Article for Independent 19 July 2007

The war in Afghanistan is one we have to fight and must win.

First, because failure or withdrawal would hugely increase the probability that Pakistan would fall. Would this certainly result in Jihadi hands on a nuclear bomb? Maybe not. But do we want to take the risk?

Secondly, because Al Qaeda would be able to expand from a small corner of northern Pakistan where they are under pressure, to operate from the whole of southern Afghanistan, where they would be under none. And we don’t need to look in the crystal ball to know what they would do with it. A brief study of the recent history books will do. 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid and Bali bombs and the seven transatlantic airliners which Al Qaeda inspired terrorists planned to bring down in a single day, should tell us clearly enough. If Al Qaeda is under less pressure, we in the West are under more danger – it’s as simple as that. Leaving Afghanistan or losing there would not, as some claim make us more safe. It would make us much less so.

Thirdly, leaving or losing in Afghanistan would mean a deadly and probably mortal blow to NATO. The alliance on which we depend for our defence is defeated by a collection of terrorists in the mountains, it would lose all credibility in the world and almost certainly the confidence of Washington at the same time.

And. perhaps most important of all, defeat or withdrawal from Afghanistan would be mortal blow to those of our Muslim friends who are fighting to defeat medievalism, darkness and ignorance in a struggle to win back their great religion for the true values of tolerance, understanding and moderation which are just as much apart of Islam’s teaching, as they are those of Christianity.

So winning in Afghanistan is really important – to the people of Afghanistan, to the stability of the world’s most instable region, to the fight to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to us.

The problem is, that we are not winning.

The reasons for this are many and go much deeper than the wrong equipment and lack of helicopters. Indeed our concentration on “giving our lads the right kit” is in danger of distracting us from the real issue, which is having enough “boots on the ground” to do the job and the right strategy to ensure that tactical military victories no longer get lost in strategic political defeat, because of division amongst the internationals and the lack of a properly integrated plan.

We in the west all think that Afghanistan is where we happen to be fighting. The British think its Helmand, the Canadians think it’s Kandahar, the Dutch think it’s Uruzgan, the Germans in Badakshan province and the US, until recently has thought it’s bombing from 15000. One of the cardinal rules of success in these kind of operations is unity of voice and action by the international interveners – and this rule we have, with willful determination, broken for eight years and ignore still. And far too many of our young men are paying with their lives because of this.

We love to criticize President Karzai, but the chief fault lies with us, not him. If we will not get our act together, how can we expect him to?

When I was asked if I would go to Afghanistan to try to put this right in 2007, I concluded that, if we were to have any chance of pulling things round, we would need a substantial change of policy, an ability to work to a single integrated country-wide plan and a lot of luck. And even then it would be touch and go. Since then, the dynamic has continued to move against us at an accelerating pace. Undeniable progress has been made in some areas, but this is more than outweighed by the decline in others. There is still clear and overwhelming support amongst Afghans for the international operation, but this is now beginning to drop and as we know from elsewhere (not least Northern Ireland), once you start losing public support, it is very difficult to win it back. The area of Taliban direct and indirect control is widening; insecurity in many areas is increasing; the coalition’s room for manoeuvre is narrowing; there is far too much squabbling amongst the allies.

We now have, I hope the ingredient to start turning this round. We have a Rolls Royce set of military commanders in Afghanistan, including our own General David Richards. And we have now, finally, adopted the right strategy – protecting the people, rather than chasing the enemy. And we will shortly have enough troops to begin to do the job properly. These are the ingredients which should enable us to begin to change the battlefield balance in our favour. But soldiers alone cannot win this war. If we win on the battlefield and lose on the political front, then we will continue to lose.

We have to stop wasting our soldiers’ tactical victories in strategic defeats at the political level. Far too many lives – Afghan and Western – have been wasted because the leaders of the international community in Afghanistan cannot or will not get their act together.

879

Article for Western Morning News 27 Jan 2007

The war in Afghanistan is one we have to fight and must win.

First, because failure or withdrawal would greatly increase the probability that Pakistan would fall. Would this certainly result in Jihadi hands on a nuclear bomb? Maybe not. But do we want to take the risk?

Secondly, because Al Qaeda would be free to expand from a few valleys in northern Pakistan where they are under pressure, to the whole of southern Afghanistan, where they would be under none. And we don’t need to look in the crystal ball to know what would happen next. A study of the recent history books will do. 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid and Bali bombs and the seven transatlantic airliners which terrorists planned to bring down in a single day, should tell us clearly enough. If Al Qaeda is under less pressure, we in the West are under more danger – it’s as simple as that. Leaving Afghanistan or losing there would not make us more safe. It would make us much less so.

Thirdly, leaving or losing in Afghanistan would mean a deadly blow to NATO. The alliance on which we depend for our defence would lose all credibility in the world and almost certainly the confidence of Washington at the same time.

And. perhaps most important of all, defeat or withdrawal from Afghanistan would be mortal blow to those of our Muslim friends who are fighting to defeat medievalism, darkness and ignorance in their struggle to win back their great religion for the true values of tolerance, understanding and moderation which are just as much apart of Islam’s teaching, as they are those of Christianity.

