Losing the battle for hearts and minds

BY ANY standards it was a tipping point. When five British soldiers were slaughtered during an after-patrol tea-break by an Afghan policeman they had taken into their trust, it was a shocking episode in a war that has already wasted far too many lives.

Corporal Steven Boote, Warrant Officer Darren Grant, Sergeant Matthew Telford, Guardsman James Major and Corporal Nick Webster-Smith were killed in a vicious manner in a vicious war.

As their families grieve, the nature of the tragedy has accelerated calls for withdrawal from Afghanistan and has added to the growing public feeling against the war.

For many UK voters the costly campaign has now become a futile mission dogged by problems making victory impossible.

Yesterday a ComRes opinion poll for the BBC found that almost two-thirds of the public – 64 per cent – now believe that the war is "unwinnable". A similar proportion – 63 per cent – wanted British troops to be withdrawn as soon as possible.

Support may be waning on the home front, but military leaders in the field remain optimistic despite reports that top brass are considering retreating from outlying bases.

"Of course we want the support of the British people, but I think the British people are quite a tough people and what they want to do is win," said Brigadier James Cowan, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan yesterday.

Speaking from the Babaji area of Helmand, Cowan said: "Nobody wants to see their army fail and we have a habit of victory in this army and we know that our people enjoy that habit.

"So I'm sure that the British people will stay with us and I'm sure that we will prevail."

Cowan remained convinced the war is "winnable" and working with the Afghan army and police was the "only way forward".

The trouble is that Cowan's belief in the mission did not appear to be shared by the Prime Minister when he raised the spectre of failure for the first time on Friday.

"We will succeed or fail together," Gordon Brown said before adding "and we will succeed" – almost as an afterthought.

Brown may have said that "we must not walk away". But walking away is precisely what is on the minds of many at the end of a year that has seen 93 deaths – the bloodiest year that Britain has experienced in battle since the Falklands War of 1982.

Producing a credible exit strategy is the challenge exercising politicians and military experts, who realise the grim procession of coffins back to the UK is rousing public opinion against the war effort.

"We need to get a decent strategy," Colonel Bob Stewart, the former commander of British forces in Bosnia, told Scotland on Sunday. "It is no good saying we are going to be there up to 30 years."

In common with most military campaigns, it has proved much easier to go into Afghanistan than to get out, Stewart said.

"What I'm saying is that we've got to have a strategy that convinces the people of this country and – most importantly – the soldiers on the ground that what they are actually doing there is for a point."

Persuading troops that they are engaged in a worthwhile cause cannot be an easy task, given that Stewart has calculated that soldiers have a 16 per cent chance of being killed or wounded on the front line.

"The death rate is a damn sight higher than Northern Ireland," Stewart said. "I was warned when I went to Bosnia that I might well have up to 25 per cent casualties but that never really happened. But 16 per cent – that's pretty high."

In forthright terms, he set out his own Afghanistan objective.

"Put crudely in military terms, it is to cut the balls off the Taleban so they can't hurt us," Stewart said. "But putting it in political terms, it is to ensure the people of Afghanistan have a decent way of life and that Afghanistan is neutralised as regards any threats to our country.

"I think the crude way of putting it sounds better."

According to Stewart, a timetable must be laid out that provides a blueprint for withdrawal.

"That timetable should not be beyond five years. It definitely includes 'Afghanisation' of the security services; training up their people. And it definitely includes a timetable for how we actually achieve our objectives."

Making that timetable known would not be the right tactic, according to the Conservatives, who will inherit responsibility for the war if they win next year's general election.

Andrew Murrison, the shadow defence minister and a former medical officer in the Royal Navy who served in Iraq in 2003, argued that a public timetable would give "succour" to al-Qaeda. Immediate withdrawal was out of the question, because it would be a "shot in the arm to terrorists all over the world. It would allow them to claim some victory and it would seriously damage Nato".

