Examination of Witness (Questions 504-547)
Q504 Chair: Welcome to the Committee.
The way we are doing these particular sessions is that we're asking
you to give evidence in private. A note will be taken of all you
say. That will be given to you, and you will then negotiate with
Karen as to anything you want cut out. It may be that there is
nothing you particularly want cut out, but that negotiation comes
up and if there is a disagreement it can come back to the Committee.
Is that okay?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Understood.
Q505 Chair: May I begin by asking
about the background to the deployment of UK Forces into Southern
Afghanistan in 2006? What do you think was the intent of that
deployment, and what was the desired or expected end state?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
context of that deployment was, of course, not a unilateral national
decision. It was Britain taking its part in the determination
by NATO to take on a presence throughout the country of Afghanistan.
If you recall, it all began with a small force in and around Kabul,
and a number of Provincial Reconstruction TeamsPRTsin
certain places such as Mazar-e-Sharif, for example. My memory
is getting a bit murky now, but the NATO move, I think, began
sometime in 2004. The intent, I recall, was for it to be done
in a counter-clockwise mannerI am sure you have heard evidence
about that. Various nations were allocated this or that Province.
I tried to think before coming, but I cannot for the life of me
remember how it was that the United Kingdom finished up with Helmand.
I honestly can't remember what went on, and I don't think that
was an MoD decision anyway.
Q506 Chair: Would you have been
involved in it?
General Sir Mike Jackson: No,
not in the sense of, "These are the optionswhich one?"
My memory says that it was more a fait accompli when it came to
the Chiefs. I suspect it was partlythere must be a connection,
how strong it is I don't know, but there must be a connection
with the then Prime Minister's enthusiasm to take on counter-narcotics.
If you recall, contributing nations were given a primary responsibility
for this or that function.
Chair: Indeed.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I think
the Italians got law and order, for example, or justice, and I
make no comment there. The then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, took
up the gauntlet on counter-narcotics and, of course, Helmand is
the focus for that particular function geographically. It came
about in a way that I do not fully understand. None the less,
I have a vague notion that Kandahar was a possible optionit
was either Helmand or Kandahar Provinces. I don't think I can
usefully add any more. What emerged was a NATO plan; a counter-clockwise
move with this or that Province being allocated to this or that
country or countries. In some cases more than one country was
involved in a single province.
That is how it came about. Planning for that
continued in 2005. I can't quite remember what the proper title
for it wasit was the preliminary ops group, or something
of that nature, and that started to set up in Helmand. Does that
answer your question sufficiently well?
Q507 Chair: Well, that helps.
Do you remember what the designated UK mission was?
General Sir Mike Jackson: We began
with a concept. Perhaps I should say something about force levels
as a preface. There was an assumption in 2004-05 that by the time
the expansion of the NATO effort in Afghanistan began in earnest,
we would have drawn down in Iraq, perhaps completely or very substantially.
As we know, that time line did not work out so neatly. The initial
deployment, which concerned me because of its size, was basically
a single battle group. It had a lot of additions, but it was,
at the end of the day, in its manoeuvre capability, a single battle
group. That being soquite sensibly, it seemed to methe
plan devised was to start in and around Lashkar Gah, the provincial
capital. The so-called "ink spot theory" was brought
into play, with references to Templer and Malaya, and that seemed
to me to be a sensible balance between the force available and
the task. You will no doubt have heard Ed Butler's narrative of
what then happened to change that strategic concept.
Chair: We will come to that.
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
original plan was to start in Lashkar Gah and bring a security
envelope into a relatively small area within which other agencies
could then start to improve the lives of the Afghans living within
that security envelope, and then look to expansion.
Q508 Chair: So the original mission
was to bring in that security envelope and then perhaps to consider
establishing a different mission once that security had been established?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I don't
recall it in that sense. I don't recall that. It was to start
in Lashkar Gah and, hopefully, as conditions improved and a greater
force level became available with Iraq coming down, to expand
that concept beyond the starting point of Lashkar Gah.
