A modern-day barbarity

A bomb disposal expert was killed in a gunfight with insurgents yesterday, The Guardian tells us, using the MoD as it source.

The solider from 101 Engineer Regiment (EOD), was attached to the joint force explosive ordnance disposal group, part of the counter improvised explosive device (IED) task force. He was "... part of an EOD team that was extracting from an incident when he was killed by small arms fire," said Lieutenant Colonel James Carr-Smith, a spokesman for Task Force Helmand.

"He died seeking to rid Helmand of IEDs such that local Afghans could move freely throughout the province. He will be greatly missed and his actions will not be forgotten. We will remember him," adds Carr-Smith.

But fine words butter no parsnips, as the saying goes. There are occasions when EODs must work out in the open, and this does put them at risk. However, as long as there is vehicle access to the site of a suspected IED, then there is no need whatsoever for a soldier to expose himself to fire.

In the first instance, there is the Husky set, for detecting IEDs and for detonating pressure-pad initiated devices. Mine rollers and armoured bulldozers also have their place. Then there is the Buffalo armoured vehicle, which can be used to investigate suspect devices. There are also tracked robots which can be used for further investigation – these can be controlled from the safety of a Mastiff protected vehicle.

However, in this man's Army, great value is placed on the ability of the EOD to neutralise and then dismantle IEDs, for the forensic evidence that it yields and thus the assistance it gives in tracking and arresting bomb-makers. For that reason, it is held, EOD must expose themselves to danger – for the greater good.

That argument would stand up if the policy led to a reduction in the number of bomb-makers and the number of IEDs placed. In fact, despite four or maybe five EODs being killed (perhaps more), plus an unknown number of soldiers killed while using hand-held metal detectors, IED incidents are at a record level.

Further, there are different and better ways of gaining intelligence to thwart the bomb makers, such as automatic change detection, or even direct UAV observation, tracing bomb-layers back to their bases – plus more subtle techniques.

Two years ago, we were asking how many more times must men be pitted against bombs, when there are machines which can be used in place of flesh and blood. In fact, we have been pointing this out ever since 2005.

Sending men against bombs is the equivalent of the First World War practice of having men in orderly lines walk into the muzzles of machine guns, instead of using tanks. In this modern age, we find it appalling that the military could even consider such barbarity – so why is it acceptable for the modern-day military to do what amounts to the same thing?

We need to forget the fine words – and bring these people back home alive.

COMMENT THREAD

Drop the dead donkey

Taliban fighters are using donkeys as deadly four-legged bombs to attack British troops in Afghanistan, reports The Daily Telegraph.

The paper adds that "the incident has alarmed military chiefs concerned that the Taliban are now using desperate methods to attack occupying forces." I sincerely hope that this is ill-informed rhetoric on the part of the paper. The use of a "donkey bomb" was reported by The Times in April this year, so it hardly suggests that the Taliban is now - or at all – using "desperate methods".

In fact, "animal-borne" IEDs are not new. One was recorded in Columbia in September 2003, used with devastating effect. In 2006, the Palestinians were reported to be experimenting with explosives-rigged stuffed animals.

In Iraq, animal carcasses were not infrequently used to hide IEDs and in August 2005 were reported to be rigging live dogs with explosives. But even that was not new. In the Second World War, the Germans experimented with dogs carrying radio-signal initiated bombs to destroy Allied tanks.

Nor is the use of live creatures confined to "terrorists". In one of the more bizarre scenarios dreamt up by American scientists during World War II, hundreds of tiny bats, each wearing a small napalm bomb strapped to its chest, were to descend on Japanese cities before exploding and spreading uncontrollable fires.

The experiments came to an abrupt end in 1944 when, during one test, the direction of the wind changed, blowing the bats back into the US Army's headquarters, which caught fire. In another incident, some bats hid under the car of a high-ranking US officer causing it to explode.

That their use was considered by US forces in 1944 could hardly have been a sign of desperation, and neither can the use of donkeys by antagonists in Afghanistan be thus considered. It merely reflects the inventiveness and flexibility of guerrilla forces when up against a better-equipped enemy, in a country where heavily-laden donkeys are more common than cars.

The worrying thing is that we see a narrative being created here. The local introduction of an old tactic – not met by ae particular batch of troops – is reported as "new" and then interpreted as a "sign of desperation". By such means to we (possibly the Army, and certainly the media) fool ourselves into thinking that we are achieving something more than is actually the case.

COMMENT THREAD

They didn't stand a chance?

In yet another graphic example of how the media have lost the plot, we see reported the outcome of an inquest on the deaths of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. This time it concerns Cpl Tom Gaden, L/Cpl Paul Upton and Rifleman Jamie Gunn, all three of whom died on 25 February this year when their Land Rover WIMIK (example pictured) was blown apart by an IED.

The soldiers were part of an Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT), on an "escort patrol" in the Gereshk district, driving along a new metalled road. They were hit by a "culvert bomb" estimated at 250kg, triggered by a command wire, with the triggerman some 500 yards distant.

The bomb blew a crater more than 6ft deep and the vehicle was "obliterated". Describing the scene was Captain Richard Camp, who was in the convoy: "Nearest to me the engine block was upturned," he said. " Forward of that was the main body upside down. Then forward of that was the gun turret upturned. Three big bits and a number of small bits."

The Army must have been mightily relieved when it submitted to the coroner that "no vehicle would have withstood the force of the improvised device," eliciting from the coroner, David Ridley, "... they didn't stand a chance." Recording a verdict of unlawful killing, he described the action as "cold, callous and arguably cowardly".

Whether it is any more "cowardly" than killing Taleban with a GBU-38 dropped from a B-1B flying at 30,000ft is certainly arguable, but even more so is the assertion that the soldiers "didn't stand a chance." They did ... or should have.

For sure, the size of the IED would indeed have challenged any vehicle, although a Mastiff might just have withstood the blast. But, against such devices, armour is not the issue. Dealing with culvert bombs demands a strategy all of its own.This, we dealt with in an earlier piece, the point then made that culvert bombs were by no means new to the British Army.

These bombs were encountered many times in the Northern Ireland campaign, and were used with devastating effect in Iraq. Nor are they new to the Afghan theatre. A US media report, in piece dated 31 October last year.noted that they "began cropping up in June – at least eight months before the three soldiers were killed.

There can be no question that dealing with culvert bombs presents problems for the coalition forces, especially as on some roads, they crop up at 100 yard intervals. They require assets such as UAVs, ground patrols and mast-mounted surveillance systems.

But, as we remarked in our earlier piece, engineering should play a major part in the mix, fixing grids to culvert entrances to prevent bomb emplacement, guarded by sensors which trigger alarms if there is any attempt to interfere with them.

Given that the road on which these three soldiers were murdered was newly-built, one would have thought that pre-emptive engineering would have been incorporated into the structure – it must have been entirely predictable that the culverts would become targets for the Taleban.

Ostensibly, therefore, these were entirely preventable deaths. The soldiers "didn't stand a chance" because the obvious and necessary precautions were not taken.

In terms of the media, this episode is one where the newspapers could be asking serious questions, highlighting the lack of precautions and demanding that the appropriate counter-measures are taken. But, with the anodyne comments from the coroner, there is barely any interest at all. The BBC and one or two papers have published brief reports, taking the coroner's remarks at face value.

Even The Sun, which tells us today that "Our boys need gear to survive", takes the report at face value, reserving its criticism for Gordon Brown, demanding that troops must "... be given the best-protected, high mobility vehicles ... whatever the expense."

