Afghanistan

I am not Serviceman but was sent this and whilst it is certainly not about football- still trying to get over Saturday- I thought some may be interested:

Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP
Dear Philip,
In regards to the recent events in Afghanistan, initiated by the reckless actions of the shambolic Biden regime and the capitulation practically without contest of the Afghan army and government I wish to enquire on behalf of myself and many former service colleagues, what you feel we have achieved, what you feel we have learned and what accountability should be sought?
The initial successes achieved by ourselves and our allies in disrupting and destroying terrorist training assets and facilities should arguably have been the extent of our involvement in the region and indeed this was an opinion voiced by many.
Staying on without consideration of the most basic rule of military planning, “what do you want and how are you going to achieve it?”, was foolish from the outset.
Blair and his Labour Party may well have initiated the nation building experiment but the Tories have for over a decade continued it.
Trying to force Western democracy and values on people living in the most corrupt nation on the planet, who neither wanted nor asked for it but merely wished to be left alone to eke out an existence was never going to succeed.
The Taliban and their cheerleaders worldwide now firmly believe that they have defeated the US and UK militaries but this was a war we were never allowed to fight.
For two decades our soldiers have done their best and given their all operating with one hand tied behind their backs.
We have not been beaten, our leaders have.
To send skilled, motivated soldiers, the finest in the world, on patrol in hostile areas day after day, rolling the dice against an IED or small arms contact, fettered by Rules of Engagement seemingly written by a child and instructed to act with subservience to those who likely attacked you all while babysitting the abysmal ANA was nothing short of an insult to professionalism and a waste of resources but nevertheless went on until the end of combat operations.
The ANA, some 300,000 strong, has cost tens of billions to train and a further 85 billion USD to equip yet capitulated almost without a fight.
The ANA, with very few notable exceptions, were a distrusted liability from the outset. Mostly illiterate, largely untrainable, prone to the abuse of drugs, each other and the civilian population even when on patrol every single private soldier knew they would not stand yet this somehow came as a surprise to senior officers and politicians.
The criticisms contained here of both the ANA and operational doctrine are not hindsight, these concerns were raised regularly by junior officers and soldiers alike but were repeatedly and wilfully ignored, indeed disciplinary action was often threatened against those questioning the proscribed narrative.
Throughout the conflict our soldiers have been forced to bear the frustration of being unable to initiate contacts with known enemies or had to withdraw from contacts to satisfy the enemy identification requirements of the ROE yet when the Taliban have openly rolled across the country in vehicle convoys, flags flying, occupied buildings and established roadblocks they have been allowed to do so without restriction and unopposed all the way to Kabul culminating predictably in the siege situation we have been witnessing.
To hear the recent comments on the Taliban from General Sir Nick Carter where to paraphrase he described them as “country boys, with an honour code who don’t like corrupt government “ delivered in a condescending tone to indicate his great intellect, deeper understanding and insight over the common soldiery who, being less informed, might still consider their foe of twenty years the enemy shows a conceit beyond measure.
Wether the government he refers to is ours or the one we outfitted them with I will leave to your interpretation.
This attitude is certainly not his alone with Rear Admiral Dr Chris Parry echoing his sentiments by describing the Taliban as “different to twenty years ago “. Really, when was the moment of their enlightenment? Do we assume that the murder, torture, drug and human trafficking, persecution of other religions, abuse of women plus myriad daily human rights violations are all in the past? It is astonishing that anybody is this naive, for such a person to be in a position of command and authority is ridiculous.
The fact that leaders of this type repeatedly sent people to face the same threat from the same enemy in the same way for so long and now wish to legitimise and act as spin doctors for the reinvented regime demonstrates the requirement for a fundamental change in the way we evaluate and select our senior officers.
It is a fact that a private or NCO is always held accountable for denting a Land Rover or losing a shovel but Generals are not held to account for losing lives or even wars.
Lest you think this opinion confined to myself and my colleagues here is a quote from Major General Andrew Mackay from 12/01/2012,
“The level of incompetence is so great and has been occurring for so many years now, that it’s systemic and has become cultural “.
That this statement was made by so senior an officer just over halfway through the conflict seemingly without effecting any change proves his point entirely.
