British Army chief says military may have 40-year Afghan role

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British Army chief says military may have 40-year Afghan role
By Harvey Thompson
14 August 2009

The new head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, has said
that Britain could still be in Afghanistan in 40 year’s time.

Richards, who takes over Afghan command as chief of the general staff
on August 28, told the Times, “I believe that the UK will be committed
to Afghanistan in some manner—development, governance, security sector
reform—for the next 30 to 40 years.”

Questioned about the heaviest troop losses of the Afghan occupation in
recent weeks, Richards said that the British campaign was “demanding,
certainly, but winnable.”

“The end will be difficult to define; it won’t be neat and clear-cut
like the end of some old-fashioned inter-state war might have been,”
he added. “We must remember, though, that we are not trying to turn
Afghanistan into Switzerland.”

Richards stated that British troop involvement would be needed only in
“the medium term” as the role of the army would “evolve”, and the
focus should shift to the expansion of the Afghan national army and
police. But he chose his words carefully to emphasise the strategic
importance of Afghanistan for Britain’s long-term imperialist
interests: “Just as in Iraq, it is our route out militarily, but the
Afghan people and our opponents need to know that this does not mean
our abandoning the region.”

Richards’ projection echoes those of several senior British officials
who have hinted in past months of a decades-long UK military
commitment in Afghanistan, including the British Ambassador to the
United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, and the former defence secretary,
Des Browne.

Richards, who will take over command from Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt as
the UK’s chief of the general staff, commanded British forces in East
Timor in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000, and also served in Northern
Ireland and Germany. Between May 2006 and February 2007 he headed
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
He was the first non-American to command US forces since the Second
World War.

When Richards was appointed head of the British Army last October, the
World Socialist Web Site drew attention to its significance in
relation to Afghanistan.

We wrote that “with the selection of Richards to head the British
Army, the political and military elite is cementing the so-called
Washington/London ‘Afghan consensus’: namely that only a massive
military deployment into Afghanistan and the brutal crushing of all
opposition can save the US-led occupation regime.

“Richards has long been a vocal proponent of a ‘surge’ of foreign
forces into Afghanistan, and has called for an increase of 30,000
troops.” (See: “Advocate of Afghan ‘troop surge’ selected as head of
British Army”).

Subsequently several thousand British and US troops have been deployed
to Afghanistan, resulting in a rise in occupation-related violence and
the highest rates of casualties of both Afghan civilians and foreign
soldiers. Richards’ comments coincided with the news of the deaths of
three more British soldiers in Afghanistan, killed north of Lashkar
Gah, in Helmand province, on August 6.

On August 8, another UK soldier died after an explosion east of
Gereshk in Helmand province.

July was the deadliest month so far for British troops, with 22
killed, most of them during the first phase of Operation Panther’s
Claw. A further five UK soldiers have been killed in fighting this
month. As of this writing, the death toll for British troops since the
US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 stands at 196.

Recent fighting in Afghanistan has also led to a record number of
battle casualties among foreign troops, defence officials have said.

According to the Guardian newspaper, July 21, “More than 157 soldiers
were treated at the field hospital at Camp Bastion in Helmand province
last week, according to army medics. Numbers were so high that medics
have been forced to break their own rules by accepting more wounded
than the hospital is designed to take.”

One medic told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “The last few weeks
have been an extremely busy period. There have been injuries like
you’ve probably never seen or experienced.” He referred to serious
wounds caused by roadside bomb explosions.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said that 51 members of the UK armed
forces had limbs amputated by March 31, after being wounded in
Afghanistan. The latest figures published by the MoD, the highest so
far recorded, reveal a significant increase in the number of wounded
even before casualties from the latest fighting are factored in.
Forty-six soldiers were admitted to field hospitals in Afghanistan in
June, compared with 24 in May and 11 in April.