So winning in Afghanistan is really important – to the people of Afghanistan, to the stability of the world’s most instable region, to the fight to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to us.

The problem is, that we are not winning.

The fact that Britain is hosting an Afghanistan Conference in London this week, six years after the war started, is a tacit admission of that. The aim of the London Conference is to invest new impetus to our efforts in Afghanistan and to come up with some new ideas which can turn round the present situation there.

The reasons for our difficulties in Afghanistan go much deeper than the wrong equipment and lack of helicopters. Indeed our concentration on “giving our lads the right kit” is in danger of distracting us from the real issue, which is having enough “boots on the ground” to do the job and the right strategy to ensure that tactical military victories no longer get lost in strategic political defeat.

Our biggest problem in Afghanistan is international disunity.

Each member of the international coalition thinks that Afghanistan is where they happen to be fighting. The British think its Helmand, the Canadians think it’s Kandahar, the Dutch think it’s Uruzgan, the Germans in Badakshan province and the US, until recently has thought it’s bombing from 15000 feet.

One of the cardinal rules of success in these kind of operations is unity of voice and action by the international interveners – and this rule we have, with willful determination, broken for eight years and ignore still. And far too many of our young men are paying with their lives because of this.

We love to criticize President Karzai, but the chief fault lies with us, not him. If we will not get our act together, how can we expect him to?

When I was asked if I would go to Afghanistan to try to put this right in 2007, I concluded that, if we were to have any chance of pulling things round, we would need a substantial change of policy, an ability to work to a single integrated country-wide plan and a lot of luck. And even then it would be touch and go. Since then, the dynamic has continued to move against us at an accelerating pace. Undeniable progress has been made in some areas, but this is more than outweighed by the decline in others. There is still clear and overwhelming support amongst Afghans for the international operation, but this is now beginning to drop and as we know from elsewhere (not least Northern Ireland), once you start losing public support, it is very difficult to win it back. The area of Taliban direct and indirect control has until recently been widening; insecurity in many areas is increasing; the coalition’s room for manoeuvre is narrowing; there is far too much squabbling amongst the allies.

We now have, I hope the ingredient to start turning this round, militarily. We have a Rolls Royce set of military commanders in Afghanistan, including our own General David Richards. And we have now, finally, adopted the right strategy – protecting the people, rather than chasing the enemy. And we will shortly have enough troops to begin to do the job properly. Already this new military strategy is, I think beginning to have an effect. There are early signs that the battlefield balance may now be turning in our favour. But soldiers alone cannot win this war. If we win on the battlefield and lose on the political front, then we will continue to lose.

We have to stop wasting our soldiers’ tactical victories in strategic defeats at the political level. Far too many lives – Afghan and Western – have been wasted because the leaders of the international community in Afghanistan cannot or will not get their act together.

The first task of the London Conference this week should be therefore, to produce a single co-ordinated plan, with a few clear priorities, which the international community can follow in a unified way, speaking with a single voice. If it achieves this, we can begin to turn the Afghan situation round. If it does not, it will be just another international talking shop which looks good at the time but changes nothing afterwards.

993

Afghanistan 24 June 2010

Times article

Here is the truth that dare not speak its name in Afghanistan. Everyone is now heading for the exit. And even if we don’t acknowledge this, the Afghans – and especially the Taliban – know it very well.

Some, like the Canadians and Dutch are heading for the door as fast as they can. Others, like President Obama, are edging more slowly, hoping for good order and a victor’s peace.

But a victor’s peace is now almost certainly beyond our reach. We may have to take any peace we can get.

The start of the fighting season, sharply accelerating casualties and the sacking of General McChrystal may bring things to a head much faster than many, including the Government, hoped

There are many reasons for our present predicament.

But one of them is not because this was a conflict we didn’t have to fight. The consequences of failing in Afghanistan are very grave; for the region, for NATO and for its member countries. But understanding this does not absolve us from answering the question that must now be asked; how do we justify sending young men out to be killed and terribly maimed in a conflict, however important, in which success is now, by some distance, not the most likely outcome?

Nor was this was a war we could never have won. Our present position was not inevitable. It is the consequence of our own mistakes.

NATO’s initial aims were over ambitious, under resourced, insufficiently clear and lacked any semblance of unity of command.

The international coalition has been consistently unable to construct a single plan with a few priorities which we can all pursue together. It still cannot speak with a single voice. It still cannot act in a focussed and co-ordinated way. And even if it had all of these, it still has no formal effective mechanism of co-ordinating them with the Karzai Government.

We are now (thanks to Gen McChrystal) following the right military strategy – protecting the people rather than chasing the enemy. But I fear that this comes so late and that turning the battlefield in our favour now will require an expenditure of blood, time and treasure which we are no longer prepared to devote to it.

And even if we could now begin to win the military battle, we are still losing the political one, chained as we are to a regime in Kabul which is widely perceived as corrupt and whose writ in the country continues to decline. In these operations, winning on the battlefield is not enough. If you lose politically, you lose.

