Britain Leaves At 13

From the BBC:
"The end of Bastion - and Britain's 13-year war in Afghanistan"

After 13 years, eight of them involving bloody fighting in Helmand, Britain's war in Afghanistan is finally over.  In a ceremony at the main British base at Camp Bastion, the union flag was lowered and the camp was handed over to the Afghans who will be left behind to look after their own security in what has been one of the hardest provinces to tame.  Bastion was once the largest British military base in the world - a sea of tents, shipping containers and barricades, plonked on the flat, empty, red Helmand desert like the first city on Mars. At its busiest, Bastion housed up to 14,000 troops. Its 2.2-mile (3.5km) runway was like any busy airport - at the height of the fighting it witnessed up to 600 aircraft movements a day. Its perimeter wall was more than 20 miles long. It had its own hospital and water bottling plant, as well as shops, canteens and gyms.  It was a military metropolis from which the British, and later the US Marine corps and Afghans too, directed the fight in Helmand - the hub from which UK forces re-supplied more than 100 smaller bases at the height of the war.  Those have now all gone, and the British presence in Bastion has been almost completely erased. Even Bastion's memorial wall, which bears the name of each of the 453 British military personnel killed in the conflict, has been removed. It will be rebuilt at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire - not just closer to home, but more secure. Helmand is still one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan.

So what might the British leave behind in Afghanistan after a presence of 13 years? What do they have to show for a war that has cost more than £20bn and hundreds of precious lives? The British military believe they will be leaving Helmand in better shape than when they arrived. Across the country, 6.7 million children now attend school, nearly half of them girls. That would have been unthinkable under the Taliban rule. Healthcare has improved; life expectancy is longer.

^ I wonder if the Afghani version of ISIS will emerge once all the combat troops from the other countries have left by the end of the year? I'm sure the Taliban will take over more territory. ^


http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29744972