- Col. Richard Kemp is a former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and the author of Attack State Red, an account of British military operations in Afghanistan published by Penguin. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Disillusionment with the inability of the Kabul administration to govern fairly or to significantly reduce violence played a role in the reportedly low turnout at the polls in Helmand.

It is critical that this changes if we are to avoid another Vietnam. The South Vietnamese Army, well trained and equipped, lost heart once the U.S. withdrew, collapsing at the first push, partly because their corrupt and ineffective administration was not worth fighting for.

That an election was held at all in Afghanistan’s most violent province is an achievement. But despite a major operation to drive out the Taliban, the insurgents deterred large numbers of voters. This illustrates just how steep a mountain NATO has to climb. But it does not mean we cannot prevail against them in Helmand.

As President Obama says: “This isn’t a war of choice; it’s a war of necessity.” Home grown British terrorists have only demonstrated an ability to kill our people when they have attended serious training and had face-to-face direction from war-hardened jihadists.

The Al Qaida leadership and their camps were driven into Pakistan in 2001. U.S. pursuit across the border using unmanned aerial vehicle strikes has been remarkably effective, resulting directly in the recent reduction of the UK terrorist threat level.

Al Qaida is not just a “global franchise” but also a solid organization that needs places to meet, to plan and to train terrorists. It cannot all be done on the internet.  Substantially unable to function now in Pakistan, the leadership is actively seeking a new base – perhaps in Yemen, Somalia or North Africa. In any of these they would be much more exposed. Their real desire is to return to Afghanistan. NATO forces are preventing that.

But we cannot do it forever. Success equals reducing the insurgency to a level that can be managed by a viable Afghan government backed by a capable security force which can prevent the country becoming a base for attacks on the West including Britain.

How long will this take? The answer to that is how long do we have?  The next U.S. election is at the end of 2012 and the patience of the British electorate will have no greater longevity.

Even as I have defined it, we will not achieve success fully in that time-frame. But we must be very clearly succeeding in a way that we are not now. And certainly in the British forces, we cannot continue with anything like the current rate of casualties over that period.

To counter the Taliban’s present devastatingly effective tactics of mines, roadside bombs and booby traps we need better surveillance and better intelligence, achieved in part through greater active support from the local people. We need to control the night as well as the day. While we build the Afghan army, this can only be done with more of our own troops. A lot more.

Casting aside inter-service rivalries, every sinew of strength of the British armed forces must now go into Afghanistan.  Even that will not be enough.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown must take close personal direction of this war through a war cabinet that will drive every relevant government department to achieve real progress in the short time we have left. And crucially to communicate our war aims to the British people with far greater effect.

- Luke Baker is a political and general news correspondent at Reuters. -

The mountains and deserts of southern Afghanistan are far removed from the elegant charms of Trieste in northern Italy, but there will be a link between the two this weekend.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight nations meet in the Italian city on the Adriatic on Thursday for three days of talks, with the state of play in Afghanistan, as well as developments in Iran and the Middle East, front and centre of their agenda.

Nearly eight years and tens of billions of dollars on from the U.S.-led invasion that overthrew the Taliban, the United States and its allies appear no closer to bringing long-term stability to the country, with the Taliban resurgent throughout the south and west and the instability expanding across the border into Pakistan.

One of the major areas of unrest is Helmand, a vast desert and mountain province in the far south where around 8,000 British troops have been deployed for 3-1/2 years and 10,000 U.S. Marines are steadily being sent in as reinforcements.

While 18,000 troops backed by helicopters, jets, Predator drones, armoured vehicles and endless advanced weaponry may sound like more than enough of a match for bands of bearded militants who usually aren’t armed with much more than a Kalashnikov rifle, it’s not always the case.

Helmand, split down the middle by the Helmand river, is larger than Switzerland and has a daunting mix of terrain that the Taliban and their followers are far more familiar with than foreign troops sweating in heavy, cumbersome combat gear. And it’s not just the challenges of the topography, it’s the sheer size of the area that stretches any army’s capability.

When I was in Helmand late last year, British troops at a Forward Operating Base in the far north of the province told me that they didn’t have enough troops or back-up to venture any further than three kilometres from their small fortified camp to take on the enemy.

“The Taliban know it. If we attack them, they go just over three kilometres away and we have to come back to base,” an officer at the remote outpost told me.

The absurdity of that situation partly explains why Britain and the United States have acknowledged that Helmand is currently in a “stalemate”, a position they hope will be broken with a new strategy and the increase in troops in the coming months.

