UK: We’re Going to Lose Afghanistan

As widely reported in the British press, but completely ignored by the American one, Britain’s most senior generals have issued a public warning that the West’s military campaign in Afghanistan is facing catastrophic failure — with catastrophic consequences:

Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, highlighted their fears in public last week when he warned of a ‘strategic failure’ in Afghanistan. The Observer understands that Inge was speaking with the direct authority of the general staff when he made an intervention in a House of Lords debate.

‘The situation in Afghanistan is much worse than many people recognise,’ Inge told peers. ‘We need to face up to that issue, the consequence of strategic failure in Afghanistan and what that would mean for Nato… We need to recognise that the situation – in my view, and I have recently been in Afghanistan – is much, much more serious than people want to recognise.’

Inge’s remarks reflect the fears of serving generals that the government is so overwhelmed by Iraq that it is in danger of losing sight of the threat of failure in Afghanistan. One source, who is familiar with the fears of the senior officers, told The Observer: ‘If you talk privately to the generals they are very very worried. You heard it in Inge’s speech. Inge said we are failing and remember Inge speaks for the generals.’

Inge made a point in the Lords of endorsing a speech by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who painted a bleak picture during the debate. Ashdown told The Observer that Afghanistan presented a graver threat than Iraq.

‘The consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,’ he said. ‘If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. The security problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I think you could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off in warlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end between Sunni and Shia right across the Middle East.’

Lord Inge pointed to three factors responsible for the imminent failure of the mission in Afghanistan: lack of a coordinated multinational military force, the failure of NATO members to provide sufficient troops and other support, and a lack of emphasis on rebuilding the civilian infrastructure.

It’s good that at least one important government recognizes how dangerous Bush’s obsession with Iraq has become for the West. Instead of manufacturing new terrorists in Iraq, the U.S. would be far better served using its (increasingly depleted) military resources to fight the ones that already exist — and existed long before Saddam was a glint in Bush’s eye — in Afghanistan.