UK Defeat in Afghanistan: Battle of Maiwand

The UK seems to be losing its penchant for empire and war. Afghanistan is just messy and too bloody for the British. That added to the fact that the ghosts of Maiwand and Lord Curzon’s ignomonious defeat at the Oxus conjures up bad nightmares for those Britishers who still read history.

Afghanistan defeat: British Failures of “the White Man’s burden”

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.” Rudyard Kipling

The story of Afghanistan and colonialism begins a long time ago. British tried to take up White Man’s burden in Afghanistan. It suffered badly in Kabul and could not hold it. NATO Lessons: 1880 UK defeat at Maiwand-Afghanistan. Today ISAF is making the same mistakes as the British did a century again. Is NATO committing suicide in Afghanistan? There is a powerplay going on. …the CIA assassination. The US has considered every possibily. However the most obvious one escapes the $80 Billion think tank industry in the USA. Saving the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan. Eradicating the Pashtun plight and ending occupation.

Some level of alterity is in order. When the British last general left the Subcontinent, Pakistanis and Afghans believed in the cynosure chimera that “the goras” had really left. The world thought that Asia would remember the Brits for the trains bequeathed by Lord Delhousie’s. The West Asian aviary must have apocryphal magnetic powers over Englishmen. The Union Jack keeps coming back to the Middle East and South Asia, this time piggbacking on the naive Europeans and the gullible Americans.

• Top generals have been frustrated by being ordered to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Thw UK budget is one of the lowest among leading Western nations, at 2.5 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product.
• With 110,000 regular soldiers, the army is only a fraction of its historic size, yet, critics say, it faces demands more suited to the days when Britain was still a major power.
• Gen. Charles Guthrie, who led British forces as chief of the defense staff until 2001, said on Friday that Mr. Brown’s rejection of the army’s request for 2,000 more troops in Helmand Province this spring
• “It is time for Gordon Brown to put his money where his mouth is,” General Guthrie

Defeat in Afghanistan: Battle of Maiwand

LONDON — Just as President Obama’s plan to sharply increase American troop strength in Afghanistan gets into high gear, Britain’s involvement in the war has come under the fiercest criticism yet at home as a result of a steep increase in British casualties, including the deaths of 15 soldiers in the past 10 days.

The latest losses are the heaviest British forces have suffered in any comparable period since the 1982 Falklands war. With the Defense Ministry’s announcement of eight soldiers’ deaths on Friday, Britain’s toll in Afghanistan is now 184 killed, five more than its total losses in Iraq, where Britain’s combat commitment ended this spring.

The deaths have generated grim images that have led the nightly television news, of slate-gray transport aircraft carrying coffins landing at a military air base in Wiltshire and being driven slowly in hearses past crowds lining the high street in Wootton Bassett, a nearby town. When five coffins passed down the street on Friday, on their way to a mortuary in Oxford, women wailed.

The Empire is gone but incredulously the Brits keep coming back. Why is it so? Is there an eschatologically obsessed version of Christianity that tries to make British foreign and domestic policy conterminous with their biblical worldview?” Is it because there were no lessons learned and the pusillanimous Kiplingish “White Man’s Burden” keeps on raising it’s ugly head every few decades. How many times will bitian try to civilize the Afghans and the Pakistanis?

Defeat in Afghanistan: Remember Maiwand

Britain’s casualties are far lower than those suffered by American forces, who have lost 732 troops in Afghanistan and 4,322 in Iraq, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that monitors the military losses in both wars.

But with Britain’s far smaller population and troop deployments, the latest deaths — from a force of 9,000 that makes Britain’s the second-largest troop presence in Afghanistan after the United States’ — have been as much of a shock here as the heavy American troop losses in Iraq at the height of that conflict were in the United States.

Partly because of Britain’s 19th-century history of catastrophic military ventures in Afghanistan, when it sought to secure the outer defenses of British imperial rule in India, the government faces an uphill task in rallying public opinion to the current conflict.

So far, however, the reaction in Britain has not run to the kind of popular groundswell for withdrawal that President George W. Bush faced when the war in Iraq worsened after his re-election in 2004.

Take up the White Man’s burden–

Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Like Mr. Bush, and now President Obama, Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, has argued that Britain has to fight on in Afghanistan as a way of preventing terrorist attacks at home. The Conservatives, the main opposition party, have so far agreed.

But Mr. Brown is facing an outcry from those who say the government must answer for the growing number of soldiers killed because of what they describe as an underfinanced defense budget, $55 billion this year. Critics say that the insufficient budget has led to a failure to deploy enough troops and to equip them with enough helicopters and enough blast-resistant armored vehicles.

Many British soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs, which critics say have taken an unacceptably high toll because the troops have had to track down the Taliban in vehicles, instead of going into combat aboard helicopters.

