Examination of Witness (Questions 89-114)
Q89 Chair:
I welcome members of the public to this sitting of the Foreign
Affairs Committee. It is an evidence-taking session in our process
of producing a report on policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our
main witness for the first part of today's sitting is Sir Sherard
Cowper-Coles, who retired from the Foreign Office at the end of
October. He was our Ambassador in Kabul from May 2007 to February
2009, and the Foreign Secretary's Special Representative from
February 2009 to September 2010.
Sir Sherard, thank you very much for coming
along. You are very welcome. Is there anything you would like
to say at the start, or shall we go straight into questions?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Perhaps I could make a couple of comments.
First, thank you for inviting me; as a former
official, I am very flattered to be asked. I know and have met
many of the members of the Committee in my professional career
as a diplomat. That includes the former Secretary of State for
Defence, Bob Ainsworth, who is with us today, and the hon. Member
for Penrith and the Border, Rory Stewart—we worked together
in Kabul on a number of projects, and we were there as recently
as March.
I particularly welcome your inquiry because,
with the mid-term elections in the United States behind us, we
have a major American review of policy coming up next month. If
I may say so, I think that the Committee's inquiry is very timely,
because the central lesson that I took away from my three and
a half years working in and on Afghanistan is that it is a political
problem that needs political treatment and a political process.
It is a political and a regional problem, and it is time for the
politicians to take charge of the project, as I believe the new
coalition Government is doing. That is another reason why the
interest of this Committee is so important and so timely.
Q90 Chair:
Thank you. That was a very helpful kick-off. Following on from
that, do you think that the present Government have the right
strategy in their approach to Afghanistan?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Yes, I do. I was lucky enough to be present at a seminar at Chequers
that the Prime Minister convened on 1 June. It was very much in
the style of the seminars that Mrs Thatcher used to convene at
crucial points in policy making. Outsiders, including Rory Stewart,
were at an opening session; and then officials and Ministers were
together, drawing conclusions for policy.
I do not think that I am breaking any secrets
if I say that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister,
the Foreign and Defence Secretaries and other Ministers present,
drew what I believe is the right conclusion—that this needs
a political approach. But at the same time, we need to show unstinting
support for our military effort, and it is particularly timely
two days before 11 November that we pay tribute to what our troops
are doing. However, military effort by itself is not enough. It
is not grand strategy. As General David Richards would be the
first to acknowledge—and, indeed, General Petraeus—the
military campaign is about suppressing locally and temporarily
the symptoms of a very serious disease, which is affecting the
whole of the Afghan polity, not just the Pashtun areas in the
south and east, or the Pashtun pockets in the north.
Afghanistan needs a new political and regional
settlement, which cannot be delivered by military force. Military
force can contribute—there is no military solution but,
equally, there is no non-military solution. Military force plays
a part but, in my view and my experience, it should and must be
a subsidiary part. That is why politicians like you—like
this Committee—need to develop and encourage the vision
of a political approach to solving the underlying tensions that
are giving rise to the violence.
Q91 Chair:
When you say that it is time for the politicians to take charge,
there is a slight inference that they are not currently in charge.
Could you elaborate on that point?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
If I may be pedantic, it is your inference, Mr Chairman, not my
implication.
My message really is that we have got, on both
sides of the Atlantic, extremely capable and enthusiastic, unquenchably
optimistic and fiercely loyal—to their institutions and
countries—military machines, which have naturally adopted
a can-do attitude and driven forward. This has distorted the understanding
of the problem, because the real problem is much deeper. It is
a problem to do with the fact that the peace that was negotiated
at Petersberg outside Bonn in December 2001 was a victors' peace—the
vanquished were not present. The constitution, which we are fighting,
dying and spending getting on for £6 billion of taxpayers'
money a year to support, is unstable, because it is highly centralised—I
am glad to say that it was designed by a Frenchman and imposed
by an American. But it is not sustainable, because it does not
go with the grain of Afghan tradition. We need something much
more decentralised.
In the end, what will bring security to the
Pashtun areas and, indeed, to the whole region will be the solution
that Lord Curzon adopted as Viceroy on the north-west frontier.