Q509 John Glen: To some extent,
General, you have explained that you have limited recollection
of the decision-making process to deploy. Could you describe your
specific role at the time in that, and also indicate the interaction
that you can recall with the FCO and DFID? Also, in order to take
all the questions together, could you discuss the MoD's responsibility,
and how long it had to make decisions in the run-up to deployment
in 2006?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Perhaps
I could give a little homily on the decision-making structure
and constitutional position.
Chair: That would be helpful.
John Glen: That would be excellent, thank
you.
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
will, I hope, go at least some way to answering your first point.
I have described the structure of the Ministry of Defence as byzantine
and I will stick with that adjective, but when forces are committed
to operations, the chain of command is pretty clear. Obviously,
it starts with the Prime Ministeraided and abetted by whatever
Cabinet arrangements, either permanent or ad hoc, are put together
for this or that operationand then goes to the Defence
Secretary, to the Chief of the Defence Staff, to Permanent Joint
Headquarters and down to the theatre commander. That is the operational
chain of command. I don't know how best to describe the position
of the single service chiefs. It's an awkward one, because you
play your part with the other single service chiefs in the Chiefs
of Staff Committee under the CDS's chairmanship, but it is the
CDS who renders the military advice and the others do not go with
him. Certainly, in my experience they never went.
I say it's awkward because you are of course
chewing over the problem, but you don't have the Executive responsibility.
You have an assumed accountability; people say, "Well, the
Chief of the General Staff is the head of the Army, so what happens
in the Army is his affair." Would that it were quite so simple,
because regarding many of the Executive functionsfor example,
pay and conditions, the quality and condition of the estate or
who buys which kityou are in a position at best of influence,
not of authority.
Q510 John Glen: But with respect
to this particular decision, did you as the CGS hold a view different
from that taken by the CDS in these discussions?
General Sir Mike Jackson: To some
extent.
Q511 John Glen: Do you account
for the difference by the different perspective you had in terms
of wider responsibility; or do you conflict given what you know
he knew about other things, too?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Just
as an aside, the relationship between any of the single service
chiefs and the CDS is slightly different when you are of the same
colour. Perhaps a purist would say it shouldn't be, but reality
is reality. I niggled away at the amount of combat power we were
putting in at the beginning.
Q512 John Glen: It was insufficient?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
force generatorssuch as Land Command in this casewere,
as I recall, able to generate certainly the force we put in, because
it happened. I have just a recollection of talking and asking
whether we could do more, and being told, "Yes, but it would
be pretty painful and we are not confident that we could sustain
it until Iraq comes down." Of course, the detailed planning
is done at PJHQ with the commitment staffor, as I think
they are now called, the operational staff, which makes a bit
more sensein the MoD. Reconnaissances were carried out
and the preliminary operations team was put in, and so on. Had
we stayed with the original concept, in my judgment, we would
not have had the very rough fighting that went on in the summer
of 2006and indeed afterwards, but particularly that first
summer. We did not stick with the original concept, as I know,
ladies and gentlemen, you will be only too well aware.
Q513 Chair: What lessons would
you learn from that? Would you abolish PJHQ? Would you send the
chiefs of staff to PJHQ to do their jobs? What would you do?
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
is a very good question. We have a number of layers of command,
which may be excessive for the amount of force we actually deploy.
That said, prior to the establishment of PJHQ one of the front-line
commands would be designated on an "as and when" basis.
For example, Bosnia was delegated to Land Command to be the operational
headquarters, and additional personnel were posted in order to
give that operational staff. It was an ad-hoc system, and if you
go back to the Falklands, inevitably, of course, it was fleet
headquarters that were given operational command for perfectly
sound reasons. I think that as the operational tempo after the
end of the Cold War ratcheted up, people were looking to see whether
this was the most sensible way of establishing the operational
level of command. We know what the outcome was: it was decided
to establish on a permanent basis a joint headquarters.