But the deadlock in fighting and the need for more manpower– there are 90,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 50 percent less than in now relatively more stable  Iraq — is not the only concern on the agenda for the G8 foreign ministers.

As well as trying to agree amongst themselves how they can best support the U.S.- and NATO-driven effort, they need to assess the implications of non-cooperation from Iran, on Afghanistan’s western border, and the widening instability in the Pakistan tribal areas on Afghanistan’s eastern border. Iran was due to send a delegation to the G8 meeting, but in the wake of international condemnation of the fallout from its disputed presidential election, it has cancelled its participation.

Afghanistan’s election in August, when President Hamid Karzai will seek reelection despite broad unpopularity in the country and among some of his Western backers, will also be a focus of discussion. Karzai’s high-profile makes him stand out among the 41candidates registered for the Aug. 20 poll. That greater degree of visibility is likely to secure him enough votes for reelection, according to some opinion polls, even if many Afghans express frustration at the scare progress made during his past 5 years in power.

Politically, socially and militarily, Afghanistan remains hugely in flux nearly eight years on from the Taliban’s overthrow. While army commanders admit there can be no military solution to the conflict, diplomats and development experts are struggling to find a political way forward either.

Three days of talks among eight foreign ministers in Trieste is unlikely to go very far in resolving what is becoming an ever more intractable conflict 5,000 kilometres away.

- Justin Fisher is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Magna Carta Institute at Brunel University. The opinions expressed are his own. -

It’s fair to say that the results of the European elections in Britain were something of a shock. Of course, it was evident that Labour was going to do badly and the BNP’s success in winning its first European seats did not come entirely out of the blue. But the collapse of Labour’s vote exceeded what most had predicted, and the realisation that the BNP now has 2 of the UK’s 72 MEPs is more dramatic than the possibility that it might occur.

Now the dust has settled, however, it’s worth reflecting a little on what the results may tell us about the future for British politics. The first point is that performances in European elections have rarely been a solid predictor of subsequent general election performance - especially since the introduction of a proportional representation voting system in 1999 (the 1994 elections are perhaps the sole exception).

Take 1989, for example, when the new Liberal Democrat party came a distant fourth behind the Greens. In the subsequent general election, the Liberal Democrats performed reasonably well, whilst the Greens fell back. And, in 1999 and 2004, the Conservatives beat Labour into second place. Yet Labour won both subsequent elections comfortably.

European elections are very different from General Elections, then. First, despite their clear importance, voters do not take them nearly as seriously as national elections.

Second, the electoral system allows smaller parties to perform much better than they would under the system used for Westminster elections. Thirdly, and linked very much to the first two, there is a clear appeal for parties such as UKIP given that these elections are about the very things that they oppose. All in all, European elections are much more multi-party affairs than Westminster ones. And as a consequence, extrapolating clues about the next general election can be hazardous.

But these elections may matter more than previous ones for three reasons. First, the results confirm that that Britain has a very strong Euro-sceptic core amongst its electorate – nearly 27 percent of those who voted in Britain, cast their ballot for one of the several anti-European parties. And, of course, UKIP claimed second place in terms of vote share and joint second (with Labour) in terms of seats. Given the opportunity that European elections afford the voters, this Euro-sceptic support cannot simply be dismissed as protest votes.

Secondly, and notwithstanding the points above, the elections have nevertheless confirmed the problems that Labour faces. Labour’s poll ratings, of course, have been poor for some time, as has been the party’s performance in local elections. But the European elections are the only truly nationwide contests other than the General Elections. So whilst local elections and polls have suggested that Labour is in a bad way, these election results have certainly confirmed the depth of the party’s problems, including a collapse in Labour’s vote in core areas such as the North West, the North East and Wales.

The collapse wasn’t uniform – in London, for example, the fall was a relatively modest 3.5 percent - but all in all, a near 7 percent fall in Labour’s vote share and a 12 percent gap between them and the Conservatives does not bode well, given that the caveats of a second order election and the effects of proportional representation also apply to the other main parties.

Thirdly, the election of two MEPs from the BNP confirms the party’s growing electoral status. Of course, the BNP have elected representatives elsewhere at local government level as well as one member of the Greater London Assembly (GLA). But these are the first on the national stage. The support for the BNP is significantly lower than for far-right parties in other parts of Europe.

However, British politics has successfully resisted the electoral advance of such parties for many years, so the effect is still significant. And the consequences may be far-reaching. It may first harden resistance amongst the political elite against proportional representation. Somewhat surprisingly, the election of a BNP member of the GLA under a form of PR (the additional member system) did not create much of a stir. But this, combined with the European elections – held under closed list PR - reveals one of the apparent advantages of first-past-the post at Westminster – it helps exclude extremists.