The MoD’s figures do not give a detailed breakdown of the severity and
nature of the injuries to British soldiers. But they state that 13
were “very seriously” or “seriously injured” last month, including
life-threatening injuries and amputations. Over 200 soldiers have
suffered such injuries since British forces began their campaign in
Helmand three years ago.

Colonel Richard Kemp, ex-commander of UK troops in Afghanistan, told
the Sunday Mirror, “This is a shockingly high ratio of the number of
British troops deployed at any one time in Afghanistan.”

Sky News cited Colonel Peter Mahoney, July 30, who has just returned
from a tour as medical director responsible for clinical care at Camp
Bastion. He said, “It’s been busy, there’s no doubt about it. There
have been days when surgical teams are working constantly.... It is
stressful for everybody dealing with injured young people,
particularly when you are cutting off people’s camouflage that you
recognise as your own—that’s always more emotive.”

The news agency added, “In one week alone this month 157 wounded
people were brought to the Camp Bastion field hospital for treatment,
including British, American and Estonian troops, as well as Afghan
soldiers and civilians, and even enemy forces.

“There have now been 2,650 UK personnel admitted to a field hospital
in Afghanistan since the numbers started being recorded in March 2006.
Of these 230 were seriously or very seriously wounded, and 2,280 were
evacuated back to Britain.”

Most of the deaths and serious injuries in recent months have been the
result of roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices becoming
increasingly sophisticated and deadly.

The recent words of a Welsh Guards officer indicate something of the
psychological and personal impact that the deaths and injuries are
having on serving soldiers in Afghanistan. Writing in the Independent,
the soldier said he felt compelled to speak out after the deaths of
seven men serving with or attached to 1st Battalion Welsh Guards,
including its commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe
and Corporal Dane Elson, 22, from Bridgend.

He said, “With each death, I think each of us experiences a feeling of
total shock, powerlessness and impotence. Within your mind you feel
you have to do something, especially if you knew the individual.

“Back at home that might be to jump in the car and drive to some
secluded spot where you can get out and scream at the top of your
lungs to let out all the anguish. But here nothing of the sort is
possible. You are all enclosed within your camp or patrol base; there
is no refuge, no private corner to go to, to deal with your grief.”

The soldier added, “When you read about a ‘very seriously injured’
casualty, that person’s life is never going to be the same. Nor is it
for the rest of their family, who will be sucked in and forever
affected by the aftermath. I am talking about limbs removed, double or
even triple amputations, on a scale that we’ve never seen before.”

Accompanying the rise in foreign troop deaths and casualties is the
increase in casualties and fatalities among Afghan civilians that goes
largely undocumented or misrepresented by the media.

Over one thousand Afghans were killed in the first six months of 2009,
according to a recent United Nations report.

A combination of deadly US/NATO air strikes and counter-occupation
insurgent activity has led to a 24 percent rise in civilian
fatalities, compared with UN figures from the same period last year.

Civilian deaths rose every month this year compared with 2008, except
for February. May was cited as the deadliest month, with 261 civilians
killed.

The BBC’s David Loyn, in Kabul, says that even the large increase
recorded by the UN is likely to be an underestimate, as many deaths
are not counted. This is the third year the UN has counted civilian
deaths, and the numbers have risen each year.

The BBC reported August 11 on the most recent unmanned US drone strike
in South Waziristan, north-west Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
Local intelligence officials were cited as saying, “at least 10
suspected militants” had been killed in the strike.

This was the latest in dozens of such drone strikes in the past year
that have added to the undocumented civilian death toll.

The conflagration incited by the US/NATO military occupation is
spreading ever closer to the capital. On August 10, just 10 days
before elections are due to take place, Taliban militants attacked
official buildings in Pul-i-Alam, capital of Logar province, just a
few miles south of Kabul. Five Afghan police were reportedly killed
and 26 others hurt as six militants fired rockets and grenades at the
police headquarters and government offices.

A BBC report said that part of the city “was said to have been
evacuated as military helicopters flew overhead and fired on the
insurgents.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/afgh-a14.shtml

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