Afghanistan and Remembrance

Strong feelings were expressed, and questions asked, at Remembrance this year. I was at St Paul’s Bledlow Ridge, a lovingly looked after village church which is (wonderfully) kept open in the day. There’s a John Piper West window which some see as a vision of heaven. Some people present knew well the village names on the war memorial, and it was good to have a crowd there to keep faith with the dead of the last century’s wars, and show their gratitude for the basics we all easily take for granted, as well as express our pride in the dedication and professionalism of our armed services today.

This year, however, with news reports of a British soldier killed yesterday in Afghanistan, and seven others in the past week, people were asking questions. Remembrance felt very much more immediate than has often been the case in previous years. The people of Wooton Basset have evolved a mark of remembrance and respect, almost weekly of late, to dead service personnel as their bodies are repatriated. Millions of ordinary people are united in their respect and admiration for those who serve in our forces, putting their lives at risk daily for the rest of us.

Everyone this morning very much expressed this admiration, and wanted to show solidarity with our troops and their families in the UK. However, people are seriously uncertain as to the aims of the current exercise. It’s not that they doubt the war is winnable, because nobody seems to know what “winning” would amount to. Many who are entirely supportive of our service personnel feel they owe it to those who are risking their lives daily for us to ask our politicians hard questions the troops can’t.

On a micro- scale our forces are doing what they are being asked to do, whatever the cost. However, the bigger macro aim is unclear, and nobody is hearing a clear or convincing answer to the question of what our macro-aims might be from the politicians who put our troops in danger in the first place. Simply asserting it’s all somehow vaguely necessary, without explaining what and why, is not enough. Those making big sacrifices, along with the rest of us, deserve better. Perhaps greater clarity is unachievable for as long as the Americans don’t know what they’re trying to achieve there either.

It was interesting to be asked, as someone who has studied Victorian history, about our previous three wars in Afghanistan, and what might be learnt from them.

1839-42 (First Afghan War)
This proved that there is no such country as Afghanistan, just a ragbag of local loyalties and warlords. Therefore any attempt to turn it into a conventional buffer state between the Indian empire and Russia did nothing but stimulate Russian interest in the region, and inaugurate a new phase of what came to be known as the “Great Game.” The war proved there’s no such “nation” as Afghanistan except in the vaguest notional terms, and it was an easier place to get into than out of.

1878-1880 (Second Afghan War)
This was the war in which literary fans may recall Sherlock Holmes’ chum Dr Watson served. It demonstrated clearly the utter hostility of the terrain, the limited usefulness of modern arms technology, and the utter impossilibility of imposing coherent government on it, along with the lack of any real British interest in the place.

The British concluded that as long as it was that hostile to Western culture and mores it would be equally hostile to the Russians. The way the treaty of Gandamak broke down, showing itself unnecessary as well as unenforceable, showed the perils of backing any one local leader too closely. Eventually, the British withdrew their resident from Kabul. There was nothing to be gained by interference in the complex internal dynamics of the place, for Britain or Russia.

1919 (Third Afghan War)
This was the shortest Afghan war yet, and yielded only one major additional conclusion of value. What was learnt was that in any operations in Afghanistan ground communications were unnecessarily hazardous. The RAF should therefore be the lead service in any future operations that might need to be carried out in the mountains.

You might think that a flood of ground troops (what some call a surge) could somehow sort everything and transform the place into something other than it has consistently proved to be, in military terms, over the past 170 years. I’m not sure the Russians would agree with you there, after their experiences on the ground in the late eighties. Of course in the eighties the West was arming and resourcing the local mujahideen, but it’s hard to think that was the only reason the Russian occupation failed.

So, it’s time for the politicians who started this war to tell us, and especially the troops whose lives they are risking daily, where and how they think it should end. Osama and chums legged it to Pakistan years ago now, and most money and resource for terrorism comes from Pakistan and Saudi. So what are doing in Afghanistan, and how are going to know when we’ve done it? We’re all ears, and very much hoping the current ceremonies at Wooton Basset will not become a permanent fixture of our national life...

Hazlemere: Remembering, Learning

Remembrance this year helping with a village war memorial service in Stewkley, orgainsed deftly by the very lively village Royal British Legion, ably led by Dusty Saunders. On the day itself, I was with children at Hazlemere CE Combined School, where years 5 and 6 put on a remarkable Remembrance community service, with guests including local councillors and members of the RAF, as well as RBL.