That the UK military has pro rata six times as many Generals as the USMC and ten times as many as the IDF, all with gold plated salaries and pensions, despite the well documented lack of funding in far more important areas shows we do not have our priorities in order.
Contrast this with the words of Rudyard Kipling written in 1903 in reference to the Boer War,
“Let us admit it fairly,
As a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson,
It will do us no end of good “.
The parallels between the two campaigns are obvious but over a century ago we adapted and evolved training, equipment and doctrine to not only turn around our fortunes in theatre but, by the advent of WW1, were able to field arguably the best equipped, most professional army on the planet.
What now and what next?
We have thankfully witnessed the safe withdrawal of UK troops. As always the professionalism and conduct of the Parachute Regiment and their attached personnel has been utterly exemplary. The credit for their part in the evacuation airlift is theirs alone won through grit, determination and an ability to dig in and succeed under resourced and against the odds. For Boris Johnson to try and claim credit for himself by describing their efforts as an “example of UK leadership” is frankly disgraceful.
Perhaps he would do better to reflect on how he fawningly described Joe Biden, a far left socialist clearly in cognitive decline with half a century of self interested mediocrity behind him as “a breath of fresh air”. I wonder if he feels the same now that Biden has betrayed, ignored and humiliated him despite promising a “sensible, coordinated withdrawal”.
What do we have to show for twenty years of expenditure of blood and treasure?
A resurgent, reinvented Taliban back in power in Afghanistan providing a beacon for terrorists the world over.
Equipped beyond their wildest dreams, in many respects better equipped than us, awash with captured money and assets, drug empire intact and thriving, more mobile than ever before even including an air force, in possession of hit lists and biometric data of everyone who opposed them they are ready and able to completely dominate the ground and impact the lives of all Afghans like never before.
With a history of changing allegiances weekly they can hide their acts behind new ISIS variants safe in the knowledge that the Western media, Generals, political elites and senior civil servants are prepared to do their PR for them as long as they throw out the occasional appropriate virtue signal.
While the Taliban prepare for their inevitable victory celebration, probably on 9/11, unknown hundreds if not thousands of UK citizens and our friends are now left trapped and abandoned.
We are almost certain to be faced with a monumental hostage crisis involving these unfortunate souls and our adversaries very much have the measure of who they are dealing with. The Iron Lady and President Reagan would steadfastly not negotiate with terrorists, the current holders of their former offices take orders from them.
Following on will come another refugee crisis. In the near future it will become near impossible to find an illegal immigrant not claiming to be an Afghan and the few genuinely having a case will have to compete with thousands of spurious applicants liberally seeded with active terrorists wishing us harm. Now that the government has completely vacated its duty to protect our borders against mass illegal immigration it is terrifying to think who will arrive and what they will bring.
Before the Prime Minister gets too carried away with his generosity with our money it is important to establish exactly who we do owe a place in our nation to and on what grounds? Simply having worked towards the betterment of Afghanistan while receiving generous remuneration from the UK taxpayer cannot be automatic grounds to live here especially when so little effort went into defending what we had helped build at such immense cost.
It is imperative that vetting of any asylum claims is stringent and carried out by those who served in the units the applicants claim to have helped aided by our known loyal allies who have already settled here. Such a task cannot be left to the gullible fools who routinely place balding men into classrooms as children.
At an estimated £400,000 per deployed soldier per year, precious little of it going on wages, many people have obviously done very well out of the conflict and the procurement gravy train. Many more senior military, government and civil service personnel have profited from career advancement.
These people arguably owe a debt to our former allies and should be encouraged to help with any resettlement costs before the bill is presented to the taxpayer.
We in the UK, plus our friends in the USA and continental Europe are unquestionably less safe now than before while the Afghan people are facing a return to the rule of a regime that the world previously agreed was utterly abhorrent.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that throughout the twenty year involvement of Western governments, the many transfers of power between various administrations, the discussions of the G7, G20, NATO and the UN there has always been broad agreement on the Afghanistan effort. This globalist collective represents the very people who tell us that we need to give them more power and more of our money in taxation in exchange for less freedom and more government to combat an apparent crisis that they have created.
After twenty years of effort, countless lives lost or forever changed, untold fortunes in borrowed money and an unimaginable carbon footprint the only thing that the great and good have succeeded in quantifiably and meaningfully Building Back Better is the Taliban.
What an appalling epitaph.