The present state of Afghan War from Britain's fool, aka latest Secretary of Defense

Philip Hammond is the nation's sixth SecDef in as many years, so he has to be given points just for being a good sport, particularly because he has no prior defense experience lol. In this interview with a Telegraph reporter he makes an interesting point about the Taliban: they hadn't expected to be fighting an indigenous force. I'd say that's true about the genuine Afghan Taliban insurgents but unfortunately the reasoning doesn't apply to the proxy fighters, the LeT, and of course al Qaeda couldn't care one way or another whether it kills Afghan troops or NATO ones. The interview also discusses some of the logistics of the British retreat from the war.

The Taliban is having second thoughts
By Con Coughlin
March 2, 2012
The Telegraph

For Philip Hammond, taking on the position of Defence Secretary has been a baptism of fire. One minute he was the Transport Secretary, immersed in planning the new high-speed rail route between London and the Midlands; the next he found himself parachuted into one of the most challenging ministries Whitehall has to offer.

Prior to his appointment - after Dr Liam Fox’s resignation last October - Mr Hammond was hardly renowned for his interest in national security issues. A successful businessman before entering politics, he was better known as one of the more bean-counterish figures in Westminster.

“I would regard myself as a very strong, pro-defence politician who believes that defence should be the number one priority of government,” he says. “If a threat comes along, the public rightly expects the Government to have the ability to defend itself.”

Until his appointment, Mr Hammond’s involvement in defence issues had been confined largely to his role as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury where, together with Oliver Letwin, he had worked on the Conservative’s master plan for reducing the budget deficit. “I had a pretty clear view of our defence needs because Liam had a very good idea on how we should project our power through the military in an age of austerity.”

But once he took up the post, Mr Hammond came face to face with the challenge of running one of the most testing – some would say dysfunctional – of government departments. Apart from having to eradicate the £38billion black hole from the Ministry of Defence budget, Mr Hammond suddenly had to immerse himself in a variety of highly complex issues, from the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent to the future of Britain’s military involvement in Afghanistan.

“I was on a very steep learning curve and spent the first two months with my heart in my mouth hoping that I did not make some terrible blunder,” he admits. But Mr Hammond is clearly a fast learner, and little more than four months after taking up his post he speaks with the confidence of a man who has mastered his brief.

Earlier this week I joined him in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where he had the delicate job of seeking the assistance of two of the region’s more autocratic regimes in aiding with the removal of the vast military infrastructure Britain has assembled in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The highly challenging task of removing billions of pounds worth of British kit from Afghanistan means the MoD needs to explore all the available exit routes, particularly as the Pakistanis have closed the main border crossings into Afghanistan, through which most of the equipment arrived.

Mr Hammond estimates that, apart from removing 3,000 armoured vehicles, there are around 11,000 shipping containers of equipment that need removing as Britain begins scaling down its military commitment to Afghanistan, with combat operations due to cease at the end of 2014.

With other Nato nations undertaking similar operations - the Americans have 49,000 vehicles and 100,000 containers to bring home - Mr Hammond fears massive bottlenecks could develop as the main exit routes out of Afghanistan become clogged up with retreating soldiers.

“The pressure on the existing lines of communication is going to be very significant,” he explains. “That is why it is important for us to open a new line of communication through the north. Nothing would be worse than a disorderly withdrawal.” One possibility he is exploring is to transport much of the equipment by rail from northern Afghanistan on a 4,000-mile journey through Central Asia and Russia to the Baltic ports, from whence it will then be shipped back to England.

But he is clear in his mind that withdrawing British forces from Afghanistan is indisputably the right course of action.

“We are not some kind of 21st century missionary force,” he says. “You cannot win an insurgency by inserting foreign troops and expecting them to do the job to completion. Nato troops do the heavy lift while at the same time turning the Afghan army from an

ill-disciplined rag bag into a disciplined force. It was always our intention to hand over to the Afghans.”

But what about the Taliban? Surely, unless there is some form of political reconciliation, we risk seeing the Taliban regain power, and we’ll be back to square one, with al-Qaeda rebuilding its terror camps in southern Afghanistan?

“When the British leave there will be a continued insurgency which the Afghans will have to deal with themselves. But I also hope there will be a political reconciliation process in place.”

Mr Hammond believes that many Taliban fighters are having second thoughts about continuing with the insurgency, as Afghan security forces increasingly take the lead role in combat operations. “There is some evidence that, at the level of the ordinary Afghan fighters that signed up to fight the “foreign infidel”, they are now fighting against Afghan troops, which is not what they expected and has persuaded them to enter the reconciliation process.”

More encouraging is the suggestion that the Taliban might be prepared to ditch its long-standing alliance with al-Qaeda. “The Taliban are talking about issuing a public statement that would distance them from al-Qaeda,” he says.

Mr Hammond’s keen business sense is also excited by the potential peace dividend the Government will receive once the last combat troops have returned home.

“We will have a large peace dividend when we leave Afghanistan worth £3.5billion a year, which is what we are currently spending in Afghanistan.” Apart from supervising Britain’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr Hammond’s main priority is to instil a culture of financial discipline at the MoD while ensuring that Britain retains the military capabilities to maintain its status as a major world power.

“The big problem we have had in the past is what I call the conspiracy of optimism between the military, the MoD and the defence contractors,” he said. This meant that Dr Fox had to make some difficult decisions when he became defence secretary in 2010, including the cancellation of a number of key projects, such as the new Nimrod maritime surveillance aircraft, in order to balance the MoD’s books.

But Mr Hammond is confident that the worst is behind him, and that the MoD will soon be able to announce that it has dealt with the £38billion black hole in its budget and can start spending money again on new projects.

“I have no doubt that we are punching above our weight and that we are establishing ourselves as an important world power,” he insists, pointing to the Government’s energetic pursuit of new diplomatic ties, from Central Asia to Latin America. “Of course our Armed Forces are going to be smaller in the future, but you do not need large armies to project power. Sending a frigate is important, but doing so without intensive diplomatic engagement is a pretty hollow gesture.”

He is also grateful to Dr Fox for the ground work he did laying the foundations for the future structure of the Armed Forces. While Dr Fox concentrated on the “what”, Mr Hammond says his job is to do the “how”. “Liam will not have detected any sense of me changing the direction he had determined,” he says. “I stay in touch with Liam and he was very helpful in briefing me and bringing me up to date on the political issues relating to various projects.”

And what about his own political prospects? He is, after all, the sixth Defence Secretary during the past six years. “Fingers’ crossed,” he replies with a smile.