1 00:00:01,140 --> 00:00:08,160 Today's speaker, as always, pleasure to introduce our country because he's part of the fabric of the changing 2 00:00:08,160 --> 00:00:13,470 national program is what we have guys as research associate on the program. 3 00:00:13,810 --> 00:00:22,650 Served as a political military officer in the U.S. to five conflicts, including places like El Salvador, 4 00:00:23,040 --> 00:00:30,629 Nepal and Golden Salsa served in Brazil and Papua New Guinea, where I was most my support. 5 00:00:30,630 --> 00:00:39,030 And we're going to have a stay in regional commander, say in Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he was the director of the Initiatives Group. 6 00:00:40,320 --> 00:00:44,910 He's also worked in Washington, D.C., which was much insurgency going on, though. 7 00:00:44,910 --> 00:00:48,390 I could be wrong about that. That's a real danger post. Absolutely. 8 00:00:49,260 --> 00:00:54,749 And he's also taught as professor of strategy and policy at the US Naval War College and has 9 00:00:54,750 --> 00:00:59,460 been a visiting scholar and now the Centre for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 10 00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:06,540 which is fantastic. These publications have included, I don't know, the dates to be so I apologise said when you did them. 11 00:01:06,540 --> 00:01:13,290 But some crossroads of intervention, insurgency and counterinsurgency lessons from Central America and the United States. 12 00:01:13,290 --> 00:01:20,519 The politics of conflict in the volatile world and our which is about to come out, I think is about to come out in the journal stories. 13 00:01:20,520 --> 00:01:26,660 That is not out yet is it is called Bureaucracy does its thing in Afghanistan. 14 00:01:27,030 --> 00:01:30,960 This team has had the pleasure of to read to assist with it. 15 00:01:31,950 --> 00:01:39,330 His current doctoral dissertation is called The Reagan Doctrine Wars in Central America and go to Afghanistan. 16 00:01:39,690 --> 00:01:47,780 So there are few people better qualified to give that civil military perspective of what's going to happen if someone comes to talk. 17 00:01:47,850 --> 00:01:51,070 Thank you very much indeed for agreeing to speak. Thank you, Robert. 18 00:01:51,990 --> 00:01:58,980 And I just want to for colleagues who know me that the lovely red coat belongs to my wife who's come from Rome. 19 00:02:00,390 --> 00:02:06,680 And I'll just point out that she has actually experienced more wars quantitatively 20 00:02:06,690 --> 00:02:11,310 than than I have in her in her career with the UN and the International Red Cross. 21 00:02:14,540 --> 00:02:23,090 Please forgive the use of we. It's been pointed out to me that I that I use we what I mean is not the royal academic way, 22 00:02:23,390 --> 00:02:32,060 but it's 30 years of of serving as in the US government and it's really hard to refer to something you've been belong to for so long as that. 23 00:02:32,480 --> 00:02:36,530 So that's, that's what I'm talking about sometimes, including the coalition partners. 24 00:02:39,410 --> 00:02:43,100 The story that I'm going to tell and I'll get to it at the end. 25 00:02:43,100 --> 00:02:53,360 The back half of the talk is about how we cracked the code in southern Afghanistan during 2010 and 11. 26 00:02:55,190 --> 00:02:59,780 And I will explain that. But first, I'm going to give some context, too, 27 00:02:59,840 --> 00:03:06,290 to the Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and enumerate what I see is 28 00:03:06,290 --> 00:03:11,210 some fundamental strategic problems with with that from the very beginning. 29 00:03:11,930 --> 00:03:16,970 I'll also give a net assessment of the of the antagonists in the war there. 30 00:03:17,570 --> 00:03:22,100 Talk about the nature of the war. And really, 31 00:03:22,100 --> 00:03:27,979 the central theme that you're going to see woven all through it is why political and 32 00:03:27,980 --> 00:03:34,280 military action integrated and unified is essential for success in conflicts like this. 33 00:03:35,330 --> 00:03:39,240 I'm. The Keep your ears open. 34 00:03:39,450 --> 00:03:44,370 They're out there in no particular order are sort of what I come up with as eight propositions 35 00:03:44,370 --> 00:03:50,910 of that lead to to an idea that I'm sort of working on now called strategic sufficiency. 36 00:03:51,840 --> 00:03:56,220 And basically what it boils down to is what do you have to do to get the job done? 37 00:03:56,310 --> 00:04:04,110 So it's not a legal formal definition like we heard last last week from you need to deal that there will be eight of those. 38 00:04:05,040 --> 00:04:09,570 The story is not particularly great when you're talking about Afghanistan, 39 00:04:09,690 --> 00:04:16,560 nor is it the first time that the United States has has experienced most of the problems that have come up. 40 00:04:18,900 --> 00:04:23,640 We're not very good at protracted interventions. But here's what I'm not saying. 41 00:04:25,320 --> 00:04:28,530 Afghanistan is not the graveyard of empires. That's a myth. 42 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:33,780 It is the graveyard of the ambitions of empires. That's for sure. 43 00:04:36,770 --> 00:04:41,150 It's not I'm not talking about the nature of Afghanistan or Afghans either. 44 00:04:41,510 --> 00:04:48,590 Really, what I'm talking about is, is us. And by us I mean the US and the coalition partners. 45 00:04:49,880 --> 00:04:55,100 I'm not saying that Afghanistan is a complete failure, that the basic goals, you know, 46 00:04:55,100 --> 00:05:01,430 as President Obama likes to say, you know, choose your deeds, degrade, dismantle, disrupt, defeat Al Qaida. 47 00:05:01,460 --> 00:05:09,140 Those are those have fundamentally been achieved or that there hasn't been enormous and significant progress in Afghanistan. 48 00:05:09,830 --> 00:05:15,320 So but bottom line, if you're looking for a contemporary prognosis. 49 00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:18,620 Yes. Well, we're probably going to end up muddling through. 50 00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:22,850 It's not going to it's not going to look like a defeat. 51 00:05:24,650 --> 00:05:36,100 But the cost. The duration were excessive, unnecessary and unjustified. 