Helmand: will the fight ever be won?

While the major shift in US policy in Afghanistan announced over the weekend should be welcomed for its increased emphasis on winning over Afghan “hearts and minds,” the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, might do well to read Stephen Grey’s piece about Helmand province, free to read in this month’s Prospect.

Offering an alternative interpretation of the “lessons learned” by the British campaign in Afghanistan so far, Grey, who has spent a year in Afghanistan embedded with British troops, suggests that “masterful inactivity” would, in many regions, have been a more valuable strategy.

McChrystal’s call for a complete revamp of military strategy in the country, acknowledging that the approach of the last eight years has failed, is supported in Grey’s article. But he goes further, arguing that one of the key lessons learned in Helmand which has so far gone unheeded is that “it is often better to do less than risk interventions that stir up, rather than snuff out, conflict.”

This analysis may be of interest to Gordon Brown too, following his announcement of new talks with Taliban leaders during his visit to Afghanistan last week. Grey’s article profiles Michael Semple, an Irish EU official who had been holding discrete talks with Taliban officials for several years until he was expelled from the country. Figures like Semple, Grey believes, are key to the Afghan mission’s success, because they understand the particular challenges of reconciliation processes. As Grey argues: “The more focus there is on great military offensives, the faster the blood and money is expended; and the greater the pressure for rapid results, the less chance there is that the fight will ever be won.”

Read and comment on Stephen Grey’s piece in full here.