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The British Army Review Number 146
A Comprehensive
Failure
British CivilMilitary Strategy
in Helmand
Province
Maj(V) SN Miller Int Corps DIS
(Note: the opinions in this article
are the author's and do not reflect
official views)
A reported nickname for the British in
Helmand is 'the note-takers'. How this
nickname was earned remains unclear. It
is possible that a sarcastically-minded
Afghan noticed a British enthusiasm for
scribbling down lists of action points,
not matched by action. We shall never
know. But to someone glancing over the
reconstruction effort in Helmand
Province, he may seem to have a point.
The new schools in Gereshk have been
built by the Danes (who also built the
new ANP Headquarters, and the new
Shura hall). It is the Americans who are
asphalting and modernising Lashkar Gah
airport, even though it is a jogging
distance away from the British Taskforce
HQ. What is going on?
This article is about that sarcastic
Afghan and the manner in which a
caravan of western foreigners has
entered his world, promising much and
delivering little. And it is also about
those westerners, the 149 British
soldiers1 who to date have now given
their lives against the backdrop of an
opaque and insufficient British
'Reconstruction and Development' effort
in Helmand Province, and a failing
military strategy.
2006 - The British enter Helmand
Province
The problems started from the
beginning. The British entry into
Helmand could not have been more
casual and naive. A Kabul-Palace based
ex-British Army lieutenant colonel
recalled being 'incredulous' when he
discovered the details of the British
proposed deployment2. 'Diktats' from 'the
Reid group and No 10' over-rode the
advice being given those with experience
of the country.
Despite the sour experience of Iraq,
British policy makers sleep-walked the
armed forces into Helmand Province
without any meaningful reconstruction
plan, without the resources to undertake
nation-building tasks, and, critically,
without any desire to fight a major
insurgency. A single lieutenant-colonel
was Britain's CIMIC representative, a
state of affairs politely described as 'suboptimal' by the brigade commander. It
was thanks to the tenacity of the
common soldier and paratrooper on
HERRICK 4 that British embarrassment
was saved. To quote the MP Adam
Holloway, we were 'incompetent and
half-cocked.'3 It is worth noting that this
MP actually walked around Lashkar Gah,
before the British arrival, to gauge local
feelings towards the proposed
deployment, an exercise that would be
unthinkable today without a bevy of
body guards.
Since that first encounter with the
reality of Helmand, five brigades have
rotated through the province. Where do
we stand today? What exactly have the
British achieved?
Map showing ISAF PRTs (ISAF)
An Afghan local merchant sets up shop on the
bank of the Karta Bridge in downtown Herat,
Oct. 1, 2008. The bridge was constructed by the
International Security Assistance Force Italian
PRT Herat in 2007 (ISAF) - (No photo could be
found on ISAF's extensive archive of a British PRT
project - Ed.)
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Helmand Province Today
Helmand today is now the most violent
province in Afghanistan. Between 1
January 2007 and 8 March 2008 it
suffered nearly 2,500 incidents. The next
nearest volatile province was Kunar, with
under 1,000 incidents4.
The British presence has not won 'hearts
and minds'. The opposite has happened.
An ABC/BBC/ARD poll5 revealed that
23% of Afghans in the south-west
support the Taliban movement, a
threefold increase on the previous year.
Where a year ago 81% stated that the
Taliban have 'no significant support at
all' in the area, now only 52% judged
this to be the case; just 45% of polled
Afghans supported the NATO presence in
the south-west, down from 83% in the
previous year. Confidence in the local
governments to provide security has
declined by 20 points, and confidence in
the Taliban to provide security has risen
by 19 points. Only 50% stated that they
strongly oppose the Taliban - the often
repeated statement that 'the Afghans
don't want the Taliban back' is
increasingly open to question. Last year
there were just 57 doctors in Helmand
Province - a scandalous figure three
years into the British campaign. Positive
opinions of overall living standards have
dropped by 20 points - a remarkably
bitter under-achievement for a campaign
that purported to improve the lives of
Afghans.
noted in its August 2008 report - 'If
Helmand were a country, it would … be
the world's biggest producer of illicit
drugs'.6 The total farm gate production
value of opium production was estimated
at $732 million for the last harvesting
season. 80% of farming families in
Helmand grew the opium poppy last year.