What really shone through was the depth of thinking and reflection behind the poems, songs and presentation. Children had written their own wartime “letters home”, and I had to check afterwards they hadn’t copied from originals! As well as a great all-age community event, the whole morning showed me the great value of “whole school” working. I know it demands amazing amounts of hard work and co-ordination from staff, but I could see how memorable and moving this all was for the pupils. Congratulations to Nick Waldron (Head) and especially Andrew Sykes and colleagues.

In passing, I also noticed some really engaging story boxes in year 4 (like storyboards but 3D). I was a numeracy governor at the time the numeracy hour came in, and I noticed how consistent working with number lines is producing a whole new quality of work in Maths, in this instance in year 4 (with Mr Rademacher). In the old days people just thought if you were good at notation you understood Maths (why? It’s like saying if you’re good at Crosswords you understand literature). Using number lines over extended periods really builds childrens’ feeling for, and understanding of number in itself. Here’s a subtraction exercise — I’ve blanked the name, but look at the way she’s really getting engaged with numbers, breaking them down, playing with the maths of it, and enjoying herself. This would never have happened in the bad old days, when maths was simply treated as voodoo for clever kids.

I may have disappeared down a slightly anoraky hole! But it’s wonderful to see children enjoying learning together in a great school with their friends. Hazlemere’s a real gem. It isn’t a small school, but somehow it feels like one when you’re there. It’s something about the good relationships, and the ways people treat each other.

As with other Church of England schools in the Thames Valley, it is our privilege to be trusted by many Muslim parents here with their children’s schooling. They don’t, of course, expect technical Quranic learning, just a broad and balanced RE syllabus that builds understanding of all religions. One Muslim parent told me how they appreciated their children to be somewhere God’s name was loved and honoured, so that their Muslim faith is simply respected, shared and nurtured as a way of life, rather than patronised or treated as an exotic hobby.

I asked, in Guardianspeak, “had they ever felt their children were being indoctrinated, narrowed or ghettoised by the experience of being in a faith school?” The parent just fell about laughing.

Faith speaks to Faith. That’s how you build understanding. That’s how schools help build community; and that’s where real hope lies. My Muslim parent did not want compulsory secularism shoved down their child’s throat as the only way, by people who won’t take responsiblity for doing this, and are sniggering at you behind their hands for believing anything more substantial than their own vapid secularism. It was quite an impassioned encounter, and made me realise how different things look in most of this country’s Church schools to how they are often portrayed by Metropolitan élite journalists, projecting their own fears and fantasies from the London experience...

War to end War?

The 90th anniversary of the Armistice has triggered interesting historical reflection about the First World War. Perhaps the time is coming when our perceptions of it can become more historical. Military Historians are probing the inadequacies of what you might call the Blackadder view. Nowadays they talk about a “learning curve” on the Western Front, which the British army negotiated painfully and sometimes haltingly, but neverthless successfully.

Confronted with the horror of the war, of course people said “never again” and talked of it as a war to end war. Given the way in which Germany collapsed, and the way things were left after Versailles, we can easily see now that the peace terms contained the seeds of the next war; so the real learning curve is about exit strategies and how you leave things. The Clemenceau desire for punishment and revenge, however understandable, has to be curbed, in a way it wasn’t in 1919.

I wonder wehther a generation raised on computer games will have a greater or a lesser capacity to feel for the human dimension of war? We are more squeamish than our great grandparents, but there’s a danger everything becomes a computer game for us. With the Big Snit in mind, I was interested to come across a Bigger Snit, pictured by Vincent Chai at the University of Hertfordshire — a dead cert war to end wars, cobbled together from 21st century fears, fantasies and images:

Remembrance, progress and hope

Remembrance this year included dedicating a new school war memorial at Wargrave Piggott School, and a village service at Worminghall. Lists of names make the point that wars involve particular human beings, not just walk-on parts in war movies or computer games. With a small amount of imagination you can spot the family connections, even in small village communities.
Here are some postwar musings of Woodbine Willie, about winning the peace:

Trying to cure Europe of its present miseries by mere information and intellectual education is like trying to cure a man suffering from peritonitis by giving him a new pair of pyjamas. The only hope is in something that goes deeper than reason, and purges and purifies the underworld of man’s irrational self. The primitive passion must be opposed by, and overcome by, a purer passion of greater power — a passion for God and his humanity, which is true religion...
...It is easy to get out of trouble by sweeping generalisations which enable you to take sides, and shift the blame to someone else. It is easy to say that the workers are work-shy, and the employers greedy, and to turn the problem into a battle. It is always easy to get out of thinking and praying by fighting, always easy, and always useless and mean. But with that sort of nonsense Christianity can have nothing to do.