observer / afganistan

Afghanistan: Our mandate for action is finally exhausted

The withdrawal of our troops is not because we have won or lost in any conventional sense

• Editorial

• The Observer, Sunday 2 January 2011

• Article history

This year will see the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan and, according to current plans, the beginning of British troop withdrawal. A decade into the military campaign, there is no longer even discussion of winning. The initial objective to release the country from the despotic grip of the Taliban and prevent its use as a safe haven foral-Qaida was achieved within months. Since then, it has only ever become harder to discern what victory might look like.

There is some clarity on what would count as defeat. If Nato withdrawal leads to the total collapse of Hamid Karzai's government and a return to Taliban rule, there would be no disguising the humiliation to western powers, nor the increased security threat from jihadi terrorism. Not that President Karzai is an attractive ruler. His administration is corrupt and repressive.

One likely scenario is a protracted civil war in which anti-Taliban forces are propped up from afar with money and weapons from the UK and the US. That is hardly a happy outcome for Afghanistan. But it would arguably be a more rational expression of Nato policy goals than the current arrangement. Notions of building a stable, centralised modern state have essentially been abandoned. The agenda of safeguarding the basic human rights of a majority of Afghans – and the opportunities for women in particular – has also largely dropped out of official rhetoric.

One of the achievements of the invasion was to reanimate a more liberal tendency in Afghan society, especially in Kabul. Another was to ensure that certain essential freedoms are enshrined in the constitution. But the political and historical reality is that those trends cannot be secured by foreign soldiers indefinitely. It is to be profoundly hoped that they will flourish, but it cannot be made to happen at gunpoint.

That leaves the core security objective which is to prevent al-Qaida from using the country as a base for attacks overseas. As a justification for war, that seemed plausible when the Taliban were flagrantly hosting Osama bin Laden's training camps. But as a reason still to have Nato "boots on the ground" it looks increasingly weak. Al-Qaida operate from a number of countries, taking advantage of shaky regimes, failing and failed states. There is clearly a terror threat to Britain emanating from Yemen, Somalia and the tribal areas of Pakistan. No one advocates sending Nato soldiers to occupy all of those countries and clear their lawless regions of jihadi soldiers. Terrorist agents have been recruited in Luton without the town having been put under martial law.

In other words, Afghanistan poses a problem to the west as part of a much wider strategic challenge in containing and preventing Islamist terrorism. The only reason for thinking that combat operations by British forces are a vital element in that strategy is because the regiments happen already to be there. That is not reason enough, especially when their presence is as likely to exacerbate the problem.

Gradually, and without any fanfare, that realisation is being absorbed into policy. It remains in Britain's interests – and a duty as an occupying power – to help secure a stable Afghan state. But the war is already in its endgame. Its justification in terms of counterterror policy has faded. The withdrawal of troops will begin this year, not because they have won or lost in any conventional sense, but because their strategic mandate is expiring.

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