The British army doesn’t want you to know what it did in Afghanistan --- The Defense Ministry's own report describes flaws in its Afghanistan operation. Now they want to keep it quiet -- Three years ago, the Defense Ministry commissioned a young officer to write a book about British military operations in Helmand Province, the volatile region in Afghanistan that has claimed hundreds of British casualties. -- This week, the book’s publishers handed out fliers instead of hardbacks at book launches as the ministry made a last-ditch effort to keep its own history from going to press. -- The author, former reserve Captain Mike Martin, 31, was forced to resign from the army to publish an account that offers unsparing criticism of the intelligence flaws and institutional failures he found in the Helmand operations. --The military fought publication of “An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict” on the grounds that it includes classified materials, such as cables previously published by WikiLeaks. -- Nonsense, one retired army colonel says. -- “I read every word of every draft of each chapter,” said Alexander Alderson, who as head of counterinsurgency in Helmand was Martin’s boss in Afghanistan. -- “I was very conscious of the Official Secrets Act,” he said. “I’m satisfied, as someone who holds the very highest security clearance, that there’s absolutely nothing in what he’s saying that transgresses the Official Secrets Act.” -- “I don’t think embarrassment and institutional failure is covered by it,” he added. -- The book highlights devastating flaws in the army’s approach in Helmand. Its ignorance of the province’s language, culture and history stymied the mission and led to tribal leaders — “the greatest natural politicians I’ve ever come across,” Martin said — manipulating coalition forces to settle their own scores. -- “Our biggest failure was a failure to understand,” he said at a promotional event for the book Wednesday at London’s Royal United Services Institute. -- Western forces tend to view Afghanistan’s recent history as a series of distinct conflicts — the Soviet war, civil war, Taliban rule — whereas locals in Helmand see those decades as a single ongoing battle over land, water and other resources. -- Coalition forces paid dearly for failing to appreciate that history. More than 400 of Britain’s 448 casualties in Afghanistan died in Helmand. - More, GlobalPost. at: http://www.salon.com/2014/04/12/the_british_army_doesnt_want_you_to_know_what_it_did_in_afghanistan_partner/