Afghaniblarrrrgh

(The BBC has updated their reporting of the story, which is how things works, so whatever. Newsniffer says they’ve  updated twelve times, and has a wonderful thing where we can see all versions! We’re working from version seven, which you can read here.)

Long(ish) story short, the BBC said last night that Gordon

…plans to host talks in the new year to discuss timing for handing over the campaign in Afghanistan to the Afghan government.

The prime minister said he wanted the Nato meeting to "set a timetable" for transfer starting in 2010.

He called for a "district by district" process of passing the responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

I’m not on the bandwagon of Gordon-haters, he seems like a lovely chap. But on the war in Afghanistan, bad, bad, bad!!! What is going on in Westminster???

It took quite a while for the domestic leadership of ISAF nations to wake up to the fact that this isn’t a conventional war, it’s a nasty, tricksy insurgency. The Taliban aren’t popular, very few people support them. Which makes complete sense, given that they are nasty, tricksy insurgents, using the cloak of “oh, gosh, look, we’re just like a band of Afghan Robin Hoods, robbing those nasty oppressors and saving all you wonderful folk.” It’s a cloak because they raise a fair amount of their money through extortion of the locals – if you don’t pay you rushr , chances are you won’t wake up to a job in the morning, if you wake up at all.

It’s the same old story of paramilitary groups bullying and exploiting the local people, using a nice, press-friendly narrative to mask it. In the beginning, there may have been some basis to the argument that the Taliban were very devout and wanted to restore Afghanistan after the decades of all out and utterly brutal war. Gretchen Peters, in this excellent piece on Taliban funding, argues that way-

Many who encountered the Taliban at their outset say aspects of the tale were true: the early Taliban were well intentioned, even if their methods were medieval. According to people who witnessed the movement from its inception, they even initially made a commitment (which they acted on a handful of times) to stamp out the opium trade. This commitment was swiftly dropped as political realities and a need for funds overcame their original objectives. Despite their efforts at myth making, the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan had little to do with the grace of Allah as they claimed. From its inception, the movement appeared to rely on the financial backing of an unholy alliance of drug smugglers, traders, and trucking groups.

This is definitely not the subtle dissection and examination of the big T and little t Taliban, the decline into thuggery, or their relationship with Al Qaeda and any other group that we may or may not demonise using inflammatory language. It’s not even going to mention all the ways corruption and the Taliban are destroying the local population, and the accompanying dangers of Western thinking (we tend to get all ‘Empire’ and think like old white men). These discussions will all come soon.

However, this is about the information aspect of the war, the all important, success-defining aspect that that keeps being overlooked by Westminster. It may be that they haven’t overlooked this at all (we live in hope!), but having read their coverage of the war and listened to people who know far more than me about the situation, not holding out much hope. The Taliban are very good at getting a story out. They have a turn around of a couple of hours, whereas ISAF take a lot longer (up to and usually over 24 hours). The Taliban also have time on their side, and the eternally popular story of standing up against a bullying oppressor who has no place to be bullying or oppressing.

The issue isn’t with Britain wanting or needing to withdraw. Obviously, we cannot sit in Kabul until Doomsday. Bloody stupid idea. But the danger comes when we say “ok, this is when we start to do this” and fix a date. The Taliban have already proven many times before that they’re more than happy to sit this one out and keep punching the West until we lose the will to fight. They have worked out that we honour our war dead, that no one enjoys seeing the streets of Wooten Basset lined with mourners, and that this is very effective leverage over our Government. It’s the Dover Effect* and it’s nothing new. It worked just as well in Rwanda, where the Hutu extremists who planned and neatly executed the genocide, factored the Dover Effect into their diabolical plans. Romeo Dallaire was told in advance that the Hutu Power had set a trap that was

“intended to kill some ten Belgians. The leadership of the Hutu Power had determined that Belgium had no stomach for taking casualties in their old colony, and if Belgian soldiers were killed, the nation would withdraw from UNAMIR.** [The informant] said that the extremists knew the Belgians had the best contingent in UNAMIR, and they assumed that if the Belgians left, the mission would collapse.”

(Shake Hands with the Devil, 143-144)

Their calculation proved right and the genocide ensued as the UNAMIR troops were forced to watch 800,000 people were brutally hacked to death by their neighbours.

This is not to draw parallels between Rwanda and Afghanistan on any level, other than that at which our enemy knows our weakness. Gordon, please! The Taliban have cased us pretty well. Sure, at some point talking to them will be a good idea, and yes, anyone with half a brain recognises we need to hand over. But don’t go giving them dates! They’ll just sit it out and do nothing. Have you not read your State Building Strategy 101? I know some smart students who could teach you a thing or two…….

*The Dover Effect is used to describe the impact that coverage of war dead has on the government’s will to continue the fight. It harks back to the days of Vietnam, one of the first wars to be broadcast nightly into people’s homes, and the coverage of the US war dead arriving at Dover Airbase.

** UNAMIR – United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda