Examination of Witnesses (Questions 146-159)
SAJJAN GOHEL,
DR STUART
GORDON AND
DANIEL KORSKI
21 APRIL 2009
Q146 Chairman: We are now going to have
our second evidence session on Afghanistan and Pakistan this afternoon.
Will the three witnesses introduce themselves for the record?
Daniel Korski: I am Daniel Korski.
I work for a think-tank, European Council on Foreign Relations,
and I used to be a British civil servant working in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Bosnia.
Chairman: And you were once an advisor
to the Defence Committee, I understand.
Sajjan Gohel: My name is Sajjan
Gohel. I am with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, which is an independent
think-tank that looks at issues of security and geopolitics. I
have been looking at the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and particularly at the ideological dimensions and their
growth.
Dr. Gordon: I am Stuart Gordon
from the Royal Military Academy and I have worked with the UK
stabilisation unit as one of the co-authors of the Helmand road
map.
Q147 Chairman: Thank you very much.
I shall begin almost where we left off in our previous session.
What difference do you think that the American strategy, particularly
the additional combat troops and the mentors pledged by President
Obama, as well as the additional NATO support, will make in the
current situation in Afghanistan?
Daniel Korski: I take a slightly
different view than some of the previous speakers in the sense
that Obama's AfPak strategy is everything to every man. Those
who want to read into it that it is a great nation-building exercise
that is finally coming around to accepting that the rule of law
is important can find solace for those views. Those who want to
look for the exit strategy and the zeroing in on counter-terrorism
can find solace for their views. In many ways, the importance
of that strategy is not that it is saying anything that has not
been said, but that it has allowed the US Administration to re-engage
allies and the Afghan authorities on the strategy. The really
important bit will be the surge of 21,000 troopsthe 17,000
plus the 4,000 mentorsand the fact that the United States
seems to want to change the strategic context in the south at
least. That means not just being the biggest player in the south
and the east, but possibly being during the next two years almost
the only player. That is a very profound, strategic difference
in the way that it has been proceeding until now.
Sajjan Gohel: One of the most
important dimensions is that hundreds of agricultural specialists,
teachers, engineers and lawyers will be brought in to help provide
and improve the civilian and civil infrastructure that has been
lacking for the past eight years. Those are important dimensions
because we have to win hearts and minds at grass roots level,
be able to educate individuals and give them the ability to enhance
their own quality of life. The operation on the military segment
is also very important. Come the summer, there will be some 60,000
US troops in Afghanistan. If we combine that with the British
forces and those of the other European nations and Canada that
are contributing, we are looking at more than 100,000, which ominously
will echo the similar figure that the Soviets had before they
decided to leave Afghanistan. Having troops there is important,
but they also have to be engaging with the Taliban. I do not mean
negotiating, but directly confronting them. Unfortunately, some
of our European partners have not shown the willingness to send
troops into difficult positions. Not enough has been done in that
regard. It is all very well having them up in the north where
it is safe, but they are not actually doing anything of substance.
British troops, along with the Canadians, the Dutch and the Americans
are actively engaging the Taliban. They should be applauded for
what they have been doing, but they need more support. The US
under the Barack Obama strategy has started it, but a lot more
needs to be done.
Dr. Gordon: The key reform measure
will be the use of the mentors in expanding the Afghan national
army and probably the Afghan national police as well, with their
numbers going up potentially to 134,000 ANA and 82,000 police.
There is a danger that the surge will be seen as a US surge and
the key is to build some form of social contract or political
settlement between Afghans and their Government. Putting an Afghan
face on security is essential and also reforming the Afghan Government
sufficiently so that they can deliver tangible results on the
ground to cement a political settlement is also key. I have seen
different figures about the number of American civilians who will
be deployedfrom 400 to 2,000but the key is to pick
priority ministries to allow them to engage and cement outreach
by district and provincial governors through a form of public
service arrangement. The many Afghans whom I have spoken to would
be very keen to see that. It would be a change in their experience
of government. I have heard Afghans talking in terms of the Afghan
police really being representative of the Government, and that
that face is nasty, sneering and contemptuous. So reforming the
Afghanisation of the security effort and also underpinning it
with public service delivery is key.
