What would Curzon have done?
David Kilcullen, the influential counter-insurgency strategist, seeks inspiration in Curzon’s experience as Viceroy of India to assess what Pakistan must do to deal with the extremist threat — and how Nato can help drive the ‘steamroller’
Kilcullen gives some necessary context from history to the conflicts underway and theorises that even if the US/British prevail in Afghanistan it could all be undone by failure in Pakistan.
At the same time in The Times a piece on how at a time when the UK Armed Services require more not fewer helicopters and the world generally is not becoming a safer place the UK Government proposes to halve the helicopter fleet; plus other cuts are likely.
Part of the problem in Adam’s view is that the UK ‘defence experts’ seem to be preparing to fight the Cold War rather than the type of wars which seem likely to be more prevalent in the future. As always at the end of the day properly equipped ‘boots’ on the ground are what matter.
Seeking inspiration from the observations of Lord Curzon through a prism focusing on the supposed similarities between his day and today’s situation where confrontation is taking place against the Taliban in the same places as then, would be of limited value.
Since the extent of tactics and mobilization of support for the Taliban and similar Islamic movements world wide has now vastly increased – primarily by the West’s dependency on Middle East oil having provided a surge of petrodollars making financial and economic jihad so much easier to carry out – failing to understand the financial avenues and political use of these shari’a based funds hampers the ability to mount effective policies plans and strategies to counter this fast growing totalitarian threat. An excellent reference http://www.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=31374 gives an insight into shari’a financial manipulation to support terrorism under the guise, amongst other financial avenues, of charity funds.
Myself I was surprised by the Curzon reference, though Kilcullen may just have been seeking a peg to hang his own views on
The UK, for decades, is home to a number of terrorist organizations. The British have used these people as tools of their foreign policy for a long time.
And the worst of all, the British, through Pakistani mediators, tried their best to cut deal with these terrorists, not to train their guns on the UK.
It is no wonder, that the British have no real interest to see an end of terrorism, as long as they can manage to find way around London sub-way like attacks on their soil.