So while the Prime Minister has indicated that there should be a review of the electoral system, early reports suggest that the Alternative Vote (AV) is preferred. AV is not a form of PR – it is majoritarian, requiring only that the winner of a constituency secures more that 50 percent of preferences (it is very similar to the system used to elect the London Mayor).

So the election of the two BNP MEPs may have sounded the death knell for PR at Westminster for the time being. After all, who wants to argue for a system that could more readily see the election of BNP MPs?

The other implication of the BNP’s success may, paradoxically, help Labour. The BNP’s electoral successes came in Labour’s heartlands and have provided a huge wake-up call. Labour supporters and waverers might be less concerned if voters switched to the Liberal Democrats or the Greens through a desire to protest against the government. But voting BNP is a wholly different proposition.

So, the alarm with which the BNP success was greeted could well have a galvanizing effect on those instinctively closer to Labour. Coupled with the distinct possibility of the Conservatives winning the next General Election, we may just see Labour’s vote improved through a desire to avoid the alternative, since despite the clear importance of the EU, it remains the case that General Elections are the ones where the stakes are highest.

- James Graham is the Campaigns and Communications Manager of Unlock Democracy The opinions expressed are his own. -

The rise of the far right in Britain is not a sign that people are flirting with fascism but a signal that disengagement has reached a crisis point.

The BNP’s rise has been slow but relentless over a 20-year period. The big turning point was actually the 2001 general election when Nick Griffin got 16 percent of the vote in the Oldham West constituency following a series of riots around the north of England. In 2003, they became the second largest party in Burnley, a trick they repeated in Barking and Dagenham in 2006 and Stoke on Trent in 2008. The election of Richard Barnbrook to the Greater London Assembly last year made it clear that they were in the running to make gains in the European Elections. If anything, the big surprise is that their gains were as limited as they were.

But there are a number of things to note about this. First of all, their success under Nick Griffin has been rooted in successfully presenting themselves as a non-racist and non-fascist party. Their deep fascist and Nazi links are apparent to anyone who does a bit of research but they have become adept at presenting themselves on the doorstep as something else.

In this respect they have been helped a lot by the relentless pace of 24-hour news. All the evidence suggests that an openly fascist party would continue to get nowhere in the UK. It may not seem much, but we should be consoled at least that the extremists will have to operate by stealth for the foreseeable future if they wish to continue to make progress.

Secondly, the party’s success is rooted in naked opportunism. Wherever there is a political vacuum, the BNP have rushed in. Burnley in 2003 is an excellent example of that, with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats failing to field candidates in 6 out of 15 wards. Their campaigns are rooted in their ability to exploit local issues and incorporate a narrative about immigration, victimhood, fear and resentment. Often these are based on the most outrageous lies - Richard Barnbrook for example has recently been caught making up three murders in Barking and Dagenham. But of course, by the time they get found out the damage has already been done.

Thirdly, they have yet to gain a sustainable foothold of power. Burnley, seen by some as a pariah council in 2003, is now controlled by the Liberal Democrats with a rump BNP group in fourth place. The BNP saw both their total votes and share of the vote fall this year compared to the London Assembly election last year, despite a much reduced turnout which should have been helpful to them. Their record in local government is lamentable. It would seem that for whatever reason people are voting for the party, for a substantial number of them once is enough.

Proportional representation has been criticised for helping get the BNP elected to the European Parliament. This is ridiculous: all proportional systems do is better reflect public opinion. A mature democracy must confront extremism, not brush it under the carpet. Furthermore, their rise throughout the past decade has been helped by the iniquities of the first past the post (FPTP) system. In Barking and Dagenham for example, they got more councillors elected than the Conservatives despite receiving fewer votes. There is no question that the uncompetitive nature of FPTP has been useful to them.

It is shocking that the BNP now has two out of the 72 UK MEPs but they will remain marginalised in Brussels. The real scandal however is the very real power they have been seizing for years in local government by exploiting the often-undemocratic nature of the FPTP system. If mainstream politicians have now woken up to the threat of the far-right, this is what they need to be concentrating upon.

Justin Fisher is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Magna Carta Institute at Brunel University. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The elections this Thursday are widely expected to be bad for Labour. And depending upon which poll you believe, they may not be brilliant for the Conservatives. But a familiar call will emerge nevertheless – that a loss of seats, particularly at local council level, will lead to a further decline in that party’s grassroots. This reality is, however, a bit more complex.