When polled on why they cultivated the
flower, 91% of farmers gave the
depressing answer, 'Poverty'. If the
Taliban took a 10% 'usher' or tax on the
opium harvest, this would imply that the
movement (and criminals) made in the
order of £70 million in 2007-08. It is
hardly surprising that the arms bazaars
in Pakistan have started manifesting
price inflation.
British fear of provoking the farmers was
not replaced by any credible policy.
Laissez-faire was not a policy, it was a
renunciation of responsibilities. With
good leadership, imagination and
alternative livelihood programs it is
possible to tackle the poppy crop
problem, Nangarhar, the country's
second-largest opium producing province
in 2007, became poppy free in 2008 - a
real achievement.
All of this would suggest that Helmand
Province should be at the top of the
reconstruction and development pile.
This is clearly a province in trouble,
and the British are pursuing a newly
scrubbed-up doctrine called 'the
Comprehensive Approach', aren't they?
If these were your expectations, as a
tax-payer, you would be seriously
disappointed. By ISAF's own figures,
Helmand was second from last in the
list of completed, ongoing, planned
and funded reconstruction and
development projects. How have we
got into this situation?
British reconstruction aid to
Afghanistan
British aid to Afghanistan is managed by
DFID - the Department For International
Development. DFID is not a part of the
It is perhaps no surprise only 10% of
polled Afghans were 'very favourable'
towards the British, and '27%' were 'very
unfavourable'. Let us not kid ourselves.
This has happened on our watch.
Operation HERRICK, to date, has been a
failure.
It is not just the reconstruction
campaign that has failed. British policy
towards the poppy crop has been an
unmitigated disaster. The chief 'effect' of
the British presence in Helmand has
been to transform Helmand into the
opium centre of the world. This
remarkable milestone was achieved just
two years into the British intervention.
As the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
36
Drugs cache as viewed looking out the hidden entrance.
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The British Army Review Number 146
Th e UK i s se cond fro m
last in R& D effort
Fig 1: ISAF R&D Spend Sept 2007
FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office).
The main vehicles for channelling British
aid to Afghanistan are the Afghanistan
Reconstruction Trust Fund, and the
Stabilisation Aid Fund. The UK is
currently committing £450 million for
Afghan development and stabilisation
assistance between 2009 and 2012. This
will comprise £345 million DFID funding
(£115 million each financial year) and
£105 million from an inter-departmental
Stabilisation Aid Fund, also managed
by DFID.
DFID has made the deliberate policy
choice to pump the overwhelming
majority of funds into strengthening the
institutions of central government supporting Kabul in other words. This is
where British tax-payer's money is going.
The attraction of Kabul to British civil
servants is obvious. It is both
convenient (it is far easier to spend your
time discussing institution-building in a
ministry building, than trying to get a
road paved in the heat of Helmand
Province), and more congenial - but
Kabul is not where British soldiers are
dying.
DFID justifies this policy on the several
grounds: it is taking the long-term view;
the Kabul government has expressly
supported this approach; and
institution-building is in the spirit of the
Afghanistan Compact and Paris
Declaration principles.
But there are criticisms of this policy. No
other donor (and especially not the US,
the largest and most important donor)
supports this approach. Corruption,
inefficiency and incompetence are
endemic in Kabul. Giving money to the
central government - always an
anathema to North Americans - is viewed
as a waste of money. Reinforcing this
view, there is not a single serious
commentator on Afghan affairs that
believes that pumping money into Kabul
will make any significant difference to
the outcome of the conflict in
Afghanistan. Afghanistan has no
experience of 'central government' and is
unlikely to develop such a tradition - as
a westerner would understand it - for a
generation or more. The word of the local
power broker matters. Using British
reconstruction money to improve central
government efficiency - a notion that
the average Afghan would probably find
risible - could amount to a colossal
waste of British money. The war must be
won first - a war that some argue is
being lost.
