It's getting tougher to be a sporting superstar

The biggest sporting shock this week was the announcement that Ben Stokes, wonderful all-round cricketing genius and hero of everyone who loves the game, is to take indefinite leave because of a build-up of mental strain and pressure over the last 18 months. Not only did he break his finger badly and it hasn't really mended properly but he had to play constant cricket at the highest level while quarantining in a Covid bubble, unable to see his wife and kids. There must be others who are feeling desperately under mental strain and perhaps trying to hide it because they want to continue performing. Ben Stokes's decision might open the floodgates. Likewise the decision by Simone Biles, another sporting superstar - the finest female gymnast of all time - to stop performing her brilliance at the olympic Games in Tokyo because of genuine fears for her mental well-being after she started to fail to reach her normal fabulous standards could have long-term repercussions for sport of all kinds. For us lesser mortals it might seem difficult to understand why these amazing sportsmen and women can't just carry on entertaining us as they do every time they appear. But the pressures on the best of the best performers are now so great that clearly it has become unbearable, especially during a pandemic. It has to be said, however, that if Simone Biles decides not to perform in any of her events in Tokyo it will take the shine off what is always such an exciting sport to watch in the Olympics. And the absence of Ben Stokes on the cricket field will surely be one of the greatest disappoinments of the year for all cricket lovers.

How robins are pointing the way to military navigation

MY STORY IN THE TIMES TODAY: The ability of migratory songbirds to fly huge distances at night without getting lost is now at the heart of aUS Army research project into how troops and military vehicles could fight wars without satellite navigation. In any future conflict, China’s growing anti-satellite capability would threaten America’s space-based global positioning system (GPS) on which every arm of the US military depends for long-range navigation. The Pentagon is funding research to find alternative ways of navigation as a direct result of anti-satellite weapons in the hands of potential adversaries. China has its own global navigation system, a network of 30 satellites called BeiDou. Turning to nature is now one of the Pentagon’s options being examined. Migratory birds, such as the robin, have a protein called cryptochrome 4 in their retinas which, it was revealed recently, enables them to sense the Earth’s magnetic field and chart their course from one country to another. “Night migratory songbirds are remarkably proficient navigators. Flying alone and often over great distances, they use various directional cues including a light-dependent magnetic compass,” an article in Nature magazine reported last month. This confirmation of a special bird’s-eye view of the world during flight spurred the US Army to intensify research which had already been going on for decades. The army and the other US military services have been involved in multiple research programmes to see how birds, insects, fish and sea turtles exploit the magnetic field to navigate in the hope that nature’s ways can be copied for human use. The discovery that the protein in a migratory bird’s retinas is sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field “could be key to army navigation of both autonomous and manned vehicles where GPS is unavailable, compromised or denied”, the US Army research laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland, said. The research findings in the Nature article carried out by the universities of Oxford and Oldenburg in Germany involving European robins were partly funded by the US Army’s combat capabilities development command. Researchers studying the robin managed to synthesise the genetic code of the protein and then harvest it. “This new knowledge is an exciting first step toward potential navigation systems that would rely only on the magnetic field of Earth, unaffected by weather or light levels,” Stephanie McElhinny , a programme manager at the US army research laboratory, said. To help prove the discovery, the two universities’ research teams also carried out similar studies of chickens and pigeons which have the same protein in their eyes. But the protein in these birds did not have the quality of magnetic sensitivity found in the robin.

Amber delta beta control our lives

Our way of life, where we go, what we can do and can't do, at least here in the UK, is now based on these three words: amber under the traffic light system for overseas travel, delta, the Indian variant of Covid-19, and beta, the South African variant. The Covid rules are changing almost every week, sometimes it's good news and then the good news is snatched away. France being categorised as amber plus, forcing British holidaymkaers returning to UK to go into isolation even if they are double-jabbed has been a farce. An expensive farce because of the added obligation to have tests on returning. Hundreds of pounds have been added to people's holidays. Now there is talk of Spain being put on the amber plus list as well, and maybe Greece, too. All because of beta or delta. Meanwhile infections having gone down every day for seven days in UK are now rising again. Is this because too many people have still not been jabbed? The US is looking to Britain as the success story in the vaccination story and it's true, more than 80 per cent of the eligible population have been jabbed, so what is going wrong now? Holiday planning is impossible because no one knows what the government and its scientific experts are going to decide from day to day. There are still too many government advisers predicting an apocalypse despite the vaccination success. How can this be right? One of these days, hopefully in the very near future, we won't have to wake up each day and wonder what the hell beta and delta are up to.

