Afghanistan is the Prime Minister’s conflict and he needs to clarify his aims over commitment and exit strategy

June 30 201

Yesterday, on the day that General David Petraeus appeared before the Senate to seek approval as General Stanley McChrystal’s replacement as commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan, the bodies of seven British servicemen were being brought home. The number of US-led troops killed this month has reached 100, making it the single deadliest month for the forces since the 2001 invasion.

This is now David Cameron’s war. He inherited the conflict, but difficult, urgent decisions now fall to him. He must rapidly explain to Britain the role that he intends it to take. He has made a very public about-turn on the budget deficit, on cuts and on spending. Afghanistan is no less fundamental. He must be just as direct in telling Britons — and Afghans — what he would define as success.

This war, and the strategies crafted to fight it, have changed form many times in nine years, and again in the past few months. Not only has General McChrystal gone, fired for insubordination by President Obama last week. There are also serious doubts about whether the surge that he devised, and his policy of “courageous restraint”, will succeed. One test was supposed to be a fall in military casualties. That test has not yet been met, although a military drive to consolidate control of Kandahar is planned for the autumn.

The Prime Minister has already begun to put far more emphasis on British national security than Afghan development in the way that he describes the mission. He is also beginning to narrow the definition of who the enemy is. Mr Cameron said on Monday that there was a “huge difference” between parts of the insurgency linked to al-Qaeda and its ideology, and “in some parts of Afghanistan, an insurgency based on the way particular tribes have been dealt with”.

There is new animation, in London and Washington, behind the notion of talking to the Taleban. That is a significant shift. General McChrystal and General Petraeus both appear to believe that such talks will offer more promise if the Taleban are militarily weakened first. But when the autumn push is over, and the Dutch and Canadians have pulled their forces out, the question of a negotiated settlement will be very live indeed.

Pakistan, whose stability is linked to that of Afghanistan, is both a complication and a possible source of help. Some senior Pakistani officials and military officers appear to have been conducting their own investigations into whether they can insert certain Taleban into a future Afghan government. Their calculations will be affected by their impressions of how long other countries will stay, and whether the Kabul administration now supported by Britain and the US will retain power after withdrawal.

The pressure on elected leaders to give dates for withdrawal risks undermining Pakistani support and that of key Afghans. That dilemma lay at the heart of General McChrystal’s abrupt exit; Mr Obama gave him the surge of troops, reluctantly, but insisted they would start coming home next year. On Monday, Mr Cameron told the Commons that he wanted forces to be home by the general election due in May 2015. “We can’t be there for another five years”, he said, “having been there for nine years already.” Yet he must make it clear to what extent he will take control of the timetable if the Americans disagree.

The Prime Minister does not entirely share the views of his generals on the ground, as The Times’s series this month showed. He needs to be explicit about what those differences are, and whether he thinks that long-term reconstruction is no longer feasible. He must be blunt about what Britain wants from this war, and how to get it — and where this differs from the US position. For this is not just America’s war, it is Britain’s.

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