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 SwatI
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 Pakistanit 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
problemthat 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 willit is not a predictionbut
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
surgeif you want to call it thatis 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 officialsto sit next to them at their desks
in provincial governments and so onas 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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