And then there are the neighbours. Iran, Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia India and Pakistan; all of these have a direct interest in ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a vacuum of instability and/or that JIhadism doesn’t triumph in the region. All could have played a role – greater or lesser – in assisting us. But NATO seems to prefer failing alone, to bringing the neighbours in to help us succeed.

Meanwhile, at home, Western Governments have consistently failed to make the convincing case that can be made for this war; or exhibit the determination to win it which would carry our publics with us. There is a real chance that this war will be lost in the pubs, cafes and beer cellars of Europe, long before our soldiers lose it in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.

Some say we should give the McChrystal “surge” a little longer to work. Maybe.

But its time also to start thinking about a Plan B if it doesn’t.

One Plan B would be to shift our strategy from Counter Insurgency (COIN), fighting the Taliban, to Counter Terrorism (CT), concentrating on Al Qaeda. This would recognise that keeping the Taliban out of Government was not our aim – keeping Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan was. The Taliban could run the Pashtun areas and participate in the Government, provided (on pain of violent sanction from the air and through Special Forces) that they didn’t march on Kabul or let Al Qaeda back. This would leave NATO to concentrate on the rest of the country.

This strategy has advantages. It is firmly rooted in the real interests of Britain and the West. It would enable us to reduce our UK stake from 10,000 whose first role was fighting to around 2,000 whose chief job was training. It should greatly cut the casualty rate. And it would give us new space to start turning things round.

But there are dangers as well. The insurgency is now spreading well beyond the Pashtun South. It would not be easy to maintain a unitary Afghanistan against a de facto partition of the country. Could we count on the Afghan National Army in these circumstances? Could we really keep Al Qaeda out of urban conurbations like Kandahar where they would be embedded in the people? How would we deal with the perception that NATO had been defeated and the dynamic this would this create? All these are problematic, some severely so.

The second, arguably better Plan B would be to start now to prepare for what we know must come in the end – a peace settlement for Afghanistan. Our aim in this should not be confined just to ending the conflict with what dignity we can, but also to leave behind as stable an Afghanistan as we are able. The danger would be a civil war into which the neighbours – and especially India and Pakistan, would be drawn. The best way to protect against this is for the peace agreement to be anchored within a wider international treaty – something like the Dayton agreement, which asserts the territorial integrity of the country, incorporates the neighbours and is underpinned by international guarantee from the great states who have an interest in peace in the region, such as the US, China and Russia.

None of this will be produce certain peace. None of it is without risk. None of it is pretty and some of it is uncomfortable to contemplate. But when the possible becomes impossible, you have to have to be prepared to consider what is left, comfortable or not.

1104 words

The Times article

5 November 2009

The clamour is growing for us to withdraw from Afghanistan. And the tragic loss of five British soldiers at the hands of one of those we are supposed to be fighting with is going to make that clamour louder.

There is now a real chance that we will lose this struggle in the bars and front rooms of Britain, before we lose it in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan — particularly since we have a Government who have completely failed both to make a cogent case for this war or convince us that they have a strategy which is worthy of the sacrifices being made.

The blunt truth is that the events of yesterday have fractured a central plank of the only strategy we have. Before deciding what we should do next, it is worth considering what happens if we withdraw or fail in Afghanistan — apart, of course, from abandoning its people, an overwhelming majority of whom, despite all, still want us to be there and only 5 per cent of whom want to see the Taleban back.

First, failure or withdrawal would mean the certain fall of Pakistan. Pakistan could of course fall of its own accord. But it would also and inevitably do so as a result of failure in Afghanistan. So abandoning Afghanistan, doubles the chances of a Jihadi Government in Islamabad. Would this certainly result in Jihadi hands on a nuclear bomb? Maybe not. But do we want to take the risk?

Secondly, it would greatly increase the vulnerability of own country and our Western allies. We don’t have to look in the crystal ball for this — 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid bombs, the Bali ones, we know what Al Qaeda can do. If we leave or fail they would be able to do it again, not from a small corner of northern Pakistan where they are under pressure, but from the whole of southern Afghanistan, where they would be under none.

Thirdly, it would mean a deadly and probably mortal blow to NATO, which would lose the respect of the world and the confidence of Washington.

And. most important of all, it would be mortal blow to those of our Muslim friends who are fighting to defeat the agents of medievalism and ignorance in a struggle to win back their great religion for the true values of tolerance, understanding and moderation which are just as much apart of Islam’s teaching, as they are those of Christianity.

These are, to put it mildly, outcomes we should seek to avoid.

The problem is that we are not succeeding in this war; we are failing at an accelerating rate. If we cannot turn things round soon, the judgment we will have to make will turn, not on why it is important not to fail, but whether we can succeed at all.

Some things are positive. The Taleban are under increasing military pressure in Pakistan. And, in US General McChrystal and our own David Richards we have a Rolls Royce team who will, I believe, make life more difficult for them militarily too.