52 00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:42,940 And we should have done better. And we should have known what to do from the beginning. 53 00:05:45,740 --> 00:05:47,360 Let me start with a couple of parallels. 54 00:05:49,940 --> 00:06:00,739 There have been other situations in which the United States with associated allies has gotten involved in wars that were set. 55 00:06:00,740 --> 00:06:05,090 The conditions for those wars were set by unsatisfactory termination of the prior wars. 56 00:06:05,750 --> 00:06:11,479 It's fairly common strategic situation in which the wars began with a surprise 57 00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:16,490 attack that resulted in national mobilisation and significant military commitment. 58 00:06:18,830 --> 00:06:27,650 And that the the shock of surprise attack reversed deep, deep resistance to becoming involved militarily. 59 00:06:29,250 --> 00:06:37,739 And of course, I'm talking about World War Two. Looking at it from another player, from another position. 60 00:06:37,740 --> 00:06:40,830 It's not the first war in which we were compelled. 61 00:06:40,830 --> 00:06:50,110 We felt ourselves compelled to play to our strengths, which were to out resource and out fight on the ground, out fight our identified adversary. 62 00:06:51,150 --> 00:07:02,220 And then when when we realised that we had not figured out how to defeat an insurgency, we looked for negotiations and thought an exit. 63 00:07:02,760 --> 00:07:05,550 And that, of course, the precedent for that, the big one is Vietnam. 64 00:07:08,010 --> 00:07:19,919 Now that we've gone into a fairly consolidated phase of drawdown in Afghanistan, we're also repeating something that happened after Vietnam, 65 00:07:19,920 --> 00:07:24,990 which was a complete withdrawal, a complete resistance to intervention whatsoever. 66 00:07:26,100 --> 00:07:36,750 And that and that reluctance is causing is causing what I think of as numerous consequences that are happening right now. 67 00:07:38,310 --> 00:07:45,870 So if you go back to the to the to supporting the Mujahideen for the Soviets to fight the Soviets in the 1980s, we turned our back. 68 00:07:45,870 --> 00:07:53,189 We turned a blind eye to Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons immediately after not only after the Soviets pulled out, 69 00:07:53,190 --> 00:07:58,379 not only did we abandon the Taliban, which that led down, did we abandon the Mujahideen, 70 00:07:58,380 --> 00:08:01,890 which led the track to the to the Mujahadeen getting to power? 71 00:08:01,890 --> 00:08:10,350 And ultimately down to 911, we also reversed our position to Pakistan, slapped nuclear sanctions on them. 72 00:08:10,530 --> 00:08:18,930 And it was at that point that they began to proliferate in a serious way, including their one of their primary proliferation partners was Iran. 73 00:08:19,970 --> 00:08:26,030 Here we are today. Other consequences as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan. 74 00:08:26,030 --> 00:08:38,180 In this phase, I believe that the the perceived failure of U.S. leadership and liberal democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. 75 00:08:39,210 --> 00:08:47,350 Have. Encouraged Islamic extremism and have contributed materially, 76 00:08:47,350 --> 00:08:54,460 although very difficult to put your finger tangibly on how that works have contributed to the instability of the Arab Spring. 77 00:08:56,640 --> 00:09:04,860 Add to that now our unwillingness to commit to have a standoff approach to conflicts that do erupt and we are definitely in a down cycle. 78 00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:08,820 That's why this stuff matters. All right. 79 00:09:09,540 --> 00:09:18,540 Now turning to Afghanistan. The Afghan what I call the Afghanistan elephant syndrome, you know, destroy the blind man and the elephant. 80 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:25,889 I don't think I've ever met a commander or an ambassador, anybody in senior leadership position that hadn't said, 81 00:09:25,890 --> 00:09:31,890 well, if they'd only done it my way when I was in charge and end it up and you get a lot of good stuff. 82 00:09:32,310 --> 00:09:36,540 But the idea is that Afghanistan would have come out right during my time. 83 00:09:38,190 --> 00:09:42,090 So this is my piece of the Afghan elephant. 84 00:09:42,810 --> 00:09:46,860 And if there's one fundamental difference, that difference, I'd like to point to that, 85 00:09:46,980 --> 00:09:50,250 that when I get to the story about it's about what we did in the South. 86 00:09:50,700 --> 00:09:58,950 The difference was, is that we listened to the Afghans and we tried to do what they said we should be doing rather than focusing on us, 87 00:09:58,950 --> 00:10:05,090 telling them what to do. Problems. 88 00:10:06,050 --> 00:10:09,380 The first big one is we kept changing. 89 00:10:12,020 --> 00:10:23,899 Just between 2009 and today, we went from sort of a half hearted, heavy handed semi counterinsurgency effort to reassessing. 90 00:10:23,900 --> 00:10:27,110 Reassessing, not a bad thing, but boom, bitcoin. 91 00:10:28,270 --> 00:10:33,130 Comprehensive counterinsurgency. Fully resourced, or at least in principle, fully resourced. 92 00:10:33,250 --> 00:10:37,960 An open ended. It was going to go on to oops again. 93 00:10:38,260 --> 00:10:43,100 Now we're in drawdown and handing over to the Afghans. And. 94 00:10:43,100 --> 00:10:46,700 Oh, by the way. Oops. 95 00:10:47,300 --> 00:10:52,700 I never get over this. Whatever we were doing at the moment was always good for the Afghans. 96 00:10:53,860 --> 00:10:57,640 And they just had to get on with what it was we wanted them to do. 97 00:10:57,850 --> 00:11:00,700 And that's where all this a lot of the friction came out. 98 00:11:04,310 --> 00:11:14,840 From their perspective, though, it's been over a generation of war, of anarchy, of extremism, and that's lasted since the communist coup in 1978. 99 00:11:14,900 --> 00:11:24,380 Soviets invaded in 79. So it's pretty much unbroken, but it's really not about those combative Afghans. 100 00:11:24,440 --> 00:11:29,030 Yes, they are warlike people. And if you want to learn more, read Rob's book, The Afghan Way of War. 101 00:11:29,180 --> 00:11:34,160 It's all it's all made out there in great detail and with a lot of insight. 