# Fighting a losing battle?



## big bad john (24 Jul 2006)

An interesting article from The Scotsman:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1034&id=1000372006

Fighting a losing battle
BRIAN BRADY

IT IS known as Camp Incoming. A tiny British redoubt high up in the north of Helmand province, from where the small army detachment can watch the aggression of the Taliban fighters far below and frequently engage them in fierce fire-fights. 

Its name sounds vaguely welcoming, but this hilltop is far from the comfort of home. The eight soldiers and 30 paratroopers worked hard to establish the stronghold and, every day, battle to maintain it. 

"We got a late-night order to defend the compound," Lance Sergeant Adam 'Swifty' Swift recorded in his diary the day he arrived, two months ago. "We had eight men and 17 ANA [Afghan soldiers]. It sounded dodgy. We had no Para support and limited assets, with hardly any of the equipment we should have deployed with." 

British troops are manning the barricades at the equivalents of Camp Incoming all over Helmand province, in a morale-sapping pursuit of a mission which appears more ill-defined by the day. 

Welcome to "peacekeeping" in Afghanistan: a constant battle with a barely visible enemy, a hostile climate and unreliable allies. It is a treacherous environment into which over 3,000 British troops have already been thrown and up to 1,000 will soon follow, with no sign of any abatement in the hostilities. Ministers insist it is a job worth doing, but others believe Afghanistan will teach a different lesson: that it may end all hopes that the British army can truly become a modern force fit for the challenges of the 21st century. 

It is only three years since Geoff Hoon, the former Defence Secretary, listened intently when he was assured that Britain could not contemplate a large-scale military intervention in Afghanistan until the post-Saddam firestorm in Iraq had begun to abate. 

"The numbers were important, of course," recalled one of the senior ministers responsible for managing the first of the (limited) British forces in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks five years ago. "We did not have an endless supply of people to work with. But it was also a question of sustainability. Asking our forces to cover two theatres of that scale would put extreme stress upon them." 

So, anyone witnessing Defence Secretary Des Browne's concession that further reinforcements are on their way to Helmand province may be justified in asking what has changed in the intervening years, since Hoon occupied Browne's new office. And the answer is very little indeed. Neither was anything radically different when John Reid agreed to send over 3,000 troops to Afghanistan earlier this year. 

Nevertheless, this week Browne will stand in front of fellow MPs and confirm that more troops will soon be getting their marching orders, to join the 3,300 colleagues who have been holding the line in Helmand province since the New Year. 

They will, of course, be impressively equipped. When Reid confirmed the original deployment in January, he leant heavily on the weaponry and vehicles that would be at the expanded force's disposal. "It will incorporate a force of eight Apache Attack Helicopters," the Airdrie and Shotts MP disclosed, as if to convince fellow members who retained grave concerns about the expedition, "the first time indeed that we have deployed this impressive new capability on an operation. Nine Regiment will also supply four Lynx light utility helicopters, while 27 Squadron, Royal Air Force, will provide a detachment of six Chinook support helicopters." 

Reid went on, covering the Scimitar and Spartan armoured vehicles, the battery of 105mm Light Guns, and the Desert Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. It was, as Reid himself argued, "a substantial package and one that the Chiefs of Staff agree is necessary to maximise their chances of success and minimise the risks". 

Even amid the deep chill of a London winter, it was difficult not to maintain a high degree of optimism about the chances of this latest British attempt to bring order to a troubled world. 

Yet, six months on, and after six soldiers have lost their lives in a matter of days, Afghanistan is beginning to bear a terrible resemblance to the sort of quagmire that British forces have been sucked into in Iraq. Afghanistan, as the British and the Soviets have found to their cost, has the capacity for danger and tragedy on a grand scale. But the greatest fear over the growing dangers in Helmand is that the weaknesses revealed in the British strategy are not confined to Afghanistan, but in fact expose fundamental problems with the way the British army is run. 

"If this government and future governments are going to send men and women like James in serious harm's way then it is time they look at the resources that are provided," said Anthony Philippson, after his captain son James was shot while patrolling in Helmand. "They have got the finest army in the world but the Ministry of Defence is not allocated the funds that they should be." 

For decades, the defence debate has been dominated by arguments over embarrassing procurement projects, where multi-billion pound equipment orders came in late and hugely over budget, often leaving troops with faulty and obsolete kit. Despite the government's efforts to gain control over its biggest orders - shaving some £700m off the total bill last year - the deep reservations remain. 

Philippson's bitter outburst came after James was shot while travelling in a lightly-armoured "snatch" Land Rover more traditionally used in Northern Ireland. Two soldiers were later killed in a similar vehicle which was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. But the problems are not confined to the ground. Nine RAF crew and an SAS signaller were killed when their Hercules C-130 transporter plane was hit by small-arms fire in Iraq in January 2005. 

