WEB EXCLUSIVE: Intelligence Squared event report - 'Afghanistan: the future'

12 March 2009

David Blackburn reports on the latest Intelligence Squared / Spectator event

Yesterday’s Intelligence Squared / Spectator event was a discussion, rather than the usual debate. There was no motion, and panellists presented possible outcomes. Matthew Parris was mischievous, rejecting all analyses except that “Afghanistan is not Britain’s fight”. What was this “nearly third rate power doing there”? Fighting a war “we can’t afford” against a “cultural and religious identity we don’t understand is mad”. Britain was not fighting at the Afghans’ invitation. “Imagine the card: The Afghan people request and require your presence for a limited military occupation.” He predicted that fellow speakers Lords Inge and Ashdown would espouse the Mastermind approach to foreign policy: I’ve started so I’ll finish. The wrong approach because “Afghan warlords employ the same logic to continue the struggle”. Good sense is to recognise mistakes; Britain should “withdraw immediately”.

Field Marshal Lord Inge did indeed assume the mantle of Magnus Magnusson. “We are where we are. The Kabul government is corrupt; its writ does not extend beyond the capital.” The situation requires “direction and strategic planning”. (In other words, ‘biffing’ followed by redevelopment). The war was “not about beating the Taleban and achieving democracy, but securing the population”. Petraeus’ surge and ensuring NATO partners fight on the front line will achieve success, he claimed.

Clare Lockhart served the Karzai government until discovering that $1bn contracts were sold to cronies for $1. Now she directs the Institute for State Effectiveness. “Afghanistan is not ungovernable or anti-western; it has huge potential”. Until 2005, the coalition worked in “partnership with Afghans”; then the country descended into lawlessness. We forfeited legitimacy and must rebuild it, not with “more bombs”, though the coalition must remain, but by redistributing aid. $2bn packages awarded to NGOs should fund government endorsed projects so that “Afghans can rebuild their country”, protected by capable Afghan forces.

Writer and campaigner Rory Stewart runs a regeneration scheme in Kabul. He praised Lockhart but thought she “underestimates the country’s intractability and poverty”, which frustrates administration. He doubted Petraeus will succeed because Afghans will resist further military incursions. Though Parris was correct to observe that “the gap between our rhetoric and actions is surreal” he was a “false prophet”. We must remain, if only to secure Pakistan. Stewart’s raison d’être is that small things are best. The coalition needs a “light footprint” that builds “from the bottom up”. Secure a district with the local leader, build a bridge and protect it with fairly paid policemen is his model.

Christina Lamb has reported from Afghanistan since the 80s. She perceives a correlation between post-2005 troop increases and an ever worsening security situation, now nearing “meltdown.” Only one of four new Kabul highways is free from attack. “When an official in Helmand commented that ‘great progress was being made: we can now go to the bazaar,’ he meant we drive through it at high speed in an armoured car”. Five years ago, Lamb visited that bazaar alone. Badly co-ordinated military and humanitarian efforts and ignorance of tribal complexities are responsible. Address those and the situation “would improve”.

Professor Anatol Lieven took a regional view. He was sceptical about Petraeus’ plan. “Inserting a large Christian army into Pashtun lands will exacerbate insurgency.” Afghanistan is vital because Pakistan is near “collapse”. Pakistan cannot contain the Taleban because the “majority don’t support a war imposed by the US”. We must learn from the aftermath of Soviet defeat: non-mujahedeen Afghans feared the jihadists and supported the communists. A similar pattern will emerge if we withdraw. The government has a better chance of survival if it cleans up its act and if we improve security services. If the operation is to regain legitimacy before Pakistani eyes, Iran must be involved.

Lord Ashdown has a military bearing and he boomed like some crazed Cockleshell hero. “7/7 made this our fight, but we have made every single mistake we knew would lead to failure...The peace was lost because, tempted by hubris and amnesia, we sought to build Afghanistan in our image”. He demanded “direction” and was incandescent about “young soldiers dying because politicians haven’t got their act together”. The panel and audience agreed: politicians’ dithering has caused unnecessary deaths. Ashdown urged us to “reduce our ambitions”; it is unlikely we can bring democracy to Afghanistan. We will have to “talk to the Taleban, but only once they know they’re losing”.

