Afghanistan: British fight a
subtle war By Philip Smucker
GIRISHK, Helmand province - The Afghan
elders sat cross-legged, waiting for their leaders
and the British commander to speak. By
mid-afternoon they had each accepted a turban from
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and
heard an expression of remorse from the Briton for
accidental casualties inflicted by coalition
forces.
Britain's approach to the war in
southern Afghanistan is unique. It addresses
nuances of the home-grown Pashtun insurgency and
values the art of persuasion
over the use of bullets and bombs.
(Talking of bullets and bombs, though,
senior Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah was
killed in the province on Saturday in a fight
against US and Afghan forces - see Dadullah's death hits Taliban
hard.)
The brigadier in charge
of operations in the area, John Lorimer, pleaded
with the assembled elders: "We know the Taliban
are still present in some villages. You must
reject the Taliban and foreign fighters and
persuade them to leave."
While apologizing
to some 400 assembled elders for civilian deaths
of Afghans (nearly two dozen) in an air strike
called in by US Special Forces, Brigadier Lorimer
was also quick to blame the Taliban for what he
called "cowardly action against your people",
adding that the insurgents "do not care if they
put the lives of civilians at risk by mounting
attacks from their homes and compounds".
In a subsequent interview, Lorimer
characterized his enemy as "cunning and
determined".
But unlike most of the
Western contingents on the ground here in 2001 and
2002, the British are not in an all-out race to
seek and destroy terror cells wherever they can be
discovered. Nor do the British apply the metric of
daily or weekly body counts to their struggle
here.
So how does the British contingent
of NATO judge success? "One measure is the ability
and will of the Afghan people to deny the enemy,
the Taliban, room to maneuver," said David Slinn,
the United Kingdom's senior regional coordinator
in Helmand, speaking from a lawn chair on a grassy
plot in the heart of a drab desert compound lined
with steel containers.
It is a slow
process that relies as much on the carrot of
economic development as it does on military
operations. Signs of progress are few, but
tangible, said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo,
the British NATO spokesman in Helmand: "In some
areas we've seen the elders, having spotted the
Taliban laying mines, approach them and ask them
to remove these mines."
In another recent
incident - possibly more significant than the
former - Afghan village leaders assassinated a
Taliban commander and his two bodyguards near the
Sangin Valley in Helmand last week after he
refused to move his guerrilla operations out of
their neighborhood, according to local Afghans and
Western officials.
As sure as British
soldiers often gaze down their barrels - without
firing a shot - leering across parched fields as
their enemy strolls casually through a village,
there is also an element to the British
peacemaking efforts that relies on the Taliban's
ability - if it is possible - to shoot itself in
the foot.
Both Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International have blasted the Taliban for
ignoring civilian casualties that its fighters
inflict through suicide and roadside bomb attacks
on police and NATO forces in crowded areas.
Taliban leaders endorse summary justice as well,
severing the heads of alleged "NATO
collaborators". (The current NATO commander,
General Dan McNeil, keeps copies of these Taliban
"snuff movies" on file in his office.)
"The Taliban need to be careful whom they
are targeting," said Colonel Mayo. "When you are
seeing civilians killed across the board, that is
bound to backfire. We hope the population rejects
their brutality."
Waiting for the local
population to throw off the yoke of Taliban
oppression is - in theory - a viable strategy,
particularly if development continues in
government-controlled areas. Many Afghans here do
not view NATO in a positive light, but they also
despise their own corrupt government and Taliban
militants just as much. "No one gives us the
respect we deserve!" blurted out one elder, as
heads nodded in approval.
The British
approach to tamping down the Taliban appears to
acknowledge that the insurgents will try to win by
simply outlasting NATO. As rag-tag American rebels
learned fighting the world's most powerful army of
their day in the late 18th century, winning
battles is far less important than maintaining an
esprit de corps and getting on with the
struggle. To this end, the Taliban has recently
beefed up its own propaganda wing and engaged in a
softer, slightly kinder approach toward permitting
music and television viewing.
Afghans also
know a little about outlasting the Brits. Her
Majesty's forces suffered one of their most
humiliating colonial-era defeats in 1880 during
the Second Anglo-Afghan War at Maiwand, just down
the road from present-day Helmand province. It was
one of the few instances in the 19th century of an
Asiatic power defeating a Western one.
Ignominiously, or maybe in an effort to lighten
the loss, Queen Victoria saw fit several years on
to award an Afghan War Medal to Bobbie the dog, a
"British survivor" of the battle.
Afghan
legend has it that a woman named Malalai
encouraged the Afghan forces into the fray,
shouting: "Young love, if you do not fall in the
battle of Maiwand, by God, someone is saving you
as a token of shame." Locals are still shamed by
their countrymen for not standing up to foreigners
- even those with altruistic intentions. So
instead of trying to "win" at all costs on the new
Afghan front, the British are trying to convince
the Afghans that they are here to help and have no
plans to abandon the struggle. They aren't looking
for love, just respect and some help in their
peacemaking efforts.
Some Afghans and
Westerners in Helmand, who want more concerted
action to stamp out the Taliban once and for all,
complain that the Americans, who left Helmand in
British and NATO hands last year, were more
determined than their close ally.
British
officials shrug off those charges. "I can't
believe that anyone would think that the British
have a soft touch," said one official. "We've
caused some serious rates of attrition among
Taliban fighters, and we still fight alongside the
Americans here with the same rules of engagement."
Indeed, US Special Forces and the crack
Afghan teams that follow them often take the lead
in Helmand on counterinsurgency operations, as
evidenced in an accident-marred attack in the
Sangin Valley last week.
But the greatest
barrier to success for the British in southern
Afghanistan may have more to do with another,
entirely different war that keeps them from
achieving their first objective - pacification.
British officers and diplomats say they
are convinced that they can defeat the insurgents
and also fight the "war on drugs". It is not clear
what they base that optimism upon. Opium and its
derivative, heroin, account for a US$3 billion
illicit drug trade across Afghanistan, and more
than 45% of production is here in Helmand
province.
As sure as the "war on terror"
is an abstract war on a concept and not a specific
insurgency, though, the European and US approach
to the "war on drugs" does not translate well into
the Afghan theater. Indeed, fighting one war can
be extremely detrimental to fighting and winning
the other.
Witness Helmand's police chief
Nabi Jan Mulla Kheal, who admitted in an interview
that hundreds of government drug eradicators sent
to the province this year made upward of $20,000
each by taking bribes for not destroying poppy
crops. Some of Nabi Jan's own officers were
guiding the Kabul officials through the poppy
fields when the deals were being made. The police
chief conveniently left on vacation to Ireland
during the eradication effort, however. "What an
amazingly green country that is!" he interjected
in an interview.
Many villagers here say
they would rather have the Taliban, which also
exacts a heavy religious tax from the business,
protecting their fields from a wildly corrupt
government led by the likes of the police chief.
This amounts to paying mafia-like "protection
money" to insurgents in exchange for the right to
grow as many hectares as they can. Keeping pace
with world demand, overall production rose 50%
last year.
As long as the Taliban can keep
tapping into that kind of local sentiment, the
movement is bound to outlast the dogged British -
even if they lose a few popularity contests along
the way.
Philip
Smucker is a
commentator and journalist based in South Asia and
the Middle East. He is the author of
Al-Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the
Media on Terror's Trail (2004).
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