To be sure, local councillors are typically very active local party members, and election defeat will naturally lead to a scaling down of their own activity. However, councillors only make up a tiny proportion of local party memberships, so why does defeat matter so much? The answer is to draw an analogy with a football team. When a team is losing, the crowds that it attracts tend to fall.

Equally, when a team is winning, attendances tend to rise. The same is broadly true for local parties. Although party membership overall is in decline, election victory tends to slow decline, while defeat tends to accelerate it – especially when a candidate is well beaten. So, election results do matter for local parties because defeat in one election will tend to lower the level of human resources available to a party in the next one.

But do members really matter that much when it comes to campaigning? Again, the answer is not necessarily obvious. First, campaigning has certainly moved on from it consisting largely of doorstep canvassing and loudhailers attached to car roof racks.

A variety of modern campaign techniques - such a telephone canvassing and direct mail - have been growing in importance for some years now, such that since 2001, the major parties have been engaging in more modern campaigning than traditional efforts built on volunteer activities by members.

Modern techniques, which require fewer volunteers, are now integral to campaigns. And, techniques such as direct mail are actually more responsive to individual voters’ concerns. Built on huge databases, which combine demographic data with the results of telephone canvassing, parties are now able to respond quickly to the interests and concerns of voters.

And from a vantage point of pure electoral calculation, all these resources can easily be harnessed where they are needed most – in target seats. The same cannot always be said for members. The Conservatives, for example, tend to have their largest local memberships in strongly Conservative areas and the evidence for all parties is that members are often unwilling to campaign outside their own patch on a large scale.

Faced with these developments, it is tempting to argue that the loss of parties’ grassroots is disappointing, but little more than that. Again, however, the picture is more complex. Whilst voters do not reject modern campaign techniques, the evidence nevertheless is that they respond much better to traditional ones – voters value the “human touch”, and parties that combine well organised modern campaigns with a good dose of traditional face to face contact tend to be rewarded electorally.

So what are parties to do, given that voters seem to what want what parties are increasingly unable to deliver? Given that membership decline is an international trend that shows little sign of reversal, one solution may be to re-examine the concept of membership itself.

However easy parties may try to make it, nailing your colours to the mast and joining a party is a big decision, especially given that voters are increasingly volatile in their electoral behaviour. Better then for parties to ease up on the assumption that campaign workers are members and recruit supporters instead, who are happy to help out without having to sign on the dotted line. A more flexible approach to the grassroots then may be the best way for parties to deal with the fallout from electoral defeat.

- Soe Paing is Director of the Office of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, based in the U.S. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The arrest and the filing of criminal charges against Aung San Suu Kyi for alleged violation of house arrest rules under Section 22 of the 1975 State Protection Law or “Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts” indicate that the incumbent military regime in Burma is not interested in the offer of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party — National League for Democracy (NLD) — to join the elections scheduled for 2010 if certain conditions are met.

The NLD recently issued, what is known as the “Shwegondaing Declaration”, in which it was suggested that the Burmese generals (1) release all political prisoners, (2) review the constitution, and (3) establish a “genuine” (federal) union based on the principle of equality for all the ethnic nationalities… and the party would join the elections scheduled in 2010.

NLD Central Executive Committee Member U Win Tin said the action taken against Suu Kyi suggested that “the political future of the country is very bleak”.

In fact, the move by the Burmese generals is even worse than what U Win Tin would openly say. It means the generals are determined to go all out to marginalize the NLD so that the party will never become a real contender in national politics again. The generals have learned from the 1990 elections that even a hastily organized group of democrats like the NLD can overwhelmingly beat a strong, well-organized party backed by the military if the people are given the freedom of choice.

The generals do not want any intervention in their attempt to legitimize military rule through a constitution which was unilaterally drafted by the military through a carefully orchestrated national process.

The arrest and trial of Suu Kyi must be seen in that political context to understand why the generals are using the intrusion into the home of Suu Kyi by an uninvited American citizen, John Yettaw, as an excuse to charge her. It was a golden opportunity for the junta since her house arrest — termed as “unlawful” because it “not only violates international law but also national domestic laws” by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions — was about to expire on May 27.

The generals do care about international outrage over the handling of Suu Kyi, the Burmese icon of democracy. But, for them, facing international pressure is less of a threat than giving freedom to Suu Kyi — a leader that the people have long been waiting for to return.

– Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

Opinion polls predict a record low turnout in next month’s EU-wide European Parliament elections. The Strasbourg-based assembly was once regarded as a toothless talking shop, but that has long ceased to be true. Indeed there are many reasons for Europeans to cast a vote.

