Twit

The departing commander of British forces in Afghanistan says he believes the Taliban will never be defeated. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, whose troops have suffered severe casualties after six months of tough fighting, will hand over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines this month.

In fact, he goes further, he strongly suggests that the best we can hope for is to negotiate some kind of settlement or accommodation with the Taliban. Does he not understand that even if he is pragmatically correct there is a human cost to ordinary Afghanistanis if we go down that road? For the sake of clarity let me make the point that the Taliban are evil, psychotic, murderous bastards who are violently misogynistic, racist, and who have a long record of slaughtering anyone that disagrees with them.

He stated that a military victory over the Taliban was “neither feasible nor supportable”. With the Brigadier in charge I concur, it is a certainty with his attitude that there is zero chance of victory.

He continues, “What we need is sufficient troops to contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government”.

The brigadier believes that his soldiers had “taken the sting out of the Taliban” during ongoing clashes in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, but at a heavy cost, with many of his men killed or injured by roadside bombs or other explosive devices.

The brigadier’s blunt warning follows a leaked cable from the deputy French Ambassador in Kabul in which he detailed dialogue with Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador. It claimed that the strategy for Afghanistan was “doomed to failure”.

Mr Fitou told President Sarkozy that Sir Sherard believed “the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust”. He said Sir Sherard had told him Britain had no alternative but to support the US, “but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. The American strategy is doomed to fail.”

You may well remember exactly the same sort of defeatist talk in Iraq before the super confident and competent General Petraeus came into military power there. He instigated the troop surge that almost everyone in the upper echelons of power, both military and diplomatic, believed was doomed to fail. In fact his tactics have been a major success, almost inconceivable just last year.

Brigadier Carleton-Smith admitted that it had been “a turbulent summer” but claimed the Taliban was “riven with deep fissures and fractures”.

He added: “However, the Taliban, tactically, is reasonably resilient, certainly quite dangerous and seems relatively impervious to losses. Its potency is as a force for influence.”

It is his belief that the only way forward was to find a political solution, which includes the Taliban with whom The Government of President Karzai has launched a reconciliation programme. The principal Taliban commanders are thought to be totally opposed to any compromise. Therefore negotiation efforts could be enhanced with the so-called “tier-two” and “tier-three” Taliban, who are perceived to be less ideologically intransigent. My view is that the Taliban are an enemy that has to be wiped out, as their idea of compromise is to kill you cleanly rather than sadistically.

The brigadier said that in the areas where the Government had no control, the Afghan population was “vulnerable to a shifting coalition of Taliban, mad mullahs and marauding militias”. In other areas, however, progress was being made and children were going back to school. “We are trying to deliver sufficient security for a degree of normalization,” he said.

The British commander said that there was a continuation of the 30-year-old Afghanistan government vacuum, and even now the Kabul Government didn’t view Helmand as a key province. He claimed that there were areas in which the Afghan people were starting to shift their allegiance towards traditional power structures “rather than the shadowy and illegal structures” of the Taliban and the warlords.

Just for the record Brigadier, you might be a good soldier, and you could be a nice chap, but you are certainly a grade A super twit! For my non-British readers a twit is a peculiarly British type of personality, somewhere beyond a fool and not quite a villain. It is defined by the sound of a small bird making a “twittering” sound, which is a little pathetic and somewhat plaintive.

The Brigadier is clearly aware he is about to be replaced or he wouldn’t utter such a defeatist and misleading statement. The truth is that any conflict is winnable with good strategy, well motivated and men and sufficient resources.

It could well be that the government’s refusal of his plea of September 24 to double the number of soldiers he could lead to cope with the increasingly tough fight against the Taliban so aggravated the general that he decided to push his case in this way. He has just got it wrong.

Despite my grave reservations at the Brigadier's tactics in this matter I still thank him, on behalf of us all, for his service and bravery for our country, during this tours of duty. I just wish our solders were as good at talking as they are at fighting.