The strategic and operational space is not as
well delineated, in my view, as perhaps it should be. The Ministry
of Defence is institutionally incapable of not using, as the phrase
has it, the 6,000-mile screwdriver. It is institutionally incapable
of standing back and letting those whose job it is turn the screw
with a rather shorter screwdriver. Equally, PJHQ inevitably gets
drawn in to the political-military interface, because of the nature
of current operations, which are almost by definition of great
political interest, shall we say? So, there is a blurring. I would
need to think long and hard before I gave you a judgment that
PJHQ should be abolished, however, because that would only inevitably
result in the Ministry of Defence being yet more absorbed in tactical
detail, which is not its place.
Q514 Mr Havard: I want to ask
you about intelligence and whether we had sufficient intelligence
about what we were doing. It is interesting that you mentioned
the preliminary ops group and so on, and Ed mentioned them as
well.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I remember
visiting them very clearly before.
Q515 Mr Havard: But there did
seem to be more than one of them, in the sense that you had an
assessment being undertaken on a cross-governmental basis, and
you also had a military assessment. What intelligence did we have?
We seem to have had some SAS; Americans wandering aboutonly
100 of them. Can you speak to whether we had the right intelligence
and what that meant?
General Sir Mike Jackson: That's
a very good question, Mr Havard. My recollection of the preliminary
operations and the run-up to that deployment tells me with hindsightand
I would stress thatthat there was an assumption too favourable
to a benign environment. Why was that? First, as you just mentioned,
the United States had a special forces contingent in and around
Lashkar Gah and had been there for some time, perhaps all the
time since the fall of the TalibanI can't remember. It
appeared to be quite benign. I have only a sketchy knowledge of
what they were actually doing. What they were not doing, it seems
to me, was taking al-Qaeda on in battle, because that would have
had the same effect as the stick in the ant hill, when the ants
start running around. I remember visiting the preliminary ops
team, who were pretty bullish about the thought of the British
deployment to Helmand.
Q516 Mr Havard: Was that the cross-governmental
team?
General Sir Mike Jackson: May
I come on to that? On the intelligence side, certainly, I have
no recollection of dire warnings that if you do this, you are
going to get a violent reaction from al-Qaeda/Taliban. I say,
with hindsight, perhaps there was a degree of optimism that underpinned
the planning and thinking. As for the inter-departmental piece,
I am a bit of cracked long-playing record on that, I'm afraid.
In my experiencethat goes back to Bosnia, Kosovo and our
other interventions in Sierra Leone and the two big ones of Iraq
and Afghanistanthe cross-governmental piece is not very
well engineered machinery. The cogwheels don't mesh that well.
Obviously, a particular concern, because it has the money, is
DFID. I don't think it's any secret that I have had my differences
with the way DFID thinks about operations that the British Government
have invested huge political capital in. It sometimes seems to
take a rather autonomous view of its role, in a way that I would
certainly wish otherwise.
Q517 Mr Havard: John Reid said
to Parliament when the deployment was made that it was all done
on the basis of a careful assessment of tasks, needs and so on,
and everything was structured on the basis of this information
that had come from the various bodies and was decided through
these various processes. In some senses, you seem to be saying
that some people perhaps saw what they wanted to see, or perhaps
there wasn't a deeper assessment
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
may be a harsh judgment.
Mr Havard: Okay.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I'm
not saying that it's outwith the range of possibilities.
Q518 Mr Havard: We had intelligence
from the SAS and others that Quetta Shura was very active and
these were the areas where surely the insurgents were making their
base, on the basis that NATO was coming with the anti-clockwise
revolution of the plan.
Chair: Do you remember that we had that
intelligence?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I cannot
be specific on that. My sense is that no intelligence was put
in front of the Ministry of Defence which said, "What you're
about to do will result in mayhem." Had that been so, I think
there would have then been a very serious discussion as to whether
that plan was viable or not.
Q519 Mr Havard:
Right. So the mission was set on the basis of this three-year
thing going into an environment that was relatively benign. We
would be there, and things would inevitably move on.