He pulled our troops back east of the Indus and decided, rightly,
that the policy for pacifying or stabilising—I hesitate
to say pacifying—the Pathan tribal areas was one of empowering
the tribal leaders, under the supervision of the Government, to
secure and govern those areas for themselves, with a representative
shura of local tribes, punishing them if they misbehaved and rewarding
them with bags of gold if they succeeded. The modern-day equivalent
of the Curzon formula has to be the right approach. Garrisoning
these areas with alien troops might produce temporary suppression
of the symptoms, but it won't cure the underlying disease.
I know that General Richards and General Petraeus
understand that. What has been missing is the political strategy
which, if I may say so, can sound a bit like Liberal Democrat
community politics—
Sir Menzies Campbell:
There is nothing wrong with that.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
It has got to be top down and bottom up—easy to say, difficult
to do, but no other solution will work. We need to remember that
the Afghan army, which is only 3% southern Pashtun, is almost
as alien to the farmers of the Helmand valley as the 3rd Battalion
The Rifles or the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States
army.
Chair: I think
some of my colleagues will come back to you later on that.
Q92 Mr
Roy: Sir Sherard, may I take you to our relations
with the United States and our influence, whatever that might
be? You insist that Britain should support the United States and
are quoted as saying, "We should tell them that we want to
be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one". What is
the reality in relation to the influence that we can bring to
bear on United States thinking on both Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Well, that quotation you attribute to me I think comes from a
French diplomatic cable which was the result of a lunch with my
deputy in Kabul, but the author bigged it up in order to impress
people in Paris. It is not something that I ever recall saying.
The central point, if I may say so, is more
important than anything else. Only the United States can succeed
in this venture. America is necessary, but not enough for a solution.
One of our chief roles, and one of the chief benefits of our massive
contribution, is the influence that it gives us with the American
military and in Washington. I would like to go into that more
during the private session. David Miliband and I worked extremely
hard over 15 months to proselytise for a political solution and
process, with some success. My friend, colleague and sometimes
sparring partner, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, gets Afghanistan
in the way that few other American policy makers do. He is a highly
intelligent man, who understands from his days as a foreign service
officer in south Vietnam about the nature of insurgency and the
need for a political solution to the problems. However, the problem
often lies elsewhere in Washington. Sometimes, if the only or
main tool in the toolbox is a hammer, every problem can look like
a nail. I know that the Prime Minister understands that. We need
to give an American Administration the courage and the cover to
start on a political process.
In February 1963, after the United States army
and marine corps had won a great victory over the Viet Cong and
the north Vietnamese army, the dean of American broadcasters,
the David Dimbleby of the time, spoke to the American people on
CBS evening news on 23 February. He said, "The best we can
hope for is a military stalemate. We need a negotiated solution;
an honourable and political way out for an honourable people that
have done their best".
It is about encouraging all the good instincts
of the Obama Administration, as set out in the Bob Woodward book.
Britain is uniquely well placed to do that and Ambassador Holbrooke
is one of those who really understands that. If I may say so,
General McChrystal also understood it and General Petraeus understands
it. Moving America in that direction, when many Americans think
that the Taliban were somehow directly responsible for 9/11—they
were indirectly, but they were actually horrified immediately
after the event at the way their hospitality had been abused—is
difficult in American politics. Britain can help do that.
Q93 Mr
Roy: Are we major or minor?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
We are major. We are very much premier league and everyone else
is sort of champions league.
Q94 Mr
Roy: Everyone else?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Yes, everyone else in terms of contribution, influence and access,
intelligence, military and diplomatic matters. A member of my
staff was in Holbrooke's office and we had a member of Holbrooke's
team in my office in London. We are major league, but if you read
the Woodward book, you see that most of it is inside baseball
between the players in Washington and on the ground. Perhaps we
could go into more of that in the private session.
Q95 Mr
Baron: Sir Sherard, may I turn to your thoughts
about the very public announcement that the Government plan to
withdraw troops by 2015 as an outer deadline? For some, that presented
a bit of a mixed message. One moment we are focusing on conditions—and
achieving those conditions—for a full withdrawal, and the
next we are setting a deadline. The two things do not sit easily
next to each other. Critics would point to the fact that that
could be exploited by the Taliban to convey the impression that
they are on the road to victory so there is no need to negotiate.
