The phrase “phoney war” was coined in the period between Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, and its invasion of France nine months later. It referred to the fact that while the western European allies had declared war on Hitler, they declined to do any serious fighting. The term would hardly seem to fit the Nato offensive in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, where last month’s assault by some 15,000 US-led troops on the town of Marjah was the largest such operation since the Vietnam War.
Still, Marjah seemed less like a titanic showdown than a tactical exercise aimed at shaping perceptions of the war – both in Afghanistan and back home in the US. Lest this assessment sound a tad cynical, consider the words of the operation’s architect shortly before it began: “This is all a war of perceptions,” said Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan. “This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants. Part of what we’ve had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this.”