General Sir Mike Jackson: John
Reid's famous, or infamous, remarkI think it is misquotedin
a way summarises or focuses on how the thinking was that this
was a nation-building exercise to remove the ungoverned space
which Helmand and Kandahar Provinces certainly represented, and
we know what happened with that ungoverned space before. That
was the conceptual thinking behind it all. We will never know,
because it didn't happen, how it would have panned out had we
stuck to the original concept. We very rapidly did something
quite different.
Q520 Penny Mordaunt: On troop
numbers, when General Messenger gave evidence to us last year,
he told us that we didn't have enough UK Forces personnel to do
all the tasks that were being asked of them in Helmand from 2006.
General Sir Mike Jackson: May
I ask whether he was referring to the concept, or to what happened?
Q521 Penny Mordaunt: He was referring
to what happened. So my question is, do you agree? We are also
particularly interested in how the decisions were made about troop
numbers both before and after deployment.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I think
I've taken you through the decision making over the initial size
of the contingent, predicated upon the original concept of commencing
in Lashkar Gah and then taking it from there, but I can't answer
your question now without going into the complete change of concept.
Chair: We'll come on to the complete
change of concept.
General Sir Mike Jackson: It is
quite difficult to answer that question
Chair: Okay, go ahead on the complete
change of concept.
General Sir Mike Jackson: It is
my understanding that you have heard from a far better witness
than myself this afternoon. It is also my understanding that,
almost immediately, internal Afghan political pressureboth
from Kabul and from the provincial Governorresulted in
a dispersal of the small force. Therefore it was not concentrated
in Lashkar Gah but penny-packeted into the so-called platoon houses.
That really was a very big stick to put into the Taliban anthill,
and the ants did run around. If you were going to do that, that
initial force level was not enough. We got away with it, not least
through the fighting quality of the soldiers involved, but there
were some close-run occasions, and I dare say that you have heard
evidence to that effect. I am content to say that the original
plan and original force level were just about in balance. I would
have wanted more myself, but when the plan changed in the way
that it did, it was asking an awful lot of four rifle companies.
Q522 Mr Brazier: General, can
I ask about the Whitehall oversight? As you pointed out, you had
influence but you were not directly part of it. We heard very
clear testimony last month from John Reid that his view, right
up to the moment that he went, was "No, no, no" to a
change of plan. Suddenly, five weeks later, the plan changes.
We have just heard from Brigadier Butler that PJHQ was intimately
involved in that plan. Indeed, he had the Deputy Chief Joint Operations
of PJHQ there with him when the change of plan took place. We
have the outgoing Secretary of State saying no, and PJHQ saying
yes. Where did the MoD come into that? Clearly, the new Secretary
of State must have signed it off, but as a brand new man in the
job, he must have been getting advice from various sources, and
not only from PJHQ. What is your reading of what actually happened?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I wish
I could give you a clear and concise narrative of that time. Again,
anticipating this question, I have tried to give this some thought.
I can only almost repeat what I have just said: almost immediately,
this internal Afghan political pressure was brought to bear to
show that Kabul's writ ran in a wider part of Helmand than just
Lashkar Gah. I suppose the question is: why did we go along with
that?
Mr Brazier: Yes,
that is the question.
General Sir Mike Jackson: And
I'm not sure that I can give you a clear answer.
Q523 Mr Brazier: May I just narrow
the question down slightly? We have established that the commander
on the ground, with all these pressures on him, did not make the
decision alone. Clearly, he had it cleared through PJHQ. My question
is really about a quite narrow point. Presumably, PJHQ must have
come back to the MoD. Who discussed it there, and what was the
process?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Do you
have access to the Chiefs of Staff's minutes?
Chair: No.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Well,
that seems to me to be a lacuna. I am sorry; I am not trying to
slope shoulders on this, but I cannot remember whether that fundamental
change was brought formally to the Chiefs of Staff or not. All
I know is that it appeared to have the imprimatur certainly of
PJHQ and, I suspect, of the Foreign Office. I think that I am
right to say that, although that ought to be checked as well.
