Examination of Witnesses (Questions 266
- 279)
TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2009
MR DANIEL
KORSKI, MR
HOWARD MOLLETT
AND MR
STEPHEN GREY
Q266 Chairman:
Thank you very much for coming to help further with our evidence
session. Would you like to tell us a bit about yourselves, please,
and what relationship you have had with the Comprehensive Approach?
Daniel Korski, do you want to start?
Mr Korski: I am Daniel Korski;
I am a Senior Policy Fellow at a think-tank called the European
Council on Foreign Relations. Before that I worked for the British
Government as the Deputy Head of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Unit (now called the Stabilisation Unit), I ran the Provincial
Reconstruction Team in Basra, spent some time advising one of
President Karzai's ministers, and worked for four years for Lord
Paddy Ashdown in the Balkans on what we then did not call the
Comprehensive Approach but it probably was that very thing.
Mr Mollett: Good morning, my name
is Howard Mollett and I work for Care International, which is
a multi-mandate non-governmental organisation. We work across
development, recovery and humanitarian work in about 70 countries
worldwide. I work in the conflict and humanitarian team at the
international level, providing technical support to our country
officers on both the programme quality side and also research
to inform our engagement with different policy issues, such as
the Comprehensive Approach. Civil military relations is a really
important issue for us, obviously, on the ground, particularly
in countries affected by conflict, but we are also seeing some
of the implications of the Comprehensive Approach playing out
at the international level in terms of donor policy and how funding
is managed, and so on. So that is where our interest stems from.
Mr Grey: Thank you for having
me. I am a journalist working as a freelancer primarily for The
Sunday Times. I have covered operations in Afghanistan, both
under the Taliban and, more recently, in Helmand after the British
involvement. I am also the author of a book, just published, called
Operation Snakebite, which is largely about Musa Qala but
looks at the overall strategy that we have pursued in Afghanistan
and involved 230 interviews with personnel, military and civilians,
both on the British and American sides at all levels. I have no
particular expertise on the Comprehensive Approach but I can offer
you some insight from many of those that are involved in implementing
that approach.
Q267 Chairman:
Could we begin with that then, please. Could you give us a summary
of how you think it is working, in your experience, on the ground
in Afghanistan?
Mr Grey: I have to say, I think
we owe it to all those that are sacrificing themselves in Helmand,
to be brutally frank about what is going on there and what is
going wrong, because it is only with that frankness that I think
certain things can be put right. From the perspective of those
on the ground, I think the Comprehensive Approach has largely
been a parody of reality. In some ways the failure to get that
right has done as much to stir up conflict and cause what is happening
as it has to bring peace to Afghanistan, which surely is the ultimate
objective there. There is a lot that is talked about the mechanics
of these things. I was reading the evidence of your permanent
secretaries, who you had last time round, who spoke about an outcome-based
approach, but I have read very little in what they have said that
seemed to reflect that. It seemed to be mainly about the mechanics
of it; whereas the picture on the ground you get is varied. There
have certainly been great improvements in co-ordination recently,
particularly in the centre of Helmand, but in their application,
for example in Sangin and in Musa Qala (and I can go into detail)
the view certainly from the military is that very little of what
is talked about is actually being put into practice. It might
just be an illustration. I have brought with me an email that
I was sent by an officer who has just returned from Musa Qala,
if you would permit me to read what he said.
Q268 Chairman:
Please do.
Mr Grey: He referred to the governance
strand, and I will just summarise that, a sense of total lack
of delivery of promises. A governor there in Musa Qala who was
frequently absent for months on end and absent without anyone
knowing where he was. Intelligence (and I will not go much into
that), but the sense of a severe lack of any continuity and situational
awareness, even at a very local level, about the opinions and
the make-up of the people with whom they were working. I will
read you exactly what he said about the Comprehensive Approach.
"The Comprehensive Approach was the biggest set back. Once
the security bubble was established, there was little to back
it up to create the ink-spot theory. Yes, there was a `rebuilt'
school, a few ditches dug and a medical centre which will be the
best for miles around if it is ever finished, but that is it.
The FCO lead in Musa Qala did not leave the base in the entire
six months I was there, as it was decreed too dangerous by their
standards. This meant it was left to an underfunded CIMIC team
of five people. In conclusion, it felt as if we were doing things
half-heartedly. Intelligence and CIMIC are a most important aspect,
but underfunded. All we really did was to fight and kill the Taliban.
