Afghanistan

Monday

James Forsyth

A triumph for America that raises questions about Pakistan

The killing of Osama Bin Laden is one of the clearest victories in the war on terror since the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. It is a major triumph for American intelligence. Bin Laden’s death does not mark the end of the war on terror. But it does close a chapter and demonstrate that the United States has the willingness and the determination to keep up a manhunt for a decade. Perhaps, the biggest question it raises is about Pakistan. Bin Laden was found not in the lawless, border regions of Pakistan but living in a mansion right in the heart of the country in Abbottabad.

Peter Hoskin

Osama Bin Laden is dead

The manhunt is over, as is the man. After almost a decade since 11 September 2001, a decade of the Afghan conflict, Osama Bin Laden is dead. The Al Qaeda leader was shot by US forces, not in a dusty cave complex in the mountains, but at a large house north of Islamabad. Announcing the news last night, Barack Obama called it, “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda.” It will surely be remembered as the most significant achievement of his Presidency, too. Let’s remember, though, that Bin Laden was not Islamist terror, just as Islamist terror is not Bin Laden. The fundamentalists

Sunday

Daniel Korski

A model for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

With the newspapers still full of Royal Wedding pictures, I thought I’d draw CoffeeHousers’ attention to something remarkable: a visit by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (pictured, left, at Westminster Abbey last Friday) to Helmand Province. That’s right, the 71-year old Danish monarch visited the her country’s troops in late March this year, accompanied by the defence minister. Crown Prince Fredrik persuaded her mother to visit the troops after his own previous trip to the region. In this YouTube clip recorded in Helmand, Queen Margrethe talks to the camera (sorry, it is in Danish) about her experiences in the war-torn province. She pays tribute to the two British soldiers who

Thursday

James Forsyth

Obama’s military reshuffle

President Obamna’s nomination of  General Petraeus to run the CIA will have a huge knock on effect on the US military. Petraeus will have to resign his commission to take on the post which means that his work trying to transform the US army into a force comfortable trying to deal with counter-insurgency will have to come to an end. One also can’t help but suspect that the Obama administration will be glad to avoid a public tussle with Petraeus over the schedule for withdrawal by moving him out of theatre. Of the other moves in Obama’s shake up of his national security team, one worth paying particular attention to

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Petraeus to CIA; Panetta to the Pentagon

Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense, is stepping down and will be replaced, it is reported today, by Leon Panetta. Panetta, currently head of the CIA will in turn be succeeded by General David Petraeus. Gates of course is an ex-CIA guy himself but these latest appointments make it clearer than ever that CIA is all but an adjunct to DoD. That may not be a bad thing (and most of the intelligence budget is already spent by DoD anyway) but it does make one wonder about CIA’s future. Politically speaking, both men will be easily confirmed and that’s no small consideration for the administration but it also suggests,

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Obama’s Love of Cake

Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker article on the development of Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy is, as always, full of interestig stuff even if, perhaps unavoidably, I suspect it depends a little too heavily upon the Slaughter-Power approach. Nevertheless, Ryan gets to the heart of Obama’s presidency – or at least the style of it – here: Obama’s instinct was to try to have it both ways. He wanted to position the United States on the side of the protesters: it’s always a good idea, politically, to support brave young men and women risking their lives for freedom, especially when their opponent is an eighty-two-year-old dictator with Swiss bank accounts.

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Should the West negotiate with Gaddafi?

This week, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband gave a speech in the United States about Afghanistan, proposing the hand over of responsibility for building a political solution to the UN, headed by a Muslim mediator capable of negotiating with the Taliban as well as partners throughout the region. Last week, also saw former US negotiator Daniel Serwer make an interesting parallel to his time negotiating peace in Bosnia: ‘In my experience, there is nothing like staring a military commander in the face, asking him what his war objective is, and discussing alternative means to achieve it.  I asked the commander of the Bosnian Army that question in 1995, having been

Friday

David Blackburn

How might the MoD get round its spending settlement?

The Ministry of Defence is Whitehall’s last monolith. Charged with the nation’s defence, it is powerful enough to challenge the Treasury. As Pete notes, there are signs that it’s trying to defer (if not avoid) the cuts laid out the punishing strategic defence and security review. It has many ways of doing this. Obviously it can use political pressure because troops are deployed in Afghanistan and Libya. But there’s also a neat accounting step that allows the MoD can transfer costs directly to the Treasury. You may recall that the Budget contained a £700m increase for ‘single use military expenditure’ (SUME) in 2011-2012. SUME does not appear as capital spending

Monday

David Blackburn

17,000 servicemen to go

The MoD has released its plan for redundancies. The numbers and plan were leaked at the weekend, but here are some details: 1) There will be 17,000 redundancies – 7,000 from the army and 5,000 each from navy and RAF. The first tranche will be notified by commanding officers in September 2011. 2) Some of the reductions are expected to be achieved through not filling vacancies and slowing recruitment, but it is estimated that 11,000 jobs will be lost by April 2015. 3) This is a compulsory programme, but the MoD hopes that the majority of losses can be met through volunteers. Volunteers will serve a 6-month notice period, non-volunteers

Friday

Daniel Korski

Learning from recent history

With a UN resolution now passed, Prime Minister David Cameron has displayed diplomatic skills his critics believed he did not possess. As NATO is planning to enforce an expansive no-fly zone over Libya, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider such a mission’s aims and to learn the lessons from recent wars. The strategic aim of the mission cannot only be to protect Libyan civilians. Framed in this way, the international community will face the same problems it did Bosnia: for instance, the Srebrenica massacre happened while a no-fly zone was already in place. A no-fly zone will not force Colonel Ghadaffi from power. As troops are not

Wednesday

Alex Massie

A Realist Straw in the Republican Wind?