Again, it is without doubt a proud tradition of the British Armyone
which perhaps may have gone too far this timethat you take
a very deep breath before you start disagreeing with the commander
on the ground.
Q524 Chair: Can you remember thinking
at that stage, when things were clearly changing, "This is
madness"?
General Sir Mike Jackson: You
are putting words into my mouth, Chairman.
Chair: You can always answer no.
General Sir Mike Jackson: No,
I didn't think it was madness. It was worrying.
Mr Havard: It wasn't correctly resourced.
General Sir Mike Jackson: No.
I hope that I have made the point that
Q525 Mr Havard: I think what Julian
is after is this: who was advising on what you would need in terms
of resources if you were going to make the change? Did PJHQ agree
that it had the right resources on the ground, or was this just
the boys on the ground saying, "We will make do. It's a crap
decision, but we'll just get on with it"?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I wish
I could do better for you. I just do not now fully understandperhaps
I never did at the timewhat had gone on to go from Lashkar
Gah to penny-packeting. You must have heard better evidence than
I can give you on this.
Q526 Mr Brazier: The difficulty
is who we ask next. We have established the train as far up as
PJHQ. Clearly, we must talk to the people who were in PJHQ then.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Have
you had CJO in?
Chair: No. Not yet.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Or indeed
the CDS. There is your chain of command.
Q527 Ms Stuart: First, we are
trying to establish when the change happened. We have got as far
as we can on how it came about, but then there must be a form
of process whereby once you have the change, you assess the means
to support it. Where ideally should that have taken place?
General Sir Mike Jackson: There
is no template there, I think. I will reiterate my point, because
it is important: it is a great tradition of the British Army that
the commander in the field is best placed to make decisions about
his own dispositions, and that the 6,000-mile screwdriver should
not be used to second-guess. You may be feeling, ladies and gentlemen,
that that tradition was not helpful on this occasion; I don't
know.
Q528 Ms Stuart: I'm trying to
get to the bottom of whether they should have gone back to PJHQ
to check, or whether there was a level of assumption on the ground
that "This is the new mission; we've just got to get on with
it; this is as good as it's going to get, so let's try."
General Sir Mike Jackson: Without
a doubt it was open to the British Government to say to President
Karzai and Governor Daoud, "We hear your requests. We understand
them, but we are not willing to comply with them." That was
an option.
Q529 Chair: John Reid did that.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Well,
quite shortly afterwards, we complied with their requests. It
is this political-military interface; you are absolutely on it
here. I cannot dissect that one for you, I am afraid.
Q530 Ms Stuart: Madeleine and
I were whispering to each other, "Would Des Browne have known?"
Mrs Moon: Would this decision have gone
up to Des Browne to be signed off?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I'm
absolutely certain of it.
Q531 Mrs Moon: John Reid was saying,
"No, no, no." Then suddenly, we had a change.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I cannot
imagine that a decision that had such great political overtones,
domestically in this country and in our relationship with the
Karzai Government, did not go to ministerial level. I don't know
that, but I cannot believe that it wasn't so.
Q532 Chair: But it would have
gone on the basis of military advice, wouldn't it?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes,
without a doubt.
Q533 Mr Havard: So some of the
military advice could have been, "Well, okay. We can maybe
do a bit of it. Maybe we can do it, but at a different pace to
what President Karzai wanted"?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
request was very specific, in terms of this and that location.
Again, it was open for us to have said, "None at all,"
or "We will do Sangin" or whatever, or "We will
do everything that you ask us to do." We seem to have gone
towards the latter. I understand the politics behind that; we
were thereand are thereamong other things, to get
better governance in Afghanistan. To some extent that implies
being co-operative with the Afghan Government.