It is at the political, not the military level that we are failing. And here, as if we did not have enough problems, we now have a government in Kabul whose legitimacy has been fatally damaged and for whom respect has now reached a new low. The international community invested hugely in blood and treasure in the recent elections, but only the Taleban have taken a dividend from them.

For the democracy they oppose has been damaged, the Kabul Government they are in competition with has been weakened and so has the international community, who are their ultimate enemy.

Some say this can all be solved by some minor legerdemain and a major make-over for Karzai. That might have worked if we were making progress towards success in Afghanistan, rather than seeking to turn round an accelerating descent into failure.

It might even have worked if, in President Karzai, we were dealing with someone whose past record showed strengths in areas which now have to be addressed — building a government of national unity and tackling corruption. But these are Karzai’s weaknesses. A government of national unity is what he started off with when first elected, but it soon broke up under his leadership and because of his policies. To ask him to attack corruption is to ask him to attack the pillars upon which those who support his Government (and some say many of those in it), depend. I have no objection to trying to re-invent President Karzai. I just don’t think it will work.

This looks to me like a moment where what is required is not a course correction, but a game changer. And that has to come from Washington. With Peter Galbraith gone Richard Holbrooke seemingly stuck in the bowels of the US State Department it is now left to President Obama find the policies which will change the game.

One could be to deal with the problem of the legitimacy of Karzai, is to make him matter less, by shifting our emphasis from the national institutions in Afghanistan, to the local ones. We have been trying to make a Western style centralised Government work in a country whose traditions have been local and tribal for a thousand years.

There are local elections next year. Could we turn the current Karzai problem into an opportunity, by re-balancing the Government of Afghanistan away from Kabul and towards more local structures which run more with the grain of Afghanistan’s tribal traditions? Much of this can be done without constitutional change, just by shifting the emphasis of our support. But there could also be value in holding an Afghan supreme council or Loya Jirga to consider constitutional change and greater local autonomy — something which would be supported by nearly all the key tribal leaders of the country, especially in the south.

This would not be easy to achieve. But it would be easier than trying to convince the Afghans that the recent election debacle was in fact a success and continuing to prop up a government in which they have diminishing trust and confidence. It would also create the best climate for re-integrating the tribal-based Taleban where we can.

This would give us at last a form of government in the country which runs with, rather than against the grain of Afghan tradition. And it might, finally mean that we would no longer be sacrificing so many young men’s lives for a Government and a President in which there is so little confidence and support.

Our own government needs to make this case and make it powerfully. The British people are not squeamish and if they understand why we are fighting, they will back the cause. But being half-hearted is not an option in war. Afghanistan must become the nation’s number one priority or the people will withdraw their support.

Afghanistan – the beginning of the end game?

5 July 2010

I have supported the international engagement in Afghanistan for eight years. And I still do. But now it’s keeping me awake at night.

I have no doubts about why it is important to succeed in Afghanistan.

Failure or withdrawal would deepen instability in the world’s most unstable region; increase the fragility of nuclear armed Pakistan; provide a second front for the already rising tension between Delhi and Islamabad; precipitate an almost certain civil war in Afghanistan; terribly — perhaps even terminally— damage NATO and allow Al Qaeda to expand from a small corner of Pakistan where they are under great pressure, to reoccupy to the south of Afghanistan where they would be under none. We don’t need a crystal ball to know what the consequences would be — and it wouldn’t be to make us safer.

Neither do I believe that this was a conflict we were always bound to lose.

Our failures in Afghanistan were not inevitable. They are entirely of our own making.

At last we have a fully unified military force. But we still have nothing remotely approaching this on the political side — no single international political plan; no clear set of priorities; no ability to speak and act with a single voice and no structures for engaging in a unified and effective manner with our partners in the Karzai Government. We have no engagement with the neighbours either, another of the key principles of post-conflict stabilisation we have chosen to ignore.

Here is a list of Afghanistan’s neighbours, all of whom have a direct interest in preventing a vacuum of chaos in Afghanistan and/or a Jihadi triumph in the region; Iran, Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia, not to mention Pakistan and India. But NATO seems to prefer to fail alone, than create the context in which these neighbours can play some part to help us succeed together.

Nor have our failures all been foreign ones. We have failed to convince our people that this war is necessary either; or persuade them that we have been following a policy leading to success. Compare and contrast Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands and you will see what I mean. Now a steady 65 per cent of the populations in all countries involved are in favour of withdrawal. The figure is nearer 70 per cent in Britain. If, in the face of accelerating casualties as the fighting season unfolds, this sleeping giant wakes, things could change very quickly indeed.

Thank God and at last (also thank sacked General McChrystal, his replacement General Petraeus and our own David Richards) we are now following the right military strategy of protecting the people rather than chasing the enemy. But after seven years of doing the opposite, they have such a mountain to climb to regain control of the battlefield that I wonder whether we are really prepared to pay the increasingly heavy price in men and money – and above all, time – to enable them to do so.

And even if we are, here’s the rub. In these kind of operations, winning militarily but losing politically, means losing. And we are losing politically. It’s the insurgency that is expanding across the country, not the writ of Kabul.

