If we lose hearts and minds, we will lose the war

Sir Olaf Caroe — a legendary figure of the Raj, ethnographer of the Pashtuns and last administrator of the North-West Frontier of British India — wrote in 1958 that ‘unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over; in British times at least they were apt to produce an after-crop of tribal unrest [and] constant intrigue among the border tribes.’ Western leaders would have been wise to consider his words after the ‘stunning defeat’ of the Taleban, whose ramshackle theocratic tyranny crumbled in less than ten weeks’ fighting after 9/11.

On 7 December 2001, as the last Taleban stronghold fell at Kandahar, only 110 CIA and a few hundred Special Forces officers were inside Afghanistan. Donald Rumsfeld mused that this lightning success by an elite ground force, operating under a high-tech umbrella of precision airpower, space-based surveillance and satellite communications, heralded a ‘transformation’ that would remake the rules of war.