In DFID's words, the reconstruction fund
is used for 'supporting the Afghan
Government's budget, building Afghan
capacity, and ensuring an Afghanistanwide approach.'7 Nowhere is there a
strong or explicit statement that the
purpose of DFID's project in Afghanistan
is to support the British military
campaign in Afghanistan. And there is
no such statement because there is no
such aim.
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DFID is pursuing its own goals principally the support of the Kabul
central government through which it
channels directly 80% of UK aid independent of the British military
campaign, and with a minor input into
that campaign through the PRT at
Lashkar Gah, and latterly at Musa Qaleh.
DFID does not deal with soldiers, or even
with local nationals at local level ('DFID
does not do bricks and mortars'). It
mainly deals with other government
officials and to a much reduced level,
NGOs.
Parliamentary committees tend to be
tame, superficial and even selfcongratulatory. Investigation into DFID
spending only reveals opaque headings
which could mean anything and nothing.
What does 'building Afghan capacity'
actually mean? In 2007-08, DFID spent
£108,926,000 in Afghanistan9. The
biggest slice (£55 million) was
committed to 'Other Financial Aid'. No
further explanation can be elicited on
what this means. The smallest
expenditure (just over £8 million) was
committed to 'Humanitarian Assistance'.
In Helmand, DFID reports that it has
undertaken: '…programmes to support
civil service reform, a new National
Justice Programme, conflict resolution,
civil society, and urban governance and
service delivery in Helmand' as well as
'Further support for programmes on
horticulture and livestock, and agriculture
and rural development in Helmand'. The
percentage of DFID funds spent
supporting the British Army's campaign
(actually taken from the Stabilisation Aid
Fund) is not revealed. The figure is
probably in the order of 5% - as a
percentage of total British aid (QIP8
figures for Helmand in 2007-08,
according to a DFID representative,
amounted to $18 million). The now
retired General John McColl was only
able to raise £2 million to support
reconstruction, a pitiful and wholly
inadequate sum.
Do the military feel let down by DFID?
There is evidence that they do. A senior
serving officer, quoted anonymously by
an MP has allegedly stated that '…the
military secure areas, but the civilians are
way behind the military effort... we are
lagging behind the rhetoric.... The
problem is that DFID do not see
themselves as part of our foreign policy.'10
An ex-Army officer of several years
experience as an NGO has openly accused
DFID of being 'anti-Army'.11 In fact,
finding anti-DFID comments is not
difficult: 'DFID only do things under
duress', their working arrangements are
'ludicrous, completely, ludicrous', and the
cost of keeping a middle-ranking official
on the ground is '£250,000', or roughly
four brigadiers.
The Comprehensive Approach - a Sham
What does this all mean? First, that the
Comprehensive Approach is a sham. The
British Army is an afterthought in DFID's
plans. British policy makers are in effect
running two independent campaigns in
Afghanistan: a military campaign in
Helmand Province, which receives about
5% of British aid, and a wider aid
campaign in Afghanistan as a whole.
The two are not connected and both
are floundering.
As shockingly (for a tax payer), there is
no detailed reporting or metrics on what
success the £100 million of tax payers'
money spent elsewhere in Afghanistan is
actually achieving. Questions at
38
To be fair to DFID, there has been an
acknowledgement that more needs to be
done and up to 40 new staff have
reportedly been drafted to support the
Afghan campaign - but should the UK
ever have found itself playing 'catch up
rugby'?
