They went into Helmand with eyes shut and fingers crossed

Critics say that senior British officials underestimated the threat from the Taleban PA

Deborah Haynes Defence Editor Last updated June 9 2010 12:01AM

They went into Helmand with their eyes shut and fingers crossed. That is how MajorGeneral Andrew Mackay views Britain’s decision to send little more than 3,000 troops to southern Afghanistan four years ago. He is not alone. A succession of military and civilian officials, interviewed by The Times, indicated that warnings about under-resourcing and over-ambition were made lower down the chain of command during the planning process, but were not considered sufficient for a significant rethink by the top brass. The charge sheet includes institutional arrogance and an overkeeness to deploy to Helmand to compensate for a troubled campaign in Iraq. In addition, there is evidence of another British intelligence failure, this time an underestimation of the threat rather than the overestimation that was made on weapons of mass destruction before the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

Military chiefs are also accused of giving the advice that politicians and civil servants wanted to hear, rather than the cold facts that might make the political imperative — on this occasion, leading the Nato charge into southern Afghanistan — less palatable. The top brass and senior civilian advisers strongly deny delivering poor judgments and watering down advice. They maintain that the decision to deploy in 2006 was justified because of the need to revitalise the Nato mission at a time when Afghanistan was in danger of falling to the Taleban by default while the United States was focused on the war in Iraq. There have been two sets of decisions that have so far cost 293 British and countless Afghan lives in Afghanistan. The first was political — whether to topple a Government that was giving refuge to al-Qaeda. The second set has been military — whether, when and how to deploy British Forces, a move that has pushed the military to breaking point. Anger at the over-stretch has largely been levelled at politicians, but as David Cameron prepares for a Strategic Defence Review, the criticism of military leaders grows louder. Mark Etherington, a civilian development expert, who headed a team that drew up a cross-government, civilian plan for the deployment, said: “I know this sounds simplistic but I think some in the military were just jolly keen to get stuck in — you know, to charge off over the Helmand desert in a stripped-down Land Rover with a 50cal machine-gun.” He recalled presenting the Joint UK Plan for Helmand in Whitehall in December 2005. “We really counselled caution: we don’t know enough, we need to think this through carefully and then act. There was no appetite for that. I remember one official saying: we know what we need to know about Helmand,” said Mr Etherington, a veteran of several conflict zones. The atmosphere reminded him of Robert Walpole, one of Britain’s first prime ministers, who stood at his window listening to the crowds outside baying for war with Spain. “He turns and says, ‘They now ring the bells, but they’ll soon wring their hands’. I thought exactly that at that moment. It simply felt illogical — after all, this is Afghanistan. It’s not easy.” Muddying the planning process was a failure by the intelligence community to present a fuller analysis of the Taleban threat in Helmand, deeming it to be a containable force that numbered only hundreds — an estimate that proved inaccurate. That contributed to a sense of blind confidence within Whitehall, where a principle concern was that the goal to enhance a tiny, American provincial reconstruction team in Helmand would be so successful it would put other provinces to shame. “There was a three-year time frame and Helmand would be peaceful, stable and prosperous,” said a civilian involved in the planning. “We said the time frame didn’t

