ABSTRACT
Taken individually, the three narratives for the British experience in Afghanistan explored in this book demonstrate serious deficiencies in the crafting and maintenance of strategic communication. This work has shown that these narratives were not consistent over time and in each case suffered from almost total incompatibility when studied as a unitary whole from the start of military operations in 2001 to its cessation in 2014. Despite the existence of strong arguments (see Ledwidge 2011, 2013; Betz 2011) that British communication efforts in Afghanistan were inconsistent – the fact that ‘strategic communication’ protocols are now in place should be evidence enough that such a view prevailed in Whitehall as well as in scholarship – this consensus is not universal. Ringsmose and Børgesen (2011: 515), for example, have claimed that UK messaging on Afghanistan ‘has from the very beginning argued in a clear and consistent manner that the purpose of the mission is to protect the security interests of the UK’. The problem with their analysis is that they do not critically analyse UK communication efforts in their own right, but rather employ a comparative approach between NATO members, wherein the UK apparently performs better than some of its allies. The first and foremost contribution this work has made is to challenge such assumptions by undertaking an in-depth analysis of the UK’s track record on communicating the purpose of Afghanistan on its own merits. This work shows that each of the three narratives analysed contained their own internal inconsistencies that militated against unified and coherent exposition, resulting from the various domestically and internationally located pressures of statecraft, diplomacy and the uncertainties inherent in military conflict and state-building. The three policies were never compatible with one another: counter-narcotics efforts were inherently de-stabilising, effective stabilisation meant accommodating narcotics to a great extent, focusing on counter-terrorism implied a reduction in emphasis on stabilisation, and the link between narcotics and terrorist activities was never as undisputable as the early policy suggested. It is surely the case that what has been lacking in Britain’s presentation of its policies and strategies for Afghanistan has always ultimately been the ‘lack of a workable political objective’ and, from that, a dearth of ‘clarity about what we are “selling”’ (Betz 2011: 629; Ledwidge 2011: 256). This is a point endorsed by British SC doctrine in no uncertain terms: ‘[s]trategic communication will fail where there is an absence of policy and strategy, or it is not crafted integral to the strategy, or what is said and done do not align with the strategy’ (DCDC 2011: 1–4). Indeed, one may be forgiven for assuming that these words were written with Afghanistan in mind, for each of these shortcomings is evident in the empirical work that precedes this conclusion.
