British Public Support for Role in Afghanistan has Grown

On a weekend when Britain was reeling from the deaths of eight of its soldiers in Afghanistan during the course of only 24 hours, an opinion poll amongst the British public has shown growing support for their country's presence in the Afghan conflict.

When the pollsters ICM last asked the British people their opinion on their country's involvement in the fight against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, the majority of those polled were firmly against any such involvement, by a considerable margin of 53% to 31%. That was in 2006. Now, with British soldiers continuing to lose their lives and politicians arguing amongst themselves over the case being made for Britain's role in Central Asia and the resources that the government is allocating to that role, arguments in which senior officers in the British army are increasingly involved, you could be forgiven for thinking that the majority opposing the fight in Afghanistan would have increased. But that has not proved to be the case. In a new poll conducted by ICM, commissioned by the Guardian newspaper and the BBC Newsnight program, the British public are seemingly putting any reservations about the conflict to one side and supporting its longer term objectives in ever greater numbers. A majority of the people polled did still oppose their country's role in the NATO led operation but now it is by a much, much narrower margin of 47% to 46%. With 184 British military personnel having now lost their lives in Afghanistan, last week's deaths took that number past the 179 who have been killed in Iraq, opposition politicians have not been slow to voice their opinions. Conservative Party Deputy Chairman John Maples was one of those who spoke on the matter:

Increasingly, people are starting to ask whether this war is winnable and whether our military objectives are sensible given the number of troops and the amount of equipment we are prepared to commit

According to the Guardian further criticism came from former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, a candidate last year for the post of the UN special representative in Afghanistan, who said:

The army were persuaded, for political reasons, to follow a Beau Geste strategy – putting our people out in forward forts largely because the politicians were persuaded by [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai that this was where his supporters and family lived. It led to a military error of major proportions. The army's job in a war is to find and kill the enemy

Add to those voices, that of an unnamed Senior British Army officer who was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying:

It is impossible to make sensible policy if you don't have proper political leadership. What we are saying to the Government is that it must resource this war properly, and start sounding as if ministers-believe in it. If they do not, then why should our chaps at the sharp end be taking the losses and sending mates home in body bags?

All of which would seem to help undermine the public's faith in the mission their families and friends who serve in the military are being asked to undertake. But, personal doubts aside, many people are most likely conscious of the psychological effect it can have on those risking their lives thousands of miles away from home when it appears that they do not have unqualified support for what they are doing. The same could be said for the Iraq conflict but from the very start of that mission British opinion was more greatly opposed and less likely to soften. A fact that the British armed forces have probably long come to accept.