Yesterday in my piece on Brexit I made some observations on the recent form of the British military.
Today in the New York Times there is a timely article on the small patch of ground in Afghanistan which cost 106 British lives to hold in the last decade.
The Brits finally evacuated from the strategically important town in 2010.
In the same year the Afghan defence minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said American troops were better equipped and better trained than their British allies.
Driving around in their cheap and nasty Snatch Land rovers the Brits were easy pickings of the I.E.D.s planted by their local enemy.
Wardak said in 2010:
“They came with all these I.E.D. threats and their soft Land Rovers; I think a lot of people were amazed …they came to a really difficult province in Afghanistan with just Land Rovers, which are not much different than the ones driven in the streets of London.”
Now the Taliban have control of Sangin again.
Of course, the Brits can have victory parades in London and show off their military prowess to The People at Ibrox if they feel the need.
However, the reality is that the last two wars that the British Army have fought in (Iraq and Afghanistan), they have been defeated in the field by poorly equipped Islamist militias.
The Mahdi Army, a Shia outfit led by Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra, and by the locals in Afghanistan.
The latter go by the name of the “Taliban” although that really is a catch all for anyone who had a go at the occupying force.
It is simply the Pashto word for “students”.
This is because it was a group of young men from an Islamic seminary who seized power in a largely lawless Kandahar in 1994.
A local warlord who had raped a local girl was hanged from a tank gun barrel.
The lynch mob were led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, a teacher in the college.
This incident was the start of the regime that sheltered Bin Laden and his crew.
Initially, the local people were happy to have some law and order imposed in their city.
However, then came in the harsh laws, like the banning of secular music.
Being caught owning hi fi system became a capital offence.
In fact, lots of things under Taliban rule became punishable by death.
After 911 it was clear that the Bin Laden harbouring regime had to go.
Helmand Province (about the size of England) was always going to be the hardest nut to crack, and that job was given to the British.
The formal title of the UN mandated NATO force there is “ISAF” (International Security and Assistance Force).
My American cousins suggested to me that it really stands for “I Saw Americans Fight”.
They certainly were not impressed by the Brits in battle.
Once more, this is at variance with the Jingoistic narrative beloved of the Daily Mail brigade.
Here in a piece from August 2007 in that well know anti-British Army rag The Financial Times Stephen Fidler lays out the facts.
The title of the piece “How the British army lost Basra” should provide a few clues to what actually happened there in 2007.
After the British left Basra place for the agreed safety of the airfield, the Mahdi Army became the de facto civil and military power in the city.
They controlled Basra for a year until the US forces regained control.
During that interregnum scores of women were murdered, some in full view of the public.
Their crime, in the view of the local militia, was they were insufficiently Islamic.
It is worth noting that the oppressive situation of women in the country was not laws thus.
This is a picture of two women in a record store in Kabul in the 1970s.
Here is a “then and now” picture of women in Kabul in the last 40 years and it makes for a depressing sight.
During the time that the Mahdi Army were ruling Basra, the British Army “provided over watch” from the safety of the airfield.
That was the deal that they struck so that they wouldn’t be attacked.
That left the militia free to impose their grim interpretation of Islam on the women of Basra.
It was a shameful capitulation and an ignominious end to an illegal war launched on lies.
Now the locals are back in charge of Sangin, the site of another British defeat.
This should be a sobering lesson to anyone in dear old Blighty who think that they can give anyone a slap in the 21st century.
Empire 2.0?
Please, pull the other one.
It’s got an I.E.D. attached to it.
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Absolutely correct, CC, it is exactly the same hoodwinked mentality that keeps the monarchy, and her 147 Commonwealth Con-Tries, alive.
However, they have no intention whatsoever of ‘winning hearts and minds’, their entire agenda is and always has been to create as much divisive chaos as is possible within the target country, while they play both sides off each other and take everything they can amidst the murder.
They then might, or might not, be able to take a grip of the country once the war is finally done and impose Order Out Of Chaos but that’s largely irrelevant by then, as they’ve sucked the best out of it already.
Remember, the French word ‘entrepreneur’, literally means ‘The taker who stands in the middle’.
Shame about all the dead they make.
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So true Phil. What was the old saying again? ” Lions lead by donkeys.” And also sent there by donkeys. The best trained and equipped military forces in the world , my arse. I reckon the good old Gibraltar apes ( guerrillas) would chase them back to the airport. Without any doubt the Daily Mail ,Sun and the other jingoistic mouthpieces readers, have much in common with the density of porcine faeces. Great blog.
Great piece Phil,
It looks as if the Dunkirk spirit is a recurring theme with the armed forces of HM Queen Elizabeth II. The Americans were lease than pleased at the lack of British progress around Caen shortly after the D Day landings and made it clear to Churchill that the British weren’t fighting hard enough. Lack of progress eventually resulted in Caen, a historic medieval city, being flattened from the air to allow the stalled Brits to eventually take it.
The Falklands War was apparently was also a close run thing and if the brave Argentinian Air Force pilots had sunk a few more ships it could have turned the tide of this conflict. There must be many more historical wars and conflicts that have eventually resulted in the Brits sent packing with their tail between their legs.
The jingoism displayed by the Brits, politicians, media and britnat fanatics does not appear to be backed up by the results on the battlefield and it’s curious that having your arse repeatedly handed to you by your enemies does not make them any less humbled or less warlike.
I wonder if we will get dragged in to their latest glorious adventure brewing up nicely in Syria? If we are, I can predict with a high degree of confidence, that it will result in more names to engrave on the war memorials and more useless waste of young lives. More young Willie Macbrides.
You would think that the Brits and Yanks would have looked at how the Soviet Bear was chased from Afghanistan and it’s surrounding borders by the muhajadeen and thought, wait a minute?? Then again, if theres something that they can benefit from by engaging in warfare, the US and it’s major domo the UK will always be in the mix.
I wonder how the oil, gas and heroin trade has benefitted those who give not a fuck for their own citizens nor of the citizens in the areas they reduce to rubble so that they can all worship inside the temple of Mammon.
The empire is finished in terms of the British but for US imperialism it’s still a goer.
British but for US imperialism it’s,still on.
It’s all the same empire, Noel, as explained below
http://www.illuminati-news.com/Articles/177.htmlL
The US is constitutionally not a country at all but a corporation owned by the UK.
The British Crown-owned Virginia Company simply changed its name to the USA (and other pseudonyms).
This information vpcan be found in every single public library in the US via the Statute of Records.
For further proof, you need only click on the link below and take one glance at the heading to wonder why the UK govt is deciding US Social Security policy:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1997/1778/contents/made
From overt to covert in one small, but incredibly lucrative, step.
And this is not the only time they’ve done it, this is their general modus operandus.
So the empire still exists, and not a lot of people know it, but we’re getting there.
All wars are bankers wars and the fake scenario of ‘US troops’ helping ‘UK troops’ is just the same Army helping itself.
It astounds that anyone who knew anything about the UK’s last adventure in Afganistan – Carry on Up the Khynber is a perfect primer – could counternance the idea of suppression let alone victory by winning hearts and minds.
There are strong parallels between the British establishment and Ibrox – coincidence – I think not.
Drawing from a very limited gene pool (RRM or the 7%), meritocracy and constuctive self criticism are alien, scary concepts bordering on metro-sexuality. Likewise, objective benchmarking against others is heresy. This guarantees incompetence in all things, hailed as glorious bravado.
Not Afganistan I know, but, “And into the valley of death rode the six hundred . . . . ”
Which other nation could celebrate such shit-for-brains ineptitude as valour?
For light cavalry read snatch Land Rovers, for Russian heavy artillery read IEDs.