Joe Biden ends two of America's wars

MY PIECE IN TIMES ONLINE: As the mighty gas-turbine M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles of US Army 3rd Infantry Division and US Marine Corps 1st Marine Division thundered over the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border in March 2003, victory over Saddam Hussein was never in doubt. So comprehensive was the defeat of the Iraqi dictator that when the tanks and other armoured vehicles eventually swept into Baghdad, an officer of the 3rd Infantry Division proudly boasted on Fox News: “Saddam Hussein says he owns Baghdad. We own Baghdad. We own his palaces, we own downtown.” It was the same story, though different in scale, two years earlier when an extraordinary combination of US special forces, CIA paramilitaries, backed by air power and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the Arabian Sea, helped to topple the Taliban government and rout the fleeing leaders of al-Qaeda and their foreign fighters. The two great US-led military victories were, tragically, short-lived. Eighteen years later in the case of Iraq and 20 years after the Afghanistan operation began, both wars have now come to an end for the United States. It has taken four American presidents to reach this point. George W Bush started both wars and prematurely declared that the Iraq mission as he saw it had been accomplished after the fall of Baghdad. Over the next eight years with the outbreak of a violent insurgency by disenfranchised Saddam loyalists, 4,700 US and allied troops died and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives. Barack Obama agonised over how to confront the mayhem in Iraq and was persuaded to send surge reinforcements. But he, too, declared an end to the combat operation in December 2011, only to reverse it when Isis reared its head and began grabbing territory on a vast scale. When Donald Trump became president he declared he had had enough of endless wars and put Baghdad and Kabul on notice that US troops would be withdrawn. But he failed to win a second term and lost his chance to fulfil his pledge. Biden took up the baton and breasted the finishing line. Following his announcement that the US combat mission in Iraq is finally over (third time lucky), switching to a training role, America’s Middle East policy will take on a new lower-profile status. In practical terms the change in Iraq is largely symbolic. US troops have not been engaged in combat for some time and it’s not clear how many of the 2,500 troops will actually come home. But Biden whose legacy will depend on what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan between now and 2024, has drawn a line. The difference with his decision on Afghanistan is that a US troop presence will remain in Iraq, both as a sign of Washington’s continuing strategic relationship with Baghdad and as a safeguard to monitor and forestall, if possible, future malign interference from Iran. The missions in both countries have come to an end based on the conclusion of the US military and the intelligence community that in Iraq, Isis, the raison d’etre for maintaining combat troops there, had been dispersed, disrupted and effectively defeated; and in Afghanistan so many al-Qaeda fighters had been killed that they would never again be a threat to the US homeland even if the Taliban were to provide the remnants of the terrorist organisation with sanctuary. Neither conclusion can be relied on. Isis may be realigning its power structures in Africa but with US combat troops gone from Iraq by the end of this year, there could be a resurgence; and in Afghanistan Isis is still a potent force for evil despite suffering a high attrition rate from relentless US and coalition special forces operations. In Iraq the change of mission became inevitable after that pivotal moment on January 3 2020 when Major-General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force, the powerful overseas interventionist wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed by a US armed drone attack soon after arriving at Baghdad international airport on a flight from Damascus. It caused outrage not just in Tehran but also in Baghdad. The political dynamic between the Baghdad government and Washington changed. When Mustafa al-Khadimi became prime minister in May 2020 he began the process of reducing the dependency on military ties to the US while at the same time making sure Washington remained a crucial ally. This suited the Biden doctrine based on ending America’s involvement in fighting other people’s wars. Biden’s political gamble, as far as Iraq is concerned, centres around Iran and whether the Tehran regime will try to exploit what it might perceive to be a reluctance on the part of America to stay involved in the region. However, other strategic changes have been taking place in the Middle East which could save Biden from future embarrassment. “An anti-Iran coalition has been forming over the past few years, signalled by the emergence of closer ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi Arabia,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think-tank in Washington. “Since strategy is about making choices and since the Biden administration appears intent on capping defence spending while upping the US efforts in the Western Pacific, it will have to take risks somewhere. I’d take it here rather than in the Western Pacific or Eastern Europe,” he said. Eric Edelman, a veteran Pentagon, state department and White House official who was undersecretary of defence for policy between 2005 and 2009, shares the view that not all is lost with the changing circumstances in Iraq. “With proper US training and enabling forces, the elite Iraqi units have demonstrated their ability. They have a bit more depth than their Afghan counterparts,” he said. “Much of this, of course, turns on perception and the question of Iranian influence will turn largely on that,” he said. “Iraqis have demonstrated repeatedly that they don’t want an overweening Iranian influence and presence in their country. An ongoing US presence, even if not a combat presence, if configured to strengthen the ability of the ministries of defence and interior to carry out their counter-terrorism operations , will certainly provide the Iraqi government with some ability to balance Iranian influence,” he said. He warned, however: “If the perception takes hold [in Tehran] that the US is in a wholesale retreat from the region then there will be other forces that fill the void, and many, if not all of them, won’t be particularly benign.”

Olympics and Flora Duffy are just what we all needed

When Japan refused to give in and postpone the Olympic summer Games, to non-participants it seemed crazy. There were all those reports of athletes arriving from around the world and going down with Covid or being tested positive anyway and being forced to self-isolate. It looked like it was going to be a disaster and the empty streets and stadiums seemed to back up the pessimists. But so far it has been a triumph, bringing smiles back to our faces and wonder at the sheer brilliance of the athletes taking part. That Olympic spirit is alive and bouncing with health in Tokyo. One of the most glorious events was yesterday's women's triathlon. Sure, I cheered for the British girls and hoped that one of them might win gold. They looked like they had the talent. But Flora Duffy, such a great name for an athlete, from Bermuda stole the show. All the way while she ran in the third component of the triathlon she looked serious and determined and unflinching. Her facial expression never changed. But then as she approached the last 100 metres her face burst into a huge smile and she raised her arms up in triumph. She knew she was so far ahead of her nearest rival, Brit Georgia Taylor-Brown, that after nearly two hours of exhausting effort swimming, cycling and running she could enjoy her moment as she hit the finishing tape. A fabulous Olympic moment, awesome for her, awesome for all of us watching and awesome for the whole of Bermuda, winning its first Olympic gold medal in its history. Fabulous Flora.

The return of massed crowds is a huge gamble

Driving through Kingston, Surrey. the other day around 10pm I came across hundreds of people in their early 20s/late teens queuing up in packed body-to-body formation along a street outside a night club. If it was this bad outside imagine what it would have been like inside as the dancing started. Pre-Covid of course this would have been a regular sight and passing in a car then it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. But with so-called Freedom Day just gone, it still seemed a touch of madness for this huge crowd of young men and women to gather in such fashion as if obvlivious of the virus still so obviously around and threatening. If everyone of those in the queue had been double vaccinated it would have been, not fine, but at least acceptable. But I just wonder how many had been vaccinated at all. I could see no checks going on at the door. So after a wonderful night of dancing and drinking how many of them will have already gone down with Covid and how many will have been pinged the next morning and told to isolate? I am a firm believer that those with double vaccinations should benefit to the maximum, ie, go on holiday abroad, hold parties with double-vaccined friends, swing from the chandeliers, whatever. But the virus is still around and for the people who have either declined or neglected or forgotten to get jabbed, the whole process is at risk, even for those who have been fully done. Only once we can say that 100 per cent of the adult and young adult population has been jabbed can we start to feel more confident about attending night clubs, football matches, music festivals and cinemas. May it come soon!

Thirty days left for US intelligence report on Covid

On May 26 President Joe Biden asked the US intelligence services to carry out a full review of everything known and unknown about the origins of Covid-19 and to produce a report within 90 days. There are just 30 days left. I seriously doubt that the CIA or any of the other 17 intelligence agencies will have found anything so glaringly new that it will make the whole world wake up and take notice and point the finger of blame at.... yes, China. The reason for this is that China is not cooperating and has become increasingly angry that everyone in the rest of the world thinks it all began in Wuhan and that China should make recompense, or even say sorry. The World Health Organisation has announced it wants to carry out a second investigation which should include examining all the records at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to make sure the virus did not emanate from its laboratories. Beijing has condemned the announcement and has made it clear it will never open the doors of the institute to WHO snoopers and certainly will never hand over documents related to the research work on coronavirus which we know has been and is being carried out there. So how on earth is the CIA going to be able to come up with anything new with China blocking all attempts to ask penetrative questions? The Biden request was silly and it will look even sillier if the intelligence report tells him nothing. He won't be able to blame China for letting loose the virus from the lab because there simply won't be the proof. So it's a farce. Unless Beijing opens the institute's doors and/or reveals everything it knows about the passing of the virus from bats in the food market to humans the world will stagger on suffering the pandemic without ever knowing how it all began. Unfortunately I fear Beijing will never cooperate. They would lose too much face to open anything to WHO.