102 00:11:35,390 --> 00:11:44,510 But a critical part of this is it's not those Afghans, it's Afghans at the intersection of the the world outside. 103 00:11:45,980 --> 00:11:51,230 Afghanistan has always been an intersection of empires for millennia. 104 00:11:52,070 --> 00:11:55,100 You've got your Mongols. You've got your moguls. 105 00:11:55,280 --> 00:11:59,060 You've got your Persians. You've got your Greeks. You've got the British. 106 00:11:59,300 --> 00:12:08,150 You've got your Soviets. Now you've got us. So what we do and what we don't do has a fundamental impact on what happens there. 107 00:12:10,370 --> 00:12:20,150 To just sort of just to capture a more historical perspective on what Afghan looks like, what what the situation feels like. 108 00:12:20,750 --> 00:12:26,910 I met a quote, my favourite quote from Two Cities can't get through a talk like this without going through Clausewitz for you. 109 00:12:27,710 --> 00:12:33,470 So the sufferings which the revolution entailed were many and terrible, 110 00:12:33,950 --> 00:12:39,760 such as always occurred and always will occur as long as human nature remains the same. 111 00:12:40,920 --> 00:12:50,880 In peace and prosperity. States and individuals have better sentiments because they are not confronted with imperious necessities. 112 00:12:51,990 --> 00:13:04,800 But war takes away the easy supply of daily ones and proves a rough master that reduces most men's characters to the levels of their fortunes. 113 00:13:06,530 --> 00:13:10,849 And I think that that sort of if you you know, the whole time I was in Afghanistan, 114 00:13:10,850 --> 00:13:16,040 I held that as my mantra in dealing with these in dealing with these situations. 115 00:13:19,050 --> 00:13:22,770 So we started out okay in 2000, one overthrow boom. 116 00:13:22,770 --> 00:13:29,700 Set up a government with a bond conference and then the United States basically turned its back, got real small. 117 00:13:30,450 --> 00:13:35,819 We were mopping up, as Donald Rumsfeld called it. This was sort of the roots of counterterrorist action, you know, 118 00:13:35,820 --> 00:13:41,580 running around with in trucks at night, guys with guns, doing stuff that's still going on. 119 00:13:43,480 --> 00:13:48,370 And and we sure as heck weren't going to do that wimpy nation building stuff. 120 00:13:49,770 --> 00:13:53,900 So that's a problem. The. 121 00:13:58,020 --> 00:14:04,980 The core of it is that in focusing on military action, we over militarised. 122 00:14:05,130 --> 00:14:09,660 Even though everybody says, oh, counterinsurgency, 80% political, 20% military. 123 00:14:10,140 --> 00:14:16,230 Same thing has happened in Vietnam. The it was the military that pretty much ran the show has continued to run the show, 124 00:14:16,470 --> 00:14:23,100 not least because only civilians had civilians who simply did not have the capacity or the orientation to do it. 125 00:14:24,750 --> 00:14:28,190 So my first proposition, remember, accelerate. 126 00:14:28,410 --> 00:14:29,730 First proposition is. 127 00:14:32,540 --> 00:14:42,470 Absolute number one requirement is to understand the nature of the war that you're involved in and conceive of your aims accordingly. 128 00:14:43,860 --> 00:14:47,970 Without trying to change it into something. It's not right out of Clausewitz. 129 00:14:51,160 --> 00:14:57,400 We never did get that right. Never did get the strategy, the fundamental strategy, the policy of Afghanistan. 130 00:14:57,700 --> 00:15:10,680 Right. And. Part of that becomes is because we were focusing on the negative aims of defeating the al Qaeda and then defeating the Taliban. 131 00:15:11,710 --> 00:15:17,680 Our positive aims were these wildly ambitious transforming Afghanistan into a democracy 132 00:15:17,680 --> 00:15:21,970 in a developed country and all that not going to happen was never going to happen. 133 00:15:23,380 --> 00:15:28,910 Anybody sitting from the outside looking objectively would see that that was a bridge too far on. 134 00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:35,700 Which which leads me to the question of, well, what was what was a realistic, positive aim? 135 00:15:35,880 --> 00:15:41,720 I think it can be produced to build a stable order. That was what our aim should have been. 136 00:15:41,780 --> 00:15:45,620 Something at some much more minimal level. Second proposition. 137 00:15:45,950 --> 00:15:51,410 Strategic sufficiency requires balancing both positive and negative aims. 138 00:15:53,230 --> 00:15:58,330 That leads to my third proposition, which is every war must end. 139 00:15:58,610 --> 00:16:03,309 All right. Afghanistan since 1978 has been at war in one way or other. 140 00:16:03,310 --> 00:16:08,350 But everyone needs to end. And the way it ends is the most important thing about a war. 141 00:16:08,620 --> 00:16:13,720 How it ends is the most important thing. So Afghans are in a war that has yet to end. 142 00:16:14,170 --> 00:16:17,260 Our involvement in this war is for the second time. 143 00:16:18,490 --> 00:16:24,220 And from their perspective and I'm speaking I'm not speaking for every individual Afghan and all that, but in general. 144 00:16:24,580 --> 00:16:30,280 Right. For them, this golden time, as I've heard them call it many times, is coming to an end. 145 00:16:32,330 --> 00:16:39,290 And their fear, their deepest fear is that our drawdown is going to lead to abandonment, 146 00:16:39,530 --> 00:16:45,320 and that's going to lead to a situation that an Islam is called fitna, which means disorder. 147 00:16:46,420 --> 00:16:50,150 And that is the thing that they fear the most, a return to disorder. 148 00:16:53,520 --> 00:17:01,160 There is a core strategic dynamic. About Afghanistan, about how wars actually end there. 149 00:17:01,650 --> 00:17:06,920 I mean, it's not military defeat. That's not the model. And I'm going to quote from Tom Barfield. 150 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:10,340 Some of you may know his book, Afghanistan A Cultural and Political History, 151 00:17:10,610 --> 00:17:14,330 which is if somebody asked me, what's the one thing to read about Afghanistan, that's it. 152 00:17:16,270 --> 00:17:22,840 Barfield says the way a war ends. Being labelled a winner or loser is a self-fulfilling prophecy. 