No doubt I will be told that this is all too pessimistic and there are good tales to tell too. And no doubt there are.

But none of these are altering the prevailing perception in the minds of the ordinary Afghans whose support is crucial to winning. However much we may like to deny it, they think that everyone is now heading for the door. Some are doing it quickly like the Dutch and the Canadians. And some in more measured manner, like the US and ourselves.

Maybe President Obama didn’t quite mean what he said last year when he announced the start of the US withdrawal next summer. But words, even inadvertent ones, have a momentum of their own. And few in Afghanistan doubt the direction in which that momentum is now travelling.

And they are probably right.

They know, even if we chose not to, that this is the beginning of the end game in Afghanistan.

A victor’s peace is probably no longer within our reach. We may have to accept a peace on terms which are much more uncomfortable. And the longer we leave preparing for this, the weaker our hand will get.

Some say that we must give the present strategy a little longer to see if it will work. Alright. Though my guess is that we have less time than our Governments hope for.

But sticking it out to see if it works, is not an excuse for refusing to consider what we should do if it doesn’t. It’s time to start discretely assembling a plan B.

First, we do need to keep up the military pressure where we are able. To withdraw now would mean losing all control over the final outcome. Frederick the Great used to say “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments” And that’s true in Afghanistan too.

Secondly, we need to start talking to the Taleban. Some say we can’t do this because there isn’t one Taleban, there are lots of them. But that makes it easier, not less so. There’s almost certainly more going here than is publicly visible. But this isn’t going to matter unless Washington gets involved — and at present they think they will have more leverage later. I doubt that.

The third strand begins with recognising that a peace directed only to the South is likely to be unacceptable to the North, deepening the risk of civil war afterwards. It has to be a peace for the whole country, not just the Pashtuns.

And this is where the neighbours come back in. We should start preparing the way for an international conference on the future of Afghanistan aimed at a treaty, a bit like Dayton for Bosnia, which assures the territorial integrity of the country, buys in the neighbours and uses key great powers such as the US, China and perhaps Russia, as guarantors. Would this prevent any chance of a civil war? No. But it might give us the best available bulwark against one. Would it be difficult to do? Of course. But not as difficult as facing the consequences of failure. Would it mean dealing with some unpleasant folk? Certainly. But in Bosnia, Milsoevic and Tudjman were no angels either.

None of this would be pretty. None of it would be comfortable. But if we do find that what we hoped was possible, isn’t, we have no alternative but to consider what is left, however uncomfortable it may be.

Afghanistan – the beginning of the end game?

5 July 2010

I have supported the international engagement in Afghanistan for eight years. And I still do. But now it’s keeping me awake at night.

I have no doubts about why it is important to succeed in Afghanistan.

Failure or withdrawal would deepen instability in the world’s most unstable region; increase the fragility of nuclear armed Pakistan; provide a second front for the already rising tension between Delhi and Islamabad; precipitate an almost certain civil war in Afghanistan; terribly — perhaps even terminally— damage NATO and allow Al Qaeda to expand from a small corner of Pakistan where they are under great pressure, to reoccupy to the south of Afghanistan where they would be under none. We don’t need a crystal ball to know what the consequences would be — and it wouldn’t be to make us safer.

Neither do I believe that this was a conflict we were always bound to lose.

Our failures in Afghanistan were not inevitable. They are entirely of our own making.

At last we have a fully unified military force. But we still have nothing remotely approaching this on the political side — no single international political plan; no clear set of priorities; no ability to speak and act with a single voice and no structures for engaging in a unified and effective manner with our partners in the Karzai Government. We have no engagement with the neighbours either, another of the key principles of post-conflict stabilisation we have chosen to ignore.

Here is a list of Afghanistan’s neighbours, all of whom have a direct interest in preventing a vacuum of chaos in Afghanistan and/or a Jihadi triumph in the region; Iran, Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia, not to mention Pakistan and India. But NATO seems to prefer to fail alone, than create the context in which these neighbours can play some part to help us succeed together.

Nor have our failures all been foreign ones. We have failed to convince our people that this war is necessary either; or persuade them that we have been following a policy leading to success. Compare and contrast Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands and you will see what I mean. Now a steady 65 per cent of the populations in all countries involved are in favour of withdrawal. The figure is nearer 70 per cent in Britain. If, in the face of accelerating casualties as the fighting season unfolds, this sleeping giant wakes, things could change very quickly indeed.

Thank God and at last (also thank sacked General McChrystal, his replacement General Petraeus and our own David Richards) we are now following the right military strategy of protecting the people rather than chasing the enemy. But after seven years of doing the opposite, they have such a mountain to climb to regain control of the battlefield that I wonder whether we are really prepared to pay the increasingly heavy price in men and money – and above all, time – to enable them to do so.

And even if we are, here’s the rub. In these kind of operations, winning militarily but losing politically, means losing. And we are losing politically. It’s the insurgency that is expanding across the country, not the writ of Kabul.