Great political leaders are few and far between

Ever since Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019 there has been much talk and many articles written about whether he will go down in history as a great leader or an average one or a failed one. If he were to succeed magnificently in getting us through the post-Brexit trauma into a non-EU nirvana and also saved the economy from the clutches of the pandemic, then I guess he has a fairly good chance of being hailed as a pretty good leader. But to be honest is it even fair to ask wheher he will ever be a great prime minister? There have been so few great prime ministers of any country. Winston Churchill was a great wartime prime minister because he never gave up and was ruthless against the Nazi threat. He made famous Henry V speeches in parliament, although his intonation was a bit odd. Instead of "We shall fight them on the beaches" with "the beaches" on a higher level and tone, he dropped his voice so that "the beaches" became sort of matter of fact rather than a splendid image. But no one can dispute that without Churchill we could have even lost the war. But who else has been "great"? Disraeli, Lloyd George, Margaret Thatcher? They all had their moments of greatness but no one really lines any of them up with Churchill. So what chance has Boris got of being a great prime minister? If he has a lot of luck and things go his way and he stays popular then he will be regarded as a good populist leader but never Churchillian great because, God forbid, he will not have to lead in time of war - I mean a war endangering this country. So let him get on with doing the best he can until he loses an election and someone else has a go. From what I can see so far there certainly aren't any "greats" waiting in the wings in the Labour party or any other party, nor any potentially great leaders in the Conservative party. Just to put this all into a global context, I doubt Joe Biden will go down in history as a great president - just a nice average one. The last great American president for all kinds of different reasons was Ronald Reagan. I think Boris will do all right but please stop trying to make out he could soon or one day be seen as a man of greatness, worthy of a statue in Parliament Square.

US back to bombing the Taliban

So here we go again. The US has started bombing the Taliban because of alarming satellite pictures showing them gathering in force around the city of Kandahar. You'd never know that the Afghan government has its own air force with pretty decent ground-attack aircraft which could and should have been used to bash the Taliban. But instead they pleaded with US Central Command to come and bomb them. It's not clear what the US sent, either carrier-borne F/A18s from USS Ronald Reagan in the North Arabian Sea or Reaper armed drones from Qatar. They hit an artillery piece and some Humvees and killed a dozen or so Taliban in the process. I somehow doubt it will stop the attack on Kandihar because once the Taliban have infiltrated the city which is what they do it will be impossible to bomb them. But the bigger question is, can the US just go on bombing whenever they get asked, up to and beyond August 31 when the whole US shooting match in Afghanistan is supposed to be over, finished, ended? It will be very difficult to justify, unless the Taliban can be seen to be fighting alongside al-Qaeda! Biden wants to be shot of Afghanistan so I don't think he will agree with the Pentagon and Central Command to send attack aircraft to target the Taliban whenever the Afghan air force fails to get off the ground.

What are the Taliban talking about in Doha?

Peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government have been going on in Doha, capital of Qatar. But to what end? Even General Mark Milley, the poor chap gettting so much flak these days as he tries to do his job as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has admitted that the Taliban are strategically heading for victory and might take control of Afghanistan once again. So, I say again, what on earth are they talking about in Doha? Unless it's total surrender by the Kabul government. I simply don't believe that with their "army" marching across the country and scooping up more districts by the day the Taliban are remotely interested in sharing power with the people they hate in Kabul. They want power and the strictest of Islamic sharia law enforced and no half measures. So the negotiations, if that is the right word for it, in Doha must be totally one-sided. General Milley's depressing summing-up of the situation in Afghanistan, delivered at a press conference at the Pentagon yesterday, was about as sobre and sombre as you could get. Theoretically the last US soldier is not due to leave Afghanistan until August 31 but the Americans lost all influence on the future of Afghanistan once the "retrogade" programme began and the C-17s started to ship troops and equipment out of the country. The Taliban are on a high, rampaging through the provinces. In some places they don't even need to fire a shot. The communities are so scared of them they only have to turn up in the markets with their grim faces and AK47s and they vanish into their homes. The Afghan national forces are retreating allegedly to protect the cities but for how long? So the Doha talks are presumably getting nowhere. Depressing or what!

Who on earth does Dominic Cummings think he is?

Perhaps the most outrageous comment yet to come from the lips of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's ex, very-ex chief adviser (unelected), was his claim to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that within days of Boris winning the mandate to lead the government as prime minister in 2019 he and a few other co-conspirators discussed ousting him and replacing him with someone he thought would be more suitable to run the country. No names and Kuenssberg didn't ask (!!) but he was probably thinking of Michael Gove whom he had worked for in the past. Two obvious quick questions: who the hell does he think he is and why does Kuenssberg keep on saying that it's so important to listen to what Cummings has to say because he was "gosh oh my goodness" Boris's chief adviser at the time? All she is doing is giving more and more air time to this fellow who clearly believes that the only person truly capable of running this country is Dominic Cummings. Sorry, but he is a nobody and if he really did consider easing Boris out of Number 10 I want to know who else was involved, how seriously did they plot it, is any of it on record - written or phone-spoken - and is anyone going to interview him on the grounds that he was engaged in activity likely to lead to the unlawful elbowing-out of the properly elected leader of the Conservative party and winner of the 2019 election by a landslide. Even if the powers-that-be are not interested in pursuing the matter, he should be put up for the award of the most bare-faced cheek quote of the decade. Kuenssberg should be told to stop giving this man any more interview time, although I bet he has a mass of other outrageous things up his sleeve.

Marxism alive and well in South America

Another Hugo Chavez is born. This time in Peru. Pedro Castillo has been voted in, just, as the next president of Peru. They never learn in these countries. Chavez became president in Venezuela with golden promises of caring for the poor on a platform of socialism that was going to transform the lives and livelihoods of the working class. But he was a demagogue who failed to understand basic mathematics and soon started down the road to ruin that is Venezuela today. His devoted loyalist bus-driving successor Nicolas Maduro followed the same path and pretty well turned the country into an econmic scrapheap, helped along by massive corruption and supression of anything that sounded like democracy. Now here we have Pedro Castillo, a Marxist, in Peru promising the same sort of nirvana, an economic miracle for the poor. Anyone with any cash in the bank has aleady begun to remove it and send it out of the country. The added danger of course is that Russia and China will smell an opportunity to get their claws into the Castillo government, as they have done in Caracas, and win influence and power in the region while the United States will do nothing because they cannot be seen to be giving any support to Marxist-orientated nations. So watch out for the Mexican-hat-wearing President Castillo and his economic Marxist dreams going the way of the Chavez/Maduro experiment.