What is missing from the WIMIK story is pre-packaged opinion, for example from a critical coroner, a high-ranking military officer, a celeb joining the fray, or grieving relatives weeping at their loss, demanding action from ... Gordon Brown.

With no political mileage to be gained, no "comfort blanket" of a pre-packaged quote, and no understanding of what is happening or what needs to be done, the media simply do not want to know. And sadly, as long as that is the case, our soldiers won't stand a chance. The media is too busy with its own agenda to care.

COMMENT THREAD

Fewer things better

"The more focus there is on great military offensives, the faster the money and blood is expended; and the greater the pressure for rapid results, the less chance there is that the fight will ever be won," writes Stephen Grey – author of Snake Bite - in the current edition of Prospect Magazine.

This may contradict the siren calls for more troops in theatre, but Grey's argument has an ineluctable logic. It starts with him assessing the psychology of the Army, the ability to "crack on" - its greatest quality and perhaps its greatest weakness. Commendable in adversity, it can also mean failing to challenge impossible orders, or unwillingness to expose a flawed strategy.

Many, in fact, believe the Helmand campaign to be flawed, a view expressed by a "senior Whitehall figure" who declared that Helmand "was a terrible strategic blunder." His views were not uncommon. Citing the plentiful material support in Vietnam, where there was no shortage of helicopters, Grey himself observes that, "unless the strategy is fixed, reinforcement could well make things worse."

The rot started with the fallacy that the campaign was more of a conventional than a guerrilla war (which explains the initial enthusiasm from an Army bogged down in Iraq) leading to the "mowing the lawn" sweeps which were viewed as a positive outcome, as they would have been in a traditional war.

The "lie" was exposed by Brigadier Andrew Mackay who used the recapture in December 2007 of Musa Qala to engineer a turning point. It was no good destroying a town and then arriving afterwards with cement mixers or wads of cash, as US doctrine seemed to imply. Thus, the aim was to take the town without knocking it down and by persuading the Taleban to flee, not fight.

A plan for reconstruction was devised to begin on "day one" after the town's recapture, and a battalion of Afghan troops was earmarked to garrison the town, with Nato troops kept out.

The military did its bit, taking the town with minimal civilian casualties but, as Anthony Loyd pointed out in the following July, the reconstruction was botched. The civilian agencies, including Britain's foreign office and development department, and the Afghan government came nowhere near to doing their part.

Beyond this, though Grey looks at a dimension we rarely consider – the idea of talking to the enemy to discover their motives. He also explores the need to avoid the indiscriminate killing of "Taleban" leaders. As has been rehearsed on this blog, the Taleban is not a homogenous, hierarchical group.

Through the eyes of an Irish EU official, Michael Semple, and another Irishman, Mervyn Patterson, Grey tells us that the Teleban of southern Afghanistan, was made up of bands of competing fighters, driven to fight more by a sense of tribe and nation than religious ideology. The US decision to demonise their leaders had prevented many from retiring, or switching sides. Instead they had been driven into Pakistan, where they had regrouped and forged closer ties to the remnants of al Qaeda.

"Reconciliation," Semple found, was possible and a process was initiated, effectively to be sabotaged by president Karzai. Had the British and their allies understood what was going on (and supported it), this - says Grey - might have stopped much of the fighting in the first place.

Ignorance, however, seems to have exerted itself in other malign ways, leading the newly-arrived British army unwittingly to blunder into the opium "turf wars", ending up in Sangin backing the drug mafia and driving rival tribal groups into the hands of the Taleban. British and US special forces campaigns to "decapitate" their leadership have made this worse, effectively eliminating the very people who could ultimately reconcile the insurgent groups.

Thus, while foreign secretary David Miliband now supports new talks with the enemy, three years of battles - which the Taleban were always said to lose – have brought a doubling in insurgent numbers in Helmand, making the kind of engagement which might have worked in 2006 much harder. Belated as it is, it still needs to be tried, writes Grey.

Now, farmers who last year might have supported the coalition are more likely to turn to producing IEDs and the area to the west of the province's capital Lashkar Gah has become a "Taleban stronghold." Retaking it has been the central objective of coalition troops, the British-led operation "Panther's Claw" having made a "land grab" akin to the operations of 2006.

Brigadier Tim Radford, the British taskforce commander, is "absolutely certain" that Panther's Claw has been a success. Lessons have been learned. A new swathe of land has been brought under government control - and it will be held.

Like many of us, Grey is sceptical. Nato has nothing like the troop strength to garrison the province and British troops, he asserts, meanwhile, "remain overstretched" in the zones they have held since before the summer. The Afghan army is not ready to step up and the Afghan government is not able to provide officials capable of delivering the security and services that might win over those infamous hearts and minds.

Musa Qala showed that there is little point winning ground for an Afghan government regarded as corrupt and unable to deliver basic security. "The problem with our approach this summer," one senior western official told Grey, "is that Afghanistan is neither willing nor capable of taking over the areas that Nato troops have captured … It's a fiction that they'll soon be ready."

On the domestic front, Grey sees no particular room for optimism either. He tells of how Whitehall officials seethed at what they regarded as General Dannatt's opportunism in using recent casualties to spread the blame for three years of bloody stalemate. As seen from London or Washington, the story of Helmand was more often of commanders who pushed soldiers into harm's way, sent back endlessly optimistic reports, and extended the conflict beyond the resources and political will available back home.

Their complaint, says Grey, has merit. Politicians dispatched troops to Afghanistan, but Nato generals decided how to deploy them. Most of the crucial decisions - from sending troops to defend the platoon houses, to "mowing the lawn," to Panther's Claw - have been made by soldiers. If an operation was launched with insufficient troops (or helicopters) it should not have been launched at all.

As to the US approach of "clear, hold and build", Grey dismisses it as "a tactic, not a strategy." It leaves unanswered just how much of this vast, lawless country should be cleared and held. There have already been calls for tens of thousands of more troops. Yet all of these dreamed-of reinforcements would never be enough to garrison all the areas of rebellion, never mind the whole country. Unlike in Iraq, we have reinforced before we know how to win.

The answer – or one of them – is to recognise that western intervention has limited value. Not all enemies can be dealt with at once. Do not reach for military action as the first response and pick our battles more carefully. Doing fewer things better - and letting the world know about them - can have greater effect than pouring more troops into an extended offensive.

Britain, says Gray, can still do good if it learns deeper lessons from its campaign. Its armed intervention should be concentrated on smaller areas, with a much greater emphasis on local intelligence. This must go hand-in-hand with economic development, and above all matching the scale of the mission with the resources available.

To this, we would add one caveat – nothing long-term can succeed unless the military manages to stem the flow of casualties. Without that, there is no long-term for British involvement. As we observed earlier, we have to deal with the IED.

COMMENT THREAD

The official version

Possibly stung by Michael Yon's trenchant report on the Battle for Pharmacy Road, the MoD has rushed out its own version of the operation, currently on its website.

The Yon version is better and much more detailed, but both bring something to the table. Neither, though, is complete and – it would seem – neither tell the full story of what happened or is going on. From the joint accounts, however, a picture begins to emerge which is more than a little disturbing.

The MoD account, by way of adding missing detail, tells us that the "battle" is codenamed Operation Flint and that 200 soldiers from 2nd Battalion The Rifles are involved, together with "experts from the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group". We also learn that this was one of two operations, the second being the clearance, a few days later, of a pathway known as "Route Sparta", also in Sangin. In total, 37 IEDs are discovered.

Interestingly, the MoD account relies on some of Michael Yon's photographs (some of which we have reproduced), acknowledging their source – which adds a further dimension to the apparent withdrawal of Yon's embed, after the publication of his despatch. The mystery deepens.