The British Provincial Reconstruction
Team (PRT) effort itself has been miserly
and wholly inadequate to address a
province the size of Helmand. A British
equivalent of the US CERPs12 was
established (£40,000 - per month which
had to be spent or forfeited). One PRT
was based at Lashkar Gah (a second,
staffed by a single civilian was recently
opened in Musa Qaleh) but this has not
been sufficient. Nationwide coordination has been poor and a source of
constant friction and arguments between
allies. An April 2008 US House of
Representatives investigation into PRTs
in Afghanistan commented: '…we were
amazed that, after five years, the PRT
mission has not been more clearly
defined, specifically regarding how they
support U.S. and coalition strategies in
Iraq and Afghanistan and support the
host nations' development plans.13
The trenchant Anthony Cordesman sums
up the problems well:
'We cannot win by not providing
meaningful reporting and
transparency on what is actually
happening. We cannot win by
refusing to report on the military
situation, even to the extent that
we report on Iraq. We cannot win by
never really discussing the resources
being provided. We cannot win by
not reporting on the problems in
developing effective Afghan security
forces and governance. We cannot
win by never accounting for where
the money we spend actually goes,
and never reporting on meaningful
measures of effectiveness for
military and civil aid expenditures.'14
Winning Not Spinning Wars
What is surprising is that few of the
points discussed in the previous sections
would be evident from official reporting
or language. Defence reporting would
wish any casual internet surfer to believe
that the British campaign is more or less
on track, that the Afghans are pleased
with the British presence, and that the
Taliban are in retreat. The re-taking of
Musa Qaleh is illustrative of this
lamentable spin.
In December 2007 Musa Qaleh was retaken by Afghan troops, supported by
ISAF. It had been 'lost' to the Taliban
after a controversial British decision to
entrust the town into the hands of a
governor who proved flabby. The decision
was taken with best intentions and
advice, but proved misguided.
The recapture of Musa Qaleh was
reportedly followed up by a rapid
inflation of the success balloon. Before
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the end of the year 69 Gurkha Field
Squadron was tasked to kick-start the
reconstruction (in fact, building a
fortified district centre), described as
'the process which will cement security in
the troubled town of Musa Qaleh in
Helmand province.15' By April of 2008, it
was being reported that 150 locals were
being employed daily in cash-for-work
programs; the main bazaar road was
being asphalted; and the local school
was re-opened. The adjectives used to
describe this activity were immodest:
'significant', 'enormous', and 'profound'.16
of a marketing man straight off an MBA
course: 'This is a significant military
operation which demonstrates that our
strategy of delivering civil effect is making
progress in southern Afghanistan17.' What,
in English, does 'civil effect' mean? How
do you 'deliver' this meaningless phrase
'civil effect'? What the spokesman really
meant was: 'shows that our commitment
to restore and improve the electricity grid
in Helmand province has made a start',
but that would have been too prosaic.
We pompously delivered civil effect
instead.
A PRT 'Stabilisation Advisor' obligingly
trotted out a doctrinally pure
explanation of this post-conflict success:
This is not facetiousness. Language
matters and has a strong relationship
with the way we relate to reality. What
was once plainly described as 'civil
operations' has been replaced with
euphemisms, empty phrases and
ambiguous, self-justifying terms. None of
this, of course, is British. Like Credit
Default Swaps, it hopped across the
Atlantic. But we have embraced it and
added our mumbo-jumbo to the mix.
'The Comprehensive Approach is really all
about ensuring that all the elements of
government necessary to rebuild and
stabilise an area like Musa Qaleh fall into
place. It is really a reflection of the
complexity of conflict nowadays that you
have to have the involvement of not just
the military but also the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office and the Department
for International Development.'
Journalists visiting six months later
found this to be so much hogwash. The
road had been built so shoddily that it
had already begun to crack and develop
pot holes - the British were blamed. The
battle-damaged main mosque had still
not been repaired. By June, British and
Afghan forces found themselves once
again 'mowing the lawn' - in this case
Operation OQAB STURGA (Eagle's Eye) which saw the deployment of 2 PARA and
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (5
SCOTS) elements trying to clear Taliban
in the Musa Qaleh wadi.
