The British army has found renewed purpose and confidence in the evacuation from Kabul.
British soldiers at Kabul international airport have earned plaudits for their compassion in supporting suffering civilians and for their courage in rescuing Britons, Americans, and Afghans from other areas of the city.
These British forces center on elements of the army’s 16th Air Assault Brigade, an airborne-infantry-led rapid reaction force. It also includes a special forces component led by the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment. Still, the British Army has spent the past week evincing a repeated willingness to take risks in support of exigent human needs. As I reported on Friday, the impulse of British forces to conduct rescue-retrieval operations outside of the airport has caused tension and embarrassment on the part of certain U.S. military commanders in the absence of similar U.S. operations.
This is not to say that the U.S. military has failed.
Large-scale U.S. rescue operations beyond the airport would be fraught with risks, which smaller-scale British operations do not carry. Moreover, without the 82nd Airborne Division, U.S. command and control infrastructure, U.S. Navy fighter aircraft, and the U.S. Air Force fighter, bomber, and transport aircraft, Kabul airport could not operate and would be a sitting duck.
The primary distinction is that where British forces have been given military-political latitude to operate around Kabul, U.S. forces have been more heavily restricted by their commanders (and their commanders by higher leadership in Washington).
Regardless, the British army needed this credibility boost. In recent years, it has suffered some ignominy.
The army’s 2003-2009 actions in southern Iraq, for example, tended to oscillate between a mix of overt and covert deals with Iranian supported Shia militias. The army’s 2008-2009 withdrawal from Basra and the surrounding area was defined by a deal with Iranian-led militias to hand over control to those militias rather than the Iraqi government (requiring an Iraqi government offensive to retake control). That withdrawal also earned U.S. consternation, coming just as U.S. forces began their bloody but ultimately successful “surge.” While the withdrawal was ultimately a political decision on the part of then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, British commanders were also blamed, at least somewhat legitimately, by their American counterparts.
Another blow to the British army’s credibility came in its 2006 onward deployment to Helmand province, Afghanistan. While British forces served courageously in these Taliban heartlands, their mission was assigned without sufficient air support, armored vehicles, and deployment strength. Some U.S. Marine officers later resented the British army for what they believed was its insufficient aggression in prosecuting operations against the Taliban. The U.S. Marines conducted bloody offensives between 2009-2011 to push back Taliban positions in Helmand.
However, today at least, the British army is winning very deserved plaudits. Army leaders will hope to translate those plaudits into a broader operational confidence.