The MoD's account of the early stages of Operation Flint very much follows the narrative set by Yon, the MoD describing Pharmacy Road as "notorious", also telling us that it had "previously" claimed the lives of five soldiers in one day. This presumably is the incident on 10 July, when five were killed in the complex ambush.

Lt Will Hignett from 2 Rifles sets the scene, telling us: "The ground in Wishtan is made up of a maze of high compound walls and narrow alleyways. It is ideal for insurgents placing IEDs in cover and a real challenge for patrols trying not to get channelled or set predictable patterns for patrolling."

As to the operation, we learn that The Rifles surrounded the "one-kilometre stretch of road to provide cover for the specialist search and bomb disposal teams" and, as Yon describes, IED after IED is uncovered.

What then gets very interesting is the way that the MoD then describes (or more accurately does not describe) the blockage caused by two blown-up vehicles, about which Yon gives us some detail and provides photographs.

According to the MoD, the clearance teams, as they moved further down the road, "discovered the wreckage of two vehicles, clearly decimated by an earlier blast." The use of the word "discovered" is, to say the very least, puzzling. They did not know they were there? We are being fed BS.

Moreover, we are led to believe that the vehicles are "decimated by an earlier blast" – i.e., a single blast. Yet, we know from Yon that one vehicle is a "Jingle" – i.e., civilian – truck. The other is, from the look of it, an armoured wheeled loader. We know it is military – Yon tells us so - and, as a JCB (Yon calls it a "scooper") is part of the recovery effort, we are told (by Yon) that "the soldier who is driving the scooper is the same driver who got blown up on Pharmacy Road."

Putting the narratives together and making our own deductions, what appears more plausible is that the civilian truck was blown up and then, subsequently, the armoured loader was despatched in an attempt to clear the wreckage, only to get itself blown up.

Originally, we had assumed that this vehicle was another JCB but, on close inspection of Yon's photograph (above right), it appears similar to the much larger and better-protected Caterpillar loader - the very same type that the MoD are selling off (left). This might explain why the driver survived. But it also tells us the Army has a serious problem. At 37 tons, and a back wheel missing, this is serious heavy metal creating a major obstruction. (It could, however, be a Case 721B Medium Wheeled Tractor with a Penman armoured cab – weighing in at a mere 16 metric tons.)

With the two hulks blocking the road (and then booby-trapped), it must have been these which finally closed off Pharmacy Road, effectively isolating PB Wishtan, forcing it to be re-supplied by helicopter. And, when – as Yon but not the MoD tells us – a supply helicopter was attacked by an RPG, which cannot have been long after the Mi-26 had been shot down, one surmises that helicopter flights were suspended, leaving the base cut-off and under siege.

Thus, it would appear, Operation Flint was not simply a "route clearance" operation. It was an emergency relief force to break the siege of PB Wishtan, before its supplies ran out and it was over-run.

This is, effectively, borne out by the MoD itself, which tells us that, 22 hours after 2 Rifles deployed, the road was declared clear as the soldiers reached Wishtan. The rest of the night, we are then told, a "convoy resupplied Wishtan with everything from fridges to missiles." That detail is not mentioned by Yon.

That is what this convoy must have been all about. Several of the photographs show the convoy driving through Sangin market, which is the route to PB Wishtan from Jackson. We are looking at a relief convoy, breaking the siege – hence the elation of the Wimik driver.

Such is speculation, of course, but it all fits. And it explains the sensitivity of the MoD to Michael Yon's report – and its eagerness now to rush out its own version. The last thing the MoD wants is anyone to realise quite how desperate the situation really is in Sangin, with a Company base not three miles from the main FOB Jackson having been cut off by the Taleban.

That subsequently, the Taleban were effectively able to isolate FOB Jackson on election day also tells you a great deal about the security situation in Sangin, and the strength of the Taleban. Operation Flint – or at least the MoD version of it – seems to be hiding that in plain sight.

Things are perhaps now worse than even the growing casualty rate tells us. Yon got perilously close to revealing this.

COMMENT THREAD

Blessed be the peacemaker

Re-reading Michael Yon's latest despatch for the umpteenth time, my own thinking hardens into a single question: why are we messing about?

The heaviest piece of kit used in the entire operation to clear Pharmacy Road is an armoured JCB Caterpillar 434 (pictured left) – with all the substance and presence of a Tonka toy. It is not even an HMEE.

The dangerous work is done by unprotected troops and ordnance clearance teams driving nothing more lethal than the absurdly expensive, unarmoured Tellar Disposal and Search Explosives Ordnance Disposal vehicles.

What we should have been using were these (pictured below) – the Mantak D-9 Armoured Bulldozer. There is even a remote-control version.


There are more pics here (about eight-tenths the way down). One of the captions reads:

Talk About Intimidating. You do NOT want to be anywhere around this monster when it is barrelling towards you with several tons of mines scooped up from your locally laid minefield, otherwise you might be eating a lot of dirt and body parts for dinner.

Procedure-wise, what should have been done is equally straightforward. A straight line should have been drawn on a map, between FOB Jackson and FB Wishtan. The route should have been published well in advance, with warnings to keep clear. On the appointed day, the D-9 is started up, put into gear and driven from A to B, in a straight line. This is the engineering solution.

Michael Yon writes about these baked mud walls stopping 30mm cannon rounds and being left standing when 500lb bombs drop in compounds. They would not last two minutes in front of a D-9.

Then, you open up a compensation office and pay a fair price for the damage. The cost would still be cheaper than a brace of GBUs and the delivery charges – much less the compensation you have to pay to the relatives of dead soldiers and limbless servicemen.

But what about "hearts and minds?" I hear you cry. Well, there is nothing benign in permitting the Taleban to kill Afghan citizens. Yon writes that two civilians were killed by IEDs after the road clearance operation.

One was killed when he tried to strip one of the blown-up vehicles left by the British engineers. The other died on a route he had thought cleared by the British. It had not been. "The Taleban blows up a lot of local people in Sangin," Yon observes. Where is the "hearts and minds" in allowing that to happen?

The Afghanis, we are told, want security more than anything. That is how you give it to them. Sending out our own young men to die in narrow alleys, surrounded by high walls, prey to the IED and the bullet, is not. It achieves nothing.

Blessed be the peacemaker – it is called an armoured D-9.

COMMENT THREAD

The battle for Pharmacy Road

We have written a great deal of the situation in Sangin, deploring the growing toll of casualties in that town, the brunt of which are being taken by the 2 Rifles Battlegroup under the command of Lt-Col Rob Thomson.

Their headquarters are at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Jackson near the banks of the Helmand River just outside Sangin town, in the so-called "green zone", the lush area of vegetation fed by the river waters.

Embedded with 2 Rifles – until yesterday when his permission to remain was withdrawn by the MoD after he had posted this report – Michael Yon was able to describe in detail one small action, which I have dubbed the "battle for Pharmacy Road", the narrative here culled from Yon's much longer report.

The unpaved Pharmacy Road, flanked by 15ft-high baked mud walls forming the boundaries to sizeable compounds, starts about two miles to the south east of FOB Jackson - a route which passes through Sangin market. It runs east north-east connecting two secondary bases, about a mile apart (see above - note, this is not oriented north/south). At the western end is Patrol Base (PB) Tangiers manned by the Afghan National Army while, at the eastern extremity is PB Wishtan, named after the locality, occupied by C Company 2 Rifles.

Pharmacy Road, however, has effectively been closed by enemy harassment, including a blockage caused by two blown-up vehicles (a "jingle truck" and a British Army armoured JCB). IEDs are planted in broad daylight and the enemy chisels small firing holes through the walls and fires bullets down the tight spaces and alleyways.