It may encourage the Afghan people to just sit on the fence and
wait it out. What are your views? Were the Government right?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
I support the idea of deadlines. I didn't initially when I first
arrived there, but the Taliban can read the politics of the western
troop-contributing democracies as well as anybody. They are perfectly
aware that American troops are due to start leaving in July next
year and that the next British general election, all being well,
will be in May 2015. The Prime Minister has said that our troops
will be out of combat, not out of Afghanistan. I have always thought
that a long-term definition of success in Afghanistan will be,
"Are troops out of combat?" We won't be seeing Helmand
and the tribal areas garrisoned by anyone very much—perhaps
the towns and the roads—but we will have a long-term British
military training mission in Afghanistan, and DFID needs to be
in Afghanistan for 50 years. I think a deadline helps show the
Taliban something that President Obama very wisely said in one
of his early interviews. Contrary to what some of the neo-cons
had said, President Obama told The New York Times, I believe,
a month or so after he took office that America sought no long-term,
permanent presence in Afghanistan.
Of course, most Afghans believe that we and
America are there to seek some long-term military presence, some
kind of neo-colonial, long-term hegemony over the area. They don't
believe that rationally—many people in Helmand believe that
we are there to avenge the battle of Maiwand—but they do
believe it, so announcing that we are going, that we are getting
out of combat, is a good thing, in my view. It was a courageous
thing for the Prime Minister to do, and the right thing.
Q96 Mr
Baron: Do you not accept, though, that there is
a danger in sending mixed messages? We seem to be saying that
we will leave in 2015 whether we have achieved our objectives
or not. That can be a dangerous message to send out.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
It is a risk, and it needs to be accompanied with a vigorous political
process and strategy. As with strikes by our special forces, you
need to strike with one hand and offer a political process with
the other. In Northern Ireland, every armoured vehicle had on
the side an 0800 number for people to use to signal that they
were wanting to come over. In my view, the tragedy of NATO policy
in Afghanistan is that we have had far too much of the right hand
and not enough of the left hand. You need both: you need the political
process to harvest politically the success that the military is
delivering.
Q97 Mr
Ainsworth: Sir Sherard, 2015 is not far away. You
spoke about the lack of understanding in large parts of America
about the limitations of the military alone to achieve anything
in Afghanistan, but we have invested an awful lot of blood and
treasure in Afghanistan, particularly since 2006. Looking forward,
what do you think is likely to happen when we leave and the Afghan
operation is over?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
If we were to leave precipitately, there would be chaos. There
would be civil war and a battle across the south between the Taliban
and the narco-mafia, broadly defined. We have not really succeeded
in building a durable causeway of good governance between the
narco-mafia on the one hand and the Taliban on the other. What
many southern Afghans want to know is who will be in charge of
their village or valley five months or five years from now, and
they will back the winner. For many of them, the Taliban are harsher
but fairer than a predatory narco-mafia/Afghan Government.
I strongly oppose too precipitate a withdrawal
of troops, which would do great dishonour to the sacrifice of
our troops, and undo, or threaten, everything that has been achieved
for the people of Afghanistan. I am glad to see that some of the
members of the Troops Out Movement, with whom I have debated in
the past, have adopted a more nuanced approach to this recently,
and that is a very good thing.
The key question—this was Mr Baron's question—is
how you accompany a military draw-down with a serious political
process. The analogy that I have used—I thought of it a
few weeks ago—is of a double-decker bus. You need an American
chassis, an American engine, an American driver and an American
sat-nav system. The passengers on the lower deck of the bus will
be the internal parties. This is about far more than just talking
to the Taliban; the Tajiks are increasingly alienated. On the
top deck of the bus, you have all the external parties. The largest
passenger will be Pakistan, but India, China, Russia, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, the emirates and the lower tier of the -stans
will all be there. The bus will be painted in Afghan colours and
have a UN conductor on each floor and, with luck, a British back-seat
driver.
The only question, I think, is not whether there's
a negotiated withdrawal; there will be a negotiated end to this
conflict, as to all conflicts. The question is, do we get ahead
of the tide of history? Do we have the confidence and courage
to say, "Look, this needs a comprehensive negotiated solution,
regionally and internally", or do we say, "We don't
want to get involved. We'll subcontract it to the Afghans and
the Pakistanis"? In the end, we want what the Taliban want,
which is the withdrawal of foreign forces. The conversation is
about the conditions accompanying those foreign forces.
