Brits lower Union flag in Afghanistan after 13 years

UK Armed Forces have ended combat operations in Helmand Province, paving the way for the final transfer of security to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), defense officials said. Photo / AP

Mission that was to end after 24 months ‘without a shot fired in anger’ over at last.

Please don't call it our Dien Bien Phu," said Lieutenant Colonel Simon Winkworth, of Britain's Royal Engineers, as we gazed out on to a desolate expanse of scrub and sand on which he was going to build Camp Bastion.

There were reasons for optimism on that February day, eight years ago, that Britain's Helmand force would not suffer the same fate as the French in Vietnam when a prolonged siege of that base effectively brought their occupation of Vietnam to an end.

The British would not underestimate the enemy as the French had done, we were assured. And John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, stated, when the mission was announced by Tony Blair's Government, that it would last no more than two years and end, he hoped, "without a shot being fired" in anger.

Yesterday, the Union flag was lowered for the last time in Camp Bastion, bringing an end to Britain's Afghan war after 13 years, three weeks and five days.

Although the invasion following 9/11 was in 2001, for Britain the war really started in 2006.

Until then, five members of the forces had been killed in total, three from suicide, accidental firearms discharge and a homicide respectively.

The death toll today is 453; meanwhile about eight million rounds had been fired in combat; and the financial cost of the mission is more than 40 billion ($81.8 billion).

The United States has supplanted Britain as the main combat force in Helmand over the past few years, and the main handover ceremony to the Afghan army's 215 corps was very much an American and Afghan affair.

It was held at Camp Leatherneck, the United States camp adjoining Bastion; the speech by Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, commander of Regional Command South West, made only a passing reference to the British contribution in the conflict.

It focused instead on those of the Afghan forces and the US Marines.

The senior British officer present, Brigadier Rob Thompson, spoke of the allies helping "Afghanistan get itself back on its feet" and the creation of the "opportunity now for the Afghan leadership to get into the fast lane and move ahead".

As tumbleweed blows through Bastion, and the last of the kit is packed away, we will have to wait and see whether the West, facing a new conflict in Iraq and Syria, keeps its promises to Afghanistan.

- Independent