Q148 Chairman: How does that aspiration,
which is very noble, fit with the Afghan public protection force
under the Ministry of Interior, which we heard about in the last
session? Will there not be a contradiction between the aspiration
to have the security sector reform be more effective, responsive
and accountable policing on the one hand, and the interior ministry
with the difficulties to which we have referred?
Daniel Korski: I think that we
all recognise that we probably were far too ambitious considering
what we could achieve with the police forces, and that the division
of responsibilities that you talked about in your previous sessionhanding
over the building up of the Afghan national police to the Germans
and the judicial sector to the Italiansprobably did not
work. I would not hone in exclusively on the question of the militias
and say, "Is this really the way that we are going to go
in the future?" I think that over the past two years we have
seen more conceptual convergence in Kabul on what we should be
doing on policing. The US programme called "focused district
development", in which, district-by-district, they take the
police officers out, send them for training for a couple of weeks
and deploy a specialised forcea more gendarmerie-style
forcecalled ANCOP, has proven reasonably successful in
many areas that it operates in. Sure, there are problems; there
are not enough ANCOP special troops to go in and, when the old
police officers come back, people say, "Give us the special
troops who were here before." There are positive things going
on in the policing sector. It may not be that wonderfully expansive
vision of a democratically accountable and responsive security
sector that we originally had, but it is not yet handing over
guns to a series of militias unconnected to the security sector
reform process.
Q149 Chairman: NATO countries have
agreed to send 5,000 extra troops, but only until August. Is there
any long-term commitment or agreement among the NATO partners
of the US or, having rejected the proposals and the pressing from
the US for a bigger commitment, have we had a kind of face-saving
formula? Most countries are reluctant and therefore ISAF does
not have a credible future, is that a fair assessment?
Daniel Korski: I think that it
is fair to say that for diplomatic reasons a lot of European nations
were willing to offer President Obama something in the run up
to the elections. When I was in Kabul two weeks ago, a senior
NATO general said that he thought that out of the 42 member states
fighting in ISAFin other words, more than NATOonly
10 could effectively be used for anything approaching counter-insurgency
operations, but the truth probably is that it is five or so. Without
a doubt, we are not going to get more forces, certainly not of
the magnitude required, and they are not going to be operating,
as Mr. Gohel said, in the south and the east. The real question
is whether the Americans want that these days anyway. The sense
that I get is that they have probably stopped asking for things
that they do not think they are going to get and have switched
to asking European allies to provide more on the policing and
economic reconstruction side. I think that it is probably reasonable
to say that we are not going to get a lot more out of European
allies, by which I mean a strategically significant lift in capability,
and that the US has to supply the main fighting force over the
next couple of years.
Sajjan Gohel: It is basically
a stop-gap measure and is going to be until the presidential elections.
As has already been stated, they are not going to be doing anything
in terms of fighting the Taliban, which is going to be the problem.
I think that the US has accepted that other European nations are
not necessarily willing to put their troops on to the frontline
because they have seen how difficult it has been for everybody
else. I have to make this point very clear: whatever the rights
and wrongs were about Iraq, everybody was in agreement on Afghanistan
after 11 September. There was unity and a coalition. It is disappointing
that not everybody is willing to co-operate enough in providing
troops. As I think was talked about in the previous session, this
is an election issue in Holland and Canada. It has the potential
to bring down Governments. If they withdrew their troops at some
point, it would put a further burden on us in the UK and on the
United States. Those countries that are not going to put their
troops on the frontline can contribute to security sector reform,
but it is not simply about reform, it is about transformation
and trying to create something in Afghanistan that has not existed,
such as an Afghan national army. The last time that we had something
like that was when President Najibullah was there and, even then,
the regime was propped up in part by the Soviets. There is also
the reform of the police, which has been extremely corrupt in
the past, and the ethnic imbalance. If European countries are
not going to contribute troops on the ground fighting the Taliban,
they need to do more to provide direct training and assistance
on those issues where they can play a more meaningful role. It
is a pity that they do not want to contribute in terms of tackling
the Taliban.
