The tide seems to have turned on Afghanistan recently. We were all so sure it was the just war, and we were all so sure of our intentions in going there. Iraq did nothing to us, and it turned out it wasn’t a threat after all, but Afghanistan’s rugged mountains sheltered the Taliban, who in turn sheltered Al Qaeda. At the same time, we had a very big stone with which to kill a second bird simultaneously: the Taliban were enough of a hindrance to Afghanistan’s people by themselves for it to be morally justifiable to take them out, regardless of who they sheltered. For such an obviously good war, there have recently been an awful lot of second thoughts about it. Asking the average person in the street, the answer you expect more and more is, “I don’t even know why we went in there in the first place.”

That answer seems wilfully ignorant. Anybody who has been paying the slightest bit of attention knows “why we went in there.” To be sure, the situation in Afghanistan has become rapidly more difficult, and coalition troops are facing some of the highest casualties of the conflict so far. In these times of economic difficulty, it is a tough task to persuade the voting public that such high casualties in so distant a land are ultimately for a good cause.

One particularly prevalent question being mooted these days is this: Afghanistan has never been conquered, not by the Russians in recent times, and not even by Alexander—who, lest we forget, was called “the Great” for a reason—so how can we be so arrogant as to think we will succeed where they failed? Perhaps the motive behind this question is well-placed. It is a fascinating historical fact that Afghanistan has never been tamed by invading armies, and it is the responsibility of all of us, politicians included, to learn from history. But it surely is not learning from history to conclude that just because Afghanistan has never been conquered, that it never until the end of human civilization shall be.

What is necessary is to analyse why past attempts have so ruinously failed. That is a difficult question, and must have a lot to do with the two obvious answers, namely, the terrain and the people. The Taliban and Al Qaeda hide among one of the most ruggedly mountainous regions in the world, but more importantly, they know their mountains well. It is one of the most astonishing facts of warfare that, no matter how much more well-equipped you are than your foe, if you don’t know the terrain, you are likely to be humiliated. The same thing, of course, happened in Vietnam, and this is the comparison drawn by those against the war to prove its ultimate futility.

The nature of the war in Afghanistan is different to previous wars there, however, and this difference is crucial. The coalition troops are fighting an ideology more than a people. It may be naive to say that all Afghans actually hate the Taliban and would fight them if they only dared. But it is equally wrong to say that the citizens of Afghanistan cannot be mobilized to defeat the Taliban—not militarily, but ideologically. Extremist groups all too often prey on people in dire need of food and resources—take, for instance, the Islamist Shabab movement, linked to al-Qaeda, who are bringing Somalians on side by taking advantage of the recent drought and lack of Western aid—and it is that theatre in which the bloodiest battle should be fought. The Taliban may know the mountains well, but they are not the only Afghans who do.

The conflict in Afghanistan should perhaps not be thought of as a war, but rather—and I say this at the risk of sounding like a politician—as the Afghanistan Project. The primary aim is still to defeat the Taliban and crush al-Qaeda. But the secondary and arguably more important aim is to prevent a future Taliban. This will undoubtedly require many years of effort, but it will be worth it—the result will be a genuinely tamed Afghanistan that can no longer play host to international terrorism.

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