Resignations and continuing casualties now challenge the UK government's long term commitment to Afghanistan and the relevance of costly operations in Helmand to UK's domestic security. Far from clarifying this issue, recent ministerial statements have exposed a tension between the British intent in Afghanistan and domestic security problems in UK. The unexplored question, which also hangs over the forthcoming defence debate is whether Britain can continue a major expeditionary campaign without first of all securing its own homeland population.
At present the British government's position is that since 2001 UK has been threatened by a series of massive bomb attacks ; fifteen plots have been interdicted at an advanced state of readiness, ninety plotters have been arrested and convicted and a further forty have been convicted on lesser charges of implication. The only attack to succeed killed fifty two civilians and injured a further seven hundred in the close confines of the London transport system .
The British Government argue that the reasons why the fifteen detected attacks were not successful are because the Home office counter terrorism operation known as CONTEST succeeded in preventing most viable attacks from taking place. British and allied intelligence had penetrated some of the international terrorist networks and above all many attacks were destined to fail through technical incompetence.
The argument for military engagement
The strongest reason why military operations in Helmand enhance security in UK is that each of the fifteen failed plots (probably with the exception of the Giraffe Café Bomber) could have been lethal if they had been more competent, technically, tactically and in respect of their mission security.
The bombers' competence could have been critically improved by access to a secure place to train and plan without fear of arrest . The allied campaign in southern Afghanistan apparently prevents this safe place from existing by preventing the fusion of three different factions in what would otherwise become an un-policed zone. The Afghan Taliban , the Pakistan Taliban and al Qaeda with its associated foreign fighters at present have to find refuge in different parts of the region.
Reducing a NATO reduction or withdrawal would allow the three separated movements to establish safe havens within the same "liberated zone" of Afghanistan with damaging consequences for European homeland security. The existence of a liberated zone would be trumpeted all over the world both by extremist movements and by the obliging Western media as a morale boosting victory for the jihad. Without a NATO presence a secure space would form and become a centre and an icon for future extremist movements.
Why that argument fails
But even in this most strongly argued version, the British position is illogical . The success record and the utility of international military interventions are at best questionable. After eight years the US operation in Southern Afghanistan has become part of a multinational , multidisciplinary, intervention. This is not Iraq and although the US are still framework provider, they have lost control of the process. There is no longer a critical point or a critical mass. The intervention has transitioned into a typical 1990s contingency (such as the UN forces in Cambodia or DRC), and they have an appalling record of success. Whether led by the most powerful nation in the world or by the UN, it is destined to slow failure.
But the main reason that the UK logic is flawed is that the insurgent activism and the homeland bombers are not from Afghanistan, they come from the UK itself ; the sources of violence lie within our own population. The argument that the NATO presence in Afghanistan critically disarms the attackers' competence is to some extent torpedoed by the fact that British based terrorists already visit training schools - but they are not in Afghanistan they are in Pakistan's frontier provinces or Somalia. NATO interventions does not eradicate these schools. A future "liberated zone" in Afghanistan might result in better terrorist training , but is preventing this unquantifiable degree of improvement worth a British expeditionary force of 9000 troops in an open ended commitment?
After 9/11, many British Muslims became radicalised in the urban areas of UK without knowledge, assistance or oversight of foreign international networks. Vulnerable young Muslims are more likely to be subverted by a disaffected friend in the hub of the local mosque, campus and coffee shop, than by some highly structured terrorist organisation rooted in Afghanistan.
A European strategy
The key to shutting off the flow of attackers lies in altering the situation in UK, especially when the disaffected individual is still in a formative state. If UK plc focused more effort on the initial stages of disaffection the government could be manoeuvrist, exploit the individual's indecision, overwhelm the insurgents' manifesto, engage minds, undermine loyalties and successfully challenge newly acquired convictions.
Europe's priorities are not America's priorities. Europe is connected to the Muslim world; whereas the US can shrug off the consequences of its international unpopularity, the Europeans cannot. Huge spending on homeland security has made America almost impregnable , but Europe's open frontiers cannot be secured in the same way. The US Global War on Terror does not fit the European reality. The NATO campaign in Afghanistan is now seriously entangled in a Taliban uprising that was only marginally relevant to eradicating a globalised movement which threatens UK. Europe is less threatened by a net flow of terrorists entering its territory from the overseas sanctuaries than by terrorist attacks arising from within their own population; attacks which are fomented by the presence of British troops on Muslim lands.