In doing so they can shape European policies on the financial and economic crisis and the environment, and help determine who runs the executive European Commission.

By abstaining, however, they may let in extremists and make it less likely that the world’s only directly elected legislature will exercise effectively its role of democratic control over EU officialdom and legislation.

That could widen a democratic deficit that is one of the concerns about the direction of the European Union.

European elections are often seen as a cost-free chance to cast a protest vote against national governments or boost single issue parties that fare poorly in national polls. But more is at stake.
Here are 10 other reasons to vote on June 4 or 7 (depending on where you live) for the world’s only directly elected transnational parliament:

1) The crisis. For the first time since direct elections to the European Parliament began in 1979, a single issue dominates all 27 member states: the financial and economic crisis. EU lawmakers share legislative power with member governments on crucial issues such as financial and business regulation.

Unlike national legislatures, the European Parliament is not divided along government and opposition lines, and it cannot initiate laws on its own. But it can amend or block proposals, which gives it the ability to influence the outcome of European legislation. The next parliament is sure to tackle proposals relating to the crisis. The left-right balance of the chamber will influence, for instance, how far the EU regulates hedge funds, private equity, derivatives or even executive pay.

2) Barroso’s future. Low-profile Portuguese conservative Jose Manuel Barroso looks set for a second term as president of the executive European Commission, which proposes all EU legislation and ensures that those laws are enforced. He is backed by the conservative European People’s Party, the largest bloc in the outgoing parliament, and some socialist governments.

Some believe Barroso has been too pliant to big member state governments, turning a blind eye to anti-competitive measures and state bail-outs to secure support for his re-election. Many see him as a weak leader of a weakened Commission.

However, Barroso’s reappointment does not solely depend on the will of EU leaders. He must be approved by parliament, which holds hearings with individual nominees for policy portfolios and must vote to endorse the full Commission. A centre-left majority could block Barroso. Parliament has never rejected a Commission president before, but the threat of censure forced Jacques Santer’s Commission to resign in 1999, and Barroso had to modify his line-up before winning approval in 2004. If the socialist group emerged as the biggest bloc, it could demand that a centre-left candidate be chosen instead.

3) Radicals. There is a danger that the parliament will become a dumping ground for single issue groups and fringe politicians. Radical leftists and rightists, such France’s New Anticapitalist Party, the anti-immigrant British National Party or Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang, are hoping to achieve a breakthrough, helped by mainstream voters’ apathy. A low turnout would also benefit highly mobilised Eurosceptics.

4) The outgoing parliament played a key role in shaping environmental legislation to tackle the threat of climate change and promote clean energy. The make-up of the next parliament will help determine how far and how fast Europe moves towards a low-carbon economy.

5) Enlargement. Conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have highlighted their joint opposition to Turkey’s EU membership bid. The EU legislature has no direct say in the negotiations but its reports on candidate countries influence the Commission and the applicants, and it has to assent to accession treaties.

6) The Lisbon Treaty. Irish voters will seal the fate of a major EU reform treaty in a second referendum likely in October after they rejected it last year. The text aims to give the enlarged bloc stronger leadership, a more effective foreign policy and a fairer decision-making system. A big vote for treaty opponents Libertas and Sinn Fein in the European Parliament election would dim the prospects of the reforms entering into force as planned in January, or at all.

7) Power. The Lisbon Treaty would extend the assembly’s power of co-decision with member states to almost all areas of EU legislation. Already, experts reckon more than half of national legislation is the transposition of laws decided at European level. Voters who ignore the European elections in the belief that the real power lies with their national parliaments are wrong.

Legitimacy. Critics often accuse EU institutions of being undemocratic, unelected or lacking legitimacy. The European Parliament is the main institution that exercises a degree of democratic control and scrutiny over the executive.

9) Idealism. The European Union is an unique experiment in transnational co-operation between former foes and remains a beacon for many countries beyond the union’s borders. For those who see a more united, integrated Europe as a better future, a big turnout is a must. For those who fear a European superstate, there are plenty of parties vying to curb Brussels’ powers.

10) Sleaze. The European Parliament has made strides in cleaning up abuses of travel and attendance allowances, unequal pay for members and nepotism that earned it a reputation as a gravy train, even if more remains to be done. As Britain’s parliamentary expenses scandal shows, sleaze is by no means an exclusive preserve of Strasbourg. If sleaze was an argument for staying home, many of Europe’s national chambers would be empty.

(editing by David Evans)