AFGHANISTAN – CUT AND RUN

In assessing the scale of the debacle of the collapse of the Western-backed government in Afghanistan, comparisons have been made with other historic defeats. To look at three previous military defeats (Singapore, Dien Bien Phu, and Saigon – Suez was a political defeat), the surrender at Singapore was the first chronologically. It was arguably the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

In February 1942, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, having first lost Malaya, surrendered Singapore to the Japanese, despite being ordered by Churchill to fight to the last man. As the British retreated down Malaya, Percival had refused to fortify the northern part of Singapore, as he had been urged to do by his subordinate officers. Percival argued that to do so would be bad for morale.

The British had artillery superiority, while the Japanese controlled the air. As the battle for Singapore ensued, the force of the British artillery bombardment was such that the Japanese were about to retreat. However, the artillery bombardment ceased, and Percival walked out with a white flag and surrendered. Many of the British forces had only just arrived as reinforcements and all those surrendering spent the remainder of the war in Japanese POW camps, with all the cruelty that entailed. A garrison of 100,000 British and Commonwealth forces surrendered to a Japanese force of only 30,000.

At Dien Bien Phu, a battle in the north of Vietnam, the French sought a decisive battle against the communist Viet Minh in late 1953. The battle was a decisive win for the Viet Minh.

The French built a base at Dien Bien Phu, believing that the Viet Minh might attack, leading to a pitched battle where superior French fire power would prevail. They seriously underestimated the Viet Minh resourcefulness and their military strength. They had received substantial aid from China. The French had received aid from the USA.

Dien Bien Phu was overlooked by mountains and as the Viet Minh encircled the position, they held the high ground. The French believed that they had the most formidable artillery available, American 105mm. They had 28 of these. They did not realise that the Viet Minh had carefully, and with much effort, disassembled their own artillery, moved it through the jungle into the ground overlooking Dien Bien Phu, and then reassembled it in caves out of sight of the French. The Viet Minh had 48 105mm artillery pieces and more than 150 pieces of lighter artillery. The Viet Minh outnumbered the French three to one in both troops and artillery fire-power.

The battle commenced on 12 March with a heavy Viet Minh artillery barrage. The French commander, Colonel Pierre Langlais, described the barrage as ‘a massacre’. The French artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth subsequently committed suicide.

Back in Hanoi, it was decided to reinforce with paratroopers. The paratroop commander Lieutenant- Colonel Bigeard was told: ‘Everything is going badly. We don’t know who is in command there – but the impression is of complete chaos.’ The paratroops went in on the 16 March.

The 15,000 besieged French put up a fierce fight over the following weeks. They mounted bloody counterattacks to retake outposts on occasion. The hospital was underground and dug out of clay – the wounded could not be evacuated. Langlais said: ‘The dead were buried where it was possible to do so. From mid-April on, they were just left behind.’

Bigeard said: ‘I saw my men disappear one after the other. This battalion of 800 men with whom I had jumped had become a force of 700 men, then 600, then 400, then 300 and then I had perhaps 180 troops left with 80 survivors at the end.’

The French defenders hoped for US support. It did not come. President Eisenhower was minded to mount air support – ‘Operation Vulture’ – but this was blocked by Congress, with Lyndon Johnson being the prime obstacle. John Kennedy also opposed US intervention.

Bigeard said: ‘I kept telling my men, we must hold on one more day. The Americans will not let us down; the free world will not let us down. They may come. That is why we saw this thing through.’ The Americans did not come.

The French abandoned plans to break out as they were physically too weak. They did not raise a white flag, but allowed the Viet Minh to overrun them without resisting. Half of the 8,000 survivors of the battle died in captivity.

The French lost Indo-China. Vietnam was partitioned.

The fall of Saigon came after the USA had pulled out combat troops in a deal with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, and after the remaining US personnel were told to leave by the South Vietnamese shortly before the communist forces entered the city.

