It was meant to be David Cameron's mission-soon-to-be-accomplished visit to Afghanistan. Instead the spin was upstaged by yet another UK soldier killed and 'security' concerns cancelling his trip to Lashkar Gah.
Stop the War Coalition
5 July 2011
Poor old David Cameron. He turns up in Afghanistan on 4 July with an orchestrated plan to bring an upbeat message of progress in the war and to confirm that British troops will be out of the country by the end of 2014.
Unfortunately for him, reality scuppered the spin. First, a British soldier was killed, the eighth to die in the last month, bringing the total to 375, nearly all of them killed in the past five years.
Then the key event in his itinerary, a visit to Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province -- intended to be symbolic of the 'stability' and 'security' the occupation forces have brought to Afghanistan's most violent region -- had to be cancelled because it was unsafe for Cameron to be there.
Only a few days earlier, Afghan resistance fighters had attacked a patrol of Royal Marines just 300 metres from the base in Lashkar Gar that Cameron planned to visit. No wonder Cameron sounded somewhat deflated as he insisted that "the insurgency is on the back foot."
Could this be the same insurgency which last week targeted the Intercontinental Hotel in the heart of Kabul? Or the same insurgency that two months ago was able to mount a jailbreak that freed 500 Taliban fighters from a high security prison? Or the same insurgency that has killed 46 US soldiers this year, on target for the worst casualty figures since 2001.
Cameron says the war is entering "a new phase", when British troops can be brought home, as the Afghan army and police take responsibility for security. It's a sign of how flimsy this commitment is that only 450 troops are to be withdrawn this year, out of a total of 9,500, and they are only support officers.
Next year, just 500 frontline troops will be withdrawn, still leaving at least 8,500, which is more than Britain had deployed in 2006.
Cameron is playing Obama's slight of hand here, to give the impression by a derisory reduction in troop numbers that the 'exit strategy' -- handing over responsibility for security to the Afghan army and police -- is on track. His aim is for an orderly drawdown of all forces by the end of 2014 which can be proclaimed as 'victory', just prior to a general election, likely to be in 2015. Having a thirteen-year unjustified war still round his neck as Britain goes to the polls will be the last thing Cameron wants, not least because it will be a reminder that -- besides the thousands of Afghan civilians and hundreds of British troops killed -- over £30 billion was wasted on a conflict the electorate never wanted, despite us being told there was no alternative to savage cuts in 'unaffordable' public services.
But the military both in Britain and the US have other ideas for the continuation and intensification of the war, and it seems to be winning the argument in both countries. The generals say any troop withdrawals will embolden the insurgents, as if they need any more motivation to get the occupying foreign armies out of their country.
This is why Cameron has labelled this planned troop reductions over the next two years as 'modest' and 'relatively small numbers'. But he still insists the all British combat troops will be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014:
"2014 is a deadline – be in no doubt. This is a matter of judgment. It is my judgment that it is right. The British people and the British military deserve to have some certainty."
Look at Iraq today, a war that was supposed to be over with the withdrawal of US combat troops from the frontline, to see how solid this 'certainty' is likely to be. There are still 50,000 US troops in Iraq and this year has seen them come under increasing attack, with 15 killed in the last month alone, the highest monthly figure since June 2009. The continuing presence of the US military brought over one million Iraqis onto the streets in April to declare that if the occupiers were not out of the country by the end of 2011, the insurgency against them would be re-activated.
There is every chance that Cameron's exit timetable could slip, because 'the conditions are not right': meaning the Afghan army and police are 'not ready' -- despite many billions having been spent on training and equipment -- to take over responsibility for security, and to become effectively proxy occupiers of their own country for the US and its allies.
The likelihood of the Afghan army and police ever being 'ready' is wishful thinking. The retention rate for recruits is low, corruption is rife and infiltration by the Taliban probably widespread. In any event the cost for maintaining the Afghan forces will dwarf the total national budget for Afghanistan, entailing an open-ended bill for the US and Nato, reinforcing the view that the army and police are a mercenary force acting on behalf of imperial interests.
Whatever happens, we face at least four more years of a hopelessly futile war, even if Cameron keeps to his timetable. 2011 is already shaping up to be the most violent since the invasion in 2001. The United Nations reports a 51 per cent increase since a year ago, civilian casualties have risen by 20 per cent and the number of refugees by 4 per cent, now totalling 435,000.
This is the reality of David Cameron's 'progress' in Afghanistan. The need for the an active, high profile anti-war movement both in Britain and the US, to maximise the pressure on our political leaders to bring an immediate end to this pointless and unwinnable war, was never clearer.
Which is why in October - which will be the tenth anniversary of the Afghanistan war -- and not coincidentally of the founding of Stop the War Coalition -- there will be major protests in Britain and the United States calling for all foreign troops to be withdrawn immediately, which is what the majority of people in both countries want.
In America, the October2011 movement plans to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington from 6 October, "with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo".
In Britain Stop the War, CND and other organisations will hold an Anti-War Mass Assembly in Trafalgar Square on 8 October, for which pledges to attend are already pouring in, including from many prominent figures in the world of politics, campaigning organisations and the arts, among them Adhaf Soueif, Tariq Ali, Brian Eno, Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas MP, Dave Randall and Bruce Kent.