make any sense. We got huge push back from Whitehall, who wanted us to write something different for the ministers.” General Mackay, who was Prince Harry’s commander in Afghanistan, believes that Helmand is the product of an institutional malaise. “Anyone with any genuine experience of this counter-insurgency business understands that it is hellishly difficult and that mistakes, cock-ups and friction are a permanent feature,” he said. “The issue is whether or not our politicians, diplomats, intelligence services, civil servants and senior military have done enough, adapted enough, been innovative enough or courageous enough to make tough and, more often than not, unpalatable choices,” he told The Times. “My answer to that question is that they have not or have failed to do so too often. Muddling through seems to be the default setting, along with the protection of individual and collective interests.” General Mackay, who left the Army last year, accused the military of allowing itself to be politicised and “too acquiescent in rolling over to political bidding”. Such a culture, he said, promoted mediocrity. “The genesis of this approach is born of complacency, the thought that ‘we can deal with it as and when it happens’. It resulted, I believe, in the upper echelons of government (political, civil and military) going into Helmand with their eyes shut and their fingers crossed. For those who fought and died or suffered injuries in that period this proved a very costly means of conducting counter-insurgency.” Another ex-officer agreed. “It’s like [Siegfried] Sassoon said, ‘It’s not the enemy that gets you killed. He’s just an instrument. It’s a bad plan that kills tough soldiers’.” A third army source, a senior serving officer, said that General Sir Mike Walker, then Chief of the Defence Staff, did not grasp the issues involved in Helmand. “None of them got it,” he said. “Nor did Whitehall or the Foreign Office ... It was a neat solution in 2004. They got a lot of kudos for taking on Afghanistan, but then they went into institutional denial about what they’d entered into.” Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Fry, then Director of Operations at the MoD, was one of the architects of the shift from southern Iraq to southern Afghanistan — in line with the political intent of Tony Blair. Also key were General Walker and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, currently Britain’s Ambassador to Washington but then Mr Blair’s foreign policy adviser, along with a number of others. General Fry dismissed the suggestion that commanders whitewashed their advice to comply with the political mood or because they feared that saying no could affect promotion prospects. The former Marine commander, who has left the military, explained that with high command comes a responsibility to give ministers your best professional opinion rather than flooding them with all possible scenarios.

“That’s not being spinelessly compliant with what you know the political intentions are. It’s taking upon yourself a responsibility for making judgments and recommendations which are properly yours. You don’t delegate these things up to politicians who are probably less well qualified to make the judgments than you are.” There was always an element of risk in war and nation building, he said. “Had we waited for everything to be entirely defined we might have been in a perfectly formed tactical situation, but we would have been in a situation where we might already have been strategically defeated.” Adam Ingram, then the Armed Forces Minister, also defended the decision to deploy and the advice that the Government received at the time. “Decisions were not taken naively and they were not taken by ministers who were being softly advised ... That just doesn’t happen in the higher level of decision-making,” he said. “If the naysayers get their way then we will just say nay to everything because there will always be someone who says you cannot do it because you don’t have the resources.” General Sir Richard Dannatt, then the Commander-in-Chief, Land Force, however, conceded that a rethink might have been wise because a planned withdrawal from Iraq was not going as quickly as expected. “Maybe we should have re-evaluated whether we should have gone into Helmand in the middle of 2006 or delayed, rather than blithely continuing as planned when the assumptions underlining the original decision were not being met,” he said. Military assumptions in March 2005 that troop levels in southern Iraq would fall from 8,000 to 1,000 by autumn 2006 proved wrong as violence flared. Instead of delaying the timeline for the mission to Helmand, planners insisted that they would still be able to achieve their aims with an initial troop cap of 3,150 — the maximum available, while Britain remained heavily committed in Iraq. John Reid, then Defence Secretary, concerned about sustainability, demanded a written assurance from General Walker that the Helmand mission was achievable even if the drawdown from Basra was slower than expected. The reply, released as part of the Iraq inquiry, said: “The short answer is yes.” It warned, however, that such a situation would lead to “some pain and grief”. Britain’s journey into Helmand began in early 2004 when the military was heavily involved in Iraq alongside the United States and looking for a dignified exit. Inside Downing Street and the MoD, planners and policy advisers started to regard the neglected campaign in Afghanistan as an ideal platform for Britain to reaffirm its status as a global military power and close US ally. Nato, eager to justify its existence in the post-Cold War era, was keen to expand in Afghanistan so plans took shape to overhaul what was then a small Nato mission based in Kabul and head south.

