Rory Stewart: Time to end the war in Afghanistan

The question today is not:

Why did we invade Afghanistan?

The question is:

why are we still in Afghanistan

one decade later?

Why are we spending

$135 billion?

Why have we got 130,000 troops on the ground?

Why were more people killed

last month

than in any preceding month

of this conflict?

How has this happened?

The last 20 years

has been the age of intervention,

and Afghanistan is simply one act

in a five-act tragedy.

We came out of the end of the Cold War

in despair.

We faced Rwanda;

we faced Bosnia,

and then we rediscovered our confidence.

In the third act, we went into Bosnia and Kosovo

and we seemed to succeed.

In the fourth act, with our hubris,

our overconfidence developing,

we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan,

and in the fifth act,

we plunged into a humiliating mess.

So the question is: What are we doing?

Why are we still stuck in Afghanistan?

And the answer, of course,

that we keep being given

is as follows:

we're told that we went into Afghanistan

because of 9/11,

and that we remain there

because the Taliban poses an existential threat

to global security.

In the words of President Obama,

"If the Taliban take over again,

they will invite back Al-Qaeda,

who will try to kill as many of our people

as they possibly can."

The story that we're told

is that there was a "light footprint" initially --

in other words, that we ended up in a situation

where we didn't have enough troops,

we didn't have enough resources,

that Afghans were frustrated --

they felt there wasn't enough progress

and economic development and security,

and therefore the Taliban came back --

that we responded in 2005 and 2006

with troop deployments,

but we still didn't put enough troops on the ground.

And that it wasn't until 2009,

when President Obama signed off on a surge,

that we finally had,

in the words of Secretary Clinton,

"the strategy, the leadership and the resources."

So, as the president now reassures us,

we are on track to achieve our goals.

All of this is wrong.

Every one of those statements is wrong.

Afghanistan does not

pose an existential threat

to global security.

It is extremely unlikely

the Taliban would ever be able to take over the country --

extremely unlikely they'd be able to seize Kabul.

They simply don't have a conventional military option.

And even if they were able to do so, even if I'm wrong,

it's extremely unlikely

the Taliban would invite back Al-Qaeda.

From the Taliban's point of view,

that was their number one mistake last time.

If they hadn't invited back Al-Qaeda,

they would still be in power today.

And even if I'm wrong about those two things,

even if they were able to take back the country,

even if they were to invite back Al-Qaeda,

it's extremely unlikely

that Al-Qaeda would significantly enhance

its ability to harm the United States

or harm Europe.

Because this isn't the 1990s anymore.

If the Al-Qaeda base

was to be established near Ghazni,

we would hit them very hard,

and it would be very, very difficult

for the Taliban to protect them.

Furthermore, it's simply not true

that what went wrong in Afghanistan

is the light footprint.

In my experience, in fact,

the light footprint was extremely helpful.

And these troops that we brought in --

it's a great picture of David Beckham

there on the sub-machine gun --

made the situation worse, not better.

When I walked across Afghanistan

in the winter of 2001-2002,

what I saw was scenes like this.

A girl, if you're lucky,

in the corner of a dark room --

lucky to be able to look at the Koran.

But in those early days

when we're told we didn't have enough troops and enough resources,

we made a lot of progress in Afghanistan.

Within a few months,

there were two and a half million more girls in school.

In Sangin where I was sick in 2002,

the nearest health clinic

was within three days walk.

Today, there are 14 health clinics

in that area alone.

There was amazing improvements.

We went from almost no Afghans

having mobile telephones during the Taliban

to a situation where, almost overnight,

three million Afghans had mobile telephones.

And we had progress in the free media.

We had progress in elections --

all of this with the so-called light footprint.

But when we began to bring more money,

when we began to invest more resources,

things got worse, not better. How?

Well first see, if you put 125 billion dollars a year

into a country like Afghanistan

where the entire revenue of the Afghan state

is one billion dollars a year,

you drown everything.

It's not simply corruption and waste

that you create;

you essentially replace the priorities of the Afghan government,

the elected Afghan government,

with the micromanaging tendencies

of foreigners on short tours

with their own priorities.

And the same is true for the troops.

When I walked across Afghanistan,

I stayed with people like this.

This is Commandant Haji Malem Mohsin Khan of Kamenj.

Commandant Haji Malem Mohsin Khan of Kamenj was a great host.

He was very generous,

like many of the Afghans I stayed with.

But he was also considerably more conservative,

considerably more anti-foreign,

considerably more Islamist

than we'd like to acknowledge.

This man, for example, Mullah Mustafa,

tried to shoot me.

And the reason I'm looking a little bit perplexed in this photograph

is I was somewhat frightened,

and I was too afraid on this occasion

to ask him, having run for an hour through the desert

and taken refuge in this house,

why he had turned up and wanted to have his photograph taken with me.

