The British defense ministry has been accused of trying to block the publication of a book on the lessons learned during the Afghanistan campaign, because the conclusions reached by the author would be too critical.
Britain's war study in Helmand was commissioned by an Army official and was to be published yesterday, but ministry officials would intervene with the justification for protecting national secrets.
The author, Dr. Mike Martin, resigned as captain in the Territorial Army, and criticized the defense ministry for being more interested in protecting its reputation than learning the lessons of a campaign killed 448 British soldiers.
The author told The Times: "I was forced to resign. I had been employed as a constructive critic and I firmly believe that the army needs reform."
The book would portray a campaign studded with British and American ingenuities, where the commanders failed to grasp the tribal dynamics of the conflict and in which, too often, they themselves involuntarily found themselves co-opted in disputes.
"This means that we have often made things worse, rather than improving them: this was the consequence of the manipulation of our ignorance by the population".
The author spent six years in Helmand acquiring the ability to speak Pashto fluently, the local language.
The defense ministry wrote to Dr. Martin last month saying that An Intimate War - An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict 1978-2012 could not be published.
The ministry would have challenged the presence of the secret American cables (already made public by Wikileaks) and "other classified material".
The author replied by denying the presence of classified material that had not already been made public.
The managing director of the publishing house, Michael Dwyer, said that the MoD had the manuscript from 14 months and that the company will go ahead with the publication.
Luckily that in Italy certain things could never happen.
In reading what we publish on average, love and harmony seem to be more widespread in our area of competence than when Afghanistan was half a pilgrimage for thousands of hippies.
Andrea Cucco
(photo: MoD UK)