Life in Blighty is now madness or caution

As soon as the hot weather appears the people of this country climb into their cars and head for the beaches in their millions, packing every dot of sand or pebble with white/turning red bodies, ice creams in each hand and bat-and-ball ever ready. Twas ever thus and now with the so-called Freedom Day here, as well as baking hot weather and school holidays beginning, the beach brigade is going to be horrendously huge. But the madness that takes over the people of this country when the sun comes out is being matched by a new madness - the end of official lockdown of any kind and the end of social distancing and compulsory masks have created a sort of wild yearning for what can be remembered as normal life. So night clubs opened at one minute past midnight last night and within seconds they were packed. Everywhere is packed, clubs, pubs, beaches, roads, the underground. In between all those carousing and shedding all restraints are those who think it is premature and worrying and potentially fatal. The cautious brigade is almost as big and you can see that by just casting your eye on the average shopping street. Many people are entering shops with masks on and even walking on the pavements with their faces covered. So the country is becoming divided between the mad and the cautious. How it is all going to end is impossible to tell but what is now happening in Tokyo with the Olympic Games should provide a hint of what we here have in store. More and more athletes and support staff are getting Covid positive and having to isolate. Soon perhaps there will be more isolating or withdrawing than taking part. Then continuing with the Games will be a farce. Hopefully not because it will be a tragedy for the thousands of athletes who have trained so hard for this moment. But when people gather in great numbers whether it be in the hotels and locker rooms in Tokyo or in the night clubs in London and Manchester, Covid will sweep in and take its victims.

Stick to your decisions, Boris!

Oh for goodness sake, Boris, stop making u-turns. So the newish health secretary Sajid Javid gets a positive for Covid-19 even though he has had the double vaccine doses (very worrying!) and straightaway Boris Johnson and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak hear the pings on their Covid track and trace app because, hardly surprising, the three of them had been in the same room at some point. But Number 10 announces that instead of going into self-isolation for ten days, Boris and Rishi would take part in the government's pilot scheme and carry on as usual but taking tests every day to make sure they are negative. Eminently sensible. They are after all, respectively, the prime minister of the country in charge of everything and the second most important member of the government in charge of saving the country from economic ruin. So let them get on with their jobs. As pretty well everyone is now saying, it's totally crazy that every time you get pinged you have to stop work and go home and vegetate, IF you have been vaccinated twice. Even though Javid got Covid despite the two vaccines, his symptoms are supposedly very mild. He's not going to end up on a ventilator in intensive care. Well I hope not. But as soon as it came out that Boris and Rishi would not be self-isolating, the Labour Party started whingeing and moaning and shouting hypocrisy and coming up with the age-old cliche about one rule for them and another rule for everyone else. Sometimes I don't think the Labour Party and its shadow leader of the opposition and shadow ministers can think of anything apart from cliches. But as a result of the Labour onslaught, Boris and Rishi have done a u-turn and said they will after all self-isolate. It's totally pathetic! They should have stuck to their guns and been bold and brave and should have told Labour to go get a life. Surely the prime minister and chancellor can do their jobs properly by taking a test every day? And if that works well then the rest of the country can do likewise instead of having masses of people doing nothing at home for ten days just because their stupid phone pinged. The ping dictatorship, now that nearly 80 per cent of adults are doubly vaccinated, is absolute madness and should be stopped now. In the meantime, Keir Starmer and co, for God's sake, stop whingeing all the time and go read a lexicon to find something other than a CLICHE when you have to make public statements. If I hear "too little too late" or "one rule for them and another rule for everyone else" ever again I'm going to scream.

US stealth fighters in show of force to China

FULLER VERSION OF MY TIMES STORY TODAY The US is sending the largest-ever formation of stealth fighters to the Indo-Pacific region for an exercise to demonstrate America’s ability to operate in China’s self-declared area of military domination. Twenty-five of the US Air Force’s fifth-generation F-22A Raptor stealth fighters, as well as ten F-15E Strike Eagles, are being deployed to take part in Operation Pacific Iron starting this month. They will operate from a remote airstrip on the US island territory of Guam rather than the main Andersen air force base, and from Tinian, one of three Northern Mariana islands from where the US launched the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Guam would be vulnerable to attack by China’s on-shore ballistic missiles in the event of a conflict. As part of the Pentagon’s 2018 national defence strategy which called for the military to be more adaptive and resilient, the aim will be to show that America’s most sophisticated fighter aircraft can operate from less obvious, more remote airstrips in the region. US Pacific air forces based in Hawaii said 800 airmen would be involved in simulated combat flight operations from “local airports” in Guam and Tinian. The deployment of 25 Raptors which together with the F-35 joint strike fighters are the most technically advanced fighter aircraft in the US Air Force, is expected to be closely monitored by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China also has stealth fighters. The PLA already has the J-20 fighter whose design looks similar to the F-22A. The J-20 entered service in 2017. Prototypes of a second stealth fighter, the FC-31, have appeared at air shows and is expected to be developed as a carrier-borne fighter. The F-22A which entered service in December 2005 is a supersonic , dual-engine stealth fighter. There are 183 in service. Raptors have frequently deployed to the Indo-Pacific but never before in such large numbers, a sign of the Pentagon’s increasing determination to show Beijing America’s ability to project military firepower at short notice.

Afghan women under Taliban terror

I am doing my best not to write about Afghanistan every day but the daily reports of Afganistan returning to Taliban brutality make it impossible. Again it's the women I fear for the most. Where Taliban fighters have seized towns as they advance across the country they are imposing ferocious Sharia law among the communities and this means women are being forced off the streets and into their homes. The terror of disobeying or displeasing the Taliban is now back, just as it was when they ruled the country while al-Qaeda was plotting in their midst to attack the Twin Towers in New York. The scenes of fear are everywhere. Is this what the US-led coalition and Nato fought and died for? A touching letter by the Canadian acting military chief, posted on Twitter, has neatly summed up what he and probably every different national commander involved in the 20-year Afghanistan operation must now be currently feeling. The Canadian, Lieutenant-General Wayne Eyre, pondered the terrible question, was it all worth it? The Canadians, with American backing, fought a mighty battle against the Taliban in Panjwai in Kandahar province in 2006 and won but 16 Canadian soldiers died and many more were wounded. Now Panjwai is back under Taliban control. This is happening all across Afghanistan. Areas where so many American, British, Canadian and other nationals died for a cause no one really understood are falling into Taliban hands, sometimes with hardly a fight put up by the Afghan government troops. The presence of Taliban in charge has brought communities, especially the women, back to the brutal regime they hoped would never return. It's a total total disaster.

