Gen David Petraeus: 'Everything in Afghanistan is hard'

General Petraeus praised the competence of his British military colleagues (Photo: Bloomberg)

Just back from a fascinating presentation by Gen David Petraeus, who leads CentCom and since his success with the surge in Iraq is arguably the most influential and thoughtful military man in the West. He gave the fourth Colin Cramphorn lecture organised by Policy Exchange (a coup for Dean Godson). CentCom may be the smallest of the six American military areas, but with 530m people, 20 countries, 22 languages, lots of oil but little fresh water and Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran and AfPak at its heart, it’s the most challenging of them all.

He opened with a gentle pinprick at the pomposity of our honours system when he praised Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, the former CDS. Reading out with exaggerated emphasis his full honorific, he said of his friend: “To think I knew him when he was simply Sir Charles. I’m fascinated by the royalty stuff. Where on earth is Craigiebank? Whatever happened to El Alamein or something?”

His speech was a virtuoso tour d’horizon that lucidly set out the situation on his patch. He was clear that success for terrorists abroad makes us vulnerable at home. But it was his assessment on Afghanistan that stayed with me. We are in Afghanistan, he urged us to remember, “to ensure that Al Qawda and other transnational groups do not re-establish safe-havens.” The campaign there will require a “sustained, substantial, commitment” (Gordon Brown please note). His assessment was fairly bleak: “The challenges in Afghanistan clearly are significant but the stakes are also high. The mission is still doable. Everything in Afghanistan is hard. It’s hard all the time.” There is little there to cheer the politicians, not least when he showed two graphs, one showing how the surge in Iraq arrested and then dramatically reduced the casualty rate, and another showing the casualty rate in Afghanistan steadily growing. What kind of “sustained, substantial commitment” will David Cameron be able to offer I wonder?

Worth noting that he went out of his way to lavish praise on the “sheer competence” of his British military colleagues, from the officers serving with him at CentCom to those in the frontline. He was being polite of course, but it will go some way to dispelling the nagging talk of dissatisfaction in some American military circles at our performance in Basra and Helmand.