This is a guest post by CSC Research intern Maurice
Cousins.
Last week I wrote about the lack of reporting in the UK press on the murder of Edwin Dyer in Mali, West Africa. I said that the distracting chaos in British politics is diverting an over excited media's attention away from important issues that affect us all.
The story reports how bureaucrats have been interfering with UK military
strategy, thus compromising our national security, by imposing a "cap on the number of troops we [the UK] could
have in Afghanistan". So far,
in our eighth year since the intervention in Afghanistan, there are 8000
serving British soldiers and 159 dead servicemen and women. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Defence Committee, Brigadier Ed Butler, former commander of the 16th Air Assault Brigade in Helmand province
in 2006, said the reality on the ground is that the British Army is "just about
holding the line," but couldn't manage a higher "tempo" from the enemy. This is
very worrying.
As Jonathan Evans, MI5's Director General,
said in January of this year: "What
happens in Afghanistan is extremely important because what happens there has a
direct impact on domestic security in the UK". Mr Evans also added, "they [the
Taliban] were able to establish terrorist training facilities and to draw in
hardened extremists and vulnerable recruits to indoctrinate and teach
techniques ... If the Taliban is able to establish control over significant
areas, there is a real danger that such facilities will be
re-established." In short, if Al-Qaeda and their hosts, the Taliban,
succeed in regaining control of any region of Afghanistan, there is a real likelihood
of seeing a repeat of 11th September 2001 - and given the chance, deadlier
if they get hold of biological weapons or a dirty bomb from Iran or Pakistan.
While those, such as James Purnell, Caroline Flint, Geoff Hoon,
Margaret Beckett and John Hutton, who were in real positions to help protect Britain's
security interests, selfishly focus putting their careers and "love for the party"
before national security - we are, as Con Coughlin wrote for Daily Telegraph, "teetering on the
precipice between success and failure." To put it simply, the establishment has
neither the appetite nor the resources to meet our commitments.
As The Economist reports, successive UK
governments, fearing that the public will think that "front line services"
won't get the necessary funds, have been too timid when it comes to defence
spending, government priorities are simply elsewhere (defence spending has
"lagged" behind health and education). Just look at the facts. In the UK we
have seen the military budget slashed from 4% of GDP
(1988) to around 2.6% (2008).
In order to have a fighting chance of winning this war, the government must
start listening to its own security chiefs and act swiftly on their advice.
This half-hearted struggle we're currently engaged in with brutal and
determined terrorists must end. The current self-indulgent squabbles of the
political class over who should wear the Labour Party's crown, and its inability
to have an honest conversation with the public about issues surrounding
national security and defence because it is too cowardly to do so, in real
terms means that we are neglecting a military campaign that has disastrous consequences.
On a final note, perhaps we should remind ourselves what Osama bin
Laden said prior to 9/11, when he thought we in the West are a
morally weak "paper tiger" that crumbles after a "few blows"; the liberation of
Afghanistan from Islamist terrorism is a test for the West to prove him wrong.
