What we need is for the Taliban to bring in some Western Bankers and business consultants - then sit back and wait for a few months - soon be over.

If I may quote:
"we do understand their culture. And it is almost completely at odds with ours. Hence we should be out of there. The Taliban were doing a pretty good job of suppressing the drug trade; much better than we're doing anyway."

Exactly, they controlled their internal situation with reference to long established religious beliefs. Unfortunately the major export of that country (apart from refugees) is hard drugs - and the profits that then allow certain bodies to continue their influence.

I'll be listening to the latest BBC From Our Own Correspondent podcast later - the blurb has:

"The British soldiers in Afghanistan have lost faith in their mission, there are fields full of opium poppies and the Taliban are everywhere. Quentin Sommerville talks of the mood among the troops as they prepare at last to return home."

_IF_ that is the case, will it be because they have finally got sick of the mixed messages delivered by means of a long screwdriver?

From now on, we should only commit to to Total, Unrestricted war or we dont do it at all. There is not point pansying about, Clausewitz and Sun Tsu said as much. The chinese bloke also pointed out that wars are costly, should be seen as an investment and if they dont prove to be worth the investment then your aims should be achieved in other ways.

Our Strategic objective was PURELY to safeguard the national security of the UK. We could have done that with limited involvement from the ground and judicious use of extreme prejudice from 30 grand. We didnt need to go sticking our oar in with an under resourced forces whilst already committed to a bloody sectarian war in Iraq.

There has been one consistent feature is all victorious handover to sovereign powers since WW2.

As soon as a date is set for us to get out the otherside doesn't stand back and say 'good fight' carry on chaps and good bye. They step up the level of attacks with the intention of giving the rearguard a good thumping.

When we left Aden we took the precaution of having 5 flat tops to hand to met out a bit of chastisement if required.

Lets hope we get it right next time. Who will volunteer to stay behind as a training cadre?

History is littered with those.

Some good posts here. The fact is there was never going to be a 'victory' here. No amount of air power will ever subdue a hostile population. Occupying and holding ground in order to deny enemy operations and support is the only way. No army can occupy the entire country, so you need a civil population who are on-side and willing to deny the Taliban (who whoever it is this week, whether the enemy are organised or factional doesn't actually matter) support. The local population have experienced centuries of conflict and they know that ISAF will soon be gone. The local 'insurgency' however, is there to stay. Local warlords also feel no loyalty towards ISAF, they will change sides with little incentive. On top of that the local population is largely tribal, with a culture based on kinship loyalty and religion. They do not generally hold western values. Attempting to change all of this in just 15 years is futile. This should either be a very long-term mission (decades), or a containment operation.

Toad is right about the drugs

It's always "The problem is Afghanistan/Columbia/Mexico who EXPORT hard drugs"

it's never the USA/France/Russia/UK who IMPORT hard drugs

I've said before that a far better plan would have been to set up a network of safe settlements around the country (not necessarily in or near the existing towns or cities), each surrounded by a eff-off security perimeter and free fire zone, each provided with a airstrip, medical centre, housing, clean water supply, reliable electricy supply, schools etc etc. Any Afghans seeking our protection and accepting our moral values would be let in (minus their weapons), everyone else could carry on unmolested (at least by us) living their lives outside. Think of a series of Bastions dotted around the country, protected at least initially by ISAF, for pro-western Afghans who wanted to start living in a modern, safe environment.

I reckon in relatively short period of time many who elected to live on the outside (especially the younger generation) would begin to gravitate towards these centres, with all that they had to offer.

and what, pray , are these Good Afghans going to DO in these secure Bastions? They can't farm so its us paying them to watch day time TV I guess

Or we just call them concentration camps - as in the original British Boer War versions

Not a vote winner

DP....we tried that in Vietnam as you might recall...."Strategic Hamlets" or some sort of name like that. The one small problem is folks like to live at "home"...not in some contrived notion of western urban utopia. There is something about herding goats or planting rice (poppies) that they find preferable to living cheek on jowl with others.