But 18 months later, I asked him

why he had tried to shoot me.

And Mullah Mustafa -- he's the man with the pen and paper --

explained that the man sitting immediately to the left as you look at the photograph,

Nadir Shah

had bet him that he couldn't hit me.

Now this is not to say

Afghanistan is a place full of people like Mullah Mustafa.

It's not; it's a wonderful place

full of incredible energy and intelligence.

But it is a place

where the putting-in of the troops

has increased the violence rather than decreased it.

2005, Anthony Fitzherbert,

an agricultural engineer,

could travel through Helmand,

could stay in Nad Ali, Sangin and Ghoresh,

which are now the names of villages where fighting is taking place.

Today, he could never do that.

So the idea that we deployed the troops

to respond to the Taliban insurgency

is mistaken.

Rather than preceding the insurgency,

the Taliban followed the troop deployment,

and as far as I'm concerned,

the troop deployment caused their return.

Now is this a new idea?

No, there have been any number of people

saying this over the last seven years.

I ran a center at Harvard

from 2008 to 2010,

and there were people like Michael Semple there

who speak Afghan languages fluently,

who've traveled to almost every district in the country.

Andrew Wilder, for example,

born on the Pakistan-Iranian border,

served his whole life

in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Paul Fishstein who began working there in 1978 --

worked for Save the Children,

ran the Afghan research and evaluation unit.

These are people

who were able to say consistently

that the increase in development aid

was making Afghanistan less secure, not more secure --

that the counter-insurgency strategy

was not working and would not work.

And yet, nobody listened to them.

Instead,

there was a litany of astonishing optimism.

Beginning in 2004,

every general came in saying,

"I've inherited a dismal situation,

but finally I have the right resources and the correct strategy,

which will deliver,"

in General Barno's word in 2004,

the "decisive year."

Well guess what? It didn't.

But it wasn't sufficient to prevent General Abuzaid saying

that he had the strategy and the resources

to deliver, in 2005,

the "decisive year."

Or General David Richards to come in 2006

and say he had the strategy and the resources

to deliver the "crunch year."

Or in 2007,

the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, Espen Eide,

to say that that would deliver the "decisive year."

Or in 2008, Major General Champoux

to come in and say he would deliver the "decisive year."

Or in 2009, my great friend,

General Stanley McChrystal,

who said that he was "knee-deep in the decisive year."

Or in 2010,

the U.K. foreign secretary, David Miliband,

who said that at last we would deliver the "decisive year."

And you'll be delighted to hear in 2011, today,

that Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister,

assures us that we are in the "decisive year."

(Applause)

How do we allow

any of this to happen?

Well the answer, of course, is,

if you spend 125 billion or 130 billion

dollars a year in a country,

you co-opt almost everybody.

Even the aid agencies,

who begin to receive an enormous amount of money

from the U.S. and the European governments

to build schools and clinics,

are somewhat disinclined

to challenge the idea

that Afghanistan is an existential threat

to global security.

They're worried, in other words,

that if anybody believes that it wasn't such a threat --

Oxfam, Save the Children

wouldn't get the money

to build their hospitals and schools.

It's also very difficult to confront a general

with medals on his chest.

It's very difficult for a politician,

because you're afraid that many lives have been lost in vain.

You feel deep, deep guilt.

You exaggerate your fears,

and you're terrified about the humiliation

of defeat.

What is the solution to this?

Well the solution to this

is we need to find a way

that people like Michael Semple, or those other people,

who are telling the truth, who know the country,

who've spent 30 years on the ground --

and most importantly of all,

the missing component of this --

Afghans themselves,

who understand what is going on.

We need to somehow get their message

to the policymakers.

And this is very difficult to do

because of our structures.

The first thing we need to change

is the structures of our government.

Very, very sadly,

our foreign services, the United Nations,

the military in these countries

have very little idea of what's going on.

The average British soldier is on a tour of only six months;

Italian soldiers, on tours of four months;

the American military, on tours of 12 months.

Diplomats are locked in embassy compounds.

When they go out, they travel in these curious armored vehicles

with these somewhat threatening security teams

who ready 24 hours in advance

who say you can only stay on the ground for an hour.

In the British embassy in Afghanistan

in 2008,

an embassy of 350 people,

there were only three people who could speak Dari,

the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level.

And there was not a single Pashto speaker.

In the Afghan section in London

responsible for governing Afghan policy on the ground,

I was told last year

that there was not a single staff member

of the foreign office in that section

who had ever served

on a posting in Afghanistan.

So we need to change that institutional culture.

And I could make the same points about the United States

and the United Nations.

Secondly, we need to aim off of the optimism of the generals.

We need to make sure that we're a little bit suspicious,

that we understand that optimism

is in the DNA of the military,

that we don't respond to it

with quite as much alacrity.