No doubt I will be told that this is all too pessimistic and there are good tales to tell too. And no doubt there are.

But none of these are altering the prevailing perception in the minds of the ordinary Afghans whose support is crucial to winning. However much we may like to deny it, they think that everyone is now heading for the door. Some are doing it quickly like the Dutch and the Canadians. And some in more measured manner, like the US and ourselves.

Maybe President Obama didn’t quite mean what he said last year when he announced the start of the US withdrawal next summer. But words, even inadvertent ones, have a momentum of their own. And few in Afghanistan doubt the direction in which that momentum is now travelling.

And they are probably right.

They know, even if we chose not to, that this is the beginning of the end game in Afghanistan.

A victor’s peace is probably no longer within our reach. We may have to accept a peace on terms which are much more uncomfortable. And the longer we leave preparing for this, the weaker our hand will get.

Some say that we must give the present strategy a little longer to see if it will work. Alright. Though my guess is that we have less time than our Governments hope for.

But sticking it out to see if it works, is not an excuse for refusing to consider what we should do if it doesn’t. It’s time to start discretely assembling a plan B.

First, we do need to keep up the military pressure where we are able. To withdraw now would mean losing all control over the final outcome. Frederick the Great used to say “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments” And that’s true in Afghanistan too.

Secondly, we need to start talking to the Taleban. Some say we can’t do this because there isn’t one Taleban, there are lots of them. But that makes it easier, not less so. There’s almost certainly more going here than is publicly visible. But this isn’t going to matter unless Washington gets involved — and at present they think they will have more leverage later. I doubt that.

The third strand begins with recognising that a peace directed only to the South is likely to be unacceptable to the North, deepening the risk of civil war afterwards. It has to be a peace for the whole country, not just the Pashtuns.

And this is where the neighbours come back in. We should start preparing the way for an international conference on the future of Afghanistan aimed at a treaty, a bit like Dayton for Bosnia, which assures the territorial integrity of the country, buys in the neighbours and uses key great powers such as the US, China and perhaps Russia, as guarantors. Would this prevent any chance of a civil war? No. But it might give us the best available bulwark against one. Would it be difficult to do? Of course. But not as difficult as facing the consequences of failure. Would it mean dealing with some unpleasant folk? Certainly. But in Bosnia, Milsoevic and Tudjman were no angels either.

None of this would be pretty. None of it would be comfortable. But if we do find that what we hoped was possible, isn’t, we have no alternative but to consider what is left, however uncomfortable it may be.

Times Article on Afghanistan

20 November 2010

“Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of hanging in the morning”. The problem is it does so, Dr Johnson might have added, in ways which are unpredictable.
Barack Obama, David Cameron and the Nato leaders hope that announcing a date for our withdrawal from Afghanistan will focus minds on what has to happen before then. But I fear that it is concentrating minds on what will happen afterwards instead.
Commenting on Nato, the founder and leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, a rather more mordant wit, said “They may have the watches, but we have the time”. Most Afghans feared he might be right. Now they know he is.
Everyone in Afghanistan has been wondering when the end game starts. Now they know it has. They know, too that whatever we say about “sticking it out” and being prepared to “surge for victory”, the international community is now heading — whether pretty immediately, like Canada, or by 2015, like Britain — for the door marked exit.
The announcement of withdrawal dates on both sides of the Atlantic has elevated time to the principal battlefield in Afghanistan. And it is not one on which we have the advantage.
It is easy to understand, of course why Mr Cameron and other Western leaders feel they must do this. They know that there is another sleeping giant they have to contend with. Public opinion is now running at between 60 and 70 per cent in favour of withdrawal. This is not a political issue yet. But it would be a foolish leader who relied on it not becoming one soon. Having, over the past nine years, failed to convince voters that we have, either reasons for being there or a strategy for winning, the unlimited haemorrhage of blood and treasure is now simply not sellable at home. That withdrawal dates make solid sense at home, does not alter the fact that they do not in Afghanistan. Domestic politics at home is once again the enemy of strategy abroad.
Our military commanders tell us that now that we have, at last, the right strategy and enough forces to carry it out, we are turning the dynamic against the Taliban on the battlefield. I am prepared to believe them. But have we the time to train up the Afghan Army and, especially, the police (where things remain far, far behind where they should be) to take our place? Perhaps; but this is far from certain.
Perhaps yes, becomes definitely no, however, on the political front, where things continue to go backwards. It’s the Taliban whose writ is widening, not that of Hamid Karzai. In the key southern areas of Afghanistan it is they who are seen as the coming power, not President Karzai’s government and its international partners.
And now that partnership is itself beginning to look terminally shaky. The increasing frequency and ferocity of criticism, public, private and leaked, directed at President Karzai from Washington, including hints that he is on medication to steady his mind, is striking. Much of this, I suspect, is caused by Washington’s frustrations, some of them personal, at having expended so much for so little return from him. Some of this is fair, but much of it is not and nearly all of it arises from an insufficient understanding of the position we have put President Karzai in.
Never an easy or flawless partner, President Karzai has nevertheless, been largely, a loyal one. But he too is now feeling the need to bend to what power comes next. He has justification when he complains that his biggest problem has been the failure of the international community to speak with a single voice, leaving him to balance both internal forces and the external ones among his Western allies too. This has been, above all the most significant Western failure in Afghanistan and it’s not getting any better. How can we criticise the Afghan President for not putting his house in order, when we have so significantly failed to do the same for ourselves.
So who can blame President Karzai for concluding, as he has done to Western anger recently, that there is a political alternative to Nato. And, by the way, he is right, whether we like to admit it or not.
The rational alternative to play into the end game is to bring in, as he proposes, neighbours (as we should have done long ago) such as Pakistan, India and Iran and other regional players such as China, Saudi Arabia and maybe Russia to seek a broader context for the peace which Nato has been unable to achieve on its own.
All these players, including Iran, will have both an interest and a role in ensuring that Afghanistan does not descend into a civil war after we leave. Getting them to commit now, perhaps through an international treaty, to the preservation of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity, may be one of the best ways to provide a bulwark against this disastrous possibility.
The bottom line is that creating a victor’s peace is beyond Nato within the set time frame. We need to press ahead fast now with a political solution. This will likely have three ingredients; a programme of reconciliation and engagement with the Taliban; a decentralised constitution which runs more with the grain of Afghan tribal structures; and a regional solution which brings in the neighbours. Military engagement will have to remain — as Frederick the Great said “diplomacy without arms, is like music without the orchestra”.
But the emphasis now must be on a political solution. I think London understands this. But Washington is still having difficulty accepting it. They should overcome this soon. For the longer they leave this the more the balance will shift away from us — the more options will close against — until only one prospect remains; that of hanging in the morning.

