Date set for withdrawal from Afghanistan: help or hindrance?
Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s announcement that 2014 is the date for withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan, is both unwise and unhelpful for the mission.
First of all, I must begin this article with an admission. The level of my military knowledge does not extend beyond a pre-pubescent obsession with the brilliant computer game, Command and Conquer. But even with my distinct lack of expertise, it would seem to me that Defence Secretary Liam Fox has committed one of the cardinal sins of waging war in the past couple of days.
Surely, it is counter-productive and presumptuous to effectively announce to your enemy when you plan on leaving? Whilst I accept that these are tricky political waters for Liam Fox to navigate with the death toll becoming more saddening by the day, his confirmation that British combat troops will leave in 2014 does a good deal to jeopardise the mission in Afghanistan.
War is not just about technology and how advanced the weapons you possess are, otherwise the coalition would have ‘won’ the war in Afghanistan some time ago, if there is such a thing as a tangible ‘victory’ in this war. It is also about psychology. If the Taliban ever needed a morale boost, this is it. It leaves the Afghan people, who have lost far more than us in this war, hung out to dry. For the Taliban, it is now about a resilient waiting game, one which they seem happy to participate in.
It enables their propaganda to project the message to ordinary Afghans that the international forces are weak, and allows them to portray themselves as the true ‘defenders’ of Afghanistan, who will be there indefinitely. Whilst this is obviously factually inaccurate, I fear this is the impression that is likely to be conveyed to the Afghan people.
There are other issues with giving such a rigid timetable. Liam Fox told Andrew Marr on Sunday that ”it has always been our aim to be successful in the mission and the mission has always said that the Afghan national security forces would be able to deal with their own security by 2014”. Fine, but what happens if the Afghan security forces cannot fight the Taliban alone by 2014? Although the withdrawal is “conditions-based”, it seems pretty clear that 2014 is the deadline.
If after 2014 the Afghan army and police fail to hold back the Taliban, Liam Fox or any future defence secretary will be left in the even more perilous position of having to decide whether to send troops in once more. It is simply irresponsible to give a date when there is a significant degree of uncertainty surrounding what the future holds in Afghanistan over the next four years.
In addition, Hamid Karzai’s government seems almost entirely inept to the foreign observer. Corruption is reportedly rife, and the president has a fundamental lack of control and authority across what is a large geographical area. With no clear signs of an improvement in governance, it is difficult to envisage a set of circumstances in which his administration will be capable of presiding over “an era of Afghan-led peace”, as President Karzai is reported to announce at the International Conference on Afghanistan to be held in Kabul on Tuesday.
I am firmly of the belief that now we are in Afghanistan, our forces cannot simply withdraw in failure. It would serve to make the international community seem impotent, and would not do justice to the heroic deeds of the many who have fallen. Of course I sympathise with those who want us to leave as soon as possible; the loss of life is truly tragic. But now we are there (something I did not agree with in the first place), it is critical that we follow it through to a sufficient conclusion, without being constrained by dates set out of political necessity. British and international troops are there to do a job, and I’m sure they do not want it to end up being a botched one.
I sincerely hope that by 2014, the Afghan forces are capable of fighting the Taliban alone and that the circumstances for the withdrawal of British combat troops are in place. Unfortunately, on the present evidence, neither of these seems particularly likely, and setting a date for withdrawal seems to be more of a hindrance than a help to the mission.
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