslim community, one or two idiots here and there perhaps, but certainly nothing organised... As usual, we just go in like a bull in a china shop and all that does is p!ss people off and radicalise them, just as thousands of young Irish Catholics were radicalised after the events of Bloody Sunday in 1971, after that, we had the Pub bombings and a consistent mainland terror campaign by the Provos which lasted all throughout the 70s and 80s, after Iraq, we had bombs on buses and tubes..... See the pattern here....? We never learn from the mistakes of history..... -_-