The one good thing we’re leaving in Afghanistan

 Kabul

A strange new institution is rising from the dust in the mountains west of Kabul. The foreigners here call it the Sandhurst in the Sand. Those who work at the new British-led military school, which welcomed its first cadets last week, prefer the more cumbersome ‘ANA-OA’, short for Afghan National Army Officers Academy (though the Australians who guard the place call it ‘Duntroon in the Desert’ after their own Sandhurst equivalent). Whichever name sticks, the ‘Afghan Sandhurst’ will be perhaps the only significant British contribution to Afghanistan’s security after the Nato mission finishes at the end of next year. Some see it as a way of making up for our costly mistakes of the last 12 years, beginning with the decision to take responsibility for Helmand, the Afghan province with the deepest historical hatred for Britain, closely followed by the deployment there of too small a military force, commanded by overconfident generals.