If we want to protect what has been achieved,
we will do it best, in my view—and, if I may say so, in
the view of your former colleague, David Miliband, in his article
as Foreign Secretary in The New York Review of Books, and,
I believe, of the present Minister as well—by having the
confidence to take the initiative ourselves rather than saying,
"After you, Claude", and letting it drift on.
Q98 Mr
Ainsworth: Forgive me, but what is precipitate?
You've just told John Baron that 2015 was a good idea, with no
conditions base. That is about four years away now, yet you're
saying that precipitate withdrawal would be a disaster. What is
precipitate?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Precipitate is starting to withdraw next month or next year. It
is pulling back significant numbers of troops and just evacuating
areas and letting chaos reign. Nothing that has been achieved
will be preserved or sustained unless it's accompanied by a political
settlement. Even the Afghan army at its very best and the Afghan
national security forces are not going to be able to hold these
areas absent a political settlement.
Q99 Rory
Stewart: Sherard, you said very clearly that you
and the former Foreign Secretary were pushing very hard for a
political solution. I think the sense, to follow on from the Chairman,
is that you felt you didn't make as much progress as you would
have liked. You've been very diplomatic about the military and
their position, but there's certainly a sense that what the MOD
was pursuing was slightly at odds with that political solution.
As the Foreign Affairs Committee, we're here to look at the relationship
between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. Do you
have some practical suggestions or thoughts—going forward,
not backward—on how one could get the relationship a little
bit better in terms of how soldiers relate to political priorities?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Well, that, my lord, is what is called a leading question. I do
have a number of practical suggestions; perhaps we can go into
more detail in the private session.
I think it is a question of politicians and
civilian officials having the confidence to question some of the
very optimistic military advice they get. I'm not in any way blaming
the military—you couldn't have a serious military unless
they were incurably optimistic—but I saw in my three and
a half years papers that went to Ministers that were misleadingly
optimistic. Officials and Ministers who questioned them were accused
of being defeatist or disloyal in some way.
One of the most moving experiences for me as
Ambassador was in Helmand, when a young and very courageous officer
in the Grenadier Guards came up to me and said he'd been at school
with one of my sons. He said, "Can I have a private word
with you, Sir? The strategy isn't working, but whenever I try
to report that up the line, my superiors say I'm being defeatist
and I must re-work my papers, because cracking on in Helmand is
what it's about and success is coming". We have had success
in Helmand and we are getting better, but it's tactics without
grand strategy and without a political approach. It is suppressing
locally and temporarily the symptoms of the disease. It is not
curing the disease.
Q100
Rory Stewart: Just following
on from that, if we are to get ourselves, by 2015, to a situation
in which we have ceased combat operations and are training and
doing special forces, how are we, as the British Government, going
to get the British Army in a position to be ready for 2015? Many
senior generals are still saying, "It's got to be conditions-based.
This is a fungible deadline. We've got to stick with Petraeus
all the way". So what practically does one do to get us from
where we are to where we want to be in 2015, in terms of the military?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
It's not a question of Britain doing it alone. There's a great
conceit, really. I remember that when I first started as Ambassador
there was a stack of papers headed "The United Kingdom strategy
for Afghanistan" and "The United Kingdom strategy for
Helmand". The reality is that the United Kingdom cannot and
should not have an independent strategy for Helmand or for Afghanistan.
This is part of a collective effort.
We still deceive ourselves in thinking that
we can somehow operate independently, but we can have a major
influence on collective strategy, above all through our relationship
with the United States. It is very much about the civilian side
of the US Administration, the US Embassy, the State Department,
the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency
all making the kind of input that is necessary for an orchestrated
de-escalation of military operations and a move towards the kind
of new, negotiated, fair, political settlement that includes all
parties to this multi-decade, multidimensional, multifaceted conflict.
That is terribly easy to say in a Committee Room in the House
of Commons, but difficult to deliver on the ground. But the truth
is that the Afghans know how to do it. The system is called jirga—in
Arabic it's called shura. It is about sitting together and thrashing
out your differences.
