“These are difficult and testing times for us all. People are bound to be concerned about what the terrorists may seek to do in response. I should say there is at present no specific credible threat to the United Kingdom that we know of and that we have in place tried and tested contingency plans which are the best possible response to any further attempts at terror. This is a moment of utmost gravity for the world. None of the leaders involved in this action want war. None of our nations want it. We are peaceful people. But we know that sometimes to safeguard peace, we have to fight. Britain has learnt that lesson many times in our history. We only do it if the cause is just. This cause is just.”

These are the concluding words, delivered in a national address to the people of the UK on the 8th of October 2001, from then Prime Minister Tony Blair regarding the commitment made, to the US, to follow their strikes in Afghanistan with those of the UKs own.

Almost 20 years later (and, indeed, each year since) the troubles and challenges associated with combating the Taliban in Afghanistan have continued to be brought home to the British people. The latest news surrounds the finalisation of the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from the country, a process announced in April of 2021, and the subsequent and almost entirely predictable fallout from that process. This withdrawal officially concludes the longest war in US history, narrowly beating the Vietnam war, one with which many similarities could be drawn.

What has the cost of Western involvement been in Afghanistan? Those faced by the US are staggering, an estimated $2.2tn of debt based spending with suggestions that by 2050 the cost of servicing the interest on that debt will amount to $6.5tn, the human cost is of course immeasurable however, over 2440 US military personnel have spent their lives on this project.

For the UK the financial cost is estimated to have been more modest at £22.2bn, however a loss of some 457 service personnel means that the death toll for the British army, serving in Helmand province as part of operation Herrick, occured at a greater rate per person deployed than that of the US (4.7% vs 2.3%), not to mention over ten thousand injuries (slightly more than half of which were due to illness and disease) and a further 640 or so serious injuries which includes surgical amputations and so on.

There are doubtless those that would argue that this cost, great though it has been, would be worth it if what was left behind as the US and NATO task forces complete their final operations was a functioning Westernised liberal democracy, molded in our own image, ready to stand as a beacon of US morality and efficacy in a desert devoid of 21st century enlightenment. Much like the classic mirage of an oasis in an empty desert however it seems that the objectives of this mission have been met only in the minds of those who cling to the idea that a state imposed liberal democracy can be implemented, top down, in relatively short order, without the tacit cooperation and adoption of those whom we are trying to enlighten.

On the 11th of August 2021 (4 days ago as I write this), it was reported that US officials had warned that Afghanistan’s government could fall in 90 days, with Kabul isolated in as little as a month. Joe Biden, president of the United States, denies this and asserts that no such claim was made. He believes that there are 300,000 Afghan defence force troops (a mixture of military, police and militia) on the ground who are well supplied, ‘as well supplied as any army in the world’, supported with the back up of an equally well supplied air force fighting against maybe 75,000 Taliban (his words).

Unfortunately Afghanistan is riven with corruption including ghost soldiers (fictional people put on the books so that commanders can collect the wages of their fictional employees for themselves) and it has continued to struggle to staff its budding air force sufficiently, It is unlikely that the Afghani government are aware of accurate troop numbers or their composition. The 75,000 Taliban operatives also represents a misunderstanding of the opposition the US backed Afghani government face there. This number represents not one single, homogenous group of ‘Taliban’ but many different groups of local people, frustrated by foreign rule, who are armed and supplied not only through their own initiative and captured US stockpiles but from surrounding countries like Pakistan, a country that receives the largest proportion of Britain’s foreign aid budget.

All of this could be foreseen, an ex-servicemen expressed the following sentiment on a radio call-in:

“If I’m honest, it makes me sick we’re pulling out. I did two nine-month tours in Afghanistan. It all comes down to politics and money I believe… We went through villages, we won the elders over, winning hearts and minds, and within 48 hours we were told to pull out and go back. All that kit that’s going to be left over there by the Americans and NATO, they’re just going to take it and use it to their advantage, and all the work my brothers and sisters did, who’ve been severely injured or lost their lives, is going to be for nothing.”

 As a result we are witnessing the organised resurgence of ‘Taliban’ forces who have made great use of captured weapons caches, US hardware and local know-how in order to quickly make inroads and capitalise on the withdrawal of Western military power. Taliban forces have entered the capital (Kabul) and talks are now underway regarding a transitional government; the Western stooge Ashraf Ghani, president of Afghanistan, will oversee this ‘peaceful’ transition of power to the Taliban 20 years after we first entered the country to bring stability and freedom from Taliban rule. 20 years of blood, toil and trillions of dollars up in smoke in a matter of days.

This is the reality we have seen repeated across the Middle-East over the last two decades, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and so on. A catalogue of objectiveless attempts to install puppet governments, sympathetic to the American ideological worldview who will show the appropriate deference to US hegemony. In all cases the result has been interminable bloodshed and the emboldening of those who do not wish to live under US rule or US standards of morality and in all instances the US has demonstrated that they have neither the political or public will or financial ability to sustain the kind of colonial rule required to fundamentally change considerably the trajectory of a given nation state.