General Milley and his fears of a Trump coup

General Mark Milley is a serious chap. As chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff he always looks like he has the world's burdens on his shoulders - and his eyebrows. Now we know why. He really thought that Donald Trump and his millions of supporters were going to launch a coup to ensure he stayed in the White House after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. This has all come out in a new book by two respected Washington Post reporters. Well I think we knew that anyway, didn't we? Milley with his very serious face made it clear at the time of the election and post-election that the military had no role to play. But I'm sure behind the scenes he was saying what the two reporters claim he was saying which was that there was no way the military was going to get involved in backing Trump's accusation that the election was a fraud. There was all that talk if you remember about whether the military chiefs, head by Milley, would need to march into the White House to remove Trump if he refused to leave after being defeated in the election. That was all fun and made good headlines but it was never going to happen. Even Trump finally acknowledged that he would have to leave and went off in a frump down to his Florida palace while Biden was inaugurated as the new president. As for a coup, well, Milley made the key point, according to the reporters in their book, you can't have a coup without the men and women with the guns, ie the military, the CIA and FBI, and they weren't about to back any coup by a president who lost to his rival. If Milley did say these things to his friends and closest aides - as I suspect he did - then it just shows the incredibly tense time that he and others endured during the weeks before and after the election in November 2020. I don't think any other chairman of the Joint Chiefs has had to face such a potential dilemma in America's history. Hopefully Milley himself, once he has retired, will tell all in a memoir but he probably won't, being an honourable military chap who has to remain loyal to his commanders-in-chief whatever they might want to do. Trump no doubt will at some stage say the new book is all rubbish and fake news and General Milley is a joke general. Milley will have to take it all on his prominent chin and hope for better days.

George W Bush fears for Afghan women

Even George Bush is now speaking about his fears for Afghanistan, especially for Afghan women whose lives have been transformed after the defeat of the Taliban regime in 2001. The former president was the leader who put US troops into Afghanistan in the first place and then took his eye off the Kabul ball when he became more focused on Iraq and Saddam Hussein, only to start rushing more troops into Afghanistan when it all went bad. Now he has said in an interview with a German news network that he thinks the "brutal" Taliban will go around slaughtering the women. For the former president whose name is so intertwined with war to come out and express his fears it should have real political impact. George Bush has been pretty quiet since finishing his eight years in the White House but clearly felt it was the right time to voice his concerns about the Afghan women in particular. But as far as I know there is nothing in the four-part new US mission in Afghanistan that spells out how the Pentagon or State Department would react/act if it looked like the Taliban were going to do what George Bush fears they might do - murder as many women as possible. Will US special forces located somewhere in the Gulf region be flown in to protect the women? I very much doubt it for the obvious reason that they would have to stay for ever to keep the women safe from the wrath of the Taliban who hate women being in the public eye, doing things they believe only men should do. Will the Pentagon bomb the Taliban to stop or deter them from slaughtering Afghan women? Well, hardly, that would be pointless, unless the Taliban chiefs get scared of the bombers looming over the horizon. They haven't been scared so far in 20 years. What else could the US do if Afghan women are brutally targeted? I fear the answer is: nothing. So George Bush is right to put his concerns into the public arena.

America's new mission in Afghanistan

And with a snap of the fingers the Pentagon has replaced its train and assist programme in Afghanistan, with counter-terrorism attached, to a new mission based on four components: protecting the huge US embassy complex in Kabul, helping to ensure the safe running of Hamid Karzai international airport, continuing to provide "appropriate advice and assistance" to the Afghan national security forces and government (by Zoom calls perhaps?), and maintaining the counter-terrorism operation (although from a long way off, ie the Gulf). General Scott Miller, for three years the US commander in Afghanistan, is flying home, and General Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command based in Tampa Florida, has assumed all the necessary authorities from Miller to do what he feels he has to do. Thus, everything has changed. With the official handover from Miller to McKenzie, the operation in Afghanistan becomes a hands-off, long-reach mission, although they have left behind a rear admiral to take charge of security at the embassy. Rear Admiral Peter Vasely, a former SEALs commander, is now the most senior US officer in Afghanistan. But his role is strictly limited to the embassy and the airport. Once the Turks have agreed to carry on guarding the Hamid Karzai airport which they have been doing for years, then even that role for the admiral will be reduced. Of course in the event of an attack on Kabul by the Taliban, it could be that Admiral Vasely will have to implement a full-scale evacuation of the embassy staff, although I noticed a senior Taliban figure was quoted by the BBC the other day saying that embassies would be left alone, whatever that means. Embassies, both the US and British ones for example, have come under rocket fire in the past. But it's all change. The first US-led coalition operation - the combat mission - was ended in 2014 and the takeover train and assist programme has now also gone with the departure of General Miller. The four-part new mission is the minimum required and won't stop the Taliban from rapidly advancing towards the capital.

Such mixed messages over Covid

Freedom from Covid Day, at least in England, is still booked for July 19. But anyone watching the Euros football final at Wembley last night will have seen tens of thousands of people without masks carousing and dancing and mingling together, as if freedom day had already happened. The stadium was packed, the pubs were packed, the streets were packed, Trafalgar Square was packed. Without wanting to put any further dampner on what turned out to be a desperately disappointing match for England - beaten by Italy on penalties - it must surely be true to say that the devastatingly infectious virus must have been circulating through the crowds with impunity. Many of those who filled the stadium and the streets outside Wembley will have received at least one vaccine jab but there were huge numbers of twenty and thirty year olds there. How many of them will have had the jab? Every day the virus figures are climbing alarmingly. OK, Boris Johnson says it's time to start living with the virus, but if any of those people in the crowds go down with Covid-19 and get very ill and require hospitalisation, then the risks were too high. Of course it's right to get the country back on its feet as soon as possible but the clear message from Boris must be that everyone, absolutely everyone, HAS to get vaccinated. No more doubts or delays or refusals. Too many people are still holding off. Nothing like it is in the US where millions of people are declining the jab, but enough to make Boris add conditions to his July 19 freedom day decision. He wants people to wear masks still in public places and public transport and to continue working from home if possible. So July 19 is not going to be total freedom day at all. It's a blow to business and a blow to city centres where shops and cafes and restaurants are dying. The messages are so mixed it's difficult for individuals and families to make the "common sense" decision which the prime minister wants us all to follow.