Q101 Sir
John Stanley: Sir Sherard, you pronounce yourself
satisfied with the British Government strategy towards Afghanistan,
and I assume that you are satisfied therefore with the broad ISAF
strategy. But do you think that we have a satisfactory strategy
to deal with what appears to me to be the single most corrosive
area of impact on the effectiveness of the Karzai Government:
the exercise of power by the Taliban through fear, intimidation,
risk to family and cold-blooded murder? We see right now a systematic
programme of assassination of government officials in Kandahar,
as they try to see who exerts the real authority in that crucial
city. Do we have a policy that can deal satisfactorily with the
exercise of power through fear?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
No; clearly, Sir John, we don't, but as in Northern Ireland, Malaya,
Palestine, Vietnam and Algeria, the solution is not going to be
to try to suppress it by force alone. You need to protect the
population, but to make the young men who are mounting the violence
feel that they have a political stake in modern Afghanistan.
The truth is that in 2001, when our special
forces and our intelligence services helped the northern warlords
to push the Taliban out of power, first in Kabul and then in Kandahar,
the Taliban weren't defeated. They were pushed south and east
and down, but they were never defeated. They were pushed out of
power, but they weren't defeated and they were not part of the
subsequent political settlement. They are violent; they are unpleasant.
But, in my view, for many southern Pashtuns they represent a less
bad alternative—a fairer, more predictable alternative than
a corrupt and predatory Government. That is why we need to use
military force, but it must be accompanied by a political outreach
and a sense that these people can be brought into a fair, political
settlement.
Chair: Sir Sherard,
that's very helpful. Thank you. You have indicated that you would
like to say some things in private, so I propose that we now move
to the private session. I am afraid that I have to ask members
of the public to leave. We will be going public again at five
o'clock, when we have two witnesses on the video link from Washington.
Resolved, That
the Committee should sit in private. The witness gave oral evidence.
Asterisks denote that part of the oral evidence which has not
been reported at the request of the witness and with the agreement
of the Committee.
Q102 Sir
John Stanley: Could you tell us what in your judgment
would be the minimum settlement that the Taliban would accept,
taking in and getting support for that settlement from their top
leadership in Pakistan?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Yes. Very, very good question—and very difficult. As you
know, Sir John, from your experience as a Minister in Northern
Ireland, one cannot know when one enters a negotiation how it
will end up. People's opening positions are not necessarily their
concluding positions. All I can say is that from intelligence,
from the websites and from my talks with people with access to
the Taliban, it's rather like the FLN in Algeria, the IRA or any
resistance movement—for example, the Jewish resistance movement
against our presence in Palestine. There is a moderate camp that
is fed up with fighting and that wants a political deal, and there
are hard-line rejectionists.
The key to a successful negotiation is to engage
those moderates, that being a relative term. There has been plenty
of signalling that they realise they made very serious mistakes
during their last time in power. It is rather like a political
party here reinventing its policies in opposition. You have the
new Taliban—I suggested once that their symbol should be
a red rose, because they like roses—and many of their extreme
policies have been abandoned. You'll be able to watch television;
they've said that they will allow girls to go to school; and they
have said that beards will not be compulsory. They've realised
that they made some horrific mistakes, but there's an old guard
sitting there in Quetta and in Karachi who need to be isolated.
We need to drive a wedge. Pakistan and the Afghans need to work
with us but, in the end, it needs America in there, because only
America will be trusted as the authoritative interlocutor.
President Karzai is a much better man than he
is made out to be. He's gone from hero to zero, but the truth
is somewhere in between. He's a great king, but a poor chief executive.
He's never going to be seen as the credible interlocutor for the
Taliban. You need a four-way conversation—America, Pakistan,
the Taliban and the Government of Afghanistan. The key link in
that is a serious discussion between quiet and muscular American
diplomacy and the Taliban we can find. The longer we leave it,
the more uncertain it is that the Taliban will talk. They may
not talk. They need pressure from behind—as the Government
of the Irish Republic put pressure on the IRA—and enticement
and pressure, including military pressure, from the front. You
may not succeed, but it is the last best hope we have of an honourable
way out and of protecting and preserving the sacrifice of our
troops, and the billions of pounds and dollars that have been
spent in and on Afghanistan.
