Afghan nonsense and Yorkshire common sense

Reviewing comments before the Afghan deployment this extract from a well argued and well informed piece by the Yorkshire Ranter is well worth re-reading ...

Thursday, December 15, 2005 Strategic Drift

" ....All this uncertainty about aims has shaken up unpleasant memories with the Dutch, who are now remembering Srebrenica and rowing back on their commitment to send 1,000 men to Uruzgan province, next door to 16AAB. This in turn seems to have unsettled John Reid to the point that a really awful decision might get made. It has been suggested that Reid is considering trimming Op. HERRICK and sending just two of 16AAB's infantry battalions to Helmand rather than the full monty. This is dangerous nonsense. Just reducing the stakes does not necessarily reduce the risk. It's possible - like the Provincial Reconstruction Teams - to be safe through keeping a low profile. It's possible to be safe through being overwhelmingly strong. Two battalions of light infantry - in fact, airborne infantry, the lightest of the light - spread across a large tract of wild mountains are enough to present a wide range of attractive targets, but not enough unless concentrated to be secure.

The full 16AAB includes a field artillery regiment with 105mm guns and the capability to deploy by parachute or helicopter, and an Army Air Corps regiment that has just completed re-equipping with the WAH64-D Apache attack helicopter, and an engineer squadron. With this backup, and the RAF Harriers currently stationed at Kandahar, even small groups of Paras can essentially go anywhere in Afghanistan. But the new option is to leave essentially all the Brigade's support firepower at home, as well as one-third of the infantry. Bizarrely, the government appears to be thinking along the lines that having fewer allies means we need less power of our own...."

The seeds of current difficluties were foreseen ..sufficient for a commentator to suggest that the High Command were happy to countenance failure to re-inforce the disastrous cut backs they see on military spending. The current (and new) CGS's first published comments suggest that, that is a drum which he wishes to bang pretty hard.

Trying to beat any sense into Beckett and Browne will be a waste of time and John Reid has long gone and is absorbed in his anxious pursuit of the seat at the top of the greasy pole.