Resupply and troop movements, therefore, had to be performed by helicopter, even though a patrol could walk from Jackson to Wishtan in an hour and straight driving would only take fifteen minutes. With the shortage of helicopters (and the fact that an RPG was recently fired at a helicopter as it lifted out of PB Wishtan), closure of the road increased enemy freedom of movement while decreasing that of the British and Afghan forces.

The British soldiers of 2 Rifles were thus given a mission: clear and hold. The task is not easy. With no direct line of sight from one end of the road to the other, and a network of narrow alleys between compounds, giving ambush opportunities to the enemy, the troops will be hemmed in by the high walls.

Snipers are of little use because they can neither see nor shoot through the walls, which are so robust that even 30mm cannon rounds fired from aircraft will not penetrate. A 500lb bomb exploding in the middle of a compound will leave the walls standing. And there is no commanding terrain other than the air.

The mission began under cover of darkness, the troops equipped with night vision goggles and led by a soldier with a sniffer dog.

"We set off down the market road," Yon writes. Then, in an oblique reference to his MoD "minders" – who were subsequently to pull the plug - he adds: "Some folks believe such reports are 'security violations', as if the thousands of people living here do not know exactly where the bases are, or do not know exactly where we came from and went to. Operations take place here every day. Civilians are everywhere."

Despite being observed by so many civilians, the troops, Yon still with them, reach PB Tangiers with no dramas. Some Afghan soldiers were on guard there, while others seemed comatose.

With the troops is Cpl Mark "Axle" Foley, the JTAC who controls air strikes. He is allocated support from A-10s but about 0314, as they approach, still about 40 miles out, they are called away for a TIC (troops in contact) somewhere in South Helmand. The men bed down to sleep.

It is not until nearly half past five in the morning that ordnance clearance (EOD) teams start moving down the road, clearing IEDs with controlled explosions – dealing with six in the space of an hour. They have a soldier with a sniffer dog with them. This is not entirely successful, leading his handler at one stage over an undetected pressure-activated IED.

With one stretch "cleared" - there have been many instances where soldiers heve been blown up by ground that has just been cleared, so cleared is more like "cleared" - Lt-Col Rob Thomson leads some of his men to check the progress in clearing some of the most dangerous ground, where the blown-up vehicles are blocking the road.

The plan to clear the blockage is ingenious. The area surrounding the vehicles is booby-trapped with explosives, and the wrecks themselves also are booby-trapped. So, instead of trying to drag the vehicles the length of the road, the goal is to blow down the wall of the adjoining compound and drag the vehicles off the road and into this compound.

About 200lb of plastic explosive is used to make a breach. This also brings down electrical wires so the breach is widened with an armoured JCB, to allow a heavy truck through into the compound, which is used to winch the wires clear. Then the wrecks are dragged into the compound and the way is now clear for the EOD teams to continue.

That night, however, the troops stay in the compound, the aim being to build a permanently manned observation post halfway down the road. Yon sleeps while soldiers from 2 Rifles and the engineers work all night erecting the sanger (guard post).

As the sun was rising on the second day, Pharmacy Road had been cleared and the sanger had been built. Yon and most of the troops headed back to FOB Jackson. Back at the base, an explosion shook the room. Word came that a local person was pulling parts from one of the vehicles that were dragged off Pharmacy Road. He encountered a Taleban booby-trap and he had been killed.

EOD had not cleared the vehicles of booby-traps; the two vehicles had merely been pulled off the road. Next day another local was killed on a parallel road that he thought the British had cleared. It had not. The Taleban blows up a lot of local people in Sangin, writes Yon.

The mission was an obvious success. It was surprising, Yon adds, that we endured no fatalities or serious injuries. The mission was well-executed and since many of the soldiers have substantial combat experience from Iraq and Afghanistan, major dramas were averted.

Although at least one IED has been placed on the road since, C Company and the ANA are now regularly patrolling and the freedom of movement has resumed. This is a brutal fight. Since that mission, eight more British soldiers and two interpreters have been killed in the area. That's ten KIA plus the wounded. The soldiers keep going.

COMMENT THREAD

In our stead

The lottery of death and mayhem that characterises the campaign in Afghanistan has this time cast its shadow on two Estonian soldiers, Eerik Salmus and Raivis Kang, both 26 (pictured). They died on Sunday after their unit came under fire while clearing explosives from a road in Nad-e-Ali.

Their deaths are in addition to the loss of a US soldier, but they will not be equally mourned. The US contingent will look after its own but, the deaths of the Estonians, as part of a small contingent serving a small nation, will be largely unregarded outside their own country.

The point is though that the Estonians, highly regarded and respected, are an integral part of the British command, working alongside British troops, supporting them and sharing the risks. And, working in Nad-e-Ali – the focus of Operation Panther's Claw – they were performing tasks that would otherwise have had to be done by British soldiers (or Danes). It could so easily, therefore, have been British casualties that were recorded.

There is a tendency, however, both with the MoD and in the media, to treat the deaths of "foreigners" as somehow less important as our own. Yet these troops are our coalition allies, working alongside us, dying for the same cause.

One would expect the media to display its usual narrow parochialism, but there is no excuse for the MoD. Since it regards part of its duty, the promulgation of casualty details on its website, it should record the passing of two soldiers who were also serving under British command. There is equality of risk – there should be equality in death. We owe them that.

COMMENT THREAD

They were in a Mastiff

In The Observer today we find published extracts from the diary of a soldier engaged in Operation Panther's Claw. As well as recording his experiences, the account provides a valuable insight into the thinking of one soldier as he grappled with the news of colleagues terribly injured and killed by the growing menace of IEDs.

He himself is shot in the chest and has to be evacuated, but he also finds himself twice in a Viking struck by IEDs. On these occasions, all troops inside survived.

Clearly conscious of the IED threat (he could hardly be otherwise) he asks why the Army does not have more sniffer dogs, suggesting that finding IEDs would be "a lot easier with a furry friend running about and a lot more lives would be saved." He observes that, since arriving, he has not seen one dog.

The pertinence of this observation is reinforced when he learns that another soldier has been killed in an explosion while searching for IEDs. The soldier also observes that, "We are so spread out and overstretched on the ground and it means the Taliban are taking the piss. They can lay these IEDs at fucking will. We are not there at the moment to put out ops or sniper over-watch and the Taliban know it."

Several points emerge from these observations. Firstly, as one might expect – this is not a criticism – the man is interpreting what he sees from his own very narrow perspective.

Thus, while he is clearly aware of the utility of sniffer dogs, he has not necessarily thought the issue through – that in a "kinetic" environment (which this certainly was) dogs and their handlers are extremely vulnerable and tend to be targeted by the Taleban.

As to "ops or sniper over-watch" to counter the IED emplacers, that is an infantry response but, in the context of this overall operation, we have already observed that this was an ideal role for UAVs and, in this piece noted:

In that Panther's Claw is a "deliberate operation" – i.e., one that was planned and executed in an area of choice - the fact that the Taleban had laced the area with IEDs could perhaps have been pre-empted. Not least, troops could have been provided with far more knowledge of their locations and extent than they seem to have been.

Our soldier also writes of being told that a checkpoint spotted "two males lying prone and digging on the track where we keep getting hit." In this instance, he reports with disgust, "...we only fired warning shots at them. Another wasted opportunity." Indeed.

In other instances, we have seen reports of the lethal effect on bomb emplacers of the combination of UAV surveillance and airpower and one wonders why such assets could not have been employed here.

