'We need to get the job done and bring our troops home," the prime minister told the House of Commons today. A day earlier, the head of the army said talks with Taliban leaders could begin "pretty soon". Officials are anxiously trying to downplay these comments from David Cameron and General Sir David Richards. But the interventions are hugely significant, for they go the heart of how Britain's military presence in Afghanistan is justified – namely, to prevent Afghanistan becoming a safe haven to terrorists who threaten Britain's national security, however long that takes.
Asked at the Toronto G8 summit if he wanted British forces home before a 2015 election, Cameron said: "I want that to happen, make no mistake about it. We can't be there for another five years, having been there for nine years already." Two days later, Richards observed: "If you look at any counter-insurgency campaign … there's always been a point at which you start to negotiate with each other, probably through proxies in the first instance, and I don't know when that will happen." It was important not to give the impression Britain was "giving up" in Afghanistan, he added.
British troops and development workers in Helmand do not seem to be giving up. Brigadier George Norton, deputy commander of 30,000 US and UK troops in Helmand, said the other day that his troops were determined to achieve the "results necessary" on the way to "irreversible progress".
Military commanders say the key to Nato's counter-insurgency doctrine is "strategic patience". Yet Cameron and his defence secretary, Liam Fox, make it abundantly clear they are far from patient about the lack of progress in Afghanistan. It is equally clear that the timetable for troop withdrawal is dictated by politics back home.
There is no military solution, Britain's generals and their political masters agree. The only question is when to talk to the enemy. The smartest generals, including Sir Graeme Lamb, former adviser to sacked General Stanley McChrystal, and smartest diplomats – notably Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who has just resigned – believe the time to talk to the Taliban is now. That view is shared by MI6, which has long advocated talking to the enemy, whoever it may be.
In the Afghan context that also means talking to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI – whose head, General Shuja Pasha, is having talks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and with the Haqqani Pakistan-based insurgents who have links to al-Qaida. It also means trying to calm down Afghanistan's Tajiks – a minority community in the country but a majority in the Afghan national army – worried about the consequences for them of a deal with the Taliban.
As they try to play down the Richards and Cameron interventions, British officials insist, as they always have, that any withdrawal of troops will be "conditions-based". That criterion is becoming more and more flexible as expectations are lowered and are now described as an Afghanistan "good enough".
That, they say, means getting an Afghan army and police force sufficiently large and adequately trained to provide security in the Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar. Yet British commanders say one of the main reasons insurgents give for joining the Taliban is the corrupt nature of the Afghan police. And one of the main reasons why locals do not trust foreign troops is because they suspect they will be gone before their security is assured. British troops may be providing a palliative. The question is, is that worth fighting and dying for?
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