Dr. Gordon: The interesting thing
here is what you want the troops for. If you simply want more
troops to hold ground and engage in garrison duties, that is a
mistake. The trick has to be the right type of security, which
immediately brings the debate around to the Afghan National Police
and back to the Public Protection Force. My concern with the other
kind of model is that there are experiences of it working reasonably
well, where as a homogenous tribal grouping there are checks and
balances within the community. We would need to look carefully
at what the Public Protection Force model had in terms of checks
and balances, but the Afghanisation is the only way forward. Expanding
the number of Western troops on garrison duties is not necessarily
the right line. That said, having enough troops to be able to
manoeuvre freely and to use those troops as your manoeuvre element,
but having the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police
holding territory as the visible face of security for the average
Afghan is the key. Simply having numbers of troops, without the
right checks and balances, we would have the same problems that
we have had with the Afghan National Police, which is that predatory
relationship.
Daniel Korski: I would like to
say quickly that we have to think of creative ways in which European
troops, who are unwilling to go to the south or east, can be used
to train the forces that are ultimately deploying in the south
and east. If the Germans are not willing to move south and east,
is there some way that they can train kandaks of the Afghan National
Army for deployment? Is there some way that we can use their presence
where they are? Do they need to focus more on border security
in the areas in which they are stationed?
Dr. Gordon: One of the models
that has worked well with the Afghan National Army has been the
mentoringembedding foreign combat troops with the Afghan
kandaks. I would be cautious about one organisation doing the
training and one organisation doing the fighting. Where the Afghan
kandaks, particularly in Helmand, have worked very well is where
British and American troops have worked alongside them, in a partnership.
That training element is key. The Obama strategy with a full brigade
dedicated towards training is a real potential force multiplier.
Chairman: Presumably if you trained in
the caveats as well, you would have an even bigger problem, but
perhaps we will not go there.
Q150 Sir Menzies Campbell: The fundamental
difference is that Afghanistan was the first implementation of
the article 5 obligation. What we found in NATO is that making
it as much a political alliance as a military alliance has not
necessarily equipped us for the military purpose. Did you think
that it was notable that President Obama in the end did not ask
for very much when he came to Europe? Perhaps that was on the
grounds that to be rebuffedas he almost certainly would
have been, apart from to the extent that the Chairman describedwould
have been damaging for him domestically. It would have made it
more difficult to persuade American public opinion that America
should assume the principal role in the way that all three of
you have described.
Daniel Korski: I think that the
Americans asked them for a lot, but on the civilian side. We know
of US diplomats handing over lists of things that they would like
to see Europeans deliver, but there is no doubt that they did
not want to go to the first NATO summiteffectively the
first security-related summit that the new President was to attendand
be rebuffed in any way, not just for domestic reasons but also
not to get into a fight with allies. Coming back to article 5
and NATO, to a lot of allies this is not an article 5 operation.
They see the solidarity expressed in article 5 following 9/11
as something separate. That is the reality that we have to deal
with. We see it differently but, for a lot of allies, NATO is
not just about Afghanistan, it is about the resurgent threat that
they see from Russia, shipping lanes off the horn of Africa and
so forth and so on. It is the sort of alliance that we share with
a lot of different people. We focus on Afghanistan, I think for
the right reasons, but they do not. That is a real challenge.
Q151 Sir Menzies Campbell: But unless
NATO's credibility is maintained or even enhanced as a result
of its activities in Afghanistan, if you are sitting in the Baltics,
the Russian threat will begin to look rather larger than it does
even so far as you think it to be a threat at the moment. The
integrity of NATO and its effectiveness is essentially at stake
here, is it not?
Daniel Korski: I do not think
that NATO is ever going to go away.
Sir Menzies Campbell: I agree with you
about that.
Daniel Korski: Because it is too
important to us for a whole series of reasons. However, if you
are a military alliance and you struggle to conduct military tasks,
that is ultimately going to be a problem.
Sir Menzies Campbell: It simply encourages
Russian initiatives from Vancouver to the Urals. It has the effect,
if not of destroying NATO, of undermining the perception of it.
Chairman: Can we move to the regional
context?
Q152 Mr. Horam: One of the aspects
of the Obama approach is the renewed emphasis on the regional
dimension. Obviously, there is self-interest in all the countries
around Afghanistan in not importing the chaos and problems into
their countries. How do you see the regional dimension developing?
