Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 August 2021. © Richard Kemp

Only one month ago President Biden denied the Taliban would be able to take over Afghanistan after US withdrawal. With breathtaking naivety, he claimed their combat power was not even close to that of the Afghan military and the Kabul government was capable of holding the country. Since then the Taliban have seized huge swathes of territory and swept into 16 provincial capitals, with the Afghan security forces collapsing before them.

Taken by surprise, thousands of US troops have re-entered the country to enable American citizens to escape. On Thursday a humiliated US government was pleading for the Taliban to spare their embassy, evoking scenes from Saigon in 1975 when US forces helicoptered staff from the roof of the besieged embassy there. Revising only days-old estimates that Kabul might fall within three months, US intelligence officials are now — perhaps optimistically — giving it just 30 days.

This debacle is set to become an indelible stain on Biden’s presidency. Not only is America’s standing in the world profoundly diminished, Biden’s unconditional withdrawal has also undermined the entire credibility of NATO, including British forces, which had no choice but to follow the US out. Not least among the consequences will be the strengthening of jihadists everywhere, exactly what the 2001 intervention aimed to prevent.

Biden said in July that the future of Afghanistan would be in the hands of other countries in the region. That makes matters far worse. Pakistan created the Taliban and armed and funded the 20-year campaign against Western and Afghan forces that has taken it to the gates of Kabul. Reportedly Pakistan has been sending militias to fight Continue reading →

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 29 July 2021. © Richard Kemp

This week, Ronald S. Lauder, former US ambassador to Austria and currently president of the World Jewish Congress, sent an open letter to US President Joe Biden setting out his concerns about rising antisemitism. ‘Recently, American Jews have witnessed something we never thought we would see in this country,’ he wrote; ‘…a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke cannot walk down an American street without fear of violence. Jews have been attacked by pro-Palestinian mobs in Los Angeles, New York and other cities. Antisemitic incidents have more than doubled in the past year. Hate crimes against Jews in America are twice as high as crimes against any other religious group.’

In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors antisemitism and provides security for the Jewish community, reports that racist attacks against Jews in May this year ‘surpassed anything we have seen before’, with more antisemitic incidents than in any single month since records began in 1986. In London, a convoy of vehicles drove through Jewish areas brandishing Palestinian flags and screaming at passers-by to kill Jews and rape their daughters. According to the UK charity Campaign Against Antisemitism, recent examples of hostility include physical beatings and vandalism, chants and placards at rallies, social media abuse and threats to Jewish children at schools and universities.

Similar antisemitic attacks have been on the increase around the world from Buenos Aires to Brussels. In a speech this week Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said: ‘Antisemitism has reached a peak that has not been seen since World War II.’

This recent spike in aggression against Jews was fuelled by intensive antisemitic propaganda during the May 2021 Gaza conflict initiated by Iran-backed Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group that fired around 4,500 rockets, mortars and anti-tank missiles at Israel in 11 days. (For comparison, the average daily rate of fire was four times that Continue reading →

Article published in the July 2021 Newsletter of the Pen & Sword Club. © Richard Kemp

Indignation from Israeli and international media followed allegations that the Israel Defence Forces deliberately misled journalists during Operation Guardian of the Walls, the recent 11-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

The IDF was accused of posting an ambiguous tweet and sending text messages to journalists, interpreted as meaning Israeli forces had entered the Gaza Strip when in fact they had not, and Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, IDF international media spokesman, was alleged to have personally confirmed to journalists that a ground incursion was in progress.

Conricus denies he deliberately misled the media, claiming an honest mistake. The tweet, however, was enigmatically worded, saying the IDF was ‘attacking in the Gaza Strip’. Israeli tanks and artillery were indeed firing at Hamas targets inside Gaza, but from the Israeli side of the border. The IDF had massed forces along the fence-line to deceive Hamas that a ground offensive was imminent.

Hamas took the bait and sent dozens of fighters underground into the ‘Metro’, a vast tunnel network constructed since the last Gaza conflict in 2014, to outflank, ambush and abduct IDF troops. Once the fighters were inside, the Israel Air Force unleashed Operation Blue South, attacking the tunnels with 160 combat planes in just 40 minutes.

Leaving Conricus’s personal role aside, it appears possible the IDF did seek to manipulate the media into inadvertently supporting their deception operation with its tweet and text messages. Reading the media outrage, you would be forgiven for thinking the IDF in 2021 had invented this kind of manipulation. So often, IDF operations are viewed in isolation and their tactics painted as outside the norms of Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 5 May 2021. © Richard Kemp

What is going on in the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service? Just four days in, the trial of two veterans accused of murdering IRA serial killer Joe McCann collapsed for lack of evidence against them. Senior detectives responsible for the Historical Enquiries Team investigation warned prosecutors the case was going to fail. The former deputy director of the team wrote of the intention to prosecute: ‘In over 40 years of investigative experience, I can honestly say I have never encountered such an appalling injustice.’

Yet, relying on legally inadmissible military statements from half a century ago – ‘dressed up and with a new 2010 cover’ as the judge put it – the PPS carried on regardless in what can only be described as a parody of justice. The costs of their bungling have been high. For more than a decade of investigations, the two distinguished former soldiers – both in their seventies – have been put through hell, their lives on hold, their future liberty uncertain. Meanwhile Joe McCann’s family has been strung along, given false hope that their perceptions of injustice would be remedied in court. And the British taxpayer has footed a hefty bill – with trial costs alone estimated at £5 million.