The numbers are staggering, and why is that? Because we are good
at it, structured for it and resourced for it, but that should
not be the centre of gravity of our efforts." I suppose I
would argue that there are three ways in which you can see fault,
and I only look for fault because we need to get it right, not
because there are not people who are trying to resolve these things
and making some progress. First of all, strategic synchronisation
is a phrase I have heard at the top of Whitehall and I think it
is a very good phrase. This is not about criticising one department
or the other; it is about only moving in one direction where the
resources and capability are there to back them up, and what we
have seen very often is the military moving ahead, extending their
reach, without account of the civilian infrastructure and capability
and, indeed, political will back here in Whitehall to that over
extension. So you are left with the military pushing out on their
own, and that is as much a fault of the military as it is of the
other agencies that have not provided the back-up.
Q269 Chairman:
Did you get involved in Iraq at all?
Mr Grey: Absolutely. I spent months
in Basra.
Chairman: Do you think the same thing
happened there, or do you think that lessons of things that happened
there were not applied, or were applied but in an inefficient
way, or what?
Mr Holloway: Mr Grey is one of the very
few Western journalists who is wandering around southern Iraq
outside the security bubble of foreign military.
Q270 Chairman:
I am sure he is about to tell us that.
Mr Grey: In some ways the problem
about Iraq is that some of the lessons were learnt right at the
end, but we were deployed into Helmand before, if you like, the
lessons learned kicked in, and what you saw in Iraq was an enormous
total lack of long-term planning where we made short-term deals
with militias essentially to hand over great responsibility for
the power structure to them. The fundamental lesson there was:
do not put all the bad guys in power if you expect to win over
the population, and, unfortunately, we repeated that mistake in
Helmand, where we arrived to ally ourselves with a great deal
of people who brought only disrespect to us from the population.
Many of the established interests we were working with, for example,
were connected to the drugs trade, and such like and, therefore,
failed to do anything to enhance our reputational ability to deliver
effect with the population. The only thing I would urge you to
do when you look at the Comprehensive Approach—because,
after all, it is just the foundation of any counter-insurgency,
political, military unity—is to look at it in three dimensions.
One is the joined up nature of UK efforts, where the whole operation
has been plagued, despite what is said publicly, by squabbling
between departments and a real sense of people not pulling together,
and that is only one aspect, but also, the second dimension is
the vertical integration: what are we doing as far as the overall
plan for Afghanistan? In some ways everything we do in Helmand
is about influencing the Afghan Government and the US Government,
which has control over the strategy. Our point-men at the moment
are Sherard Cowper-Coles, influencing at a diplomatic level, and
Jim Dutton in Kabul in terms of the military strategy. Those are
why people fight and die in Helmand, to give these people power
to influence the broader picture. The third element, I think,
that is often missing from the three-dimensional aspects of the
dysfunction is over time. I think one of the key problems with
the British approach has been these very short-term deployments
and appointments which allow no continuity and joined-up effort
over a long period of time. We have had commander after commander,
very bright, but unable to get to grips with the problems before
moving on, and Iraq was the epitome of that problem, where we
had commanders of British forces in Basra some of whom were only
there three months. It reflected a total apparent lack of interest
in developing a long-term strategy. I think it is impossible to
see how you can join up government efforts unless you have single
individuals who are made accountable for those efforts, and that
means not just at any one time, but over time. One is left thinking
like the famous general in Vietnam who said, "I am damned
if I am going to let this war destroy my Army." The structure
of rotation and appointment seems much more designed around the
career structures of people within the Army than it is about actually
winning the war.
Q271 Mr Hamilton:
Just following up on that last part. We have had evidence before
where that has come up. Indeed, when we were in Afghanistan that
point came up. Maybe we should change the structure of the commanders
so they do not go in with the regiments, they actually stay when
the other regiments start to come through and give that continuity.
You are emphasising that does not happen even now after, what,
two years. I think we discussed that two years ago and that is
still happening, the rotation just goes on and on and on.
Mr Grey: I think it was a key
recommendation of the After Action Report of 52 Brigade at the
beginning of last year, 2008, and it was another key recommendation,
I believe, in the most recent from Brigadier Gordon Messenger,
continually repeating this message. This is not about combat troops,
who arguably should be going for shorter tours, but about the
brigade and the commanders who run this thing. There seems to
be a flat refusal at the top level of the military to accept this.