The USA had to withdraw from South Vietnam, both due to the civil unrest at home and due to the dangerous disintegration of their army. Prior to 1969 fragging, attacks on officers, was so rare there were no figures for it. Between 1969 and 1971, there were an average of 240 incidents per year, eleven of which were fatal. Drug use was widespread. In the year to 1972, figures showed that the desertion rate was 73.5 per 1,000 men and the absentee rate was 176 per 1,000 men. This combined total amounted to about a quarter of total US forces. Desertion was defined as being absent more than 30 days, AWOL as being less than 30 days.

The USA did a deal with the North Vietnamese behind the backs of the South Vietnamese. President Thieu (the South Vietnamese president) was not bullied and told Kissinger: ‘I am not a yes-man. I am not a puppet. I will not agree with everything that the Americans would like to impose on our people.’ In particular, Thieu objected to the USA agreeing that North Vietnamese troops could stay in South Vietnam and the creation of a National Council involving the communists that could only undermine South Vietnam. Thieu rejected the deal outright.

After a delay for further negotiations with North Vietnam, and further bombing when the North Vietnamese were stringing the Americans along, eventually a deal was done in Paris in 1973. 150,000 North Vietnamese troops would remain in South Vietnam. Thieu accepted that unless he agreed then all US aid to South Vietnam would cease. Thieu still considered the USA’s actions to be a ‘betrayal’. However, he did receive written assurances that were the North Vietnamese to violate the terms of the Paris Agreement, then the USA would come to South Vietnam’s assistance.

The fighting did not stop. The South Vietnamese army experienced an average of 1,000 killed in the fighting per month in a struggle for control of the villages.

The USA had rushed one bilion dollars of extra aid to South Vietnam before the Paris treaty. Under the terms of the treaty, the USA had committed to replacing ‘one for one’ the expended ammunition and weapons used by the South Vietnamese. This meant that they could fight knowing that their ammunition and weaponry would not run out. Thieu said that the Americans were surprised at how hard the South Vietnamese army had fought and: ‘Everyone, and above all Kissinger, believed that six months after the peace signing we would have collapsed.’ In the event, South Vietnam struggled on for two years before the final communist offensive, despite, in 1974, the US Congress capping the aid given at $1 billion. South Vietnam by 1974 was without helicopter and artillery replacements and US air support was nil. Thieu said: ‘When the North Vietnamese launched the great offensive, we had no mobility and not enough fire-power.’

When a province was overrun by the North Vietnamese in January 1975, the USA formally protested, but did not act. The North Vietnamese took this as confirmation that the USA would no longer come to South Vietnam’s assistance – and the CIA knew this.

Thieu said: ‘By 1975, our war potential had been reduced by sixty per cent. Meanwhile the war potential of the North had been increased by the overwhelming help of Russia. Despite sending delegates to Washington (‘military men, political men, Vietnamese senators’) to explain the situation, and even writing to the US President, ‘nothing happened’. The new American ambassador, Graham Martin, said that his instructions were to make it clear to the South Vietnamese ‘that they were on their own in fighting what was obviously going to be a continuing North Vietnamese pressure’.

The Yom Kippur War was a further disaster, as the military aid available was diverted to Israel. South Vietnam ‘received a much lower priority’ of supplies, according to Martin. The oil price hikes and the following escalating prices meant that the military budget for South Vietnam was worth only a quarter of its face value. Thieu said: ‘The economic aid was cut, the military aid was cut – and we had no means to fight.’

When the big North Vietnamese offensive began in March, they quickly took control of the Highlands. When Thieu appealed for more aid, he was told, according to Martin, that ‘not only was it highly unlikely that South Vietnam would receive any supplemental aid, it was unlikely that they would receive any aid at all in the next fiscal year, beginning that June’. In other words, all aid would be cut off in three months time.

Thieu decided to consolidate and ordered the Central Highlands to be abandoned. Thus began one of the worst retreats in military history. Rumours spread, civilians panicked and fled, military equipment was left behind and many soldiers dropped their weapons and ran. Cities and provinces fell as the North Vietnamese offensive proceeded beyond their wildest expectations and the South Vietnamese were unable to rally. Some of South Vietnam’s best units were cut off in cities along the coast and destroyed.