Sunday Independent 22 Sep 2006

We have understood for some time that lawlessness in one state can affect the peace of states and peoples, not just in the region, but across the globe. Our failure to finish the job and establish stability in Afghanistan after the Soviets left, was paid for in blood and terror on the streets of New York just over a decade later.

What we have not so far fully realised is that the challenge of lawlessness does not just apply to states, but to the global space, too. Al Qaeda knows this. They use the global space as their space. Satellite broadcasting, the internet, international financial institutions, the networks of international travel – these are their chosen logistical structures. Al Qaeda no longer has physical bases in the military sense of the word. It has little or no structure, and only a tiny tangible physical presence. It has deliberately given up most of the attributes of physical form. Its most powerful weapon is its ability to remain an idea, an ethereal concept, floating in the global space, where it can morph, draw recruits, plan operations and execute preparations without any of the cumbersome and vulnerable paraphernalia of a conventional military structure. It materialises in the moment of the attack and vanishes again into the global space the moment after.

We cannot follow it there, because this space is as trackless and as lacking in effective governance by the rule of law, as any desert in Africa or mountain fastness in Afghanistan. Malign global forces now have the power to destabilise and capture weak states and deal heavy blows to strong ones.

Paradoxically, our failure to bring justice to the global space also presents us with an equal and opposite threat – the possibility that globalisation will fail, leading to a plunge back into protectionism and regional competition.

The collapse of the Doha trade liberalisation talks and the rise in protectionist sentiment in countries ranging from Europe to Latin America are all indicators that, for some at least, the struggle for the future is not how to liberalise global relationships for the benefit of all, but how to raise walls high enough to protect yourself.

And so, finally, we are being forced to confront the fact that, contrary to all the sunny predictions at the time, the end of the cold war did not usher in a more stable world. It has brought us a more unstable one. Far from being “The End of History” as suggested by Francis Fukuyama, history is alive and kicking – and kicking rather hard at the moment. Far from being more tranquil, our global village is looking increasingly more troubled. Among the issues that have come to haunt us, or come back to haunt us, are some very old geo-strategic cultural antagonisms, like the ancient struggle between Christendom and Islam, and some very new challenges such as globalization and resource competition. These were either completely invisible or on the very margins of debate a decade ago. Today they are full blooded, front and centre and demand our attention.

We have very difficult decisions to take if we are to preserve our fragile living space, share out diminishing resources and cope with rising aspirations in the developing world. These decisions would be tough enough in stable times. But we are going to have to take them against the backdrop of fierce resource competition, a massive shift of global power away from the nations and economies of the West and rising radicalism in the world of faith.

Meanwhile we in the West are facing a crisis of confidence in our own institutions and a lack of belief in the mores and creeds which used to act as a reliable and understood framework for the way we live our lives. Our leaders seem to lack both conviction and vision.

What we are involved in here is not a “war on terror” – still less a “clash of civilisations”. But a campaign FOR civilisation – a struggle for the values of tolerance and humanity that lie at the heart of all the great religions – all civilisations -, against a new medievalism, whose proposals are those of darkness and ignorance. Our problem is that we have chosen the wrong battlefield, the wrong weapons and the wrong strategies to win this campaign. We have chosen to fight an idea, primarily with force. We seek to control territory; they seek is to capture minds. We have presumed that predominant force gives us the right to impose our systems on others , when the only justification for the use of force is to assert justice and establish freedom, so that people can choose for themselves. We have responded to a self declared global jihad, by asserting a self declared global hegemony – the hegemony of Western models – as though there were no others. We have adopted methods which undermine the moral force of our ideas.

