Opportunity cost

Newspapers only have so much space and broadcasters only have so much time and, if they expend it on chasing after 15-year-old David Cameron's drug using habits, neither time nor space are available for other, more weighty issues. That is the so-called "opportunity cost". By focusing on one subject, you lose the opportunity to deal with another.

Despite the obsession with young Cameron and all things trivial, however, I fully expected at least the heavyweight end of the Sunday media to devote some time to the Nato ministerial meeting in Seville, which has been entirely ignored by the dailies. That used to be something of a speciality of the Sundays – sweeping up after the dailies, addressing some of the issues they had missed.

However, this was not to be, despite the ominous signs of trouble emanating from Afghanistan and the failure, once again, of Nato ministers to agree more troops for the region.

Nor, I suspect, are we going to see much coverage of the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, where nearly 300 security experts from 45 countries were yesterday addressed by US defense secretary Robert M. Gates. He urged Nato allies to back up their commitments to the mission in Afghanistan with money and forces, telling the gathering: "NATO is not a paper membership or a social club or a talk shop. It is a military alliance, one with very serious real-world obligations."

This was after a more emollient address on the Saturday by Nato SecGen Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. He expressed the view that the back of the insurgency in Afghanistan would be "broken" and that the country would be on the road to a long-term peace by 2009.

Gates, though, skipped the diplomacy and optimism. “NATO members are divided into two groups,” he said, those "who do all they can to fulfill collective commitments and those who do not." "Going forward, it is vitally important that the success Afghanistan has achieved not be allowed to slip away through neglect or lack of political will or resolve," he added.

The overall success of the alliance and, in particular, the success of the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan was dependent upon alliance members honouring their commitments. "An alliance consisting of the world's most prosperous industrialized nations, with over 2 million people in uniform - not even counting the American military - should be able to generate the manpower and materiel needed to get the job done in Afghanistan, a mission in which there is virtually no dispute over its justness, necessity, or international legitimacy," Gates said. "Our failure to do so would be a mark of shame."

Gates's views were echoed by Afghan national security adviser, Zalmai Rassoul, who told the same meeting that his country was facing a resurgent Taliban and an influx of foreign fighters. "While we have come far, we are standing at a crossroads in 2007 between moving forward along a democratic path and letting it slip from our grasp," said Rassoul.

US Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock added to the refrain, telling reporters before the meeting that: "you must clear, you must hold, you must build." For that, it would take more troops to conduct the combination of security and stability operations to end fighting in Afghanistan. Until then, he said, fighting will continue, since the Taleban has an enormous recruiting ground for foot soldiers among the 2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, he said. Most of these refugees have no ideological ties, he said. They become Taliban soldiers to earn a wage to live.

Star of the show though was Senator John McCain, a Republican contender for the White House in 2008. He cut to the chase, chastising "Europe" for failing to supply the troops and money to win in Afghanistan, declaring that Nato's future was at stake.

Nato allies should to move beyond the "false debate" over security and development priorities in Afghanistan - a dispute that dominated the Nato ministers' meeting earlier this week. Instead, Europe should follow Washington's lead and put more forces and resources into the war effort, he said, declaring:

Military recommitment must begin with NATO countries providing an adequate number of troops for the fight … Yet the international community still falls far short in meeting its prior pledges and in committing the resources Afghanistan needs to avoid failure.

All this comes at a time when we hear that the Taleban have stepped up attacks in southern Afghanistan in recent days in what seems to be the opening of the fighting season.

Furthermore, they are continuing to reinforce Musa Qala. More than 1,500 villagers have fled the town in anticipation of renewed fighting, while more than 300 fighters have taken their place.

Meanwhile, the governor of Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, Assadullah Wafa, also said yesterday hundreds of foreign Al Qaeda fighters had infiltrated his province and were behind regular attacks there. As many as 700 Al Qaeda terrorists had come to Sangeen and Kajaki districts from Waziristan (in Pakistan), he said, claiming they were mostly Chechen fighters, Chinese, Uzbeks and Pakistanis.