In mid-2004, Mr Blair announced that Britain would send Nato’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, headed by a British general, to Kabul in 2006 to lead the expansion. Behind the scenes, diplomats and commanders garnered support from other Nato members — principally the Canadians and the Dutch. Offering an insight into the opaque process, no one contacted by The Times was able to say categorically why, when dividing up the south in early 2005, Britain ended up with Helmand, rather than the more important province of Kandahar. “Search me, Guv,” said General Sir Mike Jackson, then head of the Army. One factor was that Helmand, the hub of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, fitted with another British task as the lead G8 nation in the fight against narcotics. After Mr Blair’s re-election in May 2005, the so-called Reid Group of senior Cabinet ministers was formed to oversee the Helmand deployment. The MoD’s Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), whichplans and executes its strategic intent, drafted experts from Afghanistan and Pakistan to run through all the possible scenarios, while reconnaissance teams were sent out to scope the terrain. PJHQ reported back in the autumn of 2005 that it was possible to do Helmand with 3,150 troops — a number that was revised up to 3,300 when the deployment was announced in January 2006. At about the same time, however, the situation in Iraq was deteriorating and attention was distracted. Brigadier Ed Butler, a former SAS commander whose battle group first deployed to southern Afghanistan, said he voiced concern that Britain had underestimated the threat in Helmand and was sending insufficient troops. He said his concerns fell on deaf ears. “Iraq was occupying 90 per cent of people’s time so no one had a free moment to really listen and rethink about what we were getting into,” he said. Civilian experts also felt like they were being ignored. Mr Etherington, who was working for the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit, a team that worked across the MoD, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development (DfID), said the response was “pretty impatient” when a more cautious approach was advised. “I felt the key decisions concerning the deployment had already been takenÍ that the main elements of the operation had been decided before we began the planning and that there was no appetite to revisit them.” He was right. The civilian part of the plan appears to have been an afterthought because the military deployment was due to start in January. Uncertainty over whether the Netherlands would commit troops, however, delayed the start date to April 2006, just as the poppy harvest was finishing and the fighting season was beginning. Once on the ground, Task Force Helmand, which took over from a tiny contingent of US troops, deviated from the development plan and started battling the Taleban. Responding to the claims, the MoD said: “In 2006 the Government’s decision to deploy

UK forces to Helmand followed careful analysis and comprehensive discussion within the MoD and across other departments.” The MoD added: “The new Government has made clear that the mission in Afghanistan is imperative for our national security and its commitment to ensure that it succeeds.” The key witnesses who spoke out The Times interviewed 32 senior sources, including past and current generals, senior politicians and senior civil servants about the planning for deployment in Helmand. Key accounts came from: Major-General Andrew Mackay, who wrote a new military doctrine on counterinsurgency. He resigned from the Army last year but previously was the brigade commander when Prince Harry was in Helmand Mark Etherington, a civilian development expert and veteran of several conflict zones including the Balkans and Iraq. He led a team of three other civilian experts that drew up the cross-government, civilian Joint UK Plan for Helmand, which was supposed to work alongside the military plan Brigadier Ed Butler the first commander of British Forces in Helmand Colonel Stuart Tootal, commander of 3 Para, which was part of Task Force Helmand Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Fry, then Director of Operations at the Ministry of Defence Adam Ingram, then Armed Forces Minister A former officer who saw the SAS report that advised against sending an under-funded British battle group to replace a well-funded, light American footprint.He asked to remain anonymous. A senior serving officer who was critical of the under-resourcing of the Helmand mission and believes that some in the military gave politicians only the advice they wanted to hear. He did not want to be identified because it might affect his job A source inside the Government who felt that the military was pushing hard for Helmand. The source did not want to be identified A civilian involved in the planning, who said there was an air of confidence in Whitehall that the deployment would be so successful it would put campaigns in other provinces to shame. The civilian did not want to be identified while still working within the Whitehall system [email protected] Contact us | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Site Map | FAQ | Syndication | Advertising © Times Newspapers Ltd 2010 Registered in England No. 894646 Registered office: 1 Virginia Street, London, E98 1XY