153 00:17:23,380 --> 00:17:31,720 What brings about such shifts is a change in the political calculations of decision makers in each region of Afghanistan. 154 00:17:32,200 --> 00:17:40,900 Such appraisals are based on empirical evidence about whether a defender can successfully maintain the core foundation of his power base. 155 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:46,120 That's a war zone in Afghanistan. So question to ponder. 156 00:17:46,360 --> 00:17:50,800 Who decides when a war is over? The winner or the loser? 157 00:17:54,210 --> 00:17:58,140 And my people say winner. You bet. And many people say loser. 158 00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:03,490 Okay. All right. So now reflect. 159 00:18:04,990 --> 00:18:08,860 When President Obama says war is winding down. 160 00:18:10,500 --> 00:18:16,480 What is he saying? Not saying the war is coming to an end, that we have successfully terminated this war. 161 00:18:17,290 --> 00:18:22,220 All right. You saying we're getting out? So. 162 00:18:22,460 --> 00:18:25,610 And the point is that an exit strategy. 163 00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:31,340 You know, stay tuned next week. And exit is not the same thing as terminating as ending a war. 164 00:18:31,700 --> 00:18:33,200 And there's a fundamental difference there. 165 00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:43,070 That's why my opinion, this whole business about negotiating power sharing with the Taliban, the strategic dynamics are wrong. 166 00:18:44,330 --> 00:18:47,330 If you're the loser, what incentive does right. 167 00:18:47,350 --> 00:18:53,690 This is a classic strategy. What incentive does the the person who is on top have to actually get and negotiate? 168 00:18:55,670 --> 00:19:03,390 Okay. A few more problems. It's not just that we took our eye off the ball and went to Iraq. 169 00:19:05,070 --> 00:19:11,100 John Paul Vann famously said about Vietnam that we've been fighting for 12 years, one year at a time. 170 00:19:11,670 --> 00:19:17,040 So Groundhog Day syndrome, an attitude that says, don't look back, don't look back. 171 00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:18,929 We got to keep going. We don't care about what happened. 172 00:19:18,930 --> 00:19:26,700 We got to you know, we're faced with this now means that when we did the surge and introduced Big Coin in 2009, 173 00:19:27,060 --> 00:19:32,400 there was no recognition whatsoever that that that the primary reason for the need to introduce 174 00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:38,610 all that stuff were all the errors that we made consecutively and cumulatively since 2001. 175 00:19:41,420 --> 00:19:47,300 At Bonn, where that where the government was structured, we acquiesced in the creation of a hyper centralised state, 176 00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:53,300 essentially making we call in President Karzai, but he's, in effect, a monarch, right? 177 00:19:53,480 --> 00:20:02,210 Exactly. Precisely. Probably the worst form of government, the last structure of government that that a country like Afghanistan needed. 178 00:20:04,190 --> 00:20:13,549 And it looked good at the start. But our attempt to to supplant this hypersexualized system and create a constitutional 179 00:20:13,550 --> 00:20:20,930 electoral democracy had no no basis there was no no substantial number of elite groups, 180 00:20:20,930 --> 00:20:28,550 for example, that were prepared to do anything remotely like that, especially on our short term on the security side. 181 00:20:28,910 --> 00:20:37,430 We never had enough troops in there. And even more importantly, we didn't focus seriously on building the Afghan security forces. 182 00:20:38,210 --> 00:20:43,510 Now, how could you miss something like that? The Taliban were down, they were thrown out. 183 00:20:43,520 --> 00:20:48,290 They'd fled. They'd laid their arms down in 2000, one, 2000, two, 23. 184 00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:51,770 That was the time we were building security forces. Not now. 185 00:20:55,380 --> 00:20:58,950 We help our our counterterrorism focus. 186 00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:05,010 The model that we followed was precisely what created the current generation of warlords. 187 00:21:05,040 --> 00:21:12,690 The very people that we identify as the source of corruption are people that we introduced in the earlier days. 188 00:21:13,830 --> 00:21:18,840 On top of that, we broke trust with our church. 189 00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:22,800 The person that we had, we had joined in choosing as president with Karzai. 190 00:21:22,950 --> 00:21:28,080 We broke trust with him from the very, very start. It's not that he's crazy and idiosyncratic. 191 00:21:28,710 --> 00:21:33,210 I'm amazed his head hasn't exploded with all the contradictions that he's been faced with. 192 00:21:35,390 --> 00:21:45,220 Okay. 26 Fast forward to to to the surge or to the to the recognition that the insurgency had had surge. 193 00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:51,400 And rather than a surge, I mean, really, it was a slow evolution, but the recognition of it really hit home at 26. 194 00:21:52,300 --> 00:21:57,070 It then took several years for the political systems, 195 00:21:57,070 --> 00:22:07,090 the various political systems of of international coalition to gear up to deliver troops in the end to to raise or raise the force level. 196 00:22:10,610 --> 00:22:15,800 That was the right it was probably the right thing to do because I mean, it did lead. 197 00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:21,380 It did lead to getting enough to getting sufficient number of troops on the ground when the situation was critical. 198 00:22:21,530 --> 00:22:29,660 But at the same time, reducing firepower, paying attention to protecting the population, as well as chasing the enemy. 199 00:22:32,070 --> 00:22:39,630 I say some of the fundamental assumptions of coin, though, are pretty much unproven assumptions, 200 00:22:40,410 --> 00:22:46,950 which the top one would be pumping billions more dollars into one of the five poorest countries in the world. 201 00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:53,490 Maybe, maybe not the wisest thing to do. Coin itself, counterinsurgency itself. 