At least, though, German soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force seem to be on the case. They gave a demonstration of their prowess to the media at the German military base in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday last (pictured). At least they have some nice kit … all we need now is the determination to fight, from the German government and the other Nato allies.

Do not hold your breath, and do not expect the media even to notice as the situation goes down the pan – until, that is, we start seeing the body bags.

COMMENT THREAD

Realism 2

As the command of Nato forces in Afghanistan passes from British Army General David Richards to his American successor, General Dan McNeil, you can take your pick of what to believe as to how the campaign is going.

According to Christina Lamb writing in The Sunday Times, the message from the outgoing British commander is very much "mission accomplished". Richards has been telling anyone who will listen that, "In many respects I think we've been more successful than I anticipated … Not only has Nato unequivocally proved it can fight but actually, militarily, it has defeated the Taliban."

Nevertheless, the loss of Musa Qala is regarded as something of a dampener but it is only this very recent incident that is allowed to cast a shadow.

Even then, the ISAF press office would prefer you to focus on its more recent success, the air strike which has killed a Taliban leader named Mullah Abdul Gafoor, and some of his associates, while they were riding in a truck through a small village just outside Musa Qala. He is said to have led the attack on Musa Qala, which wrested it from the control of the elders.

"Through this precision air strike, we have shown superior capability and we will continue to execute our plans at the time and place that is most advantageous to the Government of Afghanistan and to the peace and security of the Afghan people," says ISAF spokesman Squadron Leader Dave Marsh.

By contrast, memories are conveniently short when it comes to the recent attack on Jugroom Fort where the two Apache helicopters were pressed into service to recover the body of a L/Cpl Ford. Yet, as we pointed out, the attack was a failure. British forces were repulsed by a numerically inferior force of Taliban and, from the silence about the fate of the Fort, we must assume that it has yet to be recovered.

Thus, while, according to Christina Lamb, Nato headquarters in Kabul is saying of Musa Qala that, "We will take it back but in a manner and timing of our choosing … It's a question of if, not when," one conscious of certain uncomfortable facts. At Jugroom, some 30 Taliban saw off 200 of our élite Marines, while in Musa Qala we are told there are 200 Taliban.

Inevitably though, much of what comes from ISAF, the MoD and the British government will be propaganda, and obviously so. While we struggle to assess the current situation, the main preoccupation of the official information providers will be to hold the line. Thus we get the MoD website jibbering about the news that two Harrier GR9s (the latest version) have arrived in Afghanistan. Says the MoD:

The Harrier is part of an agile and adaptable Air Force that, person for person, is second to none. It is able to provide a winning air power contribution to joint operations in support of the UK Defence Mission.

Other than to say wearily, "Oh! P-leeze!" at such misguided jingoism, one does not wish to spend too much time and effort on this, except that the MoD then elaborates on "the strengths of the Harrier". One of these is its "versatility", demonstrated recently, it says, when an aircraft delivered 1,000 lb bombs released from ultra low level in poor conditions, in support of ground forces.

Such detail reveals a great deal: one of the acute restrictions on the operation of the Harrier fleet is the limited types of weapons available, not least the 1,000 lb bomb which requires such a substantial safety margin that it often cannot be used for close air support. Our armed forces desperately need smaller bombs, so that the Harriers can work closer to troops under attack.

With the MoD making a virtue of a deficiency, we can reliably assert that any information from - or authorised by - an official source is suspect. And even then, Richards's protestations of success are undermined by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who said of the outgoing commander, "He's tried hard and the situation is much better. But I don't think we can declare victory."

This brings us back to the issue of air power for, such success as Richards has achieved has been heavily dependent on close air support. This is from a general who, before taking command, had criticised the American forces for being "too kinetic", yet he ordered more than 650 air strikes in September alone.