Q103 Mike
Gapes: Why should the hard-line Taliban in Quetta
not sit out this timetable, knowing that American and British
public opinion is reluctant at best, and that other NATO allies
are wanting to jump out as quickly as possible? What possible
incentive do they have to negotiate seriously?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Well, there's a wonderful document that you should get your Clerks
to find for you. It's classified "secret NOFORN," but
it has appeared—or at least it has been summarised—in
The New York Times. It is called "The state of the
Taliban 2009" and it is based on hundreds of interviews of
Taliban detainees by American special forces. It shows, perhaps
surprisingly, that the Taliban are human beings. They think, as
you suggest, Mr Gapes, that they are winning, but they are tired
of fighting. They hate foreigners, and among foreigners they include
not just Americans and Brits, but Arabs and Pakistanis. They are
primitive, conservative, religious nationalists. They want what
you and I want, which is a better education, a better future for
their children and to get back to their farms. They want an honourable
recognition that they weren't defeated in 2001; they were pushed
aside. They want to be dealt back into the political settlement.
But you're quite right. Every day that goes
by without us launching a serious negotiation, the more likely
it is that they will say, "We'll just sit this out and once
the Ifranji"—the foreigners—"have gone,
we'll fight it out. We'll probably take parts of the south, and
other parts of the south will be in the hands of the narco-mafia."
The realists among them recognise that they're never likely to
rule the whole of Afghanistan again. That's the aspiration in
former article 1 of the Irish constitution, which says that the
territory of the state is the whole island of Ireland. That's
no longer a serious aspiration for the Taliban.
Q104 Rory
Stewart: We're all praying that we can do this
with the United States, but we might need to think about a plan
B. It's possible that we'll get to 2014 and hawks in the Department
of Defence and in the United States will still not be ready to
negotiate, and will still want to push ahead with the counter-insurgency
campaign, calling for more resources and more time, at a moment
when Britain will say, "No more combat operations".
How do we prepare for that plan B? How do we make sure we don't
end up with a repeat of Basra, where, at the very last moment,
we diverged from the United States? How do we use the next three
years to make sure that we can get to that position in 2014?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
I devoutly hope that we will not get to the position you describe,
because it would have a major impact on the transatlantic relationship.
There is a risk, with the Republicans in the ascendant in the
House, that there will be pressure on President Obama, against
his better judgment, to ramp up the military campaign yet further.
You're quite right to point to that, Rory. The only way is gradually
to move the British Army and British forces—one must never
forget the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force,
but above all the Marines and the Army—from a ground-holding
territorial operation to a functional operation, to switch them
out of holding territory into a training role, which could be
in the south as well as in the north, and to do that by evolution,
rather than by revolution, always taking the Americans with us,
but being very firm with them about what we want and what we don't
want.
There have been cases, I'm sorry to say, of
different branches of the British armed forces telling the Americans
different things without ministerial authority, because they wanted
different things for their own agenda. This needs clear ministerial
direction and a clarification of what Ministers want. Some of
these mil-mil conversations end up with things being pre-cooked
between the US and the UK militaries before they are subject to
political approval back in London, and/or you get different parts
of the military lobbying for their own hobby-horses without clear
political approval.
Q105 Rory
Stewart: So the answer, finally, would be that
we need to make sure that British generals ultimately get it very
clear in their heads that the 2015 deadline is serious, and that
they can't fantasise about it being fungible or about the idea
that if Petraeus can somehow pull off an extension, they, too,
can pull off an extension.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Well, I wouldn't put it, personally, quite as harshly as that.
I don't think we will end up there. I think it will be a much
more nuanced draw-down. I think there will be a negotiated end.
Four years is a very long time in Afghan politics.
Q106 Sir
Menzies Campbell: I was very interested in what
you said about Karzai. Eighteen months ago, at the Wehrkunde in
Munich, Holbrooke treated him with public disdain. It is no secret
that the relationship between the two of them has been pretty
poor. Just how much could Karzai contribute to a settlement of
the kind you have described? What would he bring with him that
he alone could provide?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
What he brings, Sir Menzies—I am very fond of President
Karzai. I know him extremely well. I used to see him once a week
as Ambassador. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border and
I have been walking with him in Scotland with the Prince of Wales.
He is a great king, but a poor chief executive. ***
What he can bring to a settlement is that sort
of quasi-monarchical leadership. He is a man who symbolises his
country's rebirth. He is fluent in Pashto, in Dari and English.
Many of his instincts about civilian casualties and private security
contractors are right. He is a true politician, a true retail
politician, who feels what his people feel. He is just an absolutely
hopeless administrator, and he doesn't realise that governing
means choosing. He thinks that governing means avoiding a choice.
Q107 Sir
Menzies Campbell: So who is going to fulfil the
chief executive role, if not him?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
No. This is very sensitive territory, but many of us dealing with
this problem have suggested President Karzai shouldn't be removed.