202 00:22:54,300 --> 00:22:59,400 It was as if this was some big inspiration. Hang on. 203 00:22:59,610 --> 00:23:03,150 This is all stuff from Vietnam. There's nothing really new in it. 204 00:23:03,540 --> 00:23:06,990 The and the real problem is, is that it was too late. 205 00:23:10,020 --> 00:23:13,400 The. The debate over the surge. 206 00:23:14,300 --> 00:23:21,680 This strategic reassessment was basically in Washington reduced to troop numbers. 207 00:23:23,690 --> 00:23:27,110 Just one factor in then the strategic sufficiency. 208 00:23:27,350 --> 00:23:28,430 But that's what the talk was. 209 00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:36,919 But the worst the worst violation, I think the one that really that really puts it all together is if you take T.E. Lawrence, 210 00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:40,740 the 27 articles, the one that really matters. 211 00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:44,749 Article 15, and we violated that in spades. 212 00:23:44,750 --> 00:23:49,370 So I'm going to read it, but I'm pulling out error of the word Arabs and putting in Afghans. 213 00:23:50,030 --> 00:23:53,569 Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better. 214 00:23:53,570 --> 00:23:57,760 The Afghans do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. 215 00:23:58,370 --> 00:24:02,180 It is their war and you are to help them not to win it for them. 216 00:24:03,110 --> 00:24:07,340 Actually also under the very odd conditions of Afghanistan. 217 00:24:07,790 --> 00:24:12,530 Your practical work will not be as good as perhaps you think it is. 218 00:24:15,270 --> 00:24:18,550 Proposition number four. Keep it small. 219 00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:23,530 Use your resources wisely. Timing is critical. 220 00:24:25,420 --> 00:24:30,700 I suspect that if you were faced with a situation of doing Bitcoin, it's too late. 221 00:24:37,090 --> 00:24:40,000 The strategic problem, the central strategic problem, 222 00:24:40,690 --> 00:24:48,429 same same as as as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon faced in Vietnam is how do you achieve strategic 223 00:24:48,430 --> 00:24:57,580 success when you and everybody else knows that your level of effort and the duration are declining? 224 00:25:00,220 --> 00:25:06,400 So you will see everything has to be put in terms of success because you don't want to you don't want to walk away with a defeat. 225 00:25:06,700 --> 00:25:11,230 But that is that is the central challenge. So. 226 00:25:12,870 --> 00:25:18,740 Proposition number five. The side that wins. 227 00:25:19,750 --> 00:25:25,300 In an internal conflict of this nature is the one that more comprehensively captures. 228 00:25:26,780 --> 00:25:41,940 Political legitimacy and authority. By authority, I mean the ability to to lead and be followed or to command and be obeyed. 229 00:25:42,950 --> 00:25:46,100 And by legitimacy, it means that the belief, 230 00:25:46,730 --> 00:25:51,650 the popular belief that that you have the right to do that you have the right to command and the 231 00:25:51,650 --> 00:25:58,130 right to you that those are what what your core strategic goals should should revolve around, 232 00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:05,360 which means that that this stuff, you know, the people as the centre of gravity, winning hearts and minds, 233 00:26:06,590 --> 00:26:13,880 you know, answering grievances, connecting people to the government really are all they're too simplistic. 234 00:26:14,690 --> 00:26:18,590 There's simplistic notions that they're some amorphous, popular, 235 00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:24,980 popular source of of strength out there that that is not ever going to get us through. 236 00:26:26,290 --> 00:26:29,310 All right. Going. 237 00:26:29,630 --> 00:26:34,640 Turning now to southern Afghanistan in the campaign, sort of where how this all gets operationalised. 238 00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:39,550 We're talking there are four regional commanders. 239 00:26:40,250 --> 00:26:45,230 There were. We added we added one here in Helmand when the Marines came in. 240 00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:51,920 But southern Afghanistan is the Pashtun heartland. It consists of Helmand, Oruzgan, Kandahar, Zabul. 241 00:26:52,340 --> 00:26:58,550 Those are the those are the core provinces. That's where the Pashtun population has its origin. 242 00:26:58,850 --> 00:27:06,830 There are also large numbers of eastern Pashtuns that these are the guys that live in the hills over here. 243 00:27:07,460 --> 00:27:10,730 So that's what we're talking about. Mostly this this part of the country, though. 244 00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:16,739 Um. It is, uh, it is desert. 245 00:27:16,740 --> 00:27:22,410 I mean, like the most desolate desert you can imagine and the most desolate, driest mountains you can imagine. 246 00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:30,510 It's got rivers through it. And life is like humanity is like slivers along the rivers. 247 00:27:30,900 --> 00:27:35,390 And by the way, all of these rivers. Don't exit in the sea. 248 00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:42,190 They disappear in the sand. The centre is Kandahar city. 249 00:27:44,380 --> 00:27:49,900 Right there. Kandahar city, named after Alexander Iskander. 250 00:27:50,650 --> 00:27:56,530 Alexander the Great founded the city. It's a crossroads of the Southern Silk Road, 251 00:27:56,950 --> 00:28:03,530 where it meets a northern intersection and finds its way out to the sea, which is now the port of Karachi. 252 00:28:03,550 --> 00:28:11,080 So the supply routes that the coalition relies on are exactly the same as they were thousands, thousands of years ago. 253 00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:17,400 All right. Let me let me do a quick net assessment of what's out there. 254 00:28:17,820 --> 00:28:24,060 Until five to Stryker Brigade arrived in Afghanistan in the summer of 2009. 255 00:28:25,470 --> 00:28:30,360 This area, which was the main the main source of the insurgency, 256 00:28:30,540 --> 00:28:44,850 was held by a single Canadian battle group with associated Australian, Dutch Romanian contingents and then the British in Helmand. 