Can the PPS with its army of highly trained lawyers, including 50 public prosecutors in Belfast alone, really have been so incompetent as to allow all of this, or is there a more sinister explanation? Convicted terrorist murderers have been let out of jail early and pardoned, and suspects who have evaded justice so far handed ‘comfort letters’ preventing their future trials. In this context, many politicians, lawyers and military officers have long believed that prosecutions of former members of the security forces who confronted these killers are politically motivated, intended to appease Sinn Fein. The outcome of this trial can only reinforce that view.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland, MI5 and the Garda, the Irish Continue reading →

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 2 May 2021. © Richard Kemp

US President Joe Biden’s unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by September this year has potentially grave and dangerous consequences far wider than that embattled country and is set to undermine the national security strategy he proudly unveiled only days before announcing his pull-out.

In 1982, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, head of the Royal Navy, told Margaret Thatcher that if Britain didn’t retake the Falkland Islands when Argentina invaded, ‘in another few months we shall be living in another country whose word counts for little’. He knew that failure to resist a dictator who seized sovereign territory by force would be a green light to such aggression everywhere. The same calculation underpinned President George H. W. Bush’s decision to unleash one of the most powerful armies in history following Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Far worse than failing to intervene is intervening to fail. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is just that. Biden did not order US forces there in 2001, but as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, he strongly supported it. Later he said: ‘History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course.’

It will not be history alone that judges Biden’s failure to stay the course now, but America’s allies, enemies and competitors around the world. His March 2021 National Security Strategic Guidance says:

‘Authoritarianism is on the global march, and we must join with likeminded allies and partners to revitalize democracy the world over. We will work alongside fellow democracies across the globe to deter and defend against aggression from hostile adversaries. We will stand with our allies and partners to combat new threats aimed Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2021. © Richard Kemp

Over 50 per cent of Afghanistan is now controlled or violently contested by the Taliban, down from about three quarters before US-led forces threw them out of power after 9/11. Despite the country’s army and police being strengthened by two decades of international training and investment, it is hard to see how the Islamist militants can be prevented from regaining their 2001 position now that Joe Biden has announced the withdrawal of all US forces by September this year.

The Trump administration planned to pull out all US forces four months earlier, subject to conditions including a significant reduction of violence, meaningful negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the breaking of Taliban relations with Al-Qaida and an undertaking not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a base to attack the West. Predictably, none have been met. But that will not affect Biden’s plan which is based not on conditions but an arbitrary date.

We should now be prepared for a civil war even bloodier than anything witnessed so far and the downfall of the democratic government in Kabul. As well as an incessant campaign of violence against women, girls’ schools and anyone transgressing strict sharia laws in the distant provinces, the Taliban have been waging a vicious purge in Kabul and other cities against leaders of the more progressive civil society that has emerged since 2001. Targets for assassination include politicians, judges, lawyers, human rights worker, teachers, university lecturers and journalists: anyone who might lead or influence opposition to a return to fundamentalist rule.

More than 450 British troops have been killed and thousands more maimed in Afghanistan since 2001. As well as fighting the Taliban and other insurgents, our soldiers have been heavily engaged in supporting the Afghan security forces. More than 70,000 of their number have been killed, including nearly 10,000 since the ‘agreement for bringing peace’ was signed between the US and the Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Express, 14 April 2021. © Richard Kemp

It is not clear whether President Putin’s mobilisation towards Ukraine was motivated by a desire to warn President Biden against sanctions, to frighten the EU from backing them, rally flagging support at home in the face of dire economic conditions, or all three.

Whatever his rationale, it could lead to a conflict he didn’t intend.

Biden cannot afford to show anything other than strength towards Russia at this stage of his leadership, especially given his frequent suggestions of Trump-Russia collusion.

US sanctions that Putin hoped to deter look like they’re on the way. The EU – usually to be relied on to vacillate and buckle in the face of pressure – has shown uncharacteristic strength in its support for the Ukraine under Russian threats, backed by NATO.

Equally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stood more firmly than Putin expected.

One thing is clear: having decided to threaten Ukraine, Putin cannot show the weakness that would be exploited by his rivals were he to back down. He has to do something aggressive rather than just pretend he was conducting military manoeuvres.

That would be immensely damaging at home. He will not want to order a major invasion which would have much wider and potentially catastrophic consequences for Russia.

There are various tactical factors, including weather and a current lack of some necessary military assets on the ground.

More likely would be infiltration by deniable forces, such as the ‘little green men’ that took over the Crimea in 2014 or peacekeeping troops to protect the Russian speakers in Donbas that never get around to leaving.

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 10 April 2021. © Richard Kemp

In March, US President Joe Biden issued his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy to parliament. Both leaders expressed concern over the increasing challenges in the grey zone and promised measures to respond more effectively.

The grey zone is the space between peace and war involving coercive actions that fall outside normal geopolitical competition between states but do not reach the level of armed conflict. Actions in the grey zone are conducted by states often using proxies including terrorists, and also by terrorist organizations in their own right. Grey zone actions are aggressive and often ambiguous, deniable and opaque. They are intended to damage, coerce or influence, to destabilise target states or undermine the international status quo. They usually seek to avoid a significant military response, though are often designed to intimidate and deter a target state by threatening further escalation.

Grey zone actions are not new and have long been the prevalent form of conflict across the world. But as America and Britain both recognise, globalisation and technology are increasing the frequency and efficacy of such activities, and the speed at which they unfold. More actors are becoming involved, using increasingly powerful means of ‘grey warfare’, including cyber, space, internet, social media, digital propaganda and drones.

Grey zone techniques can include terrorist attacks, sabotage, assassination, blackmail, hostage-taking, espionage, subversion (such as funding and manipulation of political groups in a target country), cyber attacks, political warfare including lawfare, disinformation, propaganda, electoral influence and economic coercion. They sometimes involve military intimidation and conventional and unconventional military operations. Continue reading →