Despite this, Scotland on Sunday understands that it will take up to two years more for the military's entire fleet of Hercules troop carriers to be brought in line with allies in America and Australia and equipped with the crucial protection of explosive-suppressant foam. 

Nevertheless, many experts fear the fixation with kit - significant and even life-saving though it may be - is diverting attention away from more fundamental issues determining the health of the British army. Reid's emphasis on equipment - not just manpower - in January was an echo of the doctrine of "capability" that presently dominates the thoughts of the military. 

Bluntly, given that modern military forces carry more destructive firepower than ever before, the number of soldiers they can call upon is less important. The doctrine underpins both the recent reduction in the size of the army to 102,000 soldiers - taking with it the traditional Scottish regimental structure - and the determined efforts to limit the initial commitment to Afghanistan. 

Military historian Sir Max Hastings, for one, is unconvinced. "Firepower is often not merely irrelevant, but counterproductive, in low-intensity engagements," he explained, in an interview with the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI). "Destructive capability is not what decides the outcome, but boots-on-the-ground." 

The impending decision to send more troops to Afghanistan would appear to prove Hastings' point. 

The British military's global reach has gradually fallen in recent years, as thousands more troops have been concentrated in the major trouble-spots of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The winding down of forces from Northern Ireland is critical to further commitments to Afghanistan. While the heavier nature of the Iraq engagement requires armoured and mechanised units, the Afghan operation is based on lighter role units such as those currently involved in the low-level presence in Ulster. 

But, while ministers and commanders can maintain a numbers game that allows them to cover increased demands for the moment, military experts warn that it is a precarious balancing act. Amyas Godfrey, an infantry officer who has served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq claims an unexpected crisis elsewhere could put the army under intolerable pressure. 

"The British army is small, in my opinion slightly too small," he said. "But through careful management and planning it is able to cope with the current level of operations, plus probably one additional 'small scale' operation if it arose. However, where it would suffer is if throughout next year, if another medium-scale deployment became necessary - something in the region of 3,500-5,000 troops." 

Hastings argues that the danger-point has already passed. He said: "Britain's armed forces are still very good, but we have reached the point where their size, or critical mass, has been sand-papered down to such a degree that not much has got to go wrong for them to face very serious difficulties." 

And it is not simply a question of sheer numbers. Ministers are eager to remind critics that troop numbers remain above the landmark 100,000 figure (although others insist that, on a simple population basis, the number should be at least 150,000). 

But the size of the ranks is, in itself, an illusion, as a huge proportion of that 100,000 is unavailable to fight for Queen and country at any given moment. A Public Accounts Committee report last year found that a third of Britain's overstretched armed forces would struggle to be ready for action because of the nation's growing military commitments. The disturbing figure was based on demands on combat personnel and their equipment, but also significant shortages of back-up "enablers" - logistics, engineering, signals and intelligence - who are crucial to any modern military campaign. 

"The problem with combat readiness is that we do not have enough 'enablers' to match the combat troops," added Godfrey, who is head of RUSI's UK Armed Forces Programme. 

That intelligence, the basic comprehension of the hostile territory into which British forces are being plunged, often appears to be faulty. In Afghanistan, for example, a country believed to have been becalmed five years ago, is suddenly the cockpit of murderous resistance; in Helmand, a Taliban dismissed as a spent force is now accepted to be a power capable of killing British servicemen on a routine basis. 

The government has stoically maintained that the Taliban remained a ramshackle collection of bandits, preoccupied only with protecting their lucrative criminal activities - notably through the drugs trade. 

The difficulty of the terrain has made it hugely difficult for the modern British army, with overwhelming manpower or firepower, to subdue the criminal elements. It is a situation that demands better intelligence. 

But efforts to plug the skills gaps are being confounded by a lingering recruitment crisis in the army. Every detachment of the force is believed to be under-strength this year, and the new Royal Regiment of Scotland is already heading for a shortfall of 600 soldiers. Defence chiefs have striven to tackle the crisis with initiatives from advertising campaigns to offering "bounties" to soldiers who recruit their friends. But, as Hastings recalls, the American historian SLA Marshall explained the US military's recruitment problems in the 1950s with the observation that: "No one wants to join a failing institution." 

In addition, commanders are struggling to keep existing soldiers. In a situation where the combat demands are relentless, the number of soldiers diagnosed with psychiatric problems has soared since the beginning of the Iraq war, and the numbers going AWOL are at record levels, it is hardly surprising that growing numbers are applying to leave the service at the earliest opportunity. 

One issue most uniforms are agreed upon is the culpability of the politicians in bringing the army to the present state of affairs: a significant result of the crisis is the emergence of the first-ever servicemen's "union", to preserve their interests and, maybe, to save the army in its traditional form. 

"This is a political crisis that must be addressed at the highest levels," said Col Tim Collins, a man never prepared to allow his colleagues' interests to be trampled over. 

"It is time for the armed forces to make themselves heard. The needs of the armed forces must be brought to the attention of the voting public."


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