More boots, not choppers, needed

By Ashok K Mehta

(August 05, New Delhi, Sri lanka Guardian) Rudyard Kipling immortalised the killing fields of Afghanistan in verse as the British Indian Army received its baptism by fire with full battle honours. Described as a graveyard of empires, no foreign power ever emerged victorious: Not the British, nor the Soviets and it is unlikely that the combined might of the Americans and the British (and their Western allies) will overpower the Taliban.

Their mounting casualties and charges of mission-creep compound the prospects of the largest offensive in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. Begun last month, Operation Khanjar (US) and Operation Panchai Palang (UK) are part of the much-awaited surge in Helmand bordering Balochistan which produces 50 per cent of the world’s opium and is the stronghold of the Taliban.

What the British could not do in three years — to clear the Taliban from Helmand — the Americans are trying to do now. A force comprising 4,000 US Marines, 650 Afghan Army men and 2,500 British soldiers is being resisted by 4,000 to 5,000 Taliban in Operation Fauladi Jaal which promises to teach the Marines a lesson. They are fighting back with small scale attacks, improvised explosive devices/road bombs, suicide bombers and ambushes. Until 2004, there was no IED in Afghanistan and the suicide bomber arrived in 2005, both imported from Iraq.

Indisputably, the IED is becoming more sophisticated and is the number one killer with 465 attacks in May this year. Two of every three deaths last month were due to roadside bombs/IEDs. The Americans are using dogs, robots and drones to detect and dispose IEDs and attacking bomb-making networks while designing newer and lighter ‘Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles’.

The Indian Army’s soldiers are pioneers in combating IEDs, learning in Sri Lanka that the best antidote was to footslog, avoiding roads and tracks. The Americans have found a more sophisticated version of the Jaipur Foot.

US President Barack Obama’s preference for Afghanistan as the war of choice over Iraq was never in doubt. The AfPak strategy, which has become PakAf, entailed a troop surge like the one in Iraq in 2007, a review of security strategy and appointment of a new military commander, Gen Stanley McChrystal.

Gen McChrystal has made sweeping changes in strategy, switching from “killing Taliban to protecting and winning over the people — relationship building — and avoiding civilian casualties from errant air strikes”. These have reduced from 35 to 17 per cent in June. In 2007, an average of 22 tonnes of ordnance was dropped on Helmand every month.

The allied offensive, the biggest since Fallujah in Iraq in 2004, seeks to secure Helmand, isolate the Taliban, interdict the flow of their re-supply from Pakistan, and create space for Afghans to vote in the presidential election on August 20.

The going has been very rough for British troops who aim to link Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah, with Gereshak on the Ring Road. The advance has been painstakingly slow — two km in two months with one Rifle Company attacked 15 times in a day.

When 15 soldiers were killed in 11 days, eight on a single day last month, alarm bells began ringing in Britain. These were the heaviest casualties for a single month, crossing the Iraq death toll of 176 and renewing the debate in Britain over the futility of the war in Afghanistan.

Fifty-nine per cent Britons now want troops withdrawn from Afghanistan. Military commanders and Opposition politicians have been complaining that the war effort is under-resourced: Shortages in troops, MRAPVs and helicopters. To prove the point, the outgoing Chief of General Staff, Gen Richard Dannatt, visited British troops flying in an American Black Hawk helicopter.

Britain has only 30 helicopters for its 9,100-strong force and the Government is accused of cutting 2.3 billion pounds from a helicopter programme five years ago. Rebutting charges of under-spending, the Government said it had spent 10 billion pounds on new equipment in the last three years, providing 1,200 new vehicles in the last two years.

On July 10, when a single company suffered five killed and the death toll rose to eight in 24 hours, a young soldier cried out: “We don’t care about the future of Afghanistan; we don’t care about democracy, clean water, schools for girls. All we care for is each other and making sure our mates get out alive.” Human losses cannot be taken by Western democracies.

There is no similar sensitivity to casualties in India where our troops take several times greater hits: 30 killed in a day by Maoists in Chhattisgarh is Page 7 news. And as for equipment, infantry modernisation is a joke.

The Americans are more stoic than other countries in taking casualties. In July they suffered 35 dead, the highest in a single month since 2001, crossing 730 for the war, compared to 4,345 casualties in Iraq. Gen McChrystal believes that the use of IEDs will eventually boomerang as 80 per cent of the bombings have harmed Afghans — already this year, 1,000 have been killed.

The difficulties of coordinating the war efforts of 42 countries in five regional theatres is no small challenge, given each country’s sensitivities to casualties and domestic public outrage. Gen McChrystal’s dilemma is securing Pakistan’s cooperation during the surge by acting against the Afghan Taliban and Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shoora. Under intense pressure from the US, Pakistan is promising to act against all Taliban.

But there is always a gap between what Pakistan says and does. Pakistan is complaining that the offensive has pushed the Taliban into Pakistan. It denies the presence of Mullah Omar and will not abandon the good Taliban who are enlisted as ISI’s strategic assets. It says it has no more troops to block the Balochistan border to prevent the Taliban slipping out. Lifting troops from the eastern border is heresy so long as India is the major threat.

In the nine-year-long war in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, the most powerful military power at the time, lost more than 12,000 soldiers. The commanders had asked for more troops and helicopters. Neither more troops nor additional helicopters will keep the Taliban out of Helmand for good. Sir Olaf Caroe, Governor of NWFP, had famously observed in the last century that “unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over”.

The counter-insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be effectively fought and won from the air and armoured vehicles. You need boots on the ground and the stamina to take casualties. Two kilometres in two months is not bad going. But things could have been a darned sight better if Pakistan was not a strategic ally of the Taliban.

-Sri Lanka Guardian