Afghanistan failures were so foreseeable

THE Anglo-American pull-out from Afghanistan, tails between legs, was shameful but wholly predictable. And far from unprecedented. Under Queen Victoria we tried to invade and occupy this strange, wild and seemingly (even by themselves) ungovernable land. Our retreating columns were cut to pieces in the bleak ravines. The Afghan scuttle now joins the Basra disaster as yet another bequest of Tony Blair trying to play the nation-creating statesman in the shadow of the even more useless George Bush Jnr. It all started with what we now call “9/11”, the wipe-out of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan in 2001.

It was rapidly established that those responsible were a gang of terrorists called Al-Qaeda, sheltering under the Taliban regime of Afghanistan. Washington demanded that they be handed over. Refused, the USA had no choice but to invade, seeking revenge. But Tony Blair had no need to join in. He did it out of vainglory. Some 454 dead British soldiers later we have pulled out as the Taliban, so quickly toppled back then, takes over.

The Taliban government, all West-hating fanatics, did not disappear.They melted back into their ravines and valleys, where they had once fought the Soviets with our full approval, and returned to what they knew best – guerrilla war. And they waited with their legendary patience.

Now they have re-emerged and are surging forward on a dozen fronts. The official Afghan army, under-paid if at all, is just handing over its weapons – donated by the USA – and throwing up its arms. The Taliban, shrewdly, is not slaughtering them. They are being allowed to go home. Word spreads, the next surrender is guaranteed. How odd that a Labour prime minister of all people needs to be taught by a bunch of ragged warriors from an ungovernable wilderness that the days of Empire are over.