Sajjan Gohel: Do you mean in terms
of Pakistan and countries like it playing a role?
Q153 Mr. Horam: Pakistan in the first
instance. The question specifically relates to Pakistan, because
of Holbrooke's remit and the remit covering Pakistan of Sherard
Cowper-Coles, our former ambassador, but you could say that it
could go wider. You could argue, for example, as one of our previous
interviewees did, that you cannot deal with the Pakistani Armygetting
them working the right wayuntil you deal with Kashmir.
So then you have to include India as well. Where do you stop on
the regional dimension?
Sajjan Gohel: Afghanistan's future
and its stability are intrinsically tied to that of Pakistan.
Unfortunately, because of the increasing radicalism and extremism
emanating from Pakistan, Pakistan's own security as a result is
at stake. The problem hinges on where does the Pakistan military
lie in their agenda. We know that the Taliban were created in
part as a strategic asset for the Pakistani military's policy
of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan. Ironically, now they
have conceded reverse strategic depth in Pakistan.
Q154 Mr. Horam: You could say that
it is a failed strategy.
Sajjan Gohel: It has proved to
be, unfortunately, a failed strategy and a very worrying strategy,
because the Taliban itself has evolved. It is not a homogenous
group. You have the Afghan Taliban, of which there are many segments.
Then you have the Pakistan Taliban, which, again, is divided into
many different groups. All of them have their own leadership,
personnel and financing. Some are being supported by elements
within Pakistan's own military. The problemthis is the
big concernis whether the Pakistan military sees Afghanistan
in the same way that we do. I would say, unfortunately, they don't.
It is a question almost of waiting for the west to get fed up
with Afghanistan and the mounting casualties, the cost, the endless
problems of corruption, and just withdraw. They are looking at
the long term. We are looking at what is happening tomorrow, next
week, perhaps until the end of the year. They have a much longer
term strategy. One of the most interesting things I heard in Afghanistan
was that "the west keeps looking at their watch, but the
Taliban keeps the time". Sooner or later, many within Pakistan
feel that they will be able to reassert the Taliban into Afghanistan,
and that of course is a big concern. So it is the Pakistan angle
that I would say is the key to what happens in Afghanistan and
in Pakistan.
Q155 Mr. Horam: What about the attitudes
of the Pakistani Army, which you mentioned? It is more concerned
with India and Kashmir, is it not?
Sajjan Gohel: Recently, the Pakistani
military has faced a lot of difficulty in the tribal areas, especially
with the Pakistan Taliban. There is a kind of weird paradox: on
the one hand, they support elements of the Afghan Taliban but
are deeply opposed to the Pakistan Taliban, and the Pakistan Taliban
and the Afghan Taliban actually co-operate in terms of sharing
resources and weaponry. The military in Pakistan is tied up with
trying to fight a very difficult battle with the tribal militants
in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, Mohmand province, and
as we have seen with the recent Swat valley deal, again, it shows
just how difficult it is becoming internally. Kashmir has not
blown up as a result of this. I would say actually that the situation
is somewhat better than it has been for some time. The insurgency
there does not seem to have increased over the past couple of
years. It is, obviously, an ongoing concern, especially as Pakistan
has become the home of all the different Taliban groups, al-Qaeda
and Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates, but that is not the immediate
concern. I think that the instability within Pakistan's provinces
is going to be the key issue and something that the military themselves
are now having to deal with.
Dr. Gordon: There is a challenge
that we can possibly contribute towards. The difficulty that the
Pakistani army has is that it is configured for fighting a conventional
foe. It is configured for dealing with what they perceive as an
Indian threat. Certainly most Western armies have had some difficulty
in transferring their capabilities, organisations and mindsets
to fight a counter-insurgency campaign. We have seen huge organisational
learning among the Americans in Iraq
Q156 Mr. Horam: The Pakistan army
have got the same difficulty.