But in another diary entry, we read this appalling observation:

We have spent all that money on a new bomb-proofish vehicle but you've still got four blokes with metal detectors out at the front of it and one commanding them. Sometimes I just don't get it. We need to invest in better bomb detection equipment and get more dogs out here. Surely there is something that we can use to trigger bombs off early?

And, of course, there is. Earlier, we reported on these self-same "primitive" British mine/IED clearance methods, compared with their US counterparts, noting that the USMC were equipped with a 10-vehicle clearance team that included a vehicle equipped with a mine roller, pushed ahead to detonate pressure-pad actuated mines and IEDS, a Husky mine detection vehicle and a number of MRAPs, all manned by specialist combat engineers.

Later, we then noted how the British deficiency had been made up by borrowing "an American anti-explosive unit, Task Force Thor, with specialised vehicles, sweeping the road ahead for the ever-present threat of bombs."

The soldier's comment, where he calls for investment in such kit, displays his own ignorance. The MoD has invested in some of this kit, announced last October as "Project Talisman". A better question, therefore, might have been why the investment was made so late – a question which the media could be asking, but have never bothered with.

The results of this lack of investment have all too often been tragic, but on one occasion the soldier is able to report better news. He is told that two casualties had been flown in, their vehicle hit by a 40kg IED. One "had a bad arm" and that other "his vertebrae done". "They were in a Mastiff," writes our soldier, "that's why they survived. They were both very lucky. The Mastiffs are worth their weight in gold."

Compare and contrast this with the experience of Pte Richard "Hunty" Hunt, as recorded by Sean Rayment in The Sunday Times. As the driver of a Warrior, he was protected by several tons of metal but, as it trundled along a river bed, en route to the main British base at Musa Qala, his vehicle, the 11th in a convoy of 30, hit an IED.

Such was the force of the blast that Pte Hunt's head was smashed against the side of the Warrior. Even though he was wearing a helmet, the impact caused immediate brain damage. Close to death, he was taken to the field hospital at Camp Bastion, where surgeons fought to keep him alive long enough so that he could be flown home to spend his final hours with his family.

Our soldier, of course, was luckier. With his chest wound, he was flown home on a medical flight. There are, he writes, "blokes with no legs on board." He sits next to one lad who is completely deaf. Another tells him he has been hit with IEDs four times while inside a Viking and he's just had enough, too frayed to get inside another vehicle.

It would be facile to suggest that he should have been in a Mastiff, and that mine clearance/detection teams should have preceded him. But the diary of our soldier does suggest very much that our troops are not getting the deal they deserve.

COMMENT THREAD

Fine words ...

"I find it so distressing to hear lavish praise being heaped upon the procurement of vehicles that are potential death-traps and to listen later to expressions of condolence to the families of those who have perished in them."

So said Ann Winterton in a debate in the House of Commons on 4 June this year, but her distress might easily apply to the expressions so freely offered (and repeated) every time troops are killed.

"Fine words butter no parsnips" – a phrase which seems to have its origins in antiquity - seems an appropriate response to these gushing outpourings, so easily trotted out every time a soldier is killed.

Thus we see, yet again, the MoD website tell us that: "It is with great sadness" that it must confirm that one soldier from 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Duke of Wellington's) and one soldier from 2nd Battalion The Rifles have been killed in Afghanistan.

The soldiers, we are told, died as a result of an explosion that happened whilst on a routine foot patrol, not connected to election security, near Sangin, northern Helmand province, on the morning of Thursday 20 August 2009.

Yet the "great sadness" phrase is just words, pulled off from a standard MoD template, to be pasted in against the details of whichever incident is then current.

Even now, the media team are rushing around collecting statements from the colleagues and relatives of the deceased, to paste into the increasingly lengthy eulogies that are in the process of being written, but they too will be just words. They butter no parsnips – they do not bring the dead back to life and nor do they prevent troops yet to die from being killed.

Furthermore, built into the brief announcement from the MoD is a "lie" – a circumlocution, if one wants to be charitable. The incident happened while the troops were "on a routine foot patrol" says the MoD.

We saw this "routine patrol" lie in November 2006 when the MoD described the deaths of four military personnel on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in Iraq in terms of them being engaged in "a routine boat patrol".

In fact, they were in a "water taxi", sent to their deaths, wholly unprotected when it was thought that this was the safest way of transporting personnel between bases. It certainly was "routine" – and that is what killed them – but it certainly was not a "patrol". These were lambs led to the slaughter.

Nor indeed was this current incident a "routine patrol" – at least, not wholly. In fact, according to Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, it was not one incident, but three. The first may have arisen from such an event, although the whole idea of a "routine" is an anathema in counter-insurgency. Routines kill, as they did on the Shatt al-Arab.

The first soldier, writes Harding, from the 3rd Bn The Yorkshire Regiment, a unit sent out as emergency reinforcements to Afghanistan last month after the very high casualty rate this summer, was killed instantly after his foot patrol was targeted.

The second soldier, from 2nd Bn The Rifles, died as a force was sent out to retrieve the body of their dead colleague. Then, as the remainder of the force attempted to evacuate both fatalities a third device went off. Two soldiers were wounded in addition to the two killed in the attack, bringing the total number of British fatalities in Afghanistan to 206.

These facts immediately elevate the incident into a different league. We note that the location is what we have called the mincer of Sangin and that these two deaths bring the total in this area to 57, and this year to 22, with nineteen of them arising from IEDs.

With the grand total of 206 fatalities now recorded, an estimated 176 of these are KIA, which has Sangin and its immediate environs accounting for nearly a third of all deaths in action (32.4 percent).

That, in itself, is remarkable, as the area is often cited as one of the government's key targets for its "co-ordinated delivery of military and civil effect". Its aim has been "to provide a secure environment to allow stabilisation activity to take place", an aim in which it seems singularly to have failed, despite numerous intensive operations - although the MoD claims otherwise, one observer "noting" that ISAF is making "small baby steps" that, if continued, will soon pick up greater pace and confidence.

But what has marked out the most recent casualties – and magnified the rate of attrition – is the Taleban tactic of employing multiple IEDs in complex traps, with secondary devices aimed at killing rescue parties when they come to the aid of those caught in the primary blast.

With this current incident, this is the fourth time in the Sangin area since 10 July that troops have been caught out with fatal effect. That is not to say that similar tactics are not being used by the Taleban elsewhere – they are. Earlier this month we saw a soldier killed near Gereshk (although not so very far from Sangin) when he sought to recover an Afghan soldier's body. Then there was the incident in December 2008 when a soldier was killed after a complex ambush on a Viking near Lashkar Gah.

From other reports, though, it would appear that complex IED ambushes are now theatre-wide, these also having been experienced by USMC patrols further south in Garmsir.

Nor indeed is the slaughter confined to British troops. While we have lost 15 so far this month, the total losses for all coalition forces have now reached 50, not so very far short of last month's rate, when the total reached 76.

Public (and therefore political) acceptance of this continued toll of fatalities – which admittedly by contrast with previous campaigns is relatively modest – requires us to trust that the Army knows what it is doing, and the casualties are a necessary and unavoidable consequence of war, all in the context of the military making progress towards achieving its aims.

Sensitised by the saga of the Snatch Land Rover, however, and many other subsequent episodes where it has been demonstrated that the military (with or without the dereliction of the MoD – and it is difficult to assess where the responsibility lies) has been somewhat cavalier in its responsibilities, we are less than convinced that the Army has a grip on the situation.

Looking down from this end of the telescope – lacking the context and broader appreciation of the campaign in Helmand – all we see is a progression of casualties, some of which are evidently caused by the same Taleban tactic, for which the Army seems to have no obvious counter.

