WE RAISED THIS NATION’S EXPECTATIONS AND WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED UNTIL THEY WERE FULFILLED
LASHKAR Gah, Helmand Province, Kandahar City: places that are deeply familiar not just to the British soldiers – including myself – who fought in Afghanistan, but also to the UK public who, for two decades ofWestern intervention, followed the twists and turns of the campaign.
Today these places are once again on the front pages as we and the Americans walk away from our obligations and theTaliban walks in. It was in Lashkar Gah that I was involved in my first, but tragically not my last, suicide bomb attack.The desperate scene of carnage will always be with me: the blood and the brains; the shattered bodies and the smell of death; the screaming of the badly maimed and the soft moaning of the mortally wounded.
I completed three tours of “Afghan” and, for six years from 2006, the country dominated my life: either I was preparing to be shipped out, or I was in theatre, or I was recovering from deployment. Each time I returned I encountered new horrors.
There were more suicide bombers.There were the improvised explosive devices. There was a tenacious enemy who we fought hand-to-hand.Together they took their toll. I could only curse whilst colleagues – of so many nationalities – dwindled in number as they were killed.
But what kept me volunteering to go back was that I felt we were doing a worthwhile job, training and supporting the fiercely brave but woefully underpaid and under-equipped Afghan soldiers and policemen on whose shoulders the nation’s security would ultimately rest.
And indeed, towards the end of my time in Afghanistan, in 2011, some progress was evident.There were signs of reconstruction and investment. It was Afghan action, underwritten by the international community.
Confidence grew. It didn’t last. In subsequent years, the
UK shrunk its sphere of influence.We withdrew from Helmand to Kabul. The safety net the Afghans had been toiling under developed bigger and bigger holes. And now the net and the confidence have gone completely, just as have the coalition forces.
I paid my own emotional price for what I experienced but the far bigger cost falls on the population of this war-ravaged country. Having intervened – interfered many will say, though not me – our duty was to stay until we could guarantee something better, whereas we became bored and left under cover of peace talks.
Having raised expectations, we are now prepared to stand aside and watch the chaos as theTaliban once again comes to rule over much of the territory. What we should have done was remain until the talks brought about change; helping the Kabul government negotiate from a position of strength.
The very least we can do now is prepare an “over the horizon” military force – as we did in Bosnia and Kosovo – to give the option of returning to stem a
Taliban tide which risks becoming unstoppable despite President Ashraf Ghani’s optimism he can reassert control.
I think of people like my interpreter Haviz who risked his life by working with us and of Major Sher Wali of the Afghan police who died fighting alongside me.
I remember my friend Sergeant Jon Mathews, shot dead in 2008. And I will never forget Ranger Aaron McCormick; we shared a brew the night before he was killed by a bomb in 2010.
Then there is the continuing tragedy of the British Army veterans who kill themselves years after their service is over. What have all these sacrifices been for?
As a career soldier and now a politician I am a pragmatist. I have never doubted the ultimate need for an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem but for the sake of those who have died – and will die – we should have stuck around until it was found.
●●Doug Beattie served three tours of Afghanistan with the Royal Irish Regiment, winning the Military Cross. He wrote two books about his experiences: An Ordinary Soldier and Task Force Helmand