Karzai is known to be unhappy about the level of bombing and the number of innocent people being killed. Yet, without air support, there are not enough troops with the right kind of equipment to hold even the ground they occupy, much less prevail against Taliban strongholds.

Even now, according to The Observer today, Richards admits that his crucial battle at Panjway, close to Kandahar, against the Taliban last autumn was "a damned near-run thing". The Taliban came close to forcing heavily outnumbered Nato forces to give up their attack.

One official admits that Nato planners are trying to make up for a lack of people on the ground with air power. But, he says, "that can only go on for so long."

Now, as the snows begin to melt in the mountains and passes of Afghanistan, the Taliban is promising a bloody spring offensive in what is likely to be a decisive year in the battle for this country. We are 80 percent prepared and "are about to start war," says Taliban leader Mullah Hayatullah Khan. He warns that: "This will be a bloodiest year for foreign troops", adding: "Now there is great enthusiasm for suicide attacks among the Taliban and these attacks will increase in future."

Putting all this together and adding some of our own analysis, we see a situation where troops are ill-equipped for offensive operations and are not even holding their own in defensive operations. Yet they are about to face a resurgent Taliban, which seems far from being cowed, while we – the public – are forced to rely on obviously skewed propaganda in order to judge how they are faring.

What is especially disturbing here is that British tactics seem best to be summed up as a policy of "running away". We saw this in Iraq at Al Amarah. After some extremely violent fighting and incessant attacks on the base at Abu Naji, the British response was to abandon the base and take up a nomadic existence out in the desert of Maysan province, avoiding any serious contact with enemy forces.

In Afghanistan - described in detail by Pak Tribune - after pulling out from the platoon house at Musa Qala, British forces changed tactics in an uncanny parallel with the activities in Maysan province.

Instead of holding territory, they started operating out of small armoured vehicles, bedding down in the desert under the stars. Their units are called MOGs, "manoeuvre outreach groups", and the marines and soldiers say they are MOGging - living for weeks on end in the desolate moonscape that Baluchi tribes named the Desert of Death.

The paper cites Major Ben Warwick, commander of C Squadron, the Light Dragoons, whose light armoured reconnaissance vehicles were brought to Afghanistan last October. "What these mobile assets bring to the operation is the ability to appear in one place and then disappear into the desert and appear again somewhere else," he says.

That sounds terribly familiar. These are the type of tactics adopted by the then newly-born SAS in the Western Desert by its founder David Stirling - in the Second World War. But his were small, special forces operating against a conventional enemy, mainly attacking airfields where there were large numbers of vulnerable aircraft.

In guerrilla warfare – as in counter-insurgency operations - the security services have the problem of finding an elusive "hit and run" enemy. The common complaint of operations in VietNam was that the enemy was invisible and could never be brought to battle. Yet, in Afghanistan, the enemy made themselves known – and vulnerable – by attacking fixed points occupied by the British, losing large numbers of their fighters. Had we been able to sustain the "platoon house" strategy, the Taliban would have lost even more.

So, in what seems an optimal scenario for the security forces – in this case the British – what did they do? Well, they disengaged and drove off into the deserts to play at MOGging, no doubt to the strains of the theme tune to Lawrence of Arabia.

Cynical that may be but, in the context where the official organs are spinning like mad, the media is offering incomplete and partisan accounts - with analyses of such stunning triviality that many are not worth reading - we need to rely on basic principles. And these, in major respects, seem to have been ignored and continue to be ignored.

This might be acceptable if we had the "best armed forces in the world", which would mean that they would also have to have the best equipment, the best logistics and the best leadership. Then an element of innovation might be welcome. But, as we argued in our earlier piece, some of our personnel and units might be world class. Overall, however, our armed forces are seriously deficient in all manner of things – not least, it would seem, in their tactics.