Haiti next for US troops?

Haiti is next on Joe Biden's "what to do" list. The country is in turmoil and the government there wants American troops on the streets to keep order. Biden's instincts are going to be no no no. He has ended US military involvement in Afghanistan. The last thing he will want is to pile troops into C-17s and fly them into another country of chaos, possibly leading to casualties. But despite what Biden may now be sayng to his national security advisers, I think the US should send troops. It's not a war in Haiti, just anarchy and a breakdown of democracy, and the poor ever-suffering people of the island need to feel safe. They won't get protection from their own soldiers, and the presence of, say, US Marines patrolling the streets will give them confidence and a reason to smile. The US, with its mighty military assets and firepower and experience operating in difficult terrain, is the only country that can truly help Haiti. Talk of a United Nations force is a non-starter. The UN had a peacekeeping mission in Haiti for 15 years which ended in 2019 and the legacy of that period was mixed to say the least. I doubt the Haitian people would welcome them back. What they need and the country needs is an instant wow factor of US Marines flying in to bring stability. Haiti is a desperate country which has suffered from so many disasters, man-made and natural. So, Mr President, send in the Marines.

Peace deal? What peace deal?

By the end of this month it will be 17 months since the Taliban team of negotiators and American officials led by Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador in Kabul, signed a piece of paper in Qatar which supposedly outlined the process and timetable for an end to America's war in Afghanistan and a move by the insurgents to start talking seriously about peace and power-sharing with the Afghan government. It all seems to have gone down hill ever since. Sure, the US has kept to its side of the bargain, albeit agreeing to pull out all troops by September 11 (now August 31) instead of Donald Trump's May 31 as per the Qatar deal. But the only concession the Taliban have made is to ignore the American troops as they withdrew and just got on with seizing as much of the country as possible. The Pentagon continued to mount aggressive defensive measures, including having two carrier strike forces in the Arabian Sea, to ensure that the Taliban were deterred from attacking the US troops as they queued up to leave for home. But if the Taliban HAD targeted the withdrawing Americans, it would have invited a massive retaliation. The Taliban knew that and anyway they had promised to stop attacking American troops as part of the Qatar deal. They kept that promise but it was an easy one to honour because, in their view, provided the pull-out timetable was followed, give or take a few weeks, they could concentrate all their efforts on seizing districts across the country. Now, according to Reuters, they are hunting down Afghan military pilots to disrupt the fledgling air force which had been developed and nurtured and equipped by the Americans. The Afghan air force poses a real threat to the Taliban because their pilots can bomb away without too much problem. But even if the Taliban fail in their attempts to target Afghan pilots - and please God they do - the air force itself is soon going to be in trouble, because the hundreds of private contractors employed to maintain the aircraft are also being withdrawn under the same Qatar deal. No mechanics, no aircraft. Will there ever be any good news coming out of Afghanistan?

Taliban grab grab grab

And so it goes on. The Taliban are helping themselves. Now they have taken control of one of the most lucrative border trading posts into Iran, providing them with $20 million a year in revenue. The Islam Qala border crossing was snatched from the Afghan government forces who seem to be increasingly surrendering from day to day. The Kabul government can ill afford to lose revenue from any source and the trading post into Iran was a key money provider. But no more. Now the money will be used to sustain and arm and equip the Taliban. The story is gettting worse and worse and, judging by the latest remarks of President Joe Biden, Washington is doing little more than keeping its fingers crossed and hoping all the bad stuff will go away. Well, it won't, the bad stuff is here to stay in Afghanistan and right now the Taliban are ticking off the list of things they want to achieve over the next few months before they decide how and when to totally ignore the co-called peace deal signed with the Americans on February 29 last year and start infiltrating fighters in disguise into Kabul and prepare for the big takeover. There's nothing the US will be able to do about it, despite all the promises and hopes of having a super over-the-horizon military force somewhere in the region to move in to stop it happening. Even if the Pentagon does find a suitable location, other than the faraway bases in the Gulf, will Biden actually approve a military attack on the Taliban in or around Kabul? If he did, then he would go against his own statement made yesterday that it was time for the Afghans to run their own lives. And, of course, he would have American troops back in Kabul and unable to leave until the Taliban had moved away. So back to a war which Biden vowed to bring to an end, as far as US military involvement was concerned, by September 11 - now moved forward to August 31. The Taliban are on the march without anyone stopping them, certainly not the 325,000 troops and police trained by the US-led coalition.

Humvees in new lease of life

MY STORY TODAY The Humvee became one of the most visible and iconic US military vehicles on the battlefield in the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan and was due to be replaced. However, it seems the Humvee still has legs, and the Pentagon wants to keep it in service and spend millions of dollars on updating it for the next war. Like the US Air Force’s B-52, A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack fighter and U-2 spy plane, the Humvee has a status all of its own in the American military, and the Pentagon wants to persuade Congress to provide the funds. The troop-carrying vehicle that was adapted multiple times to survive in increasingly lethal counter-insurgency conflicts, came into service in 1983 with a long and unmemorable name: high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicle. It wasn’t long before it was known to every soldier as a Humvee . The name stuck and its versatility and ruggedness brought customers from around the world. It also became the trophy vehicle for the Taliban who captured hundreds of them from the Afghan national security forces. There is a programme already underway to replace the Humvee with a new generation joint light tactical vehicle. The acronym JLTV doesn’t have the same ring to it and is not yet ready for operational service. Now the Pentagon has decided to use some of the funds for the JLTV to keep the Humvee alive and well and operationally effective. A request has been made to Congress to approve an additional $36 million to keep the Humvee production line going and upgrade existing ones, of which more than $20 million will come from the JLTV project. The Humvee manufacturer, AM General, based in South Bend, Indiana, produced at least a dozen variants of the vehicle, including a military ambulance and a commercial one for civilian use. As on the battlefield, the civilian version acquired iconic status. The first American to acquire one was Arnold Schwarznegger. In 1990 he was driving to a film set in western Oregon when he overtook a convoy of military vehicles and spotted the Humvee with its cool, muscular body, wide wheelbase, protruding grille, and emitting a growling diesel roar. It perfectly matched his own Hollywood image and he wanted one. He persuaded AM General to produce a commercial model, to be known as the Hummer. He became the proud owner of a $50,000 Hummer in the summer of 1991, and a new craze was launched. The military version wasn’t always a success. When insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan began developing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and armour-piercing grenades, the unarmoured Humvees were suddenly vulnerable. In 2006, as the insurgency in Iraq raged, about 70 US soldiers died when their Humvees were hit by IEDs. The Humvee had not been designed as a combat vehicle and it was hastily armoured to provide more protection for the eight troop passengers. The Humvee made its first appearance in combat in Operation Just Cause, the US invasion of Panama in 1989.