And so, in a battle of concepts, we have strengthened the concepts of our enemies and weakened our own and elected to fight on a battlefield where they are strongest and we are weakest.

Force has a part to play in this struggle – regrettably it nearly always does. But this is, at its heart, a battle of ideas and values, and unless we realise that and can win on that agenda, then no amount of force can deliver victory.

Afghanistan Sunday Independent

Article for Yorkshire Post

By Paddy Ashdown 22 Oct 2007

Mark Twain once wrote of a notice in the wheelhouse of the Mississippi steam boats which said “Don’t speak to the Captain; don’t spit on the floor”. It’s a good motto for ex-Party Leaders and one I have tried to follow.

But the Lib Dems don’t have a Captain on the bridge at the moment. So here are some thoughts for those now campaigning to get there.

First I hope our new Captain will be Yorkshire MP, Nick Clegg. I have known him for more than ten years since Leon Brittan (check spelling), then the Tory Commissioner in the EU for whom he worked, described him as the brightest young talent he had ever known, complained that he had tried in vain to tempt Nick into the Tories and asked me to help him in the Lib Dems.

That kind of thing doesn’t work in the Lib Dems. And anyway Nick has made it entirely through his own formidable talents and on the way won the admiration of all he has met and taken some very courageous decisions; such as the one not to hold onto the safety of his seat in the EU Parliament while he won Sheffield Hallam when it would have been easier and safer (but less principled) to hold onto it until he was in Westminster. Courage and decisiveness are the essential quality for leadership and Nick has them, alongside a formidable array of the more usual political talents. They will serve him, the Lib Dems and the country well when, as I hope, he wins on XXX (insert date of announcement of the ballot) when the new Lib Dem Leader is announced.

But what kind of job is he stepping into ?

The toughest one in British politics.

The Leader of the “official” opposition (David Cameron) gets the salary of a Cabinet Minster, an official Government driver and a Government car. Nick will have none of these. He will be expected to match and outmatch both Cameron and Brown. But he will be paid as an ordinary MP. If he has an official car, he will depend on the Party or a benefactor for it. And if he is driven around on the exhausting schedule Party Leaders have to follow, then he will either do it himself or depend on one of his very limited (in comparison with Cameron and Brown) staff.

At Prime Minister’s Questions (which I found more frightening than anything I ever did on active service with the Royal Marines or the SBS), Cameron and Brown speak from the Despatch Box, which means they can have full folders of notes. He will have no such advantage. When he speaks he will do so to a House in which he will be outnumbered ten to one by hostile opposition MPs and he will do it from an ordinary place on the benches where anything but the skimpiest notes are impossible. They can speak from prepared texts. He has to depend on his wits.

So what can he expect? Shouting and barracking from 600 hostile MPs (check how many MPs in the House now) if he makes the tiniest error and having to fight for every column centimetre and broadcast second of press coverage from a media system (The Yorkshire Post honourably excepted) which would much prefer that the third Party didin’t exist so that they could concentrate on the “big two”.

So why would anyone want the job ?

Because, although leading the Lib Dems may be the toughest job in politics it is, for the stout hearted and the fleet of foot, also the best. It allows you to be unconventional; to lead opinion rather than follow it, to break the mould where you need to and, above all to be the voice for the greatest of all political philosophies and the only one genuinely in tune with our age; Liberalism (I know this because both Tories and Labour are trying desperately to pretend that this is what they are too).

So my advice to the next Leader of the Lib Dems is make very clear what you want to do before you get the job. It may be easier to win with careful words and carefully constructed compromises. But there is no point in winning this back breaking and sometimes heartbreaking job unless you know exactly what you want to do with it and have the mandate from the Party to do it. Nick seems to understood this well, as his call for the Party to “go outside its comfort zone” shows.

But being right does not necessarily mean winning. The next Leader of the Lib Dems also needs to recognise what kind of a game he is in. For the Leaders of the “big two”, politics is like a heavyweight boxing match. They slug it out and the last one left standing, wins. Leading the Lib Dems is much more like jujitsu. You rarely get to create the momentum of the moment. So you have to take the momentum set by the other two and turn it to your advantage. To do this, you need to be sharper, and more quick witted than them and take more risks, including the risk occasionally to be in the minority in Parliament and derided for it. That is what my great hero Jo Grimond did over Suez, I did over Bosnia and Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell did over Iraq.

My last piece of advice for whoever wins on XXX is, don’t forget politics does not just exist at Westminster. Personally I hated the place. I preferred my politics out of Westminster, amongst the people of the country who we serve. If we are to re-build trust amongst ordinary people in our political system, then it is in their midst that we must increasingly do our politics, not the hothouse of that brawling pit, the Chamber of the House of Commons.