That, in the face of a ruthless enemy on its own ground, seems to be a recipe for failure. Thus, once again we find ourselves warning that of the need to break out of the mould. Instead of complacently applauding ourselves for having the "best armed forces in the world", we do need a little bit a realism. In short, we need to be worrying that, in the next few, crucial months of the Afghan campaign, we could very well have an unacceptable number of dead armed forces.

COMMENT THREAD

An heroic failure

We did the story on Wednesday with a follow-up the following day, in which I was highly critical of the unbelievably amateur graphic published by The Daily Telegraph to illustrate the attempted rescue of Lance Corporal Ford.

Although the attempt was last Monday, it has taken this long for photographs of one of the Apache helicopters actually involved in the rescue attempt to reach the media. These have been picked up by – amongst others - the News of the World, the Mail on Sunday, the Observer and The Sunday Telegraph (print edition only).

The photographs themselves completely support our contention that the riders on the Apaches were strapped to the sides and not, as the Telegraph illustrated in its cack-handed manner, lying prone across the wings.

Some of our readers - well, one in particular - questioned whether the detail mattered, countering our view that there seems little value in using up precious space in a national newspaper with a graphic which offers a false impression of events. Arguably - and we do thus argue - if accuracy is no longer an issue, then we might as well all give up and go home, leaving the newspapers to print whatever they deem fit - right or wrong - without challenge.

But there is more to it than this. Following the incident on the Monday, the Army Air Corps was ordered to put on a demonstration of how the Apache transport was arranged, which it did at its Middle Wallop base on the Wednesday morning. Thus, apart from checking the details on the internet (which we did), the Telegraph had an opportunity to check with the Army as to the details, both that morning and later, when Channel 4 News broadcast footage of the demonstration (video grab illustrated above). That the paper did not, and persevered with publishing an inaccurate graphic, suggests an element of carelessness or even incompetence that does not fit well with a major national daily newspaper.

Even then, we have always regarded this issue as peripheral. We were concerned that, in talking up a procedure that is quite normal in the military - hanging off helicopters - the paper was missing the point. In our Thursday posting, we argued that, in its story accompanying the graphic, it could have been better employed raising the issue that we had brought up, and which had been raised by a Telegraph letter-writer - why were there no proper troop-carrying assault helicopters to convey troops in what was a pre-planned attack?

But it was Channel 4 News, in its Wednesday evening report, that raised an even more important issue. The attack site, suspected of being an important Taliban regional centre, had been under observation for two months. Yet the assault, dubbed "Operation Glacier" - where the attackers' numbers had vastly overwhelmed the defenders - had faltered in the face of ferocious fighting.

This led Channel 4 News corespondent Alex Thompson to observe:

There is, however, no getting away from the central fact of this operation, which was that it was a failure, albeit a heroic failure in some aspects… the Taliban were not flushed out of their fort, and four Marines were injured and one, of course, was killed.

His report concluded, "There will be serious questions as to why months of surveillance and planning ended up in retreat, injury and death."

It takes no imagination at all to surmise the MoD's relief that the Telegraph chose for the following day to concentrate on the "derring do" aspects of the incident, complete with its "Boys' Own" comic-book style graphic, talking up the bravery of the troops.

It must be stressed that we applaud unreservedly the bravery of these troops, but the bravery was going back for their fallen comrade, not riding the outside of a helicopter.

That activity is not even confined to the military. The picture to the right and the one above show civilian electicity workers on the skids of an MD-500, prior to and in the process of repairing high-level electricity cables. Ironically, it is just this type of helicopter that the Army so desperately needs, the "Little Bird" to which Booker referred to in his column.

While other commentators could have given the MoD a hard time as well, however, none did. A media that so lacks perspective and judgement that it is besotted with "Big Brother" fell for the "derring do" story. It shelved its critical functions and went for the easy option, letting the MoD completely off the hook and a "heroic failure" go unchallenged.

And that is important.