257 00:28:45,630 --> 00:28:52,230 And putting the Canadians into Kandahar was kind of like saying, okay, you guys go do Omaha Beach. 258 00:28:54,190 --> 00:28:56,800 They really I mean, they did a great job. 259 00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:06,910 But but that was, you know, not I don't think a lot of strategic thought went into went into that as 10th Mountain Division. 260 00:29:07,060 --> 00:29:13,870 That was the American division I was with when they were there, took over command in November of 2010. 261 00:29:14,140 --> 00:29:20,200 The surge was at its peak surge had reached its peak. The main effort, Stan, General Stanley McChrystal. 262 00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,319 McChrystal, ISAF commander, had designated it as the main effort. 263 00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,410 So we had the main call on resources, correct decision. 264 00:29:29,090 --> 00:29:35,600 So the problem the big problem was the bulk of surge forces. 265 00:29:36,710 --> 00:29:42,290 Were Marines, 20,000 out of a total of 30, 34, 35,000. 266 00:29:42,590 --> 00:29:48,320 And even how you count the surge. But 20,000 plus went into this one district, Helmand Province. 267 00:29:49,100 --> 00:29:54,470 We're there with the Brits. And, you know, I don't care how great your coin is there. 268 00:29:54,950 --> 00:30:01,990 It's 3% of the population. But Afghanistan and the main and the main centre was here in Kandahar. 269 00:30:03,060 --> 00:30:03,340 Okay. 270 00:30:03,350 --> 00:30:12,700 Even so, that the effect of the surge, the effect of having that number of troops on the ground was to reverse the tide of the rising insurgency. 271 00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:17,580 No question that that that that happened. All right. 272 00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:26,010 So let's turn to the to the insurgency. What we know we've got a factionalised insurgency generally referred to as the Taliban. 273 00:30:28,530 --> 00:30:31,170 Here it's the Quetta Shura Taliban. 274 00:30:31,380 --> 00:30:39,960 Quetta, because that's where they took refuge in in Pakistan, headed by Mullah Omar, who was the emir during the government. 275 00:30:41,250 --> 00:30:44,460 And their headquarters was in Kandahar City. 276 00:30:44,490 --> 00:30:50,190 He never went to Kabul. It was here. So that's that's why, 277 00:30:50,550 --> 00:30:59,850 from my perspective and the basis of our operational assessment for a political military strategy was that the centre of gravity and the Clausewitz, 278 00:30:59,850 --> 00:31:05,190 in sense the hub of power for the insurgency, was Kandahar. 279 00:31:07,310 --> 00:31:13,220 And if you secured Kandahar and the surrounding districts and our city and the surrounding districts, 280 00:31:13,580 --> 00:31:21,160 then you would render the only faction of the insurgency that represents national aspirations. 281 00:31:21,170 --> 00:31:27,400 You would render that futile. And that's your key to dismantling the Taliban. 282 00:31:28,180 --> 00:31:34,300 Not running around in the hills, banging away at every little tribe in every little valley. 283 00:31:34,420 --> 00:31:40,810 You're never, ever, ever going to get there. You have to approach it here first and then move out from there. 284 00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:49,620 And that was the the basic idea. The Taliban have something that I believe is essential. 285 00:31:49,620 --> 00:31:55,080 Proposition number six. You've got to have a compelling strategic narrative. 286 00:31:55,890 --> 00:32:00,090 This is from Emile Simpson's book, War and War from the Ground Up. 287 00:32:00,090 --> 00:32:10,170 If you haven't seen it, it's really terrific. So strategic narrative, it's a stable, unifying vision that sustains your cause. 288 00:32:11,660 --> 00:32:15,229 It's all it is. It's not information operations. It's not lines of effort. 289 00:32:15,230 --> 00:32:20,420 It's not all this other coin stuff. It's it's it's the vision that you have for the Taliban. 290 00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:25,320 It's jihad. It's a religious war. 291 00:32:26,910 --> 00:32:31,040 And Jihadis are expressive lawyers, jihadist forever. 292 00:32:31,460 --> 00:32:35,630 So there is a cause around which they will fight. 293 00:32:36,050 --> 00:32:42,780 That is, rule is not entirely independent, but it doesn't depend on the desire to seize power and the state of the state. 294 00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,670 It's more than a it's more than just a desire to seize power for the state. 295 00:32:51,790 --> 00:32:56,990 Okay. So turning to how we went about it. The. 296 00:32:57,530 --> 00:33:05,570 We put together a small team in the in the initiative group that reported directly to the to the Division Commander and Regional Command South. 297 00:33:06,500 --> 00:33:13,819 We brought in a few people. For example, Tom Barfield came for a couple of weeks and and he's I mean, he's great political thinker, very entertaining. 298 00:33:13,820 --> 00:33:17,570 And he, you know, you talk to the to the command group and that sort of thing. 299 00:33:19,490 --> 00:33:25,160 We we wrote basically an integrated political military plan. 300 00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:31,850 So we had a campaign plan, had a military component and an integrated political component, never been done before. 301 00:33:31,940 --> 00:33:38,570 So people didn't quite know how to deal with the animal. But since we had the the commander on board, it was it went very smoothly. 302 00:33:40,430 --> 00:33:49,460 The on the military side. Used combat power to to secure Kandahar City and the surrounding districts. 303 00:33:49,940 --> 00:33:57,860 And we found in the process that it takes about two years to complete that clear, hold, build cycle to really stabilise it. 304 00:33:58,250 --> 00:34:02,210 That job was never finished. The surge was over before that draft was finished. 305 00:34:04,740 --> 00:34:07,860 We synchronised with special operations forces. 