If they win, the Conservatives will set up a war cabinet immediately. The Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary, the heads of MI5 and MI6, the Chief of Defence Staff and the Foreign Secretary will all be involved.

David Cameron plans to devote more troops to both combat and training the Afghan security forces, although it is hoped that the emphasis will shift towards training.

"What is clear is that we have to focus our attention on Afghanistan, despite what has happened," Murrison said. "If we can't build up the police and army, then there is no possibility of removing ourselves from Afghanistan. We have to have the sense of having done the job properly."

The Prime Minister's rhetoric also makes much of building a democracy in Afghanistan and the internal security services. But his plea to Afghan president Hamid Karzai to clean up his regime was described as "naive" by Murrison.

The Prime Minister was accused of sending out mixed messages when he pledged that he would not put servicemen and women "in harm's way" for a regime that does not stand up against corruption.

Some commentators wondered if the Prime Minister's words were another signal that he was prepared to pull troops out – an interpretation that Downing Street denied.

"Gordon Brown is stamping his little foot up and down and saying stop being corrupt or else," Murrison said. "How naive. We have to work with what we've got on the ground. It is obviously wrong to prop up a regime that's failing, but you have to work with what's available.

"The problem with Labour is that they have neglected the development of the country's infrastructure. It is in a right mess. But we have simply got to stick in there."

According to Stewart, the problems facing the government are now partly of its own making; getting out of Afghanistan has become more difficult as the demands on the troops there have increased. "The problem with Afghanistan is that we went there in 2001 to get rid of al-Qaeda. That's what we went in there for originally. General James Jones, the national security adviser of the United States, had declared last month that there were less than 100 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. When that's viewed against our original mission – then mission accomplished, maybe?"

There had, however, Stewart said, been "mission creep" since 2001. "Some of the mission creeps are to make a democratic, stable government in Afghanistan, to assist women in Afghanistan to go to school and to take part in democracy.

"Now we've been told, of course, that it is to stop immigration into this country," he added, referring to remarks by Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, who told the Commons last week the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK would "significantly increase" if troops came home. "The whole thing is absurd," Stewart added.

The UK Government, weighed down by unpopularity and recession, is under enormous pressure to define a clear Afghanistan strategy.

But the reality is that US President Barack Obama is the lead player in this operation. He is faced with requests for reinforcements from his generals, but appears unconvinced that more troops will stabilise Afghanistan or reduce attacks on the US.

His own way forward was thrown off course last week when a US army psychiatrist and practising Muslim, apparently concerned about the US role in the Afghan conflict, gunned down 13 of his unarmed comrades, wounding two dozen others, at the giant Fort Hood military base.

Does Obama now risk the wrath of the American Right by following his instincts? Despite the need for swift action, as junior partners in this operation, British politicians are waiting for America to take the lead in the knowledge that they cannot upset the Atlantic Alliance.

Murrison said: "The whole thing is being driven at the moment by Obama, and what we do over the next few months has to reflect whatever he decides to do as the main player."

For politicians of the two main political parties, withdrawal is not yet an option. Some of the relatives who lost loved ones last week at the hands of a rogue Afghan policeman, think differently.

They have to deal with the fact that those close to them were killed in circumstances unlike any of the other 230 losses in eight years of conflict.

They were not killed while confronting the Taleban in a firefight or blown up by a roadside bomb – as so many of their colleagues have been. They were murdered when the policeman they had been training turned a heavy machine-gun against them inside a checkpoint in the village of Shin Kalay in the Nad-e' Ali district of Helmand.

They died because they were betrayed by a man they trusted, and were mentoring, as part of the government's strategy to bring law, order and democracy to a lawless country.

Elizabeth Chant, the mother of WO Darren Chant, the soldier described by his regiment as being "carved from the very rock that forms the foundation of the Grenadier Guards", had her own views.

"Darren wouldn't have me say anything bad, but I do think that those boys should come home now because there's too many being killed," she said.