The Army response (and that of so many of its fellow travellers) is to retreat behind the wall of OPSEC (operational security) oblivious to the very obvious fact that the enemy clearly knows a great deal about its operations, with so many others directing sneering condescension at those who have the temerity to question or even doubt the wisdom and professionalism of "Our Brave Boys".

So often are our soldiers cast as "heroes" that there is virtually a cultural taboo against offering even the mildest criticism of soldiers, even though there is nothing particularly heroic about being blown apart by a hidden IED, or having limbs ripped apart. In fact, it is a squalid, miserable way to go.

Somehow, though, the military – or perhaps the politicians – are going to have to come to terms with the legitimate, but often overstated demands of OPSEC, and the need to provide enough information to assure its critics that the Army is responding effectively to the different threats in theatre, and is taking them seriously.

Fine words are no longer good enough – if they ever were.

COMMENT THREAD

Coincidence?

In July, we reported the shooting down of a Mi-26 as it was delivering supplies to the British military base at Sangin.

Now we learn from the MoD website that a convoy stretching for five miles and consisting of more than one hundred UK, US and Afghan National Army vehicles set off recently to resupply coalition bases in northern Helmand.

The 116-vehicle convoy, one of the biggest to ever leave Camp Bastion, was travelling a dangerous 40 miles to bases in the Sangin Valley via the outskirts of Gereshk and then off-road through open desert. It took a full day to get to the first base, with a Manoeuvre Operations Group [MOG] in Vikings acting as a screen for the convoy and clearing the path ahead (one of which took an IED hit).

The road convoy was mounted, incidentally, at a time that the US forces are increasingly relying on airlift. Since 2005, there has been an 800 percent increase in air drops – from two to three per week to seven to eight per day. In July, the USAF made 1,700 air drops over Afghanistan. That is the most since the start of the Afghan conflict, in 2001.

Given the considerable manpower required to mount extensive road convoys and the danger of attack, one would have thought that the British would be keen to use helicopters as force multipliers. But then, with 20 tons of lift capacity having been taken out, and the situation obviously very dangerous in Sangin, here we see land convoys being mounted.

Of course, this could be a coincidence. It could be that the British have so many troops that they are short of things to do with them.

COMMENT THREAD

Media responsibility

It is easy to recall the squawks of media indignation when Gen Dannatt artfully explained that the reason for his travelling on a US Blackhawk helicopter during his tour of Helmand in July was that there was no British machine available.

Helicopters, of course, comprise only one aspect of the shortage of British equipment in theatre. There is equally a pressing need for specialist mine/IED detection and clearance vehicles, the first of which are not due to arrive until next year as part of project Talisman.

Given the carnage caused by IEDs, one might have thought that the media might show some interest in this vital deficiency, not least because this equipment – even more than helicopters – is needed to protect supply convoys and mounted troops as they go about their patrols.

However, despite US forces, the Canadians and now the French having acquired such equipment, the British media has been almost completely silent on this remarkable and dangerous lack of capability in the British Army.

Interestingly, we now see Kim Sengupta, of The Independent writing about Operation Tor Shadey, the last offensive by British and Nato forces to clear insurgent-held areas before this week's national elections.

Entirely with critical comment, though, he notes that the British convoy, moving through the night to the operational area was "a laborious affair", trailing behind "an American anti-explosive unit, Task Force Thor, with specialised vehicles, sweeping the road ahead for the ever-present threat of bombs."

This is the same Kim Sengupta who enthusiastically wrote up the debate on helicopters, but he (and his fellow hacks) is apparently completely unconcerned about the shortage of equally vital equipment.

Of course, Sengupta could have made this an issue, focusing his piece on a "shortage of IED clearance vehicles" which had forced the British to rely in US resources. But then, while helicopters are part of the "narrative", IED clearance equipment is not.

It is probably not unfair to assert that the media furore over helicopters has at least focused ministers' minds on the shortage of helicopter capacity, and perhaps ensured that machines will be brought to theatre a little earlier than they might have been.

If that is the case, then arguably, a similar furore over the criminal lack of specialised IED clearance vehicles could have had a similar effect. To that extent, it would not then be unfair to assert that the trivial, superficial and careless conduct of the media over such equipment is part of the problem.

Journalists do like to dish it out, and are ever so good at criticising all manner of people – especially defence ministers – who might offend them (or provide good copy). But one wonders whether they might also think about taking some responsibility for their own conduct.

COMMENT THREAD

Unacceptable attrition

Reflecting precisely a comment on our forum, we have Lt-Col William Pender (rtd) in the letters column of The Daily Telegraph today, making the essential point about the war in Afghanistan: either we fight it properly, or not at all. More specifically, he writes:

The fundamental question, both for the Government and for Nato (if it is to remain a meaningful alliance), is whether defeat of the Taleban and establishment of a stable, long-term democracy in Afghanistan really is a vital interest.

If it is vital, then since national security is the prime duty of any government, whatever it takes in manpower – but primarily willpower – from all Nato member nations, must be allocated to fulfilling this aim. If this means putting economies on a war footing – fine.

If, on the other hand, these aims are merely desirable rather than vital – and with governments led by politicians with no personal military experience, and more concerned with interest rates, credit crunches and unemployment – why, let them say so.

Then the nations that contribute combat troops can resign themselves to long-term attrition of their soldiers committed to an unwinnable war.

For "attrition", read feeding troops into a mincer, sustaining a never-ending toll of casualties for no strategic effect. In such a battle, with our small, expensive Army, we can never win against the unlimited manpower of the Taleban, sustained by a never-ending supply of young men from the North-West frontier. Even at an exchange rate of 1000-1 in our favour, we cannot win.

Iain Dale notes that "politics is upside down" when Sunny Hundal supports the war and EU Referendum says we should withdraw.

For the record, we support the war. But that support is conditional on it being prosecuted effectively, with clear objectives and some prospect of success. None of those conditions currently apply.

In our overnight post, we write of the tragic episodes where three foot patrols in Sangin in the space of just over a month are confronted with the same type of complex IED ambush, each suffering multiple casualties in exactly the same circumstances.

On a smaller scale, the Army response seems to mirror the tactics of the First World War when the Generals, having experienced the carnage of sending troops "over the top" to face the German machine guns – to be slaughtered in their tens of thousands - hit upon the new, "war winning" tactic - of doing exactly the same thing again.

In terms of this war, it is not the machine gun but the IED which is the decisive weapon. And, as in the First World War, we see an Army which is completely unprepared, both physically and intellectually, to deal with the threat.

Faced with the endless attrition arising from sending men out on foot patrol to confront IEDs which have been manufactured and emplaced on an industrial scale, the Army's tactic is simply to do exactly the same thing again, and again and again. We are not alone in being less than impressed with what passes for Army tactics.

The point is, of course, that the Taleban's use of the IED was expected and predicted - back in June 2006, when we arranged through Ann Winterton for the defence minister to be asked what he intended to do about it. The answer was not reassuring.

Only now, three years later, is the outgoing CGS at last taking the threat seriously. In a long interview with ITN yesterday (summarised here) Gen Dannatt "vows" to deliver swift retribution to sneak bombers who attack UK soldiers with deadly booby traps in Afghanistan.

He calls for his troops to be given better "technical" equipment to locate the devices and catch those responsible in the act so they can be eliminated and we are told that the General "has been forced to endure reports of death and injuries inflicted on those under his charge" by IEDs.

"IEDs are a critical issue at the moment. We need more technical equipment to have 24/7 surveillance and the ability to target these people and kill them, if necessary, when they are laying these devices," he says.