He can't be removed.
Q108 Sir
Menzies Campbell: I don't believe he can.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
He should be encouraged to take his place in history, in a gradual
way, presiding over a peace process. A new constitutional settlement
might well involve the creation of a Prime Minister-like post
in Kabul, that could be held by a Tajik, with a redistribution
of power between the Executive and Parliament within the Executive—and
above all between Kabul and the provinces and districts. ***
Q109 Sir
Menzies Campbell: That project for 2007 was made
more difficult by the results last week. In one of the euphoric
post-election speeches by the Republicans elected, I heard the
person say, "We're going to get a victory in Afghanistan".
If that sort of attitude pervades the House of Representatives,
then it's going to make it very, very difficult for Obama to move
in the direction you suggest.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
I agree, Sir Menzies. General Petraeus himself said that this
isn't about victory; it's about a long-term military struggle.
But I don't think it need be about a long-term military struggle
if a political approach is adopted. We mustn't forget that according
to the strategy that we have signed up to, we are supposed to
have stabilised 40 districts in southern and eastern Afghanistan
by the end of next month. We are nowhere near achieving that—that
performance measure has been forgotten. Forty districts next year
and 40 the year after is an almost impossible target, and it certainly
won't be done by garrisoning these areas and putting men in forts.
For the Pashtuns, seeing a man in a fort is a provocation not
a pacification.
Q110 Chair:
Sir Sherard, may I share a problem with you? I have just been
told that due to a technical glitch we failed to record the first
10 minutes of this session.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Thank heavens.
Q111 Chair:
Maybe you feel relieved. Do you feel that you have covered the
points that you wanted to make about the role of the military
after those 10 minutes?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Yes. In the United States there is a problem.
Q112 Mr
Ainsworth: You talk about the United States going
forward and a potential problem with the change in Congress, but
what you haven't said—you're not saying it, or I haven't
for quite a long while that it's the case—is what has been
the problem to date, and where it has come from. I know that you
have some views on that.
Rory Stewart: You
are being diplomatic, Sherard.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
I am being very diplomatic. Neither the former Defence Secretary
nor the former director is going to tempt me into being completely
frank. There is a very serious problem for us with the United
States as an ally. It is a house divided—in Kabul and in
Washington. The Woodward book doesn't give the half of what is
really going on between them all. We are a very minor player in
what is inside baseball; we are the major outside player, but
we are still a minor player. It needs a lead from the top. It
needs the Prime Minister of the day to speak very robustly to
the President. But all down the line, it needs us to be much more
conditional in saying that we are prepared to go along with something
that is a result of often sins of omission as much as commission
by the American Administration. Again, that is easy for me to
say, but difficult to do.
The truth is that, at root, the American Republic
is not really equipped, constitutionally or in any other way,
for that kind of quasi-imperial expeditionary adventure. Americans
are too nice. They are not interested and not very good at ruling
other people, which is essentially what this is about—ruling
them in a benign sense, temporarily, in order to prepare Afghanistan
for independence, as it were. America is not equipped to do that.
It has huge resources and a very confident military, but very
weak other parts of the machine. But I would not want that attributed
to me.
Q113 Chair:
Do you feel that you have covered all your bases now? Have you
got across all the points?
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
Yes. Thank you very much.
Q114 Chair:
On behalf of the Committee, I thank you very much. One usually
goes through a ritual passage of thanking the witnesses, but I
genuinely thank you for what has been an invaluable contribution.
It is much appreciated.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:
I really mean it when I say that I welcome this inquiry. The timing
couldn't be better and it is about all our knowledge of history,
which Britain has uniquely—we really do do it better. It
is about the politicians taking charge. I met Obama's Vice-President—I
had lunch with him alone in Helmand in January. As happens with
American politicians when they meet the British Ambassador, he
said to me that he felt the need to quote Churchill. Apropos of
nothing, he said, "Mr Ambassador, Churchill said that democracy
is the worst form of government except all the others". I
said to him, "Mr Churchill also said something else, Mr Vice-President.
He said that you can rely on America to do the right thing once
it has exhausted all the alternatives". Your inquiry is about
helping America now to do the right thing. The military campaign
is not wrong, but it is not enough.
Chair: I think
we can safely quote that.
The public were readmitted.
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