Q534 Chair: Were you aware at
the time, getting back to Penny's question about troop numbers,
that on a regular basis Ed Butler had been staffing requests for
more resources to PJHQ? Was that something that had come past
the chiefs?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I have
that sense that there was a request for more. The difficulty is
that the original concept was matched reasonably well to the force
available. With the dispersion to quite a number of small bases,
your logistic problem increases exponentially, because you have
to deliver matériel over distance. You have to do that
either on the ground or in the air, which gets us into the helicopter
problem and all of that. Not only was it tactically very different
from the original concept, but it brought with itI am looking
at Tim Cross, a logistician of some renownhuge logistic
complications.
Q535 Chair: The reason I asked
the question is that if Ed Butler was saying that even before
the change of tacticsthe change in what was happening on
the groundwe didn't have enough people here, where does
this great tradition in the British Army of supporting the commander
on the ground come in?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Indeed.
I am trying to remember whether there was any occasion on which
PJHQ came up with a clear, distinct proposal for another battalion,
or whatever it might have been. I don't recall that. I had a sense
at the time that there was nervousness because the Iraq commitment
was considerably higher at this timethe summer of 2006than
had been planned for. There was real concern that we would get
right out of kilter. I don't think I can do any better for you
than that, sorry.
Chair: Okay. I am going to invite people
to catch my eye if there are further questions that they would
like to ask. I think we have pretty much abandoned the structure
that was set out.
Q536 Mrs Moon: I would like to
ask about the level of support that was provided. We have got
the impression that almost as command changed, so the matériel
needed to pursue their direction also changed. At one point it
was helicopters that were short; another time, we needed tanks.
It is almost as though everybody had a different shopping list.
Is that your perception?
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
is interesting. There is no doubt that from the summer of 2003
the campaign developed. If you recall, in the first two summers
the Taliban took us on, basically using fire and manoeuvresmall
arms, basicallyand each and every time, they were defeated
tactically. We can discuss whether any operational-level progress
had been made, but they were defeated tactically. It took them
rather longer, looking back, than one might have expected, but
they obviously thought very hard, particularly after the second
summer, 2007, and said, "We're not going to get anywhere
taking on the British soldiers at what they do best; ergo we will
find another way." That brings us to the IED. That changes
priorities on our side. Armoured vehicles suddenly go right up
in terms of priority, because that is the way you protect the
force. As I've already touched on, the dispersion put a greater
premium on helicopters. Tactics and equipment will vary according
to the operational circumstances. One has to respond. Ideally,
you need to be one foot ahead, but that's not always possible.
Does that help?
Q537 Mrs Moon: One of the things
that have been suggested to me is that there was also an element
of the Armed Forces using Afghanistan as a reason to modernise
and equipthat there was an element of using the operational
requirement to restock and get the latest level of equipment.
How much of that is natural?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Mrs
Moon, I think I detect two strands. You can tell me I'm wrong
when I've answered. *** Let's not forget, I haven't used the two
words "Northern Ireland" in all this either. Part of
the time scale of this is, of course, the British Armed Forces
going non-operational in Northern Ireland on, I think, 31 July
2007. That had another bearing on 2006. We still had a commitment
in Northern Ireland. It was predicatedindeed, the reduction
in the size of the Army that took place over 2005-06 was predicatedon
that run-down in Northern Ireland.
The first strand, which is reflected in some
of the evidence I've read, is that somehow the British Army was
looking for a new operation. Northern Ireland was finished, and
in Iraq one could see the horizon, so we wanted to go and do something
else. I don't see that myself. That is not to say that you don't
have an Army that is operationally hungry, because that's what
it is. You will have detected that, I suspect, on visits for yourselves;
I hope you have. That's a far cry from actually pushing to go
and up the ante. That is a strand that I can't see, myself.
Q538 Mrs Moon: I wasn't suggesting
that.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I beg
your pardon. But it's probably just as well I've said what I've
said, because I've seen reflections to the contrary.
