Global Security: Afghanistan and Pakistan - Foreign Affairs Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-145)

JAMES FERGUSSON, CHRISTINA LAMB AND DAVID LOYN

21 APRIL 2009

  Q140  Mr. Horam: But do you not think that officials here are already thinking what we would look like if we admitted it was too late and there was not much more we could do? Globally, that would be defeat and would leave Afghans in a mess.

  Christina Lamb: Yes, I do not see how we could do that; we cannot withdraw just like that. There is much talk now of building up the Afghan army so that Afghans can secure the country for themselves, but that is going to take a very long time.

  Q141  Mr. Horam: It is going to take decades, as Mr. Loyn said. What effect do you think the confusion of aims and the questions about how long we are going to stay are having on the British military?

  James Fergusson: It is very tired. The marines have just been there for their second tour, and I have heard that they are complaining bitterly and have had several casualties. They were fighting in exactly the same places they were on their first tour, and a lot of them cannot see the point of it. I cannot speak for the whole Army, but you come across a lot of despondent views within it. They are very tired; a lot of the young soldiers who went out there for the first time could not wait to get there, but once they have done two or three tours it is amazing how the novelty value wears off. Many senior soldiers will tell you that this is not sustainable for ever. Apart from anything else, we do not have the equipment for it. We do not have the helicopters, as I am sure you know. In terms of Chinook forces, we have 40 Chinooks altogether, of which half are working and perhaps eight are deployed in Helmand at any one time. The Army is very small and we are asking an awful lot of it. It knows that and is very tired.

  Mr. Horam: Do you share that view?

  Christina Lamb: Yes, I do. Actually, I think it is remarkable how motivated they still are when you go out in the field with them, considering the situation. When you talk to them in quieter moments, many of them will tell you stories of how they lost a friend fighting for a small spot of dusty land that we have now lost and that they are having to fight for again, and they will say, "What's the point?"

  Q142  Sir John Stanley: May I turn to Pakistan? Do you consider the Taliban's effective takeover of the Swat valley to represent the limit of their territorial ambitions in Pakistan, or is it a further step in Taliban creep towards Islamabad?

  Christina Lamb: Unfortunately, I do not think that Swat is the limit of their ambitions. We have seen that Pakistan now has more suicide bombings than Iraq, and if you go to Karachi, the biggest city, you will see the Taliban operating very openly now, which is a very frightening situation. I think that they have much bigger ambitions than just Swat—I really do. They are very active in Punjab and, as I said, Karachi.

  Q143  Sir John Stanley: What do you think is the ultimate Taliban goal in Pakistan?

  Christina Lamb: There are a lot of people in Pakistan who were involved in the creation of, or originally backed, the Taliban, because that is what they saw as the ideal regime. Many of those people are now very happy to try to have it in Pakistan, which is very sad because Pakistan's population of, according to the latest calculation, 170 million is mostly made up of moderate people, but a tiny minority is able to carry out a lot of things. Unfortunately, I believe quite strongly that we played into their hands because there is now no country in that region that is more anti-American or anti-British than Pakistan. Parts of Pakistan are being subjected to bombings and drone attacks, of which there have been more than 30 in the last eight months and in which many innocent civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes. But I have yet to see any evidence of any senior al-Qaeda people being taken out in those attacks. The Americans keep saying that they are removing al-Qaeda No. 3, but how many No. 3s are there? Who are these people? That is really alienating people and creating a whole new load of recruits for the Taliban. We have to do something about that very quickly, or this will be a much bigger problem than Afghanistan.

  James Fergusson: I agree broadly with that, except that it is not for us to do. We will have to help the Pakistanis to do something about it themselves. It is really all about the army in Pakistan—it always is. On a quick point about Swat, it is not quite a done deal. We talk about the Taliban taking it over, but there is still talk about what kind of Sharia law will emerge in Swat. It is not settled yet. There has been a lot of talk in Pakistan about a kind of Sharia lite. It would be based on Sharia, but might not include the most severe punishments for theft and so on that we all know about. That might be a classic kind of Pakistani compromise. But who knows? That battle is going on at the moment. There is definitely a battle going on for the soul of Pakistan between the two. However, it does not look good.

