The latest surge in the death toll of British soldiers in Afghanistan to 184, higher than the total killed in Iraq, is beginning to change public opinion about the Afghan conflict. It certainly sharpens public demand for greater clarity about the precise strategic objectives. Originally back in 2001 it was the destruction of Al Qaeda following 9/11 and the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. None of these objectives have been achieved. Rather the US and Nato invasion has reinstated a series of brutal and corrupt warlords under the phoney pretence that they are democrats, set up a Western-backed Karzai government whose writ runs no more than a few miles outside Kabul, driven the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaderships over the border into Pakistan where they are much more dangerous, and restored the Taliban as the champion of Pashtun nationalism. The war is stuck in a bloody stalemate – us and UK troops have the capacity to clear large areas of the main Taliban forces but are increasingly vulnerable to a high kill and casualty rate from booby traps, roadside bombs and suicide attacks, while Taliban insurgents show a stiffened and highly organised determination to resist but are vulnerable to airpower and in particular helicopter gunships. So what is the exit strategy?

No doubt both sides are striving to overcome their vulnerabilities while at the same time consolidating their strengths. Nato forces are becoming more adept at locating hidden bombs (though still taking increased casualties from them because the number of such bomb planted has multiplied), while also troop numbers are being significantly boosted – 17,000 in the case of the Americans, a 50% increase. The Taliban will certainly be trying hard to access effective surface-to-air missiles, the acquisition of which turned the war against Soviet forces in the 1990s and could very likely do the same here again against Nato forces. There is no obvious way out of this stalemate other than perhaps pouring in a 10 or 20-fold increase in Nato (for which read US) troops which is unimaginable in terms of US domestic politics – and even half a million US troops couldn’t defeat a determined enemy in Vietnam dedicated to throwing out its foreign occupiers.
The truth is, what is being revealed are the limits of US and Western military power. Bush’s war on terror is in tatters. The plan to seize permanent control of the Iraqi oilfields and establish a permanent US military base in the Middle East has collapsed. The Iraq war has transformed Iran into the pre-eminent regional power. The Iranian proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have established themselves as the main forces in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. And the terror networks have been transferred into safe havens in Pakistan, the sixth largest State in the world and nuclear-armed, where their potential for de-stabilisation is infinitely more dangerous. It is ironic that the risks of a geopolitical cataclysm are dozens of times greater in Pakistan than in Afghanistan, yet the West is pouring dozens of times more blood and treasure into the latter rather than the former.
US and Nato forces are not going to leave in a hurry, and cannot be forced to do so. But the only way to end the war is a political settlement negotiated with the Taliban and other warlord groups in the country, in return for the withdrawal of all occupation forces. Any such settlement, if it is to stick, must be underpinned by other key forces within the region, both regional powers and neighbouring States. What we should now be doing is laying the groundwork to pursue this objective as vigorously as is feasible.

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