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By James Cowan, CEO of The HALO Trust.
Last week, I went back to Helmand. It’s a place I’ve been to before: in 2009 I commanded British forces there, at a time of considerable violence. 64 of my soldiers were killed and several hundred wounded. Nobody knows how many Afghans died in that timeframe, but it will run into the thousands.
For most British soldiers the Helmand campaign is the cause of mixed emotions. We went there to defend the Afghan people and not to kill, and yet the killing was prolific. I am proud of the fact that during our time a corner was turned, and the casualties began to reduce to a point where peace was possible.
When I returned from Helmand I was asked by David Cameron to join his first National Security Council meeting, at which a decision would be made to stay or leave Helmand. Rory Stewart, Adam Holloway and Paddy Ashdown argued that we should leave. Another general, Graeme Lamb and I argued that we should hold our nerve. In the event Cameron chose to compromise and set 2014 as a departure date. The date was set, but as the Taliban joked, we had the clocks, they had the time.
For the last ten years I have run the landmine clearance charity, The HALO Trust. HALO’s first and largest programme is in Afghanistan. It is a strange experience going back to a place that I knew so well.
On Tuesday, we landed by plane in Lashkar Gah and drove through Babaji to Chah-e Anjir. I was accompanied by a supporter of HALO who had also fought in the campaign. We found the exact spot where his platoon command group had been struck by an RPG, killing two soldiers and wounding more. Few, if any, British veterans of the war have been back to Helmand, let alone to a place freighted with such emotion.
From there we drove to Gereshk and on to Sangin, where half of the soldiers on my tour were killed in some of the most intense fighting. It was strange to stop beside the clear waters of the Helmand river and see HALO’s deminers going about their life saving work in complete peace. From Sangin we continued North and arrived at the Kajaki Dam at midday.
In 2008, British forces delivered another turbine to the dam in a carefully planned operation. The operation was a success in a limited sense, but the turbine never worked and sat there rusting for many years. That is until last year, when HALO cleared the IEDs, allowing the construction of powerlines from the dam to Kandahar. A new turbine hall has been built, and the power is at long last flowing.
Soldiers are taught never to plan for the last war. The Afghan campaign isn’t the last war. It isn’t even the war before the last war. With each new week another international crisis delivers a fresh sugar rush to governments increasingly habituated to violence. With each twist and turn of the news, who can care about Ukraine? who can care about Gaza? about Syria? about Sudan? or for that matter Afghanistan?
The day I visited Kajaki was the same day that the NATO allies met to agree defence spending targets. It was the day after the negotiation by President Trump of a delicate ceasefire between Iran and Israel. While NATO has agreed new targets, at the same time aid budgets are being cut with potentially dangerous consequences for HALO and our life-saving work.
As a former soldier, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I welcome responsible resourcing of our armed forces. But military spending is not of itself enough. An approach based only on military crisis response will be both costly and ineffective. From the Sahel, Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan to Myanmar, and beyond, our world has slid into an omni-crisis in which military power cannot be the only answer.
My charity employs 10,000 people around the world. 1,000 of these deminers work in Afghanistan. The British government gives £2 million of funding a year for HALO’s work in Afghanistan. For this, some four million Afghans can farm their land in safety. £2 million a year might seem a lot of money to some. But consider this: the cost of housing migrants (many of whom are Afghans) in British hotels was £8 million a day in 2023.
I remain in touch with veterans of the Helmand campaign, a great many of whom question the very reason for their sacrifice. They struggle to understand why after such intense expenditure of blood and treasure we might now abandon the Afghans by cutting overseas aid. Out of a clear blue sky on 9/11, the world was forced to sit up and take notice of Afghanistan. There can be no excuse for making the same mistake twice.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Halo Trust
James Cowan was a soldier. He joined The Black Watch from Oxford in 1986, serving in Berlin, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Hong Kong. He helped plan the Kosovo operation in 1999, and he commanded in Iraq in 2004 and 2006. He planned the military Olympic security operation of 2012. In 2015 he become HALO’s CEO.
