The cheaper man

In 1886 Rudyard Kipling stressed the cultural and economic aspects of clashes between West and East as he penned his notably apt poem, "Arithmetic On The Frontier".

A couple of stanzas from this relevant ode convey his opinions:

A scrimmage in a Border Station-
A canter down some dark defile-
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.

He understood the futility of attempting to bring the attributes of educated British troops into play against financially poorer tribal Afghani fighters.

The same problems exist today with Western technology failing to be superior to basic improvisational skills of a country which has been steeped in conflict since around 500BC.

An aspect of war's evolution is that as firepower becomes more technically progressive, the intrinsic resourcefulness of those being targeted becomes more marked.

It's worth taking an historical snapshot of a region which is dominated by small tribal loyalties rather than fervent nationalism.

The written recorded background to the land presently constituting Afghanistan can be traced back to around 500 BCE when the area was under the First Persian Empire.

A high degree of urbanised culture existed in the region since between three thousand and two thousand BC, so some form of regular society was the case.

Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army arrived at what is now Afghanistan in 330 BCE after conquering Persia.

The name "Afghan" was used historically to refer to a member of the ethnic Pashtun community, and the suffix "stan" means "place of" in Persian, hence the regional name "Afghanistan".

Since then, many empires have risen from that country which has been a strategically important location throughout history. Sitting on many trade and migration routes, Afghanistan was a gateway to India and a key section of the ancient Silk Road which provided the trade route between China and the Mediterranean.

Britain became involved closely in Afghan policy, and this is the time during which the legendary Rudyard Kipling wrote his accounts of the British Army's deployment.

In 1838, the British marched into Afghanistan, arrested the country's ruler, sent him into exile in India, and replaced him with the previous one. A number of sequential Anglo-Afghan wars followed as did Britain's standard divide and rule policy which would lead to strained relations, especially with the later new state of Pakistan.

In 1919 after the Third Anglo-Afghan War and the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi, King Amanullah Khan declared Afghanistan a sovereign and fully independent state.

He moved to end his country's traditional isolation by establishing diplomatic relations with the international community, and introduced several reforms intended to modernise his nation, making elementary education compulsory and abolishing slavery.

The governance of Afghanistan has always been anything but honest or reliable. According to Transparency International, Afghanistan remains in the top most corrupt countries list.

A January 2010 report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that bribery consumed an amount equal to 23% of the GDP of the nation. A number of government ministries are believed to be rife with corruption.

Afghanistan became a member of the United Nations in 1946. It enjoys cordial relations with a number of NATO and allied nations, particularly the United States, Canada, United Kingdom,

Germany, Australia, and Turkey. Today, a number of NATO member states deploy troops in Afghanistan to train the Afghan National Security Forces – an attempt to create

more expensively educated forces, more competent in the eyes of Westerners.

Yet as Kipling goes on to pen,

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares-shoot straight who can-
The odds are on the cheaper man.

Today's military thinking does not reject using the latest in technology to wage war. Rather it emphasises that whatever weapons are used should be appropriate to the task at hand. It requires commanders to define an objective accurately, then achieve it by the most effective means.

This means getting the best bang for the buck. But money also can work in favour of the most impoverished opponent:

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap-alas! as we are dear.

Modern technology can achieve accurate battle supremacy but also with the extremely high risk of collateral non-combatant deaths, particularly during drone strikes. Some populist criticism of operations in Afghanistan demands increasingly superior weaponry, overlooking the need for a commensurately high level of care in employing any high-technology battle skill.

There are also the countering capabilities of guerrilla-style fighters who see themselves as the repellers of invading powers, and who will make use of improvised weapons such as explosive devices and all manner of booby traps to retaliate against well-equipped troops.

One aspect in the placing of booby traps is in exploiting natural human behaviours such as habit, self-preservation, curiosity or acquisitiveness. A common trick is to provide victims with a simple solution to a problem, for example, leaving only one door open in an otherwise secure building, thereby luring victims straight toward the firing mechanism.

An example that exploits an instinct for self-preservation was used in the Vietnam War. Spikes known as Punji sticks were hidden in grassy areas. When fired upon, soldiers instinctively sought to take cover by throwing themselves down on the ground, impaling themselves on these spikes.

It is a feature of modern warfare, particularly from the Vietnam campaign onwards, that the marked rise of skilled, opportunistic, low cost resistance forces who face the latest in modern weapon technology has bloomed. The emphasis is on Kipling's astute proposition that no matter how much more modern and better educated one side of a warring force may be, the odds are definitely on the side of 'The Cheaper Man'.