Comment: Why are we fighting in Afghanistan?

Yet more British service personnel have died in Afghanistan this week, with that grim total reaching 300 a few days ago.

And the commander of NATO forces in country, General Stanley McChrystal, has been sacked by Barack Obama and replaced by General David Petraeus, who was responsible for the troop surge in Iraq.

And in his visit to Afghanistan a few weeks back, prime minister David Cameron told troops they were fighting a war of obligation.

He did not go as far as Gordon Brown in saying that British troops in Helmand were keeping the streets of London safer, but he was fully in line with their presence there and the job they’re doing.

Bur following the recent spate of deaths, with the horrifying prospect of more to come as the summer fighting season continues, there will be increased calls to bring troops home, and increased counter-calls to stay the course.

But how did the UK, the US and their allies find themselves on this course?

UK and US forces landed in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

They were there to catch and/or kill Al Qaeda operatives based in the country, particularly Osama Bin Laden.

Nearly eight years on, Bin Lade has not been captured, Al Qaeda seems to be dispersed and NATO forces are fighting a largely indigenous insurgency of the Taleban which has no real pretensions to international operations.

Meanwhile Islamic terrorism has not diminished; from 9/11 to Madrid, to London to Mumbai to Pune, the spectaculars continue, with countless smaller incidents, arrests and alerts.

How did this happen?

Briefly, after a swift but not stable military victory over the Taleban, UK and US forces didn’t find Bin Laden, but did find they had a totally failed state on their hands.

The political fear is that walking away from Afghanistan would not only allow the Taleban to take power again, but it would again become a haven for Al Qaeda or other Islamist terrorist groups.

And also the Iraq adventure proved to take attention from operations in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda internationally.

In the five years that Iraq dominated military and intelligence thinking the Taleban were able to regroup and start operations against ISAF. They also learned some lessons about guerilla fighting and roadside bombs.

Which means that we now have troops fighting a home-grown insurgency in Afghanistan while trying to reconstruct the country.

Al Qaeda hasn’t returned. But it doesn’t have to. There are plenty of failing states where it can regroup and re-organise, while fellow travelers like the Taleban can keep the UK and US military and intelligence services tied up in Afghanistan, looking the wrong way.

With Petraeus now in charge of ISAF, changes are expected. And maybe Afghanistan will be brought to the uneasy peace that seems to prevail in Iraq right now.

But it’s hard not to feel that young men and women have been fighting and dying, doing a good job, in an honourable cause, but one which is a fatal distraction to what our armed and intelligence services really need to be doing.