Great Game in Afghanistan still alive and well

The withdrawal of American and coalition troops from Afghanistan will now move into a new period of strategic politics. The Great Game never goes away. This time it's all about the US desperately trying to fix a deal with someone/anyone in the region to enable the Pentagon to have troops on standby across the border in case of an upsurge in al-Qaeda or other terrorist organisation activities. The signs are not looking good because of the huge influence of Russia and China and their clear intention to block any move by the US to station troops in one of the bordering -stan countries - Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. If the Pentagon and State Department fail to persuade any of these countries to host American forces, there will be no alternative but to rely on the bases in Qatar, UAE and Kuwait and an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea to monitor what is going to happen in Afghanistan over the next few months. If the Taliban does advance to the edge of Kabul and push further in, I seriously doubt they will do anything to curb the activities of al-Qaeda whatever their negotiators promised in Qatar with the Americans. If al-Qaeda rises up again in Afghanistan - with the blessing of the Taliban - then the US will be even more desperate to get special forces onto a base across the border, ready to pile in when required. Doing it from Qatar would require greater logistics, more time and a comprehensive intelligence picture. Not out of the question but just more complex. The heavy hand of Russia and China will probably ensure that the US will fail to persuade any -stan country to host anything branded American. Uzbekistan is a possibility but it relies too much on Russia, and China will do everything in its power, diplomatically and strategically, to keep US troops out of the region. It's going to be a messy business and as with all previous versions of the Great Game, it's not going to end in peace and stability, let alone joy and optimism for the Afghan people.

A 4th of July weekend of shootings

It's somewhat difficult to fathom but here it is: no US soldiers were killed battle in Afghanistan since February 2020. But over the 4th of July weekend just gone more than 150 Americans were killed in 400 shooting incidents across the country. A quite staggering figure. So to put it bluntly, since the signing of the "peace" deal between the US and the Taliban at the end of February last year, it has been more dangerous for Americans back home than being in a war zone in Afghanistan. The death of 150 people is the equivalent of a large company in the US Army. I wonder if anyone raised this with President Biden as he was trying to be happy and optimistic over the weekend. According to CNN there were 83 shootings in Chicago alone, with 14 deaths. Fatal shootings are so regular in the United States that may be there is a degree of complacency about such statistics, although I'm sure the deaths were all devastating for the families involved. It has been said a million times but there are just too many guns in too many hands in the US. Fourth of July should have been a time to celebrate and to be proud of America's independence but it seems it was also a time of violence and brutal deaths. When will America learn?

Too many Afghanistan doom warnings!

I know it looks bad. The Taliban are going whoopee and advancing across Afghanistan, seizing districts so easily you wonder what the hell all those armed Afghan national security troops are doing for their wages, paid incidentally by the Pentagon. Well, they're running away in droves. So much for all those years of training. Anyway that's not what I'm on about. What I do get fed up with are all the people, military, spooks and others who played their part in the 20-year war one way or another and are now retired and are saying what a disaster it all was and what a terrible disaster it still is and how it's all going to go downhill into the black depths in the next few months when all foreign troops, especially the Americans, have vanished. Sir Alex Younger, retired chief of MI6 or the British secret intelligence service, is the latest to come out of the woodwork and accuse the West of getting it all wrong and failing to build a decent democratic nation and failing to get rid of the Taliban. Ok, fine but he was head of the British spooks, including the very large MI6 station in Kabul, from 2014 to 2020, a key period in the attempted nation-building programme after the combat phase had ended. Of course it's not his fault that Afghanistan remains a nation in crisis, but he was there among the top people making decisions and recommendations. Did he during that time warn everyone that we were heading down the wrong road and, if so, did no one listen? I listened to literally hundreds of different military commanders talking about Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, embedded with military units as they took on the Taliban, interviewed aid workers, health workers, NGOs and local Afghans all over the place and none of them thought the US-led coalition was going to win a great victory over the Taliban and turn the country into a cross between North Dakota and the garden of England (the county of Kent). The only message I got from the military whether generals or majors or captains or sergeants was that they were makng progress and holding back the Taliban. That was it. All the finest military brains in the business were hard at it and none of them seemed to grasp the simple fact that the Taliban are Afghans and therefore they were never going to go away. They believed and still believe, they had a legitimate cause and an entitlement to political power like any other Afghan faction and were prepared to fight for it. So foreign troops occupying large chunks of what they say is their land were never going to win. So don't come weepng tears now after it is all over and complain that it should have been done differently. There wasn't a different way, other than not doing it at all. What was totally wrong was to send 130,000 American and coalition troops to sort out the country. It was never going to happen and all those who thought it was possible, especially those now whingeing about the disaster ahead, should in my view accept some of the responsibility and admit the mega mistakes made over 20 years.

Donald Rumsfeld, the charming warrior

Much has already been written about Donald Rumsfeld since his death a few days ago, a lot of it blaming him for the US decision to invade Iraq. My memories of him are purely personal. He was without doubt quite a character and above all he had charm and what I can only describe as a Hollywood-style swagger. I first came across him in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan in December 2003. I was on an early assignment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2001. Everything was new to me. I had travelled up to Mazar-e Sharif because the British had a provincial reconstruction team up there, working with the locals to try and improve conditions and security. The base was a dusty old outpost off a long road that seemed to go from nowhere to nowhere. While I was there I was told in confidence that Donald Rumsfeld was due to visit the base during a 24-hour trip to Afghanistan. What he could learn in such a short time I don't know but that was the plan. I was at the base hours before he was supposed to arrive. The British soldiers and civilians were primed for the super VIP. I will always remember the first sighting. Way off in the distance there was a massive dust storm building up. Something was moving fast and furious across the desert road and heading for the British base which, incidentally, also had some American troops around. The dust storm got closer and closer, in fact quite rapidly so. And suddenly a convoy of heavy-duty limousines and trucks and God knows what skidded to a halt outside the base and the dust and sand swirled and swirled high up into the air. A rear door of the third limousine opened and outstepped Tom Cruise.... well no it was Donald Rumsfeld in a suit but it was almost as glamorous. He came, he spoke, he inspired the soldiers to great victories and left. The dust eventually settled. The great cavalcade carrying the US defence secretary with the Hollywood looks had moved on.