As the South Vietnamese army fell back towards the Saigon, the USA encouraged the South Vietnamese generals to try and negotiate for a coalition government. The North Vietnamese demanded Thieu’s removal. Then US intelligence reported that the North Vietnamese were so pleased with their progress that they had decided to go for all out victory in 1975.

The South Vietnamese decided to make a stand at Xuan Loc (38 miles north-east of Saigon), where their 18^th Division and 3^rd armoured brigade halted the North Vietnamese advance, with the North Vietnamese taking heavy casualties. The North Vietnamese brought up more forces. As the battle raged, in which South Vietnamese air support was crucial, the South Vietnamese deployed reinforcements including the 1^st Airborne Brigade, marine and ranger battalions, more artillery, and three armoured brigades. The North Vietnamese eventually redirected its artillery to bombard the South Vietnamese airfields, thus neutralising the air support. More air support was made available from another air base.

After a 12 day battle, in which the North Vietnamese took heavy losses, the South Vietnamese 18^th Division was isolated and the decision was taken to evacuate the surviving units. A volunteer rearguard of 600 men, commanded by Colonel Le Xuan Hien, fought to the last man when overwhelmed by an attack of 40,000 North Vietnamese.

On the same day that Xuan Loc fell, Thieu resigned (he had been under US pressure to do so).

Shortly after, the incoming president, General Minh, broadcast an order for all Americans to leave within 24 hours. This resulted in the hectic evacuation scenes with helicopters pulling people off the US embassy roof.

In 2021, there is the fiasco in Afghanistan. Regarding the potential defeat of the Afghan forces, Biden said: ‘Because you – the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped – as well-equipped as any army in the world – and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.’ He further pointed out that the USA had spent more than $1 trillion over 20 years on Afghanistan, and that: ‘They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation.’

That supposed 300,000-strong, NATO-trained and US-funded army disappeared in the face of a Taliban offensive spanning only 11 days. NATO is now being run out of Afghanistan and is scrambling to evacuate its own citizens and many Afghans deemed to be at risk.

It is increasingly apparent that there were not 300,000 Afghan army soldiers. The figure is false due to the endemic corruption in the Afghan government and military. Senior officers were believed to be pocketing the wages of soldiers who did not exist. Those soldiers who did exist were being paid a pittance, if they were paid at all. The Taliban offered those soldiers bribes to desert and go back home rather than die fighting for a corrupt government, and many took those bribes. Others simply deserted.

No effort was made to defend Kabul, the capital, into which the Taliban breezed.

This is not the first time the West has encountered this problem. In June 2014, the Iraqi city of Mosul, and the oilfields there, fell to an ISIS force of only 800 men. This was largely because the supposed defenders mostly did not exist. The officers ran at the outbreak of fighting. The soldiers who did not escape were immediately executed by ISIS.

On paper, ISIS faced an Iraqi army of 60,000. That substantial force, in reality, was only a third of its supposed strength with the officers pocketing the salaries of non-existent soldiers or half of the salaries of others provided they did not have to show up or don a uniform. According to an Iraqi politician, who subsequently inspected an Iraqi armoured division, there were only 68 tanks and 2,000 soldiers instead of the supposed strength of 120 tanks and 10,000 troops.

We are supposed to believe that neither the US nor UK governments were aware of the scale of the corruption in the Afghan army. There are claims that Biden was made fully aware. The USA and the UK governments were certainly not so concerned as to do something about it other than dish out yet more funds. Estimates put the actual strength of the army as being somewhere between 30,000 and 150,000, with around 50,000 being the likely figure.

In a House of Commons debate in the UK, the Government came in for some criticism. Much of the criticism focused on the failure of the Government to bring a much larger number of Afghan immigrants to the UK than the Government had promised. The Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister had departed on holiday as the final collapse of Afghanistan occurred. The Foreign Secretary was sunning himself on a beach in Crete.