306 00:34:08,220 --> 00:34:15,959 I think that was a major advance. So instead of having special operations, doing targeted kill capture against against leaders, 307 00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,320 independent from what your main what your main groups were doing, 308 00:34:19,650 --> 00:34:24,630 which would mean that you'd have operations taking out leaders, but you didn't have anybody securing an area. 309 00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:30,090 And since the replacement time averaged about six weeks by the time you got there, 310 00:34:30,090 --> 00:34:34,020 if you hadn't synchronised boom Taliban drop in like that, no problem. 311 00:34:34,230 --> 00:34:43,590 So synchronising those was very important. Put gave Afghanistan security force partnering top priority. 312 00:34:43,890 --> 00:34:50,670 In other words, rather than handing it off to the National Guard and having things like majors mentor general officers. 313 00:34:51,650 --> 00:34:57,830 That really is the model. HOFFMAN The seniors mentored the seniors. 314 00:34:58,820 --> 00:35:00,469 That was the number one part. 315 00:35:00,470 --> 00:35:08,990 And then it flowed down from there rather than working to the bottom up and and gave equal attention to the police and integrated 316 00:35:08,990 --> 00:35:15,650 rather than just using them as paramilitary auxiliaries and then letting them run their corrupt mafia operations on the side, 317 00:35:15,890 --> 00:35:22,370 integrated them so that the army would operate, the Afghan army would operate jointly forward, 318 00:35:22,370 --> 00:35:29,240 and then the police would be responsible for securing areas that were specially designated designated for them. 319 00:35:29,900 --> 00:35:41,320 So proposition number seven. Force levels and force employment are equally important. 320 00:35:42,620 --> 00:35:47,270 Got to pay attention to both of those as you put together. All right. 321 00:35:48,140 --> 00:35:58,800 Political side. I'm not talking here about if you if you've been you know, if you follow the news on Afghanistan, about governance, 322 00:35:59,190 --> 00:36:06,660 rule of law, about creating, you know, a government bureaucracy that deals that deliver services. 323 00:36:07,770 --> 00:36:12,060 About elections. About about anti-corruption. 324 00:36:13,050 --> 00:36:28,510 Any of that stuff. What we did was we took advantage of a formal decision that that General McChrystal made in 2010 to stop chasing Ahmed Wali Karzai, 325 00:36:28,900 --> 00:36:33,900 the president's brother, who was the the godfather. 326 00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:40,960 I thought of him as the kingpin of Kandahar. He really was the second most powerful person in the country who had everything in his hands. 327 00:36:41,380 --> 00:36:48,420 The fact that he was also a criminal genius who who, you know, deeply involved in the family business. 328 00:36:48,430 --> 00:36:50,980 Remember, the number one cash crop here is opium. 329 00:36:52,870 --> 00:37:02,229 Having only the CIA and the Special Forces deal with him to help hire militias and rent property was involving the person who 330 00:37:02,230 --> 00:37:09,040 was literally the kingpin of the whole of the centre of gravity of the country in about that much sliver of what mattered. 331 00:37:10,100 --> 00:37:17,750 So instead of instead of going in and delivering red lines and trying to dictate to the president's brother what he could and could not do, 332 00:37:18,170 --> 00:37:21,140 I mean, what do you think we are trying to do there? 333 00:37:22,460 --> 00:37:30,800 We started talking to him and to a whole series of people throughout these these four primarily in these four provinces. 334 00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:35,540 And we listened to them. They were extremely sophisticated. 335 00:37:37,270 --> 00:37:41,200 And they understood what needed to be. They understood what needed to be done. 336 00:37:41,650 --> 00:37:52,540 The core of it was a four day session that that the small team of ours held with a group of leaders in the governor's palace in Kandahar. 337 00:37:52,690 --> 00:38:00,730 And we literally sat there and wrote this document called Peace in Southern Afghanistan, was based around the concept of LOI Kandahar. 338 00:38:01,420 --> 00:38:04,900 LOI Kandahar became the strategic narrative. 339 00:38:05,530 --> 00:38:12,160 What it means is greater Kandahar, and it's instantly recognisable to any Afghan, not not just Pashtun, 340 00:38:12,370 --> 00:38:18,400 but any Afghan understands it predates the foundation of the nation state in 1747. 341 00:38:19,660 --> 00:38:30,130 This is the southern Pashtun heartland. And when Afghanistan was founded as a nation state by Ahmed Shah Durrani in 1747, 342 00:38:30,910 --> 00:38:39,309 it was based originally out of Kandahar and moved to Kabul because it was a better location geographically 343 00:38:39,310 --> 00:38:45,190 to unify the country and to get out of the intrigues in the southern portion intrigues of Kandahar. 344 00:38:45,610 --> 00:38:54,120 So. The other the other Karzai brother, Khartoum Karzai, he's sort of the elder family counsellor type, said. 345 00:38:54,270 --> 00:39:00,210 What we have to do is use LOI Kandahar to go back in order to go forward. 346 00:39:01,110 --> 00:39:11,460 So that was the operating principle. In other words, go back to that period pre 1978 when Afghanistan enjoyed 50 years of stability. 347 00:39:12,610 --> 00:39:20,200 And look to what what was working then in order to move to move forward and and the rats through that. 348 00:39:20,380 --> 00:39:31,450 So with Lloyd Kandahar is the rallying cry we move to unify formal and informal leaders from from these four provinces held in Kandahar, 349 00:39:31,450 --> 00:39:39,310 Zabul, Uruzgan, with sort of fringe representatives and gods near and far where there are also Pashtuns. 350 00:39:40,790 --> 00:39:48,859 Around the themes of unifying, connecting to Kabul rather than just Kabul, sitting up here super, 351 00:39:48,860 --> 00:39:53,870 hyper centralised and top down, creating a basis, a basis for political action. 352 00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:02,460 It was sort of in a way it was based on an aristocracy, southern power, Pashtun aristocracy. 353 00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,790 Yes, it was archaic, but it was authentic. 