Center for a New American Security

From the Daily Telegraph, excerpting a paper published in the British Army Review:

Writing in the British Army Review, an official MoD publication, Major SN Miller, stated: "Lets not kid ourselves. To date Operation Herrick [the British codename for the War in Afghanistan] has been a failure".

 

He claimed that hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money had been wasted on a war which had failed to deliver any real reconstruction, governance or security.

 

Rather than "winning hearts and minds", Major Miller, who serves in the Defence Intelligence Staff serving Intelligence Corps, said the British presence had had the opposite effect.

 

But his most blistering attack was on the UK's counter-narcotics policy, where the illicit sale of drugs has been successfully used by the Taliban to fund the insurgency and kill British troops.

 

He wrote: "British policy towards the poppy crop has been an unmitigated disaster. The chief "effect" of the British presence in Helmand has been to transform Helmand into the opium centre of the world.

 

"This remarkable milestone was achieved just two years into the British intervention."

I recently read a much more sympathetic portrayal of the British efforts in the south that was co-written by Theo Farrell (who has a lot more love for the British Army than you would expect from an Irishman married to a Frenchwoman). And in conversations with U.S. officers in Afghanistan, it appears as if there is good understanding that the conflict in RC-South is much different from -- and in some ways more difficult than -- the fight in RC-East. Still, blunt talk from a British officer should not be ignored. And the British national security establishments have, if possible, emerged from Afghanistan with even more egg on their faces than their American counterparts. A U.S. Marine Corps officer I know who recently trained with the British reported they were all reading FM 3-24, largely because their own military has failed time and time again since 2005 to write a new COIN manual of their own.

Maj Miller claimed that the British government "sleepwalked" into Helmand in 2006 "without any meaningful reconstruction plan, without the resources to undertake-nation building tasks, and, critically, without any desire to fight a major insurgency".

 

He added: "It was thanks to the tenacity of the common soldier and the paratrooper that British embarrassment was saved."

From the Guardian:

It took 13 days, but Major Phil Packer, who lost the use of his legs in a rocket attack in Iraq in last year, finally crossed the London Marathon finish line after midday today.

Exhausted but ecstatic, Packer - who was told he would never walk again after the accident in February 2008 - was surrounded by a crowd of family, friends and wellwishers as he was awarded his medal by Sir Steve Redgrave at the gates of St James's Park on The Mall.

...and you can donate here.

The first rule for success in both Afghanistan and in blogging is to find yourself some dependable local Pashtun allies. So many thanks go out to Londonstani for covering for me these past few days. Back in DC, I am scrambling to get prepared for a meeting later this morning. On the ride to the meeting, though, I'll be reading two things:

1. David Betz and Anthony Cormack on the British Army in Afghanistan and Iraq (Orbis -- password protected)
2. Nadia Schadlow on Mexico in Small Wars Journal.

David and Anthony are friends/mentors from the UK, while Nadia and the Smith Richardson Foundation are generous patrons of many of your favorite security studies geeks.

And if you're really bored this morning, here's Bill Roggio, Bill Nagle and I talking about the new media and contemporary conflicts at the 2009 MilBlog Conference a few weekends back. (Thanks to Greyhawk for putting a fun panel together.)

Panel #4 - 2009 Milblog Conference from Nathan Long on Vimeo.

The British Army handed over Basra to the U.S. military yesterday, though cynics would argue it effectively ceded responsibility years ago -- or at least when U.S. units supported Iraqi Army units in 2008 while the British stayed in their bases, mostly stewing at not being allowed to fight by London. The British experience in Basra has been a humbling one for a proud institution. And now the British Army -- asking for more troops for Afghanistan -- has been told "no" by Gordon Brown.

Anyone else sense the British military is enjoying less cordial relations with its civilian overseers than the U.S. military is these days?