The single most significant and widely
reported reconstruction task in Helmand
Province cannot even be claimed as
British. The much-trumpeted Operation
OQAB TSUKA ((Eagle's Summit), which
saw the delivery of a third hydro-electric
turbine to Kajaki Dam, over 180km of
rugged terrain, was a USAID funded
project. The Taskforce Helmand
spokesman's comment on this mountaintaming feat read like the gobbledegook
What was once simply known as 'the
mood of the locals' is now a mysterious
gas called 'atmospherics', sampled by
the social scientist of a CIMIC team,
and even given a percentage value.
Talking to someone is called an
'influence activity'. A radio is called 'an
influence channel'. It is bitterly ironic
that the sum of all this 'influencing' is
a population increasingly hostile to the
'practitioners' of 'influence activities'.
British Military Defeatism
The British ambassador to Afghanistan
was recently embarrassed when a French
satirical newspaper leaked an alleged
confession to the French ambassador
that the war was 'doomed'. But it has
not just been the civil servants who
have, reportedly, become 'wobbly'.
Yoked to a misguided and inadequate
reconstruction effort there has grown an
insidious defeatism in the armed forces.
Perhaps the frying pan of Basra has
dented confidence. Routinely, senior
commanders and military spokesmen
express the sentiment that 'this war
cannot be won'. That a British
commander should, in effect, state that
the British Army is no longer capable of
defeating insurgencies, is some leap from
the generations that fought in Kenya, or
Malaya, or Oman. If this is a sincerely
held belief, pull out.
The new doctrine of 'Clear, Hold, Build'
has become a parody of itself. We are
really only clearing the immediate
vicinity of the security force bases, we
are only holding the major settlements,
and we are not building. Self-protection
has become the main tactic, reinforced
by air strikes that can backfire and
undermine the campaign. Even as the
Army renders itself more and more
immobile with heavier vehicles and
infantrymen weighing in as much as a
medieval knight, still the fantasy of 'the
manoeuvrist approach' is peddled in staff
courses. There is nothing manoeuvrist
about weeks of petty, attritional fire
fights within a few kilometres radius
of a FOB. The reason for all this is clear zero casualties has become the tacit
assumption behind operations.
In part the pressure to achieve this
impossible state of warfare reflects
shifting cultural changes in British
society which are inevitably transmitted
to the armed forces - the most obvious
being the erosion of common sense and
its substitution with an infantile 'Health
and Safety' culture. It is only a short
step between a culture that forces firms
to place fatuous signs at the bottom of
stairways, which this author has to pass
every day: 'Take Extra Care When Using
Stairways' (a trick learned roughly by the
age of two), and a culture that hunkers
down behind several Hesco barriers and a
layer of body armour.
When British troops first deployed into
Helmand it was quickly appreciated that
body armour could not be worn all the
time without limiting the type and
duration of operations. Today body
armour is mandatory, with inevitable
consequences: operations last about 48
hours, and patrols last a few hours in the
immediate vicinity of the FOBs. The
Taliban are not being 'coerced',
'deterred', or 'destabilized', nor are they
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experiencing any other 'effects' word.
They simply disperse, knowing that the
British cannot sustain pressure, and they
return like the tide when British troops
withdraw, after a short period, back to
their bases.
Mastiffs of B Squadron Kings Royal Hussars
escorting a Combat Support Team (CST) from
Forward Operating Base (FOB) Edinburgh in Musa
Qaleh to Now Zad District Centre (DC) (Cpl Steven
Peacock)
The irony is that British military
operations have enjoyed success. We
have been doing that very thing that
cannot be admitted: winning. But the
winning has been lop-sided and not
exploited. Ordinary line infantry
commanders, and ordinary soldiers have
been demonstrating that war-fighting is
not 'an irritant to nation building' - it is
the foundation of nation-building. Every
brigade deployed on Op HERRICK has
demonstrated that it has an appetite for
the fight and that it is good at it.