In the debate, Theresa May, a former prime minister, presumed that the Government had simply accepted the US decision to pull out and had assumed that it would all turn out OK. She criticised that the Government had not put together a NATO coalition to replace the USA forces – despite being told that the other NATO allies were completely uninterested and that the UK could not go it alone, not least due to the loss of US air power. As ever a bulwark against reality, and a globalist, this is the same Theresa May who, as prime minister, questioned the need for the UK to remain a tier one military power and repeatedly refused to commit to retaining tier one status. In June 2018, in the House of Commons she said: ‘There is no question that the government will do what it needs to do to ensure that we are a leading military power. But we do need to ensure that we look at the threats that we are now facing and the capabilities that we need as these threats change. That’s what the modernising defence programme is about. But we are committed to remaining a leading military power.’

At the time leading up to the fall of Afghanistan, illegal immigrants were freely invading the UK from across the English Channel, a destroyer had sailed close to Crimea territorial waters to provoke a Russian military response, and the only functioning aircraft carrier was sailing into disputed waters in the South China Sea, without a full crew, with only a handful of aircraft on board – half of which belonged to and were piloted by the USA – and with US and Dutch escort ships as the Royal Navy ships did not have engines that worked properly.

Although the Tories do boast that the UK is a ‘development superpower’.

Such attention-seeking stunts, gimmicks , wheezes and bullshit were of little use in Afghanistan.

In The Genesis of Political Correctness: The Basis of a False Morality, I wrote:

‘Another example of the harm done by abstract theories about human rights is the penchant for human rights wars. It has been estimated that the cost of the most recent wars, primarily Iraq and Afghanistan, was between $3trillion and $4trillion. The cost to Britain of the war in Afghanistan was around £40billion and 453 soldiers killed. Over 250,000 people have died in such wars over the last 15 years. This is, as Robert Cooper, an adviser to Tony Blair, urged for, ‘a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values … which like all imperialism aims to bring order and organization but which rests today on the voluntary principle’. Despite the penchant for human rights wars, the human rights theories and the legal profession’s opportunism crippled the ability to fight such wars or defend the country. This was demonstrated by the lawyers, with judicial permission, bringing claims against Britain and its troops for alleged human rights breaches.

Wars have not necessarily been fought in defence of the national interest but have been increasingly motivated by a determination to impose human rights theories on imperfect countries. Prime examples are, in general, those countries affected by the so-called Arab Spring and, in particular, Syria. While it might be welcome to see people who have been oppressed by a tyrant gain their liberty, that liberty cannot exist without law and order…

A commitment to military action in the name of human rights very nearly embroiled Britain in the Syrian civil war in 2013 and was only thwarted by a defeat in a vote in Parliament. This defeat likewise influenced the USA to keep out. The Syrian President, Assad, allegedly used chemical weapons against rebels. Cameron wanted to attack Syria with some cruise missiles in response, presumably in the belief that blowing up some Syrians would assuage Assad’s lack of human rights credentials. It certainly would not have had much effect on the civil war, and eventually, after pressure and the threat of military reprisals, Assad agreed to destroy his chemical weapons arsenal. Subsequently, ISIS has been reportedly using chemical weapons.’

And:

‘Apart from the wet Liberal politics of the Tories, part of the reason lies in Britain’s imperial past. Presiding over the empire and placating the natives has been absorbed into the psyche of the British ruling class. That class might have mislaid the empire, reduced the Royal Navy to a token force, squandered North Sea oil, and ruined the economy of the world’s first industrial nation, but they remain firmly convinced that they should be big players on the world stage. Disavowing any loyalty to Britain, England in particular, and concentrating on getting their feet under the conference tables of a variety of international institutions, they are more than willing to sacrifice British interests in furtherance of their own worldly status. It should be noted that Cameron was keen to bomb Syria in 2013 in response to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons and keen again in 2015 to bomb following the terrorist attacks in Paris. He did not, however, urge a military response to the murder of more than 30 British nationals in Tunisia. Somewhere along the way, Britain’s imperial role damaged the Tories, rendered them unable to govern properly, and made them highly susceptible to political correctness.’

The UK voted for Brexit, not because the voters wanted a different version of globalism to that offered by continued membership of the EU, but because they wanted to reclaim the UK’s independence. We do not want ‘global Britain’, we want an independent Britain. In Turbo Brexit: And the Case Against Brino, I defined independence thus:

‘Independence will be taken as consisting of three aspects. First, sovereignty and the ability of government to take decisions; equally important is their willingness to do so. A government might be sovereign, but if it continually defers decisions it should take to outside entities then that sovereignty becomes diluted or even worthless. Power is not the same as sovereignty, and the ability to implement a decision should be taken into consideration in the exercise of sovereignty.