The (rhetorical) question is, where was Dannatt three years ago when the threat was being predicted but had not then materialised? Well, as we know, this "honest general" was obsessed with the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES).

Interviewed by RUSI in Summer 2006, he spoke of having "won the argument for the medium-weight equipments," predicting confidently that "we will have them." Even then, with "roadside bombs" ripping the heart out of his army in Iraq, IEDs were never mentioned.

With the Army three years behind the curve, there can be no "swift" retribution. It will take several years to devise the necessary countermeasures, equip and train the troops, deploy the equipment and introduce new tactics. The consequence is that, in the interim, the Army must cede the tactical initiative to the Taleban in order to minimise casualties, or sustain losses which would make continuation of the current campaign unacceptable.

The alternative, as Lt-Col William Pender writes, is to put the UK on a war footing, injecting massive resources into the campaign to overcome the years of neglect. If we had any confidence that this might happen, either under this or the next administration, then our view of the war would be different.

Devoting the necessary resources, however, is as politically unsustainable as bearing the current casualty rate. Brown is not going to do it, and neither is Cameron. For want of that, therefore, we must withdraw. There is no way out, other than to resign ourselves to long-term attrition of our soldiers committed to an unwinnable war.

And that simply is not acceptable.

COMMENT THREAD

Why we are losing

Anthony Loyd in Sangin reports for The Times on the latest fatal attack, which killed three soldiers and injured many more. He writes as follows:

As the dust cleared around them, revealing the terribly injured body of one of their comrades, the fusiliers knew that the horror might have only just begun.

Three of their number had died on Thursday in the same green zone south of Sangin — killed by a secondary device that exploded among soldiers trying to rescue the wounded from the first blast.

Shortly after first light on Sunday, the same was about to happen again, killing three more British soldiers and taking the death toll to 204.

As the troops of 3 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles battlegroup carried their casualty through reeds on the bank of the Helmand River towards ground that was clear enough for a medical helicopter to land upon, another blast ripped through them.

"I was blown on to my backside," said Sergeant-Major Pete Burney. "I thought, 'That's me then' but as I picked myself up I saw I hadn't a scratch. Then I realised we were among a belt of IEDs [improvised explosive devices]."

To his right he could see a medic, a woman who seconds earlier had been attempting to resuscitate the first casualty, but who had been blown past him and lay wounded on the ground. Another fusilier and a Royal Military Police corporal were injured. A fusilier lay dead among more IEDs.

The other incident to which Loyd refers happened on 13 August. But then there was the incident on 10 July when five died, again through a combination of a primary bomb and a secondary set to kill members of the rescue party.

To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, once may be regarded as a misfortune; twice looks like carelessness. Three times?

But we had exactly the same dynamic with Snatch Land Rovers. On 29 May 2005, L/Cpl Brackenbury is killed in a Snatch by a type of bomb then new to the British sector – the explosively formed penetrator (EFP) – against which the vehicle was defenceless. Three others are injured.

Then, on 6 June, an EFP "daisy chain" is discovered intact and successfully defused. It is taken away for forensic analysis, from which the Army confirms with no room for doubt that Snatch Land Rovers offer no protection at all to this type of device.

So what does the Army do? On 15 July it sends another Snatch patrol out into the same general area where the device is known to be used. Three soldiers are killed and two more injured. And then the Army does it again and again and again.

We are led to believe that the Army is manned by professionals – soldiers who know what they are doing. We can criticise the politicians freely, but not our "Brave Boys" who put their lives on the line.

So which politician was it that decided to send a foot patrol out into an environment where twice previously soldiers had encountered complex, multiple IED ambushes and experienced multiple casualties?

Or could we possibly surmise that this was an "operational" decision, just like the decisions to deploy Snatches into a territory where weapons were being deployed which rendered them defenceless?

And just how many times do soldiers have to walk into such traps before it dawns on someone that this is not a terribly good idea?

Incidentally, it was on 10 March 2007 that Anthony Loyd, soldier turned photographer and war correspondent, argued: "for once" an Afghan war is winnable, declaring that, "the tide is turning against the Taleban".

Some tide ... some Taleban.

COMMENT THREAD

A matter of interpretation

A tactical decision to pull some British units out of Sangin, in northern Helmand province, led to a surge in Taleban attacks in and around the town in which 14 British soldiers were killed by IEDs in five weeks.

Thus writes Michael Evans in The Times today, a report that can be interpreted at several levels.

The information comes from a "senior defence source", who says that to make up numbers for Operation Panther's Claw, units in Sangin were "thinned out". The Taleban had then suffered such heavy losses that they had looked elsewhere to see where they could inflict the most damage on British troops and selected Sangin for their attacks.

Ostensibly, this makes complete sense. That is what "guerrillas" do. If their enemy saturates one area with troops, the classic strategy is to move out and cause mayhem elsewhere.

That this was the dynamic at play is "confirmed" by Lt-Gen Simon Mayall. Commanders had used the resources available for the "main effort." "As a corollary, the Taleban moved elsewhere and they turned to Sangin," he says.

However, this may not be an accurate (or complete) explanation for what is happening. In Sangin this year, there have been 20 British fatalities. Six were killed prior to the start of Panther's Claw and 14 afterwards. But raw numbers do not tell the whole story.

Between 1 January and 19 June when the operation started, there were six attacks on British troops, giving rise to six fatalities. Three of the deaths were from shooting. Three were from IEDs.

After the start of Operation Panther's Claw, there were 14 deaths, but also six fatal attacks. The main difference was that all the attacks involved IEDs and three of them gave rise to multiple deaths: five, three and three respectively, accounting for 11 of the 14 deaths.

On the face of it, therefore, we are not seeing substantially increased Taleban activity in response to Panther's Claw, especially as half of the pre-19 June attacks took place in May, with one in early June.

What we are most definitely seeing, however, is a change in tactics. There is a greater reliance on the IED, with the use of multiple devices, and the sophisticated use of secondary devices, increasing the kill rate per attack.

Thus, while displacement of guerrilla activity is one thing, if the Taleban are increasing their kill rate for a roughly constant level of activity, this is a very much more serious development.

Unknown to us though is the number of unsuccessful attacks, those where injury and no deaths occurred, and those involving foreign nationals, which have not been factored into the story in The Times.

We do know from Michael Yon, however, that on 13 August, when three British soldiers were killed in one IED attack, there was another ambush which killed two interpreters. This was not recorded by the British media (or the MoD) – foreigners do not count.

This actually changes the arithmetic slightly, but we do not have enough information overall to draw definitive conclusions. But then, neither does The Times. Lt-Gen Mayall may know more, but he does not bring any facts to the table.

Crucially though, from what we know, we cannot assume that a reduction in troop levels in a particular location (and/or an increase elsewhere) is responsible for increased casualties. For all we know, more troops could have meant more patrols, more "targets" and more deaths. The precise situation, therefore, is not clear – to us, at least. It is a matter of interpretation.

COMMENT THREAD

Bring them home

It is almost painful to agree with The Guardian, but we do. It describes our adventure in Afghanistan as: "Mission impossible." It is.

That was never pre-ordained. It could have been different, and it could still be different, but it will not be. As we have watched the train wreck that masquerades as strategy in this benighted country, we have become more and more convinced that it is wrong – totally, completely, fundamentally wrong.

It cannot succeed. It will not succeed and the inevitable outcome is that, after the expenditure of much more of our treasure – which we can ill-afford – and the death of many more fine men (and, probably, some women), we will be forced into a humiliating retreat, dressed up as victory, leaving the country in no better a condition than when we found it – if not worse.