Niall Ferguson writes in his 2003 book “Empire” that Since Woodrow Wilson’s intervention to restore the elected government in Mexico in 1913, the American approach has too often been to fire some shells, march in, hold elections and then get the hell out – until the next crisis. I’m sure at the time of writing he did not envisage that the US and her associates would remain in Afghanistan quite as long as they have done but in any case the result seems to be the same. The people, those who matter in the context of the US – Taliban war were not sufficiently convinced that the US rule, or at least US style rule, was sufficiently embedded to resign themselves to the fact.

Murray N Rothbard, regarding how exactly the state preserves itself, writes:

“Once a state has been established, the problem of the ruling group or ‘caste’ is how to maintain their rule. While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long run problem is ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be; else the minority of state rulers would be outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of the public.”

If states are unwilling or unable, as has been demonstrated across the Middle-East by the US, to obtain this majority indifference (or indeed tacit support) then they will fall. What has been clearly and unequivocally established is that the US, for whatever reason, can not project its ideology in the region; it has been comprehensively rejected by the local population. Unless the US is willing to occupy nations for not merely a handful of years or even a couple of decades (in the case of Afghanistan) but generations, to ensure fundamental ideological change through all segments of a society, both rich and poor, secular and religious, political and apolitical, with the associated cost in terms of lives and money, then these attempts at managing an empire through post-colonialism are likely to remain nothing more than ideological pipe-dreams for Western leaders who day-dream of a world united by their values all the while their own societies slide in to moral and financial ruin.

I don’t pretend to be able to approach the complexities of geo-politicking within this short piece, Afghanistan has a complex history (particularly from the mid 70s onwards following the deposition of their Monarch) and that means that any solution for their predicament even prior to our involvement in 2001 would be equally complex. In some cases the best thing to do is simply to leave well alone those things which are not posing any threat to you. In the closing remarks or Tony Blair’s speech quoted at the beginning of this article, in his own words he says that:

“I should say there is at present no specific credible threat to the United Kingdom that we know of and that we have in place tried and tested contingency plans which are the best possible response to any further attempts at terror.”

Whatever the reason given at any given time for our continued occupancy, be that the Taliban, Bin Laden, opium, freedom, democracy, liberality, we were categorically not there in the interests of our nation or its people but solely in the interests of puritanical ideologues who wish to see all nations of the world in their own likeness. They play, as gods might, games which they have no interest in winning and in which they have nothing personally invested. The blood, both physical and financial, of British subjects has been spent fruitlessly in the prosecution of an occupation that neither our people, nor theirs, wanted nor supported.

It is over.

Except it isn’t, even now parliaments are being recalled to discuss where ‘we’ go from here; to allow the Taliban to rule represents an unthinkable volte-face and a critical weakness not only of Western ideology but also of the American Empire itself as they seek to offer their sworn enemy, the terrorists, undisclosed sums of what will doubtless be called ‘foreign aid’ in order to secure the safe removal of its remaining personnel from Kabul. What form our involvement in the region now takes will be debated over the coming days however it seems likely that involvement is now likely to continue with various MPs, many of whom served as MPs in 2001, pledging money from the bottomless pockets of the taxpayer to once again try to solve a problem not caused by the taxpayer. Not content with this they also believe that our country ought to be thrown open to innumerable refugees who will never have to be repatriated once the situation finds a natural equilibrium, free of the proxy warring of the USSR and the USA.

These are the consequences of interfering in Nations whose culture we do not understand. The ‘liberal democracy’ which our leaders wish to impose upon others came about by a process of thousands of years of organic development, of push and pull between the ruling class and the ruled and of those of a multiplicity of differing interests. To naively believe that this can be grafted into other societies and begin bearing good fruit almost immediately demonstrates a considerable lack of historical understanding regarding the ways and means by which we arrive in the condition we find ourselves. The whig historical narrative propagated by the ideological colonist.

The statement given by Tony Blair in 2001 can not and must not be repeated again, like a hollow canticle, by Western Leaders in 2021.
Where we ought to go from here has become more difficult to answer due to our ongoing involvement but some steps might include: 

• No return to military involvement unless it can clearly be demonstrated that our country is at credible risk of attack.
• All refugees to be dealt with locally in the immediate area, the cost of doing so is generally far lower than doing so in the UK and it enables people to return more easily.
• Political refugees, those whose lives are at demonstrable risk due to compliance with occupying Western forces will likely need to be settled elsewhere but this should be by exception only.
• Use of trade as a means of ensuring compliance with the minimum acceptable Western standards
• Immediate discontinuation of the 20th century practice of ideological colonisation and a total rejection of new world order ‘global governance’.

The Wellington Project’s view is that:

“Whilst there may be practices or affairs in countries which we would not accept on our own soil, where these do not compromise the integrity or security of the United Kingdom we believe that these practices or affairs ought to be for those countries to manage or resolve internally. Although we may petition those countries, or make their compliance with our own moral standards a condition of our cooperation, regardless of whether their own cultural or moral standards may fall short of our own, it is our conviction that countries must be free to govern themselves as we also seek the right to govern ourselves.”