Q539 Mr Havard: So would you say
that when each commander goes out theredepending on whether
they're Marines or whateverthe mission's clear? Their
intent on how they prosecute might be slightly different. Some
will say, "I'm going to take the fight to them"; others
will say, "I'll do things this way and emphasise it differently",
and so on. That's just the way the thing works. Do you think,
however, there was a lack of clarity and understanding? At the
time when all this was happening, you then had an overlay of political
decisions to say, effectively, "No, no. You will go and do
it this way. The mission has changed. You will go and take the
fight to them, but at the locations that we are choosing for you,
rather than you choosing as a commander to do it the way you want
to do it." So no matter how much discretion there was for
individuals, that was the big change. At that time, the Americans
were still on Operation Enduring Freedom, so there were two very
conflicting processes running at the same time. Was that more
important than tactical nuance or changes of individual commanders,
and what support they would need to do those things differently,
as well as the political imperative that then meant they couldn't
do it because they didn't have the support? Which is it? What
is the mixture?
General Sir Mike Jackson: May
I deal with the chain of command issue first? There is no doubt
that the Coalition and NATO chains of commandbecause there
were two, in 2005-06, and you would not have got many marks at
the staff college for coming up with that as a solution to your
command and control. The counter-terrorist operationOperation
Enduring Freedom, I thinkwas clearly under American guidance,
direction and command, and then there was the NATO operation,
which was more about nation building, if I can use that shorthand.
There were blurred lines. It got better because, at least in theory,
the two chains of command merged, I think, in late 2006. David
Richards had to push that one very hard. So, that was not ideal.
Am I right that the first part of your question
was about the degree to which British commanders in the field
take individual and somewhat different views on the task in front
of them?
Q540 Mr Havard: And you said,
"Trust the commander." When they are making different
decisions, that might have different implications.
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
criticism has also been levelled at command in Southern Iraq,
and there is substance in the criticism. Again, it goes back to
part of our doctrine, in that it is for the commander on the ground
to handle his force. Of course, he doesn't have complete freedom,
and nor should he. I think your question goes to a much deeper
point. Clausewitz said that the use of force is politics by another
meansergo, what is the political end which is sought? That
has not always been clear, although Ministers and Cabinet of whichever
Government may be of the view that it is perfectly clear. To be
fair, it is a criticism I get from the lay public as well, who
don't quite understand what we're trying to do in Afghanistan.
What is the political objective required? That takes you down
a way of thinking that ought to be common.
In Afghanistan, perhaps it was not clear, with
Enduring Freedom running. Is the political objective to remove
al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters from the ungoverned space
of Southern Iraqand that is it? Or, is it broader: to help
Afghanistan out of its miserable past into a more stable future,
where governance, rule of lawif I can say "rule of
law" and "Afghanistan" in the same sentence? It
seems to me, however, that it is all part of that. There is the
balance that the commander must strike between, obviously, protecting
his own forcebut that may not be enough in terms of the
opponentsbut doing that in a manner that does not result
in the civil population, not the Taliban, becoming more sympathetic
or indeed turning to the Taliban. This can be a fine line
Q541 Mr Havard: So, it is not
a case of not giving the commander sufficient support to make
the tactical difference that he wants to on the ground. It is
a case of not having supported properly the political intent that
you are expecting the commander to carry out. If Ed Butler is
on the ground saying, "I need more resources, on a weekly
basis. If you now want me to move and do a different thing in
a different way, I need extra resources to do this work",
and they're not arriving, it's because additional support is not
being given to the political intent change, which was to agree
with Daoud and Karzai to do it differently. Whether or not the
commander is acting differently on the ground is not the issue,
is that what you are saying?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Although
commanders are of course individuals and will bring their own
characters, beside anything else and despite all of the training,
it seems to me that the crucial point here is thatsorry,
I'm going to repeat myselfwe will never know whether the
original concept was sound because it didn't happen. I judged
that it was just about okay in terms of task and force levels.
However, when the dispersal happened, and it happened very quickly,
it was almost self-evident that you were asking too much of four
rifle companies and the limited logistics. My logistician has
Chair: He's gone.
General Sir Mike Jackson: He got
rather bored with listening to Jackson banging on. Anyway, that
is why you get the mismatch between those new tasks and doing
it from the same force level for a rather different task.