The right answer is declare Victory and leave....quickly!

..wasn't it difficult to tell the difference between a peasant & a terrorist - with all sorts of hilarious consequences...?

Get out now. Not one more soldiers life.

When I rule the world, all convicted drug peddlers will be boiled alive in a vat of their own excrement....

As for your idea of townships, dead_pan, regrettably they would simply become targets for opportunists and radicals.

The origins of the villages were the New Villages devised by Lt Gen Briggs in Malaya in 1949. They were designed to enfranchise the Chinese squatters who were on the fringes of society and thus prey to the Chinese insurgents. The villages were pretty basic - but each family got a house, some land, access to education and medical care. In return they had to defend their own villages in Home Guards armed with shotguns. It also meant that Special Branch could enter these villages and obtain intelligence on the CTs and, when things got tough, impose curfews and rice-rations to stop the CTs being supplied with food and int.

The system worked well - but this wasn't a volunteer programme; it was forced settlement. By and large, the Chinese accepted this proposal as a better option than being in the Min Yuen, supporting the CTs. However, I suspect that such a programme today would be a human rights nightmare. I spoke to Police and troops who were involved in the forced moves and 60 years on, they were still pretty shocked by it all.

Sir Robert Thompson, Head of the British Advisory Mission in Vietnam in the early 60s proposed this to the Americans who adopted it; however, circumstances were completely different and it saw forced movement of farmers from their land - and therefore livelihood - whereas in Malaya, the Chinese had no land and were living a subsitence exisitence.

Air power use in Malaya was particularly interesting: roughly 1000 tons/tonnes of bombs were dropped for each CT death; leaflet dropping and use of Voice Aircraft was much, much, much more effective. There was a good article in Air Power Review in 2008 about it...

As I noted in my earlier post I think the key is to work on the younger generation - we need to break the cycle and get them hooked on the Internet, mobile phone, Coca Cola, whatever - anything to show them the contrast with the lives their elders are leading and which currently beckons. Show them the way the world can be.

Getting them away from the influences of their village life would bring big benefits, IMO. Control and influence is the key, something which is impossible to achieve by the occasional visit by a group of sh*t-scared Western squaddies or dodgy Tajik AN policeman or soldier.

Of course, but you could minimise any threat through the judicious use of technology - full body scanners on entry, CCTV etc, not to mention a decent array of weaponry at the settlers disposal plus the ability to call up air and reinforcements. We could learn a lot from the Israelis (it would be somewhat ironic that such a contentious program be employed to the benefit of Muslims).

No doubt you'd also get your quota of firebrands who bluff their way in - they could simply be sent back to wherever they came from (after being comprehensively biometrically scanned). If they want to continue living in the dark ages, so be it.

Not talking about forced settlement here. Participation would be purely voluntary.

They needn't be forced to give up their livelihood, although there could be benefits if they could be persuaded to move on from working the land (it could go some way to sorting out the poppy problem).

I'm sure with the a proportion of the money pledged to the country by the international community, under the supervision of NGOs etc, we could devise all manner of schemes and initiatives to keep those idle hands and minds gainfully employed. The construction effort alone would employ numerous fighting-age males for many years.

beagle - your views on honest traders filling a gap in the market are really too much

If soft drugs were available from Boots the Chemist I doubt it would lead to the end of civilisation as we know it but it would dent the criminal classes

Dead Pan.

The system of New Villages worked in Malaya because the Chinese are pragmatic, had nothing to lose, and the methods used would not be acceptable today. Moreover, the tribal ties and sense of omerta are so strong in Afghanistan that it will take generations to move forward. When I was working with well-educated Afghans (there is a small, but burgeoning middle class) many of them assumed that the current British Involvement was to avenge defeats of the 19th century. it will take more than exposure to Western 'culture' to change these mindsets.