Tragic numbers

Let’s have some figures

• 111,000
• 69,000
• 3500
• 20,660

And, finally: 

• Five million

So what do they all represent?

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, there have been 111,000 civilians killed, just in the time that it has been counting, since 2009. The war started eight years earlier.

There have also been 69,000 Afghan police and security force personnel killed.

Those figures naturally dwarf the NATO casualties. Still, the coalition has lost 3500 people, two-thirds of them American, representing 3500 families bereaved.

In addition, the Americans have suffered another 20,660 wounded. Some of those will be serious, life-altering injuries. That’s healthy young people who will now carry major physical damage for the rest of their lives.

That’s without taking into consideration the psychological harm many of the soldiers have suffered in the course of their service.

Finally, what about the five million? That’s the number of displaced people in Afghanistan, refugees who have fled the fighting. 

1996: Taliban entering Kabul

This would all be bad enough if the sacrifice had achieved something. But at the beginning of the war, Afghanistan was being tyrannised by the Taliban, in a shameful, backward-looking and, above all, misogynistic autocracy holding the nation in a state of medieval obscurantism and brutal persecution. 

Today, it’s on the brink once more of being tyrannised by the Taliban, in a shameful, backward-looking and, above all, misogynistic autocracy holding the nation in a state of medieval obscurantism and brutal persecution. 

2021: Taliban entering Kabul

All that death, destruction and suffering was, it seems for absolutely nothing.

How on Earth did we get here?

In the West, we have all, starting with the US, allowed ourselves to be blinded by US military power. The most powerful armed force the world has ever seen. And it led us to believe that there was no problem too big for it.

What we have failed to get our minds around is that the military is, at the level of international politics, what the fire brigade is at home. When we need them, we want them in quick and hard. But, when the fire’s out, we really don’t want those boots, axes and hoses still in use inside the house. Instead, we want builders and electricians and painters to start repairing the damage.

The same applies to the military. Once they’ve done the job, say of kicking Al Qaida out of Afghanistan, or even of bringing down the Taliban government, we need them gone, with the equivalent of the builders, electricians and painters taking over. 

Unfortunately, while the US army is, in this metaphor, an outstanding firefighting force, it doesn’t have the builders and other trades needed for repair work. I mean, individual soldiers may be highly talented builders, but that’s not the task for which the military was set up, trained or equipped. That applies equally forcefully to the other countries in the Coalition that was fighting in Afghanistan. 

However good individual soldiers may be at do it yourself work, armies aren’t designed, trained or equipped for building nations. So the United States joins the Soviet Union and, three times over, Britain in the club of foreigners who’ve come unstuck in the graveyard of Empires that is Afghanistan.

The attempt was always going to blow up in our faces. As it has. Or rather, in the faces of the Afghan people. They’re now going to be facing a Taliban revelling in the the prospect of settling some old scores.

All we can do is hope that the Afghans will, in time, free themselves. But we need to learn that we can’t free them ourselves, any more than we can free the Chinese, the North Koreans or the Russians (fortunately it looks unlikely that we’re even going to try). Above all, we need to learn never to go wandering blithely into another war we can’t win, without the slightest shade of an exit strategy for getting out.

So next time someone glibly suggests, “hey, why don’t we send in the military?”, perhaps to Libya or – God help us – Iran, the right answer is – “just say ‘no’”.