• Eight UK soldiers killed in 24 hours
• Afghan death toll eclipses that in Iraq
• Brown warns of ‘very hard summer’
Ministers were bracing themselves for an increasingly bloody conflict in Afghanistan as it became clear that a further eight British soldiers have been killed in 24 hours, the worst combat death toll since the war began.
Five troops were killed in a single incident after they were caught in a bomb blast while on foot patrol. Officials confirmed that 15 troops have been killed in the last 10 days. With the government’s handling of the conflict under increasing scrutiny, Gordon Brown was forced to defend the Afghan mission as he left the G8 summit in Italy. Before heading directly to a private briefing at the military’s operational headquarters at Northwood, Middlesex, he warned of a “very hard summer … It’s not over”.
Speaking at a press conference at L’Aquila before the latest deaths had been announced, with his voice faltering Brown voiced his sympathy for the families of those who have died.
He said: “There is a chain of terror that runs from the mountains and towns of Afghanistan to the streets of Britain. Our resolution to complete the work we have started is undiminished.
“It is in tribute to the members of our forces who have given their lives that we should succeed in the efforts we have begun.”
Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, said the conflict was “winnable” but warned there would be no early end to the fighting. “I do believe that we are making progress and I do believe that this is winnable, but it is not winnable in the short term,” he told the BBC. “We are going to have to … get behind our armed forces who are doing the brave fighting.”
The daybegan with the confirmation of two deaths in Helmand province the previous day: one from 4th Battalion The Rifles by an explosion while on foot patrol; the second from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, during a battle with insurgents near Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Later, a third soldier from the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment was confirmed as having been killed when the Viking armoured vehicle in which he was travelling was hit.
Then there was worse news as it was confirmed that five troops had died and others were injured in a bomb blast. The deaths took the total number of fatalities in Afghanistan to 184, five more than the total lost in the Iraq conflict.
As the death toll grew, there were poignant scenes at Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire as five coffins draped with the union flag arrived at RAF Lyneham and were met by sombre crowds on the town’s streets.
Relatives of lance corporal Dane Elson, 22, from Bridgend, south Wales, of The 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, wept as the hearse carrying his body passed.
His girlfriend, Claire Wells, 23, was ushered forward and placed two roses on the hearse carrying his coffin. Wells said she had planned to live the rest of her life with Elson. “Now I’ll never see him again, I can’t bear it,” she said. Wells added that she did not believe the troops ought to be in Afghanistan. “They are fighting a war that we cannot win,” she said. “There are too many of our lads dying.”
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, who broke the consensus among party leaders this week when he criticised the government’s strategy in Afghanistan, said: “This tragic milestone must be a reminder to all of us of the huge sacrifices made day after day by our brave service men and women and their families. The courage and professionalism of our armed forces are second to none.”
Bernard Jenkin MP, a member of the Commons defence select committee, said: “It is astonishing that we are fighting high intensity operations the scale of Afghanistan on a peacetime budget without enough protection mobility and with fewer helicopters per head for armed forces than we had three years ago.”
Defensive errors
When an official at the MoD makes a duff call, the system ensures that no one takes the blame
Suppose you’re a grieving family, one among many, day after day, and the man you love has just died in Afghanistan. Perhaps his troop carrier was too frail when a roadside bomb went off, perhaps a helicopter wasn’t there on time. At any rate, as so often before, there are questions about the kit he was sent off to war with. You’re sad, but you’re also angry. Who do you blame?
The easy answer, of course, is those men from the ministry, the eternally faceless bureaucrats who are always getting it in the neck as they apparently fritter away billions on aircraft carriers, hi-tech fighter planes, nuclear subs and the rest. If the Vikings they’d provided had been Mastiffs, more fit for Helmand purpose, then surely things could have been different. Ask a learned friend what he thinks and maybe, depending on precise circumstances, there’s a case you might bring to court.
Yet, in truth, that really isn’t the point of the whole, tragic exercise. Money doesn’t matter. This is a democracy. You’re a voter, a citizen: your outrage matters. How do you make someone inside the Ministry of Defence, someone who made a wrong call, share your pain?
And the miserable answer is that it’s impossible. The system itself guarantees countless duff decisions, but it also diffuses them in the mists of time. Just consider that system – and what you’d think of it if applied to any other walk of democratic, or business, life.
The title secretary of state for defence was invented in 1964. Peter Thorneycroft sat first in that chair. Since then, right to this day, 18 other secretaries of state have followed on. Make that a new boss ever 27 months or so. And in Labour’s 12 years, the shift rate has speeded up a bit. Bob Ainsworth is the sixth defence secretary since 1997. Make that new broom at the top every two years.
Who, then, does the minister rely on for advice when crucial, long-term spending decisions have to be made? The chief of the defence staff: but there’ve been 19 of them, too, permutating rigidly between the three services. Call the chief of the general staff? Relative stability there: only 17 have come and gone. By these lights, the job of the permanent secretary – changing every five or six years on average – does indeed seem pretty stable. But then, when you cross Whitehall to run defence, there’s no great tradition of needing to know too much about it. Sir Bill Jeffrey, the current incumbent, has anti-terrorism and intelligence credentials in his bag, but his last big admin job before this posting was as director general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Calais isn’t the first place you’d go to buy a new tank.
Consider the fattest contract of the lot, the Eurofighter. First design specified, 1972; formally proposed by BAE and German partner, 1979; experimental version flies, 1986; initial construction contract signed, 1998. Four staging posts along a flight path that has now cost the UK more than £20bn, leaving early estimates twisting in the wind. And, of course, at every point, there’s been a different secretary of state in charge – Carrington, Pym, Younger, Portillo – with a different defence chief (two of them admirals, if you please) and a different impermanent secretary at his elbow. There’s been no consistency, no adjustment to changed strategic circumstances in Europe, no group memory to carry a vision through. So there’s no one to blame, either, when we get the wrong plane at the wrong price – and think how our men in Afghanistan might have been rather safer for better choices along the way.
What can secretary of state Ainsworth promise today that, in hard terms, he can deliver before quitting office? Or permanent secretary Jeffrey, getting towards the end of his stint? To learn the lessons? Well, naturally: but don’t expect even fast learners to be anywhere in sight when they’re put to the test.
Much of the time, in government, you can simply cancel your last announcement – scrap identity cards or Sats at the sweep of a pen. A sort of accountability. But defence doesn’t work like that. Forget Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any modern model. Defence turns at the speed of a gargantuan tanker. Good decisions were taken long ago. Bad ones can’t come home to roost. The captain on the bridge – from Des Browne to Bob Ainsworth – is never that important, because he’s only passing through. And when the voters want a word in edgeways – a plea, an apology, an admission of error – then, of course, there’s nobody there.