  Q144  Sir John Stanley: Against the background that you have both painted, what do you believe should be the British Government's key policy objectives towards Pakistan?

  Christina Lamb: The single biggest problem is, where are all these people being recruited from? It is the madrassahs. Again and again, there has been talk that Pakistan will regulate the madrassahs and crack down on them, but nothing happens in practice. It is exactly the same with these militant groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and all the others. When a lot of pressure is put on them, they will round up the leaders, but shortly afterwards they will all be released. Organisations might change their names briefly, but they still operate. Pressure has to be put on them to act on these things that they keep talking about. They and we know that that is the problem—that they do not actually do anything about it. If you have 2 million children graduating each year from madrassahs, even if only 1% of them are being trained to go and kill Westerners, that is still an awful lot of people.

  James Fergusson: The short answer is that the priority in Pakistan should be our national security, because we have an enormous Pakistani community in this country. An experienced combat brigadier whom I spoke to the other day painted this nightmare scenario where he could imagine British troops fighting on the streets of Britain against, perhaps, holed-up suicide bombers in a terrorist house in Manchester. That would be the follow-on from civil war in Pakistan, if that does happen. I am not saying it will—it is not a prediction—but this was a soldier talking off the cuff about what he thought might happen. That is a consideration. And it is nuclear as well. The national security implications for Britain, therefore, are much higher when it comes to what is going on in Pakistan than they are in Afghanistan. We should not be worrying about trying to create a new liberal democracy in Pakistan. We cannot afford to and we have not got the resources. We need to concentrate on security issues.

  Chairman: We could go into that issue at great length, but unfortunately we do not have time. The last question in this session is from Sandra.

  Q145  Sandra Osborne: You have said quite a bit about what you think of the new US strategy. Do you have anything to add? Do you think that it will be effective? Will it address the past failings of the US policy? What are the implications for Britain?

  Christina Lamb: The good thing is that everyone now recognises that the situation is a mess and that something has to be done quickly. That is a lot better than, say, a year ago, when people were still talking about it as though it was somehow successful. I think that that is good news. General Petraeus and his team are good news. There are very good people now trying to come up with answers. We have wasted a lot of time and have made it much harder for ourselves. As I said, we have lost consent and have not done the things that we promised to do. It is extremely difficult, therefore, but at the end of the day the majority of Afghans want peace. They do not want the Taliban back. At the moment they are being put in a very difficult situation: they are on the fence, and on one side is the Taliban threatening them, but on the other side they have not really got anything, because the Afghan Government is not offering them anything. There has got to be a lot of focus on getting that Government working and delivering things to people. On the military side, the civilian surge—if you want to call it that—is extremely important and people have to see development. I cannot bang on about this, but it stuns me that when you go to Kabul, you find that after all this money and everything, it is still in the mess that it is in. If we can't sort out the capital city, we can't do anything.

  James Fergusson: It's not all bad news; there is some good stuff coming out. The US strategy is the right one and we should support it. That is the short answer to your question. There are good things going on. I must say a word about the National Solidarity Programme, which Richard Holbrooke supports. It is an Afghan Government programme that has already helped development in 22,000 villages in the country, which is not negligible. I agree with Christina that civilian development is extremely important. The Americans in Kabul are very serious about it. I heard that they wanted to put 2,000 civilian mentors in with Afghan officials—to sit next to them at their desks in provincial governments and so on—as a means of training them up and getting rid of corruption. What an amazing thing to try to do. I hope it works. I am a bit sceptical about it, but we need to get behind that plan because it is the only one going.

  Chairman: Miss Lamb and Mr. Fergusson, thank you very much for coming and giving us your expertise. It has been very valuable. We will now take a two minute break and have a change of witnesses. If any members of the public wish to leave, this is the time to do so.





 
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