There have been recriminations, too, about the British troops’ reliance for transportation on aging, poorly protected Land Rovers from the time of Britain’s military involvement in Northern Ireland.

Even in the 19^th century technology was not the panacea that prevented defeat. Are there any lessons learned from the “Charge of the Light Brigade“.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The criticism has come from the opposition leaders in Parliament and retired British commanders who oversaw earlier stages of the Afghan conflict. American generals, too, have spoken privately about the mismatch between Britain’s military commitments and the British forces’ manpower and equipment.

The Americans say this situation has often contributed to decisions by British commanders in the field to back off from confrontations with the Taliban, or yield ground the British forces have lost soldiers in gaining.

But perhaps the most damaging recriminations have come from the families of the dead.

“They continue to allow the army to operate in those ridiculous tin- can Land Rovers when they should have been equipped three years ago with American Humvees,” Tony Phillipson, father of a 29-year-old army captain killed in 2006, told the BBC on Friday. “The Afghan Army has 4,500 Humvees. Why haven’t our soldiers got them?”

How many times will you “To veil the threat of terror“?

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,

Last week, the political consensus fragmented when Nick Clegg, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, used a House of Commons speech to say the government should either finance the war properly, giving the troops the force numbers and equipment they need, or withdraw. “We can’t give them the worst of both worlds — put them in harm’s way, but not give them the backing they need,” he said.

It has been an open secret at Whitehall for years that top generals have been frustrated by being ordered to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as handle overseas peacekeeping commitments, with a budget that is one of the lowest among leading Western nations, at 2.5 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product.

With 110,000 regular soldiers, the army is only a fraction of its historic size, yet, critics say, it faces demands more suited to the days when Britain was still a major power.

And work another’s gain Unfortunately the lessons of unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838-42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students. Perhaps Blair and Brown never saw Lady Butler’s famous painting of Dr William Brydon, the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad. This painting epitomized the limits of the British Empire and focused on Elphinstone’s retreat from Kabul and established Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Gen. Charles Guthrie, who led British forces as chief of the defense staff until 2001, said on Friday that Mr. Brown’s rejection of the army’s request for 2,000 more troops in Helmand Province this spring — a request that was strongly backed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American allied commander in Iraq and Afghanistan — was one reason more soldiers were dying.

“It is time for Gordon Brown to put his money where his mouth is,” General Guthrie said. “We have to get serious about this conflict if we’re going to do it.”

Speaking at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy on Friday, Mr. Brown said the increase in British casualties during an offensive in Helmand, where Taliban fighters have concentrated a summer offensive of their own, was part of a mission that aimed at breaking “a chain of terror” that ran from southern Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain, and contributed to the transit bombings in London in 2005. “Britons today are safer because of the courageous sacrifice of British soldiers in Afghanistan,” he said.

Bring all your hopes to nought The lessons learned from the defeat of Lord Curzon’s (1878-1893) “On to the Oxus” policy are not taught to the Eaton and Harrow graduates. “Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred

But his faltering voice as he predicted further casualties reflected a political reality he could not avoid. Although Mr. Brown voted for Britain’s involvement in Iraq in 2003, when he was chancellor of the Exchequer, he made no secret in following years of his profound discomfort with the war, and he moved decisively after he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007 to lay down a schedule for British withdrawal, which will be completed later this month.

But like Mr. Obama, a vigorous opponent of the Iraq war during the Bush years who has become a proponent of a more vigorous American military commitment in Afghanistan, Mr. Brown has made the Afghan conflict his own. On Friday, as often before, he made an unequivocal commitment to staying the course. “We knew from the start that defeating the insurgency in Helmand would be a hard and dangerous job, but it’s a vital one,” he said. NeW York Times. By JOHN F. BURNS, Published: July 11, 2009

The lessons of the Peloponnesian war when Athens lost its democratic roots and it’s independence, because of her prolonged war with Sparta are very appropriate in our current times.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

The lessons of the British defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan should be codified.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,

And mark them with your dead. Will Britannia learn her lessons ever?

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Does no one in Britain read Robert Fisk anymore?

Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

The minority Northern Alliance led non-Pashtun government has been a total failure. The worst is yet to come in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last allied or NATO troop will be reminded to “turn the lights off”..

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

Images of the last American helicopter leaving Saigon is etched into the collective memory of political scientists around the world

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

The only way out of the Afghan quagmire for NATO is to negotiate with the Talibaan and the Pashtuns. Pakistan’s vital interests in Afghanstan have to be taken into account, and the Hindu Kush mountains cannot be used to launch terrorism into Pakistani Baluchistan.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

An American led “Marshall Plan” for Pakistan and Afghanistan will reduce tensions, and provide employment to the disaffected youth of the area.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

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