Second, is military power and security. Is a sovereign, independent nation able to defend itself and its borders? Does it have the military capability to project forces to support foreign policy objectives? Naturally, a puny military power will have less influence than a strong one.

Third, is the economy. Can the sovereign, independent nation pay its way? Can the government pay its bills and honour its obligations to its people? Currently, the British government cannot and successive governments have been dishonouring commitments to the public for a considerable time (the erosion of the state pension and social care being obvious examples). Can a country trade successfully and export sufficient goods and services to pay for imports? Currently, Britain cannot. Change is therefore necessary and this is an important reason for Turbo Brexit. Britain cannot afford to blunder on indefinitely as it is, as a member of the EU.’

The UK might have regained most of its sovereignty (it particularly has not done so regarding Northern Ireland), but it is not defending itself against the illegal immigrant invasion of England (with the assistance of people smugglers – including ISIS and al Qaeda) by tens of thousands of illegal immigrants (those crossing the English Channel are in excess of 10,000 per annum), it is continuing to pay around £10 billion per annum to the EU, the trade deficit continues and the UK is continuing to waste around £15 billion per annum on foreign aid. The Tories also intend to rat on their promises to increase the state pension in line with the pensions triple lock (which increases the state pension annually by the higher of inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent). Then there is the continued underfunding of social care for the elderly.

Meanwhile, as the world has just seen, the UK’s military capability is too puny to reinforce British foreign policy in Afghanistan. As a result, more than 40 million Afghans are about to return to the middle ages and the strategically important copper and lithium deposits in that country are likely to end up in the hands of the Chinese. Afghanistan has flipped from being a Western ally to being a very dangerous rogue state.

The UK needs to cut out the posturing and stop giving money away. The recent strategic and defence review, fleetingly brought up on the recent Commons debate, is obsolete. The UK needs to rebuild its military capabilities. It needs to regain its position as a genuine tier one military power – in particular the Royal Navy needs to be rebuilt and the RAF needs more aircraft and firepower.

Presently, the UK’s response has been to double the aid given to Afghanistan (ie to the Taliban), and to get even more immigrants into the UK.

The Doha Agreement between the Taliban and the USA, of February 2020, is straightforward, is only four pages long, and consists of four parts. Part Four is concerned with the future talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and states:

‘A permanent and comprehensive ceasefire will be an item on the agenda of the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. The participants of intra-Afghan negotiations will discuss the date and modalities of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, including joint implementation mechanisms, which will be announced along with the completion and agreement over the future political roadmap of Afghanistan.’

There are very few in the world today, including those who are illiterate or even mentally subnormal, who cannot but have noticed that the Taliban have not adhered to Part Four of the Doha Agreement at all.

There was no ceasefire. Far from sticking to their part of the bargain and acting in good faith, the Taliban continued their terrorist attacks against the Afghan forces, built up their own forces and infiltrated Afghanistan, bided their time until the USA was ready to leave, and then launched a major offensive that was well planned and fully funded.

Under the Biden presidency, the USA simply washed its hands and left the Afghans to their fate. The UK was ineffectual. The Afghan army had been fighting the Taliban, had contained them, and had done so with limited support. It was clearly important that that army continued to fight and the USA’s cut and run policy led to a fatal collapse in morale. The USA, and NATO, should have continued support for the Afghan army.

Knowing that corruption was widespread, then the USA and NATO should have stamped it out and ensured that the Afghan army available was nearer the 300,000 that the USA was funding rather than the 50,000 it actually was.

This disaster was an entirely avoidable defeat, and is nearer to the surrender of Singapore than either Dien Bien Phu or the fall of Saigon (although there are similarities and lessons clearly visible regarding Saigon).

The fundamentalist jihadists now have a state of their own once again, and the world is a more dangerous place.

The USA is at a crossroads.