Cables From Kabul

[ewx]

Cables From Kabul by Sherard Cowper-Coles (ISBN 978-0-00-743203-5).

The author is a former British ambassador to Afghanistan; he also spent some time as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The book is essentially a narrative of his time spent in these two jobs. There is a wealth of detail concerning the life and work of a diplomat abroad, of course, but also plenty of discussion of the various political elements of the situation he found himself in.

President Karzai initially comes across as intelligent and well-meaning, if inevitably lacking the power he needs to effectively rule the country, in contradiction to the common perception in the west that he was more problem than solution. As the book progreses however he comes increasingly paranoid and erratic - though the paranoia is not unjustified, as an account of an assassination attempt demonstrates.

Much as in Hans Blix’s book on Iraq, Condoleeza Rice comes across as relatively sensible (at least compared to other members of the Bush government). Cowper-Coles clearly thinks American policy was badly wrong at the time though, and moreover that the dominance of the USA in ISAF meant that even though UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband agreed with him that a political solution was required rather than a military one, there was no option but to go along with the Americans. Richard Holbrooke seems, if anything, more erratic than Karzai, failing even to turn up to ministerial meetings.

He also has some harsh words for the military. While not doubting their ability to fight he sharply criticizes the six-month rotation of local commanders, which in his view led to military tactics largely disconnected from any coherent wider strategy:

And yet, in almost every case, each brigadier did what he could be only expected to do, as he enjoyed what had to be the highlight of his profession career as a soldier: commanding his brigade in war. He planned and launched a major kinetic operation. That is what soldiers do, with glory at the back of every half-decent warrior’s mind. Each operation made local, tactical sense in Helmand. Each undoubtedly suppressed Taliban activity in its chosen area. Each might have happened even if there had been no six-month rotation system. Each was of course cleared through the ISAF machine. But, through no fault of the individual brigades, few of these operations were genuinely part of a serious overarching political strategy. None made more than a cursory nod in the directoy of the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual’s reminder than counterinsurgency (or COIN) is mainly politics.

He also discusses critical press coverage concerning shortage of body armour, helicopters, and so on. He argues that each military mission was agreed by politicians on the basis of positive military advice, only to run into equipment shortages during execution - “how the politicians […] could be blamed for not having ordered Mine-Resistant Ambush-Proof (MRAP) vehicles five years earlier, was not clear”. Not that the civilian side is entirely blameless here: when he queries the possibly deployment of Tornados, a Cabinet Minister tells him: “‘Sherard’, he said, ‘I don’t know the difference between a Tornado and torpedo. I can’t possibly question of the Chief of the Defence Staff on this.’” It seems evident that civilian government requires both the will and the capability to properly govern an army at war, and in this instance failed on both counts.

Elements of the US armed forces do not escape criticism either:

The arrival of the US Marines in Helmand in 2009 must have provoked some puzzlement in Tehran: the Marines’ policy of push as far forward towards the border with Iran was not, as far as I could tell, authorised in Kabul, let alone Washington. I suspect that the exuberant US Marines were motivated as least as much by an interest in showing off the Marines’ V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft as they were by geopolitics when they established, and then put down on, a landing strip virtually up against the Iranian border. A weary ISAF general complained that the US Marines in Helmand were out of control.

The author’s conclusion is that no military solution is possible; only a political one, and that “we will need to accept […] that often it may be better to let the Afghans themselves do a job badly than for us to do it for them.” Moreover in the absence of a sustainable settlement, further intervention will be necessary in the future, wasting all the lives and money spent so far.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

<suitably appalled>

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Just wait until I finish and review Orlando Figes's book on the Crimean War. Now that conflict was appalling.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Thanks to Tennyson, that much is (at least for one incident) well-known. One might have hoped, though, that we'd at least learned the lessons from the fiascos of the previous Anglo-Afghan Wars...