The audience were asked if they favoured withdrawal, negotiating peace or staying until the Taleban were defeated. As in Afghanistan, there was no clear answer. Perhaps Rory Stewart is right: “Afghanistan must wait for its Jinna”; just hope he’s not bin Laden’s disciple.

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frank goddard

March 12th, 2009 2:55pm Report this comment

Yesterday I watched the funeral in Liverpol of the 20year old Marine who died for his country.How sad that this boy,(for he is only a boy)should DIE in some far off land that has NO strategic bearing for this country(Let Osama Bin Laden and Taleban have it.Indeed there would be no expected terrorism here in the uk if we withdraw from Afghanistan,let our soldiers defend our borders, so bring them out NOW,NOW,NOW.
Frank G....English pensioner.

jwright

March 12th, 2009 4:19pm Report this comment

How much longer will the british public put up with the butchering of ill equipped squaddies so that a mad oneeyed scotsman can go and pose as a world saviour in the united states.??

Margaret Harding

March 13th, 2009 3:03pm Report this comment

Did anyone raise the case of Pervez Kambaksh,jailed for 20 years for downloading an article on womens rights or lack of them in Islamic countries,Karzai could free him,but has not,and his govt freed the ex Guantanamo Bay detainee who is a Taleban leader in helmand.It is a huge human rights issue-

Tilak

March 13th, 2009 8:49pm Report this comment

As one exasperated former senior CIA offical commented: the US has lost every military engagement since Korea. Why is the US, having dragged along reluctant allies, in Afghanistan? Surely, the desire aspiration to create a completely new society there as a response to 9/11 was an absurdity that defies belief. In the process, it has destablised Pakistan and spawned a problem of far greater magnitude and one which cannot be resolved at reasonable political and economic cost. So, a holding operation will persist until the unpopularity of this wretched venture with the US public reaches a crescendo or something unexpectedly appalling occurs in Afghanistan or Pakistan. All the outcomes are now terrible and for all concerned, in the region and beyond, and the least damaging goal is to somehow stabilise Pakistan and depart. Afghanistan is lost though unlikely to cause too much grief to the internatioal community that cannot be curtailed from the air, if need be. But Pakistan is another matter and it is almost 11.55 PM as far as its fate is concerned.

Gautam

March 14th, 2009 9:48am Report this comment

Correct, Tilak. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has bombed. And now that utterly senseless war is taking Pakistan down the abyss. There's no getting away from the US folly of invading Iraq when the mission hadn't even properly begun in Afghanistan. Having entered Afghanistan, the US-led multinational forces should have, by now, and if they hadn't got into Iraq, de-fanged the Taliban and secured both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The mission failed because a confused American leadership hadn't a blueprint on how and where to fight the war on terror. It still isn't too late for the US and its allies to cut their losses and quit Afghanistan, leaving crazed militants and assorted terrorists to their own devices.

But it's doubtful whether the US would do this: Right now it's deeply worried about the political breakdown in a nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country reduced to a schizophrenic state, somewhere between an Islamic caliphate and a failed secular-democratic balkanising reality it is today.

Fritz

March 14th, 2009 11:59pm Report this comment

We must talk to the Taleban because they are winning. Who else is capable to gouvern Afghanistan? The Taleban were the best gouvernement Afghanistan had since the Soviets left. We should have supported them more. Lets build a railway with them. An old myth..

A. MacAulay

March 18th, 2009 6:39am Report this comment

I suggest looking at the work of Gaston Bouthoul on demograhic effects and social stability. Set against our ca. 50,000 NATO troops are, per year, 500,000 Afghanis reaching the age of 15 and warriorhood, This is a great deal of testosterone with nowhere to go and nothing to do. The Taliban will never run out of recruits and they know it.

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