Sarah Ingham: What was the war in Afghanistan actually good for?

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.

Four years ago in August 2021, the world’s eyes were on Afghanistan, as Taliban insurgents once again rose up to take control of the country.

One-by-one provinces fell to the Islamic fundamentalists, who had governed Afghanistan with medieval barbarity for five years from 1996. Their advance on the capital Kabul was as lightning-fast as it was relentless.

Here in Britain, we could only look on in shock, but hardly awe, as two decades of our nation-building efforts were reduced to rubble.  The years of combat operations which cost the lives of 457 British military personnel; the billions in development aid; the attempts to instil Western values in one of the world’s the poorest countries …

Faced with Taliban 2.0 – public executions and amputations, women back in their burqas confined to home, no music, no girls’ education – who would want to stay? Ashraf Ghani, the president, fled. Thousands tried to follow his example, gathering outside Kabul airport. Secured by the US military, it was the only route out.

Britain’s evacuation plan, Operation Tipping, got underway. In a scorching report, Missing in Action, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee identified failures of intelligence, diplomacy, planning and preparation: “The manner of our withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster and a betrayal of our allies that will damage the UK’s interests for years to come.”

Two recent major policy developments (the undertaking to commit to five per cent GDP on defence and the bombshell about the Afghanistan-related super-injunction) shed new light on Missing in Action, as well as the Defence Committee’s report of February 2023, Withdrawal from Afghanistan, and others from the International Development and Home Affairs Committees.

During the second half of August 2021, scenes around Kabul’s airport were apocalyptic, as desperate humanity tried to scramble to safety. On the ground, it must have resembled Saigon 1975, mashed up with the Casablanca sub-plot about letters of transit. Amid the chaos, an ISIS terrorist detonated a suicide bomb, killing 180 people, 13 of them American troops.

Along with the suffering and sacrifice was the low farce of the Nowzad charity’s stray mutts. Somehow, PM Boris Johnson’s aide Trudy Harrison MP got entangled in it.  The Who Let the Dogs Out? saga reflected the “arbitrary and chaotic nature” of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s role in Pitting, says the Foreign Affairs’ committee, then chaired by Afghan veteran Tom Tugendhat MP.

The Committee’s evidence includes startling testimony from Raphael Marshall, an FCDO whistleblower. He conveyed the chaos of compiling different repatriation lists on Excel: ARAP, ACRS, Special Cases, Leave Outside the Rules… frankly, it’s difficult to keep track.  Separately Ben Wallace, then Defence Secretary, mentioned a data leak concerning Afghan contractors. And, in the rush to evacuate the British Embassy, sensitive documents identifying local job applicants were left behind.

While the exact chain of events prompting the September 2023 super-injunction remain opaque, the various Select Committee reports give insights into the chaos and lack of cross-Departmental co-ordination surrounding Tipping.

On the plus side, 15,000 people were evacuated on 100 RAF flights. But during “Dunkirk by WhatsApp”, many Afghans eligible to come to Britain were abandoned, including Special Forces’ personnel.

The Select Committee reports offer wildly different figures about how many Afghans were entitled to settle here. Some got lucky: in August 2021, “who you know” mattered. Wallace stated that 65,000 applied “in the first whoomph”; Marshall suggests between 75,000-150,000. The injunction-inducing data leak involved 18,714 Afghans.

Like a vengeful spirit, Afghanistan is haunting Britain. It’s one thing to offer sanctuary to the deserving contractors who supported British soldiers: it’s quite another to learn about secret immigration channels costing billions and the resettlement of the unvetted, perhaps sent to be housed in military bases in the UK.

Operation Tipping pointed to abject failure in many parts of the British state. The only institution that worked was the Armed Forces, with heroic efforts made by personnel on the ground at Kabul airport. Some surely had flashbacks about being back in Afghanistan, where comrades were lost or severely wounded. Some must have wondered why the Afghan National Army, much of it trained and mentored by British soldiers, collapsed so quickly.

The super-injunction saga will continue to prompt reflection on Britain’s fourth war in Afghanistan, an involvement that lasted for the best part of 20 years. It comes just as the Government is trying to persuade voters that defence spending – and their taxes – must rise. Going to 2.5 per cent GDP in 2027, Sir Keir Starmer promised 3.5 per cent on “core spending” by 2035. This could add an extra £30billion a year, says the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

In June the United States demonstrated the utility of force when it took out Iran’s nuclear facilities. This military operation wasn’t dressed up as a stabilisation, nation-building effort. There was no national conscience-salving “hopefully without a shot being fired”, as then-Defence Secretary John Reid stated in 2006 ahead of British forces occupying Helmand. Labour’s war of choice in Afghanistan, on the other hand, would ultimately cost £27 billion in treasure, let alone in blood.

Even by 2011, Barack Obama was weary of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq; the interim bill was $1trillion and the lives of 6,000 US service personnel. He stated: “America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.” Britain, over to you.

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