Helmand 10 years on

orraloon

This week I listened on podcast (The Moth Podcast, highly recommended) to a talk by Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times on her experiences as an embedded correspondent with the some of the earliest deployed UK troops in that 'hearts and minds' 'reconstruction' adventure into Helmand province Afghanistan in 2006. Worth a listen, she tells a graphic story with remarkable clarity; is on the Moth Radio Hour episode released 26/1/16.

2016 will mark the 10th anniversary of that undoubted success. Then Defence Secretary John Reid, now the Baron Reid of Cardowan, was quoted at the time by Reuters saying "we would be perfectly happy to leave in 3 years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction".

Didn't quite work out that way; 46million bullets fired by UK troops fighting the Taliban, to date. Reconstruction? Doubt it. Cost in blood? 456 dead, how many seriously disabled? A friend of mine was there as a 'civilian contractor' to aid the nation building; took an IED, survived, 3 years of reconstructive surgery means he is able to walk, with some difficulty, and ride his bike. Cost in gold? Goodness knows.

What a bloody (in all senses) mess.

Never mind, that's history. Move on. Next politician's big idea and assertions please.

bianchimoon

orraloon wrote:

This week I listened on podcast (The Moth Podcast, highly recommended) to a talk by Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times on her experiences as an embedded correspondent with the some of the earliest deployed UK troops in that 'hearts and minds' 'reconstruction' adventure into Helmand province Afghanistan in 2006. Worth a listen, she tells a graphic story with remarkable clarity; is on the Moth Radio Hour episode released 26/1/16.

2016 will mark the 10th anniversary of that undoubted success. Then Defence Secretary John Reid, now the Baron Reid of Cardowan, was quoted at the time by Reuters saying "we would be perfectly happy to leave in 3 years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction".

Didn't quite work out that way; 46million bullets fired by UK troops fighting the Taliban, to date. Reconstruction? Doubt it. Cost in blood? 456 dead, how many seriously disabled? A friend of mine was there as a 'civilian contractor' to aid the nation building; took an IED, survived, 3 years of reconstructive surgery means he is able to walk, with some difficulty, and ride his bike. Cost in gold? Goodness knows.

What a bloody (in all senses) mess.

Never mind, that's history. Move on. Next politician's big idea and assertions please.

There's an interesting programme/Documentary on iplayer by Adam Curtis called Bitter Lake
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... itter-lake
Takes an hour more than it should, but fascinating background as to how religious fundamentalism seemed to spring from a lake in Afghanistan.

Full synopsis:
Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated.
Bitter Lake is a new, adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer.
The narrative goes all over the world, America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia - but the country at the heart of it is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted our politicians with the terrible truth - that they cannot understand what is going on any longer.
The film reveals the forces that over the past thirty years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this.
But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan - and used them in new and radical ways.
He has tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan. A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.