Farewell Afghanistan

A FULLER VERSION OF MY TIMES STORY TODAY: America’s Great Exit from Afghanistan is now approaching the endgame. It’s not just about troops withdrawing. It’s also about 20 years’ worth of accumulated paraphernalia vital for the sustainment and survival of a superpower force confronting a resilient and well-armed insurgency. The American military footprint, human and structural, is being reduced to zero. Around 900 US Air Force C-17 transport aircraft loads of equipment from armoured vehicles, trucks, highly classified computers and munitions to spare parts for everything , furniture and fast-food stalls, have already been flown out of the country. So far, more than 16,000 separate pieces, most of them now “non-defensive articles”, as the Pentagon puts it, have been extracted. What the US created over 20 years was a vast empire of warfighting support structures that in many cases changed the landscape of once primitive areas of Afghanistan. With the war and training mission officially over, it’s now all about completing a “retrograde” programme which is how the Pentagon describes it. As with the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, the logistics kings of the US military divide up the huge tonnage of materiel deployed for a conflict into three categories: “First, must be sent home. Second, can be left for the host country to use. Third, no longer needed or obsolete but too sensitive to give away or against US law to do so, therefore trashed and turned into scrap metal”. “Retrograde requires a full inventory of equipment which is a complex operation due to the amount, variety, condition and sensitivity. The fate of the equipment is assessed after it’s inventoried,” Lieutenant Commander Karen Roxberry of US Central Command said. Afghan Del Boys have had their eyes on making a small fortune with the scrap but have watched with dismay as the Americans destroyed perfectly good vehicles which they could have sold. But the US which lost dozens of Humvee armoured vehicles and other military kit captured by the Taliban over 20 years would rather turn such valuable assets into twisted metal than risk them being bought on the market by the insurgents. The first US soldiers to arrive in Afghanistan, a dozen Green Berets from 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) who set foot on Afghan soil in October 2001 after flying from Uzbekistan over the Hindu Kush mountains, resorted to riding horses when they teamed up with the Northern Alliance to take on the Taliban. Their mission was codenamed Task Force Dagger. They joined a CIA paramilitary team, codenamed Jawbreaker, which had arrived on September 26. It was warfighting at its most primitive. But over the next few years as mass troop reinforcements built up to a peak of 100,000 US personnel, it was not just American forces residing across the length and breadth of Afghanistan, supported by thousands of Nato and other coalition troops. They brought mini-Americas with them. Kandahar, a huge airfield in the south, was a classic case. “They built a boardwalk with coffee shops, McDonalds, Burger Kings, even TGI Fridays, “ Seth Jones, a longstanding adviser to US special forces in Afghanistan, told The Times. “When Canadian troops arrived at Kandahar they built a hockey rink and we played against them.” “Now no more McDonalds, no more Burger Kings, no more TGI Fridays. It was like a fast-food mirage in the desert and it’s all gone,” he said. To underline the impact a large-scale foreign conventional force had on Afghanistan, you only have to look at the statistics following the first retrograde programme carried out in 2013 and 2014 when the US and Nato combat phase of the war came to an end. By then the US military had 11,000 huge mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPS) to evacuate. Nine thousand were repatriated and 2,000, judged to be surplus to requirement, were destroyed. It took around 12 hours with a special blowtorch to turn each $1 million vehicle into scrap. The 2014 exit of heavy armour was the largest retrograde operation in history, with 24,000 pieces of rolling stock shipped back to the US. Today, everything is being dismantled at a rapid rate. Bases which had housed thousands of US and coalition troops are being handed over as empty shells with destroyed equipment lying around - permanent mementoes of what was once a great endeavour by the western world to bring peace, stability, human rights and modern thinking to a country gripped by tribal war lordism, a fanatical insurgent militia, international terrorists and corruption. Were lessons learned from this experiment in nation-building? “I think for the American military who served in Afghanistan there is currently a feeling of detachment. But it will really hit home if there’s an advance by the Taliban on major cities such as Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kunduz where US troops fought and died to protect,” said Jones who spent 12 years advising special forces in Afghanistan, both in the field and at the Pentagon. “I don’t think people will fully appreciate what the end of the mission means until they see Taliban flags flying over these cities,” he said. “What will we do if the Taliban expands its control over the country? The Afghans may then fracture in which case the war will continue and the US will have to decide who to back. Then it will be like the US backing an insurgency against the Taliban rather than being involved in counter-insurgency against them,” he said. “But the US footprint will be different, it will be done from the Persian Gulf and from carriers and it will be like returning to 2001 when the CIA and special forces deployed to Afghanistan. The US has now learned this lesson [after 20 years], you don’t deploy large numbers of conventional forces,” he said. Andrew Krepinevich who spent 20 years as an officer in the US army and served in the private office of three secretaries of defence, agreed. “We need to avoid getting caught in these kind of wars. But we will need to maintain a baseline level of training proficiency in these sort of operations.” “So, always have special operations forces aiding allied partner countries confronting insurgencies or large-scale terrorism to pass along what we’ve learned and to stay current on changes in enemy tactics; and figure out how to expand this capability quickly and effectively,” he said. “It could be a tall order but let’s hope we have political leaders who can think strategically,” he said.

Don't ask Biden about the war

Afghanistan is going to be Joe Biden's Achilles Heel. OK it was actually Donald Trump who ordered America's involvement in the war to be brought to an end and instituted peace talks with the Taliban. But it's now Biden's administration, so he has to take the rough with the smooth, and he doesn't like the rough, not when it comes in the form of questions from impertinent reporters who want to know what he is going to do if the Afhgan government collapses and there's a raging slaughter in the next few weeks. Biden replied that he wasn't holding a press conference to answer negative - sorry, he said later, he meant to say legitimate - questions about Afghanistan. It was about to be July 4th,the great American celebration holiday and he wanted everyone to be happy and nice and optimistic about everything because everything (else) was going so well. Like the increase in jobs and the vaccination programme etc. Poor Joe, he can't stand it when he rolls out all the good news and then the first question is about the dire situation in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Mr President, that's the way it works. Reporters can be a pain in the whatsit but actually a question about Afghanistan on the day when it was announced that the huge Bagram airfield no longer had American troops there was wholly relevant, never mind the jobs figures and the vaccine record. July 4th or not the president has a duty to tell the American public what he thinks and fears about the biggest decision he has made so far in his presidency - to stick with Trump's policy of getting out of Afghanistan and removing every piece of materiel and equipment put into that country over two decades. It wasn't a negative question he was asked, it was a realistic one. He will have to deal with the political consequences if Afghanistan is overrun by murdering, slaughtering insurgents and militia. Not a good prospect for the Afghan people or for the US military who made so many sacrifices over 20 years of war.