Q542 Ms Stuart: This is another
attempt to get the picture, because I have been checking a few
date lines as to where we were. You're sitting out in Afghanistan
and looking at a British Government where the Prime Minister has
not yet said he is going, but everybody knows he will soon. He
has a Chancellor of the Exchequer champing at his heels who is
known to dislike military intervention, so the military doesn't
have much confidence in him, either. There was yet another Secretary
of State for Defence, and a Foreign Secretary who, when told she
was going to be Foreign Secretary, came out with an "expletive
deleted". Iraq wasn't working out the way we thought, so
the departing Prime Minister's political legacy was getting pretty
shaky. You guys were still out there in Afghanistan and being
asked to do yet another thing. Would the troops on the ground
have said, "These guys don't know what they're really up
to and won't be around for much longer, so we might as well just
make the best of a bad job"? Is that theoretically an interpretation
of what may have gone through some minds?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Ms Stuart,
you are putting it in quite partisan terms. As a recently retired
Crown servant, I don't want to get into partisanshipunlike
one or two others, I might say. I will answer the question in
this way. Soldiers in the British Army understand perfectly well
that they are all volunteers, and the vast majoritynot
necessarily every man jack, but the vast majorityare operationally
hungry, to use that phrase again. Throughout British military
history the soldier has cursed the politicians who sent him there,
but that does not mean to say that they do not understand perfectly
well that in a mature democracy such as ours it is the bounden
duty of soldiers to follow the direction of the elected Government
of the day. They do it with more cheerfulness than is perhaps
sometimes warranted, but they do it pretty cheerfully. I don't
know if that helps at all, but I do not want to go down your partisan
lane, if you don't mind.
Q543 Bob Stewart: General, I totally
understand the short chain of command: theatre to PJHQ to CDS,
Chiefs of Staff Committee
Chair: The Chiefs of Staff Committee
is not involved as such, is it?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Well,
it is involved, in that the CDS will chew things over, but then
he trots off.
Bob Stewart: So the Chiefs of Staff Committee
sits, Chairman, and CDS actually answers for it. My question to
General Sir Mike is: what, in your view, is the mission of the
brigade on the ground as the operational Head of the Army? What
did you think Butler was supposed to be doing, as a member of
the chiefs of staff committee?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Again,
I have to put it in the greater context of the overall NATO operation.
We weren't doing this as a single nation doing its own thing.
Q544 Bob Stewart: But you would
have visited him and asked him about his mission.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Would
I have visited whom?
Bob Stewart: Butler.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes.
I visited him a lot.
The overall NATO mission, as it spread out,
was to put a Coalition/NATO presence throughout the country and
to assist the recovery of Afghanistan towards stability. Those
are my words, but that was roughly what it was about, and Britain
was to play its part doing that in Helmand. It was therefore a
mixtureI have already of covered that pointand that
balance between improving governance, improving the economy and
so on, and providing a secure environment within which that could
happen. It is that balance. So far as I am concerned, that is
what we set out to do in Helmand. It turned out differently, for
reasons that we have now
Chair: Discussed.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Well,
I have exhausted my knowledge of it. It is not so very satisfactory.
Q545 Chair: Thank you very much
indeed. It has been extremely helpful, and we are most grateful
to you. I am sorry that because of my own inefficiency we had
to change your time, as well as keeping you here late.
General Sir Mike Jackson: No problem.
If I can help, that's all I ask. I would just say that it seems
to meno doubt the MoD will have its own reasonsthat
the Committee would be much better informed if you had better
access to contemporary documentation.
Q546 Bob Stewart: To the chiefs
of staff document?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Among
others.
Q547 Chair: We have not asked
for those minutes, and it would be quite interesting to see what
would happen if we did.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes,
it would be quite interesting. I would be intrigued to see the
outcome of such a request.
Chair: We shall need to consider that.
Thank you.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Not
at all. My pleasure.
Mr Havard: We'll
tell them it was your idea.
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
means you won't get them at all. I am not the favourite retired
general up in that place, but there we are.
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