Still struggling to meet the Afghanistan challenge

It is, and will remain for some time, the supreme foreign policy challenge for President Obama and (Britain lacking any independence in this sphere) for the UK as a result. That will not change any time soon. As Obama talks about getting out of the country, his means of doing so is to send yet more troops into the country.

And the mission since the invasion and occupation almost a decade ago now, has widened and spread beyond all recognition into de facto nation building from the new trunk road connecting the capital Kabul with Kandahar in the south – to giving Afghans the dubious benefits of voting and a bi-cameral western “democratic” model.

Not bad ambition then, for a country built upon tribal fiat and warlord muscle, valley by valley, poppy field by poppy field, alongside hefty interference with money and weapons and know-how from Iran to the west, Pakistan has the east and the former Russian republics to the north: the Great Game continues alive and well.

The mission since the invasion and occupation almost a decade ago now, has widened and spread beyond all recognition

So it is that militarily the US (for it is NATO only in terms of a fig leaf title) is finding out bloodily what the Russians learned a generation before. The insurgents, pretty much armed with Kalashnikovs, some heavy machineguns and improvised explosive devices or roadside bombs (IEDs) are capable of holding down the greatest military arsenal this planet has ever seen.

All this, without the stinger missile systems which the CIA supplied to the previous insurgents to stop the Russians tightening their grip on this stark, dramatic, beautiful and often brutal place.

Afghan challenge
So down the near decade of war now, Channel 4 News has charted that stark war from the horse-mounted patrols of the British armies in the northern mountains, to the current bitter fighting across the poppy and wheat fields of southern Helmand Province.

All the while the country crumbles in many respects. It is true that more Afghan girls and boys are attending school than before the invasion. It could hardly be less than under Taliban rule. Yet Afghans – like the British – actually don’t care about education as much as security.

They want that, for their businesses, their factories, their future, and all too often they are getting insecurity, bribery and corruption and graft which amounts to a kleptocratic state in its enormity and widespread existence.

Afghanistan has scarcely ever had central government covering the country and to this day it does not have such a thing.

The military embed is one of the oldest forms of reporting – but it now has a horrible Americanism imported from the disastrous Iraq war. We have been embedded and will continue to be so – but with both sides where we can.

Joining insurgent forces is difficult and extremely dangerous and to be frank, ITN who make this programme, will not sanction any of their staff doing it, because of the obvious risks of kidnapping and worse. But both sides must be covered and will be covered.

Then there is the terrible hinterland of war and decade upon decade of chaos and breakdown, Afghanistan has scarcely ever had central government covering the country and to this day it does not have such a thing.

Into that vacuum come terrible stories of privation – of families selling their own children simply to get cash to get themselves through the long and punishing Afghan winter.

Each autumn is another survival battle for so many families in a place where even the capital is nearly several thousand feet above sea -level – fiercely hot then cold by turns of the calendar.

They know these strange western infidels will be going home soon. They know the insurgents possess the most powerful weapons of all: motivation, blind faith in what they are doing – and time.

Even the mighty grip of US forces in this forbidding terrain can be limited and they have drawn back to bases, abandoning some of their remoter outpost to the insurgency. We have been to those places and filmed these men in the war they know they cannot win.

British mission
Yet nothing seems to be able to stop it. No debate on Afghanistan during the last British election. Filming with British forces was censored – forbidden outright. Yet all the main parties simply agree about moving out in the coming years and leaving the place to, well, they simply do not know to be frank.

And the Afghans know all this; they know these strange western infidels will be going home soon.

They know the insurgents possess the most powerful weapons of all: motivation, blind faith in what they are doing – and time. Any amount of time.

In the capital Kabul, it is common to have to pay an official to pay someone to pay someone else to pay your electricity bill. All this is a city of power cuts. And so goes the country.

In the capital Kabul, it is common to have to pay an official to pay someone to pay someone else to pay your electricity bill. All this is a city of power cuts. And so goes the country.

Not a few Afghan point to the Taliban days when there was security in the country. They might not want them back with all the restrictions placed upon peoples’ lives – but they certainly don’t want the country the American war has delivered with the British helping along.

There has, Afghans will observe across the country, there has to be a better way than this. They fell short-changed by the western overlords who so often appear able to talk about only one thing – getting out and coming home.