British Commander Talking Sense About Afghanistan

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, Britain’s most senior military commander in Afghanistan, is reported by the Times ‘War on Taliban Cannot be Won‘ to have said said the ‘British public should not expect a “decisive military victory” but should be prepared for a possible deal with the Taliban.’  

Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan, said it was necessary to “lower our expectations”. He said: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.”

The brigadier added: “We may well leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency . . . I don’t think we should expect that when we go there won’t be roaming bands of armed men in this part of the world. That would be unrealistic and probably incredible.”

I know this is likely to be received in some quarters as defeatism–that seems to be the thrust of comment on the Times report so far. That is wrong. In fact, it’s a badly-needed reality check. I’m not sure that it is right that Brigadier Carleton-Smith is the one to say it; but at the moment since there is a blank space where you’d expect the government’s strategy for Afghanistan to be articulated I’d say he hasn’t much of a choice. There is a pattern here going back to at least General Rupert Smith in Bosnia of local commanders attempting to craft a framework of action in a strategic limbo. Of course it is unrealistic to expect a ‘decisive military victory’ in Afghanistan. For one thing, insurgencies are not defeated militarily independently of politics. This is old news. It’s explained right there on page 1 of Colonel Summers’ On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context (1975) where he recounts a discussion with a NVA colonel after the war:

‘You know you never defeated us on the battlefield’ said the American colonel.
The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. ‘That may be so,’ he replied, ‘but it is also irrelevant.’

Insurgents are out-governed not outfought. Elsewhere in the Times ‘Relentless Taliban Just Keep Coming‘ Carleton-Smith expresses more optimism and resilience than the headlines alone would suggest:

He insists that time is on the side of the Afghan government. “The young people want betterment of their lives. What the Taliban can’t do is deliver progress and development. As long as the international community can stay the course, over time the Afghan government capacity will grow.”

He argues that the international community should aim not for victory over the Taliban but to reduce the insurgency to a level that can be contained by the new Afghan army.

“If we reduce our expectations then I think realistically in the next three to five years we will be handing over tactical military responsibility to the Afghan army and in the next 10 years the bulk of responsibility for combating insurgency will be with them.”

Flying out through the dustbowl that is Camp Bastion, and watching all the building going on below, it seems the British Army is digging itself in for a very long campaign.

This makes good sense to me. Going back to Rupert Smith, he explained in The Utility of Force that the function of armed force is to create the conditions in which other instruments can be applied to the achievement of the political objective. That, in so many words, is the reality to which Carleton-Smith is drawing the attention of the public. The scale of the task at hand compared to the actual investment of ‘other instruments’ suggests bleak prospects. But we do have an advantage, probably dwindling but not irreversibly, in that the Taliban still struggles to offer Afghans a positive political, economic and social agenda.