This is not a knee-jerk reaction to the "grim milestone" of now 200-plus deaths in theatre. We have seen this coming and were prepared for it. But, while the media talks glibly about the first hundred deaths having taken from 2001 to early 2008 to have been reached, with the next hundred taking 15 months, what few if any have commented on is the fact that, of those 100, just over 50 occurred in the last five months ... an effective doubling of the casualty rate.

Unless urgent action is taken on the ground by military commanders to minimise casualties, that is the continued fate of our soldiers – to fall to the combined threat of direct assault and, mainly, the unseen peril of IEDs, against which out military have no effective counter.

That was the action taken in Iraq, with a retreat to our bases inspired entirely by the need to keep the headline death rate down. It was a self-defeating strategy, ceding control to the militias and abandoning the population which needed and deserved our protection.

So it would be in Afghanistan, where a similar retreat would cede control to the Taleban and abandon any attempt to pacify and police the country. The alternative is to keep taking the casualties, and the current rate is politically unsustainable.

The British forces – and to a great extent all the coalition forces – are therefore caught in a deadly trap. On the one hand, they are locked in to an unworkable and fatally flawed strategy. If they attempt to implement it, the result will be unacceptable casualties.

On the other hand, if they prioritise on force protection, the strategy falls by the wayside and they achieve nothing, other than to see the violence escalate and the Taleban strengthen their hold. Either way, we lose – the Afghani people lose and the international community loses. We might just as well lose from the comfort and safety of the UK, with the troops back home polishing their toys, rather than in Afghanistan, polishing the next batch of coffins.

Consistently, on this and our sister blog, we have sought to offer advice on how to avoid this trap. This comes not from a reservoir of our own experience and knowledge of the area (we have, after all never been there). It comes instead from that ill-used and often misunderstood process of research and analysis.

We don't know the answers, but we know lots of people who do. By listening, researching, studying, distilling and – above all – analysing the dynamics of this conflict, certain basic principles emerge which are of unchanging value.

At the core of this is the central precept that "security" – the Holy Grail of our current endeavour – cannot be imposed on an unwilling or cowed population. It must emerge from them. Thus, the objective of a counter-insurgency campaign must be to create the conditions whereby the people themselves opt for security, and strive to achieve it, not as passive observers watching the manoeuvres of foreign troops, but as active participants.

Therein lies the fatal flaw in our strategy. By artificially creating a divide between "security" and "development", and making the latter dependent on the former – then seeking to impose security as a precursor to any further endeavour – we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Bizarrely, those involved with this train-wreck of a strategy cannot see the logical flaws of their own creation. All of them will happily chirp that there is "no military solution" to the insurgency. Yet, they say, the solution is to impose security. And what is that if not an attempt at a military solution?

Thus, the only way out is to forge ahead with development, the military task thence being defined as to protect (and in many cases carry out) the development. The unreformed lefties of the FCO and DFID should be retired early and sent home, together with their fatuous "hearts and minds" cult.

The only "development" worthy of the name is hard-edged infrastructure improvement – roads, rail where necessary, communications, electricity, airports – plus industrial and commercial development. The aim here should be to enhance wealth-creating activities, enabling Afghanistan to capitalise on its considerable economic assets. With economic stability comes social stability.

As far as governance goes, there are only three requirements. Firstly, there must be imposed an equitable system of property rights, and a means by which citizens can enforce them. Without that, there can be no progress.

Secondly, the government of Afghanistan must be given a deadline to establish a universal taxation system. It must be set targets for revenue collection and we should then reduce the amount of international aid paid directly by the amounts we have set the government to collect for itself.

A government that lives off international aid has no need of its people and a people that does not pay tax to its government has no need of a government. If the people then want schools 'n' hospitals, let them lobby their own government to pay for them – and pay the taxes to support them. We should not be providing them.

Thirdly, develop an agricultural policy, subsidising small famers to stay on the land and to produce food crops. Whether Pashtuns or Anglian barley barons, farmers are farmers throughout the world - a calling that transcends nation, ethnicity and religion. If they can make money out of growing crops and rearing animals, they will do so. Give them the money and the opium problem will solve itself.

As to the international community generally, it should do a series of vital things. First, grant Afghanistan favoured nation status for the purpose of trade. Secondly, it should allow free access to Afghan produce, without tariffs or similar restraints. Thirdly, it should buy the goods. A Tesco supermarket buyer with a cheque book is worth a battalion of troops.

Then, there is the vexed question of building up the Afghani security forces. Forget it. This is a matter of the Afghani government. A government that depends on its people – aka taxpayers - for survival will find a way of protecting its people – aka revenue base – from outside interference. The initiative must come from the government. Then we can help, but only then.

None of this, though, is going to happen. The principles have been talked about endlessly. Those in the know agree with these fundamentals, but lack the wherewithal to make them happen. Policy is decided, therefore, not by reference to what is right and necessary – and that which works – but what is possible within an entirely inadequate and dysfunctional framework. And, for that, soldiers die.

That is not good enough. We have had enough of futile gestures and the posturing of politicians. If we can't do the job properly – and we can't – then we should get out. Bring our troops home.

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The appliance of science

In the Daily Mail today we saw a report announcing that inventors had been urged to come up with gadgets to tackle possible future terrorist threats such as robot suicide bombers.

This, apparently, is part of the government's three-year counter terrorism strategy, in which it wants civilian scientists to follow in the footsteps of Q - the fictional inventor who supplies contraptions to James Bond.

One cannot help but think, however, that this search for novelty rather misses the point – certainly where the military is concerned. The picture above shows a damaged Wimik, one in a patrol from A Company the Royal Irish Regiment. On 6th April 2008, it was hit by an IED whilst travelling through Sangin and, as can be seen, the blast ripped through the front of the vehicle, leaving the Company Commander, Major Simon Shirley, severely injured.

This perhaps suggests that is not the application of new and as yet undeveloped inventions that the government needs to be looking for, but simply the application of existing technology and its more widespread use.


The contrast between the exisitng technologies is clearly seen in the picture above where, in a composite convoy comprising UK and US forces, we see a US Maxxpro MRAP leading a British Wimik (the same type of vehicle in which Major Shirley was injured), the latter complete with the same strapped-on Kevlar armour, added in a vain attempt to improve the protection.

What is striking about Major Shirley's vehicle is the relatively modest level of damage caused to the vehicle, indicating that a better protected vehicle might easily have shrugged off the explosion, leaving its occupants uninjured, as was the case in the vehicle depicted (below), which seems to have taken a similar explosion.


Much the same could perhaps be said of the Americans. While they are well ahead of the game in equipping troops with protected vehicles, and have exploited other technologies, they appear to be nowhere as well advanced in applying these to protect the increasingly vulnerable road network.

What we see below is the result of a major explosion at a site in Wardak Province, where inspection suggests that the insurgents had emplaced a fairly substantial culvert bomb. The road is evidently new, well-engineered an in good condition.

Also evident, though, is a complete lack of cover for potential (and in this case, actual) bomb emplacers. Arguably, therefore, CCTV and/or other sensors, using fixed surveillance masts could have provided some degree of protection, detecting bomb placing activity and enabling action to be taken which might have avoided a potential catastrophe.


Nevertheless, the photograph, which appeared on The Washington Times website – has a caption, with frustratingly little detail, but it does tell us that US troops "are working to combat the use of roadside bombs by the Taliban and al Qaeda."

With the MoD now reporting that IEDs have increased by 114 percent in Afghanistan, compared with this time last year, British forces too need to be working to combat them. But existing technology – the appliance of science - rather than following "in the footsteps of Q" already provides many of the answers.

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