Dr. Gordon: Yes, exactly. Where
a difference can be made is in terms of contributing to a recognition
within the Pakistani army that some of their approaches need to
be adapted in order to avoid some of the difficulties that I think
other armies have faced in fighting insurgencies. The danger for
Western policymakers is finding a point at which they can influence
the trajectory of Pakistan, and limiting their aspirations. I
think there are probably three areas. One was mentioned earlierthe
regulation of madrassahs. The second one is looking carefully
at the Pakistani military capabilities and seeking to produce
a more nuanced counter-insurgency strategy, or helping them to
do that. The third issue is really to look at the question of
ISI support and what can be done there.
Q157 Mr. Horam: Do you think bringing
in the other surrounding countries, such as China, Russia and
Iran, is relevant and important in this context? Or is it really
that the focus must be on Pakistan, and everything else is irrelevant
or less important?
Dr. Gordon: I think you have to
set a limit somewhere, and certainly defining a strategy towards
Pakistan that contributes to the effort in Afghanistan is key.
My mind goes back to looking at regional strategies over Iraq,
for exampleIran's role and Syria's role. Both of those
roles were fundamentally quite limited. How far do you really
need to set the net? Certainly in the case of Afghanistan, people
talk about Iran's role, China's role, Pakistan's role, India's
role, and then the central Asian states' roles as well. The key
is to focus on the key relationship, which is Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
Daniel Korski: It is fair to say
that I think Richard Holbrooke's mandate includes India, even
though it does not say so on the packageon the cover, as
it were. But if I could add just one point to the list: I think
we have to focus on policing as well.
Q158 Mr. Horam: Policing in Pakistan?
Daniel Korski: That is right.
I think the Pakistani police force has rarely been given the kind
of support that Pakistan's allies have been providing the army
for fighting against a conventional enemy. We can look at the
amount of money poured into the Pakistani air force, which is
not particularly useful for counter-insurgency purposes, and contrast
that with the very limited trickle of funding going into the policing
sector. There has been some work with the frontier corps, but
this is also a big area that I think we need to start thinking
about in future if we want to craft a workable Pakistan strategy.
Dr. Gordon: With the Indians as
wellI am going to contradict my earlier point to a degree,
but I think the Indians have been quite interesting in the way
in which they have engaged in Afghanistan. They have contributed
to the building of institutions in Afghanistan in quite a unique
way. The last estimates I had were that there were somewhere in
the region of 4,000 Indians working in Afghan institutions and
ministries, providing perhaps a very different way of going about
building institutions in a conflict state. But of course that
brings alarm bells with it for Pakistan, so there is a sense in
which the more the regional states contribute productively, the
more other states perhaps have difficulties with them.
Q159 Ms Stuart: On the issue of Pakistan,
but in particular the American strategy towards Pakistan, to what
extent can we talk about a coherent view of the world within Pakistan,
if you were to say the ISI, the Government and the military? Do
they actually sing off the same hymn sheet?
Sajjan Gohel: The problem has
been that under Pervez Musharraf, he was the military ruler and
the chief of army staff. Theoretically you would assume that his
job would have been somewhat easier, but in effect what we are
seeing today in Pakistan and the knock-on effect in neighbouring
Afghanistan is his legacy. He undermined the civilian institutions;
he arrested politicians, lawyers, human rights groups. The only
thing he did not dismantle was the terrorist infrastructure, which
he was asked to do after 9/11. Ironically, the radical madrassahs,
and we should point out that not all of them are breeding grounds
for terrorism, but the few that have been identified, were not
reformed. The training centres for terrorist groups were still
active. The fact that so many Britons have gone there for training
and been given the skills and the ideological guidance to come
back to the UK to carry out attacks over the last few years is
another indication. More needs to be done to support the civilian
Government in Pakistan. They are not perfect. They have shown
their weaknesses, especially with the Swat valley deal. There
are divisions within the civilian Government. But supporting the
military, as has been done in the past, is not a solution. Unfortunately,
it is a failed policy. More needs to be done to empower the civilian
Government. What President Obama had to say on the matter was
interesting. He said that they were looking at not just one element,
but all the different facets, including those within the civilian
apparatus. They have been talking to President Zardari and opposition
leader, Nawaz Sharif. Moreover, they have been trying to offer
financial packages, but they are tied in to commitment and performance.
In the past, there was a policy of blank cheques going to Pakistan,
especially to the military who were using it to buy hardware rather
than to fight against the insurgency of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
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