The cheaper man

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.