12. Understanding the War in Afghanistan

In this episode, we hear from Dr Mike Martin about his work in Afghanistan and his research into the local experience of the conflict there. Mike spent time in Afghanistan as a Political Officer in the British Army, and as a Pashto speaker, he was brilliantly placed to understand the wider struggle going on in Afghanistan, as well as evaluate Britain's military strategy in the conflict.

Mike's first book, An Intimate War (2014), was based on numerous interviews with Helmandis caught up in the conflict. It shows us that Britain, and Western allies in general, grossly misunderstood the war that they were engaged in. Rather than a binary conflict between two sides (Western democracy vs the Taliban, which is how the west framed the conflict), war had been waging for decades previously and was being fought, not alone these ideological divides, but because of local struggles and personal vendettas. By overlooking this context, western military forces exacerbated the situation and employed strategies that were doomed to fail from the outset. 

This episode thus reminds us of how important it is to understand the war that is being fought.