With all the attention on Libya and the rest of the middle east at present, it’s easy to forget (again) about Afghanistan. so I think Ben Smith is right to argue that Haley Barbour’s call to bring American troops home from the Hindu Kush is interesting and, possibly, telling. Barbour, the Boss Hogg governor of Mississippi, remains a long-shot for the GOP Presidential nomination but he’s not someone noted for policy boldness or imagination. True, his ideal timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan may not differ from the platonic ideal of withdrawal imagined by the Obama administration; that’s not the important thing here. What matters – though this is but a

Saturday

Philip Hensher

‘This time it will be different’

There used to be two rules of successful imperialism. First, don’t invade Russia. Second, don’t invade Afghanistan. As Rodric Braithwaite points out, invading the latter country itself offers no real difficulties. The Afghans abandon their strongholds and take to the hills, allowing the invader to enjoy the illusion of power in Kabul, with a puppet leader installed in the Bala Hissar, the old palace fortress. The problems come later, as a long war of attrition achieves little and finally obliges the invader to cut his losses and run. Anyone can see that this is what is happening at present to the British and American forces. And it has happened before.

Thursday

Daniel Korski

The forgotten war

There is a war on. Not in Libya but in Helmand, where nearly 9,000 British troops are fighting. Last year was in fact the deadliest of more than nine years of war for Afghan civilians, the United Nations has just reported. You would not know it, though. For the events in North Africa have almost removed the issue entirely from the newspapers. When Hamid Karzai came through London recently, his visit barely registered. What a change from only half a year ago when every one of his idiosyncratic utterances would be replayed and over-analysed.   This may not be an altogether bad thing. Too much 24-hour coverage can make it

Wednesday

James Forsyth

A reminder that the Iranian threat hasn’t gone away

Today’s news that Nato has intercepted an Iranian weapons shipment to the Taliban shows the threat Iran poses to international order and just how dangerous it would be for this regime to develop a nuclear capability. The shipment means that the regime, or at least part of it, wishes to assist those who want to kill Western troops and will back the forces of instability in the world. William Hague has released a statement calling Iran’s behaviour ‘completely unacceptable.’ But it is not clear what options Nato has beyond complaining about Iran’s actions. Any attempts to disrupt these supply routes on the other side of the border would be extremely

Friday

David Blackburn

The case for retaining Harrier in Afghanistan

Lord Owen, among others, has responded to Colonel Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling lunacy by insisting that a no-fly zone be imposed over Libya. But, as Con Coughlin has suggested, it is unlikely that Britain could support such an operation without a fixed-wing attached to an aircraft carrier. The debate about the Strategic Defence Review and Britain’s military capability has reopened. The SDSR put Afghanistan first. As armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey explained in a recent speech to RUSI: ‘Throughout the next few years, the mission in Afghanistan remains our main effort. Having made this commitment in the SDSR, this shaped many of our other decisions: the proposed changes to the Army, for

Saturday

Alex Massie

America is Talking to the Taliban

This is likely to shake things up. Steve Coll, who tends to be pretty impeccably sourced, reports in the New Yorker that Washington has begun to talk to the Taliban: Last year, however, as the U.S.-led Afghan ground war passed its ninth anniversary, and Mullah Omar remained in hiding, presumably in Pakistan, a small number of officials in the Obama Administration—among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—argued that it was time to try talking to the Taliban again. Holbrooke’s final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

That Petraeus story

Rumours abound that General David Petraeus will leave his post as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Early editions of The Times quoted Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell saying that “General Petraeus is doing a brilliant job but he’s been going virtually non-stop since 9/11 [and] he can’t do it forever”. According to The Times, President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are searching for a replacement. And, says the newspaper, there has apparently even been talk of Petraeus succeeding Gates as Defense Secretary. Really? I find it extremely unlikely that President Obama, who has had a testy relationship with the military, including Petraeus, would promote the Army officer

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Coffee House interview: Mark Sedwill

Diplomats are often seen as stuffy characters from a different century, men who often appear lost in today’s chaotic world. Nobody could be further from that caricature than Mark Sedwill, the former British ambassador in Kabul and outgoing NATO Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan. For more than a year, Sedwill has been, first, General Stanley McChrystal’s right-hand and, more recently, the civilian counterpart to General David Petraeus. Since he took up his ambassadorial post in Kabul, after a stint as Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan, few Britons have had as much influence on NATO’s strategy as him. And there are now rumours that, having impressed several Tory ministers, Sedwill could

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

A legion of attacks

Some attacks hurt more than others. And the attack launched by Chris Simpkins, the director-general of the Royal British Legion, on the government’s approach to the military covenant will be particularly painful. For it comes after a Defence Review that left few happy, and when the nation is engaged in a war from which many feel the Prime Minister is a bit too keen to withdraw. Speaking to The Times, the Royal Legion chief said plans set out in the Armed Forces Bill requiring the Ministry of Defence to publish an annual report on the unwritten pact between society and the military were not the same as writing it into

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

As the oldest parliament yawned, the oldest civilisation erupted

One yawn every minute. That’s how PMQs felt today. Foreign affairs dominated the session as Ed Miliband and the Prime Minister exchanged lofty words about the Cairo demonstrations and the spread of democracy around the world. Doubtless they felt they struck a suitably elevated tone but to the viewers they came across as a pair of prep school smart-alecs trying to sound like great statesmen disposing of liberated peoples after the fall of empires. Egypt and Afghanistan were both treated to a torrent of high-minded vacuities. David Cameron found the demonstrations ‘incredibly moving.’ Ed Miliband was impressed by the sight of ‘hundreds of thousands of people facing overwhelming odds to