Some US presentations on the Afghan
War show timelines out to 2019. It is
time for the UK to get serious about this
war and win.
The Future
Britain must fight one, single,
comprehensive civil-military campaign,
focused on winning the war where
Britain has committed her soldiers,
airmen and marines - Helmand Province.
Britain does not have the resources to
stimulate modern economic
development, or create a modern,
efficient central government in
Afghanistan. These will not be achieved
for generations. The money must go to
the provincial, local and tribal levels - to
40
Helmand Province in other words, where
the war is being fought. The relationship
between the Armed Forces and the
British reconstruction effort must be
addressed. Either the civil servants go to
the war and 'get their boots muddy' or a
proportion of their spending and powers
are transferred to military - much like US
commanders enjoy spending powers
through CERPs18. Current reconstruction
spend in Helmand is woeful and
inadequate.
The military campaign must become
aggressive and mobile, not static and
attritional. The ANA19 must be backed they are the relative success story.
Propping up the ANP20 is a fruitless task.
Developing an elite counter-drugs force,
(like the UK sponsored Policia AntiNarcotica in Colombia) may have merit.
The recent NATO agreement to tackle the
opium trade is certainly welcomed. The
British 'blind-eye' policy in Helmand was
convenient, not sensible, and betrayed a
lack of courage and imagination over
confronting the problem. 'An Afghan
solution to an Afghan problem', was not
only false, but no solution. The Taliban
movement may be $100 millions richer
thanks to this deliberate British policy
decision.
The British Army must believe that it can
win wars again. The war will not be won
by the 'delivery' of nebulous and
meaningless 'effects' - a change in the
discourse of warfare would go some way
to repairing the damage done in Iraq.
Ever-increasing layers of protection and
immobility can never be a substitute for
imagination and speed of action on the
battlefield. The British Army needs to
rediscover manoeuvre warfare.
Politics needs to be squeezed out of the
military campaign. The point of going to
war is not to then save ministerial
discomfort by avoiding casualties and
buttering the media. Wars cost lives and
the media better get used to it. The
British people understand this. They are
far tougher than a worried government
PR man imagines. We need to win a war,
not spin one21.
1. MOD - as at 13 September 2008
2. Memorandum from Philip Wilkinson,
Defence Committee Evidence, Ev 87
3. Adam Holloway (Con) Gravesham, 17 June
2008
4. DoD, Report on Progress toward Security
and Stability in Afghanistan, June 2008
p. 11
5. Gary E Langar and ABC polling unit,
ABC/BBC/ARD poll 'Where things stand in
Afghanistan' Dec 3 2007, quoted by
Anthony Cordesman.
6. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008
7. House of Commons International
Development Committee, Reconstructing
Afghanistan: Government's Response to the
Committee's Fourth Report of Session
2007-2008, 24 April 2008
8. Quick Impact Project
9. Table 3.3 Total DFID Expenditure by
Recipient Country (Asia) - see DFID web
site
10. Adam Holloway (Con) Gravesend, 17 Jun
2008 : Column 178WH
11. Memorandum from Philip Wilkinson,
Defence Committee Evidence, Ev 87
12. Commander's Emergency Response
Program
13. Agency Stovepipes versus Strategic Agility:
Lessons We Need To Learn From Provincial
Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and
Afghanistan, US House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Forces, April 2008
14. Anthony Cordesman, Winning the War in
Afghanistan: The Realities of 2009,
October 9 2008
15. MOD Defence News 27 December 2007
16. MOD Defence News 2 April 2008
17. MOD Defence News British Troops Complete
Operation to Deliver Vital Power Turbine, 2
September 2008
18. Commander's Emergency Response
Program
19. Afghan National Army
20. Afghan National Police
21. Anthony Cordesman, Winning the War in
Afghanistan: the Realities in 2009,
October 9 2008.