And thirdly, we need to have some humility.

We need to begin from the position

that our knowledge, our power,

our legitimacy

is limited.

This doesn't mean

that intervention around the world is a disaster.

It isn't.

Bosnia and Kosovo

were signal successes,

great successes.

Today when you go to Bosnia

it is almost impossible to believe

that what we saw in the early 1990s happened.

It's almost impossible to believe the progress we've made

since 1994.

Refugee return,

which the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

thought would be extremely unlikely,

has largely happened.

A million properties have been returned.

Borders between the Bosniak territory

and the Bosnian-Serb territory have calmed down.

The national army has shrunk.

The crime rates in Bosnia today

are lower than they are in Sweden.

This has been done

by an incredible, principled effort

by the international community,

and, of course, above all,

by Bosnians themselves.

But you need to look at context.

And this is what we've lost in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You need to understand that in those places

what really mattered

was, firstly, the role of Tudman and Milosevic

in coming to the agreement,

and then the fact those men went,

that the regional situation improved,

that the European Union could offer Bosnia

something extraordinary:

the chance to be part

of a new thing, a new club,

a chance to join something bigger.

And finally, we need to understand that in Bosnia and Kosovo,

a lot of the secret of what we did,

a lot of the secret of our success,

was our humility --

was the tentative nature of our engagement.

We criticized people a lot in Bosnia

for being quite slow to take on war criminals.

We criticized them

for being quite slow to return refugees.

But that slowness, that caution,

the fact that President Clinton initially said

that American troops would only be deployed for a year,

turned out to be a strength,

and it helped us to put our priorities right.

One of the saddest things

about our involvement in Afghanistan

is that we've got our priorities out of sync.

We're not matching our resources to our priorities.

Because if what we're interested in is terrorism,

Pakistan is far more important than Afghanistan.

If what we're interested in is regional stability,

Egypt is far more important.

If what we're worried about is poverty and development,

sub-Saharan Africa is far more important.

This doesn't mean that Afghanistan doesn't matter,

but that it's one of 40 countries in the world

with which we need to engage.

So if I can finish with a metaphor for intervention,

what we need to think of

is something like mountain rescue.

Why mountain rescue?

Because when people talk about intervention,

they imagine that some scientific theory --

the Rand Corporation goes around

counting 43 previous insurgencies

producing mathematical formula

saying you need one trained counter-insurgent

for every 20 members of the population.

This is the wrong way of looking at it.

You need to look at it in the way that you look at mountain rescue.

When you're doing mountain rescue,

you don't take a doctorate in mountain rescue,

you look for somebody who knows the terrain.

It's about context.

You understand that you can prepare,

but the amount of preparation you can do

is limited --

you can take some water, you can have a map,

you can have a pack.

But what really matters

is two kinds of problems --

problems that occur on the mountain

which you couldn't anticipate,

such as, for example, ice on a slope,

but which you can get around,

and problems which you couldn't anticipate

and which you can't get around,

like a sudden blizzard or an avalanche

or a change in the weather.

And the key to this

is a guide who has been on that mountain,

in every temperature,

at every period --

a guide who, above all,

knows when to turn back,

who doesn't press on relentlessly

when conditions turn against them.

What we look for

in firemen, in climbers, in policemen,

and what we should look for in intervention,

is intelligent risk takers --

not people who plunge blind off a cliff,

not people who jump into a burning room,

but who weigh their risks,

weigh their responsibilities.

Because the worst thing we have done in Afghanistan

is this idea

that failure is not an option.

It makes failure invisible,

inconceivable and inevitable.

And if we can resist

this crazy slogan,

we shall discover --

in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya,

and anywhere else we go in the world --

that if we can often do much less than we pretend,

we can do much more than we fear.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Bruno Giussani: Rory, you mentioned Libya at the end.

Just briefly, what's your take on the current events there

and the intervention?

Rory Stewart: Okay, I think Libya poses the classic problem.

The problem in Libya

is that we are always pushing for the black or white.

We imagine there are only two choices:

either full engagement and troop deployment

or total isolation.

And we are always being tempted up to our neck.

We put our toes in and we go up to our neck.

What we should have done in Libya

is we should have stuck to the U.N. resolution.

We should have limited ourselves very, very strictly

to the protection of the civilian population in Benghazi.

We could have done that.

We set up a no-fly zone within 48 hours

because Gaddafi had no planes

within 48 hours.

Instead of which, we've allowed ourselves to be tempted

towards regime change.

In doing so, we've destroyed our credibility with the Security Council,

which means it's very difficult

to get a resolution on Syria,

and we're setting ourselves up again for failure.

Once more, humility,

limits, honesty,

realistic expectations

and we could have achieved something to be proud of.

BG: Rory, thank you very much.

RS: Thank you. (BG: Thank you.)