The one improvement is a deployment of a headquarters to Regional
Command South by General Nick Carter, who is coming in in October
for a year, which is a lot better, but that has to be reflected
in the overall British plan.
Q272 Chairman:
But there is a balance, is there not, between deploying a brigadier
with his brigade and having, therefore, the entire brigade serving
a period in Afghanistan which might be considered to be unacceptably
long and deploying a brigadier for a long time?
Mr Grey: Absolutely.
Q273 Chairman:
How would you resolve that?
Mr Grey: The key people that require
continuity are the intelligence officers, political officers,
in other words those people that interact with Afghans. They have
to develop relationships. It is impossible to develop a relationship
over six months. By the time you have made the relationship you
are leaving, and then the headquarters elements of the brigade.
That does not mean the individual soldiers who are fighting. I
would argue that they are too long, actually, many of the combat
units. They are totally overstretched.
Mr Korski: I wonder if I could
add a civilian element to this. There is obviously no point in
longer rotations of senior military officers if their civilian
counterparts either stay in the shorter rotations or have leave
rotations that do not coincide with their military counterparts.
Just to complement what Stephen was saying, I think it would be
necessary to think much more comprehensively about deployment,
including deploying military and civilians together for longer
periods at the higher level.
Q274 Chairman:
A totally different question. Have you had any difficulty, as
a journalist in Afghanistan, getting access to the frontline in
order that the message about what is happening there should be
well delivered to the British public who need to know about it?
Mr Grey: It is extraordinarily
difficult to get access. It is just the nature of the war rather
than the Government. This is very different from Iraq. In Iraq,
albeit in some danger at points, I could live independently in
a hotel in the centre of Basra even while the insurgency was erupting.
This is a rural and more violent conflict, which makes access
intrinsically more difficult for any independent observer. The
supply of places to go out with them, as I am sure, Chairman,
you found, is highly regulated and, whilst there are people who
are willing to express their minds, it is obviously quite difficult
to get to the bottom of what people think sometimes because particularly
commanders are very regulated in what they can say to the military.
I remember in Iraq, when I was there last, which is 2006, I believe,
the lines-to-take book had got up to 130 pages. I remember hearing
soldiers being briefed for the visit of the Prime Minister, and
they were choosing junior officers, certainly young soldiers,
who would be in line to talk to the Prime Minister and what they
should tell him. The whole thing seemed completely circular—basically
politicians going out to be told what they wanted to hear.
Q275 Chairman:
I am sorry, were you there for that briefing, or were you told
about the briefing afterwards?
Mr Grey: I was there when I overheard
discussions by staff in headquarters about how they planned to
organise this Prime Minister's visit.
Q276 Chairman:
What you are telling us is that when the Prime Minister goes there
he gets no ground truth; he gets some pre-organised line-to-take
cooked up in advance by the Ministry of Defence?
Mr Grey: That is the objective
of certain officials. Of course, I just add that there are soldiers
who speak their mind regardless of any briefing they receive,
but there is a tendency in that system certainly and people there
who do try to cook up that sort of viewpoint.
Q277 Mr Holloway:
Do you think generally with both Iraq and Afghanistan that the
politicians have been well or ill served by the Ministry of Defence
and the Foreign Office in terms of what the Chairman refers to
as ground truth? I have often felt, when we have been in Afghanistan
and when we have evidence sessions here, we are dissembled too.
Do you think the Prime Minister and the Ministers have had a good
deal?
Mr Grey: I do not know what briefings
you have received, but I just know that there is almost a professional
optimism that is provided to yourselves which is not borne out
by the private opinions of many of the same people that make these
public statements.
Q278 Chairman:
You have seen the evidence that the permanent under-secretaries
gave us. Do you think that was just words?
Mr Grey: I do not know their private
views; I have never met any of them. I remember they made a similar
report. In the spring of 2007 they made a fact-finding trip to
Helmand in Afghanistan and they wrote a report, which you might
try and get hold of. I think the summary was headlined "Overall
we are optimistic", and it seems that in the intervening
period things have got considerably worse, but overall they remain
optimistic, as far as I can tell.
Q279 Chairman:
From what you are saying, the truth is different from what they
were telling us in terms of the effectiveness of the Comprehensive
Approach.
Mr Grey: I do not wish to question
those particular conclusions.
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