354 00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:16,130 It was Afghan. The purpose was to establish the basis for the legitimacy and authority of the Afghan state. 355 00:40:17,390 --> 00:40:22,430 That thing that is that central is the central problem of the state in Kabul is it's 356 00:40:22,430 --> 00:40:29,059 not it does not perceive as having sufficient authority or legitimacy and in large 357 00:40:29,060 --> 00:40:34,940 part because they're dependent on the coalition to create that situation that Barfield 358 00:40:34,940 --> 00:40:41,690 described of empirical evidence on the ground based on our security activities, 359 00:40:42,140 --> 00:40:50,180 that would convince that that that made it convincing that the Taliban recapturing Kandahar in the emirate was futile. 360 00:40:51,710 --> 00:41:00,860 That would lead to a political calculation that the state is going to be the winner is the definitive winner to unify leaders around that vision. 361 00:41:02,380 --> 00:41:11,950 To include tribes and clans that have been disaffected and to bring the the traditional charismatic leaders into the 362 00:41:11,950 --> 00:41:18,540 formal system by giving them positions in the security forces and thereby subjecting them to professionalisation. 363 00:41:18,550 --> 00:41:27,780 That was the basic program also had a Taliban outreach program that was the Afghan it was the Afghans that came up with this. 364 00:41:27,790 --> 00:41:37,090 They're talking to the Taliban anyway. The big problem is this this hang up with national power sharing negotiations up here is a total distraction. 365 00:41:38,260 --> 00:41:43,810 The Tajiks, the Hazaras, the Uzbeks, they hate the idea of bringing the Taliban into the government. 366 00:41:44,230 --> 00:41:49,510 But the idea that they can resettle in their home areas replaces their from the problem. 367 00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:57,639 They can hang out and do whatever they want down here. The big issue was how do you get them out of Pakistan where whether the Pakistani 368 00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:01,910 intelligence service knows where all their families are and can secure their families. 369 00:42:01,930 --> 00:42:06,850 So it was sort of a challenge to get to get the families out first and then and then make it happen. 370 00:42:09,250 --> 00:42:20,110 Okay. Just to just to wind up here. Proposition number eight. 371 00:42:22,930 --> 00:42:26,530 Political and military action must be integrated. 372 00:42:27,070 --> 00:42:28,840 I think I've given a little bit of a description, 373 00:42:30,190 --> 00:42:38,890 and the way that they're integrated is that military action is in support of your political aims at all times. 374 00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:45,850 Again, back to basic your basic Clausewitz. The problem is that we've reversed that pretty much the whole the whole time through. 375 00:42:47,530 --> 00:43:01,659 And just to close off this, the LOI Kandahar came to a head after the assassination of the principal warlord in Oruzgan province here in the north, 376 00:43:01,660 --> 00:43:04,360 very mountainous province that we had alienated. 377 00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:11,890 By the way, although he was the man that made it possible for Karzai to survive again and to have a base of power. 378 00:43:12,370 --> 00:43:18,059 In 2001, he was blown up in Kabul by the move. 379 00:43:18,060 --> 00:43:24,480 I mean, suicide bombing is bad enough but turban bomber that just chilling that. 380 00:43:24,910 --> 00:43:36,940 So at his memorial ceremony we we ISAF in its appropriate role of providing support to Afghan initiative provided helicopters 381 00:43:37,270 --> 00:43:46,570 that flew a dozen rapid the governor plus a dozen tribal leaders from all the provinces to Tarin Kowt the capital of Oruzgan. 382 00:43:46,810 --> 00:43:49,660 And the buzz had been building up for this for a long time. 383 00:43:49,900 --> 00:43:54,850 The Afghans insisted that they would secure this, even though they knew there would be a huge target. 384 00:43:55,970 --> 00:44:00,170 It ended up that thousands of people turned out turned out for this event. 385 00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:05,660 And, you know, one after another Afghan got up and talked the Afghans totally. 386 00:44:06,050 --> 00:44:13,280 There's no time schedule. There's no agenda. You know, they get up and talk and it's dramatic and it's emotional like only Afghans can be. 387 00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:22,040 And this mullah, who none of us had ever heard of, but all of them knew when he stood in the stages. 388 00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:29,180 But you could just hear this buzz went all through the crowd and he got up and he he gave this talk and sort of, 389 00:44:29,390 --> 00:44:34,190 you know, we got to hang together or we're all going to hang separately because the Taliban is killing us. 390 00:44:34,940 --> 00:44:43,959 Just galvanised them into action. A delegation followed that immediately to President Karzai. 391 00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:50,020 Came came the older brother had already gone secretly to talk to him and gotten his blessing for this. 392 00:44:50,290 --> 00:44:54,140 A delegation went to him and said, Stop calling the Taliban, your brothers. 393 00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,230 They're the ones who are killing us. And he stopped. 394 00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:08,040 We then started to lobby in in Kabul to get support because that was really the key, was to get to get the dynamic working. 395 00:45:08,250 --> 00:45:12,000 And here's where the story gets sad. It all pretty much collapsed. 396 00:45:12,270 --> 00:45:16,890 The 10th Mountain Division rotated out. 82nd Airborne came in. 397 00:45:17,490 --> 00:45:21,030 Bottom line, 82nd Airborne, they did not get it. 398 00:45:21,090 --> 00:45:25,260 They said, yep, yep, we know what we're doing. See you later by. And boom, they marched in the wrong direction. 399 00:45:25,770 --> 00:45:30,030 The ISAF was not prepared. They had you know, I would have to say, frankly, 400 00:45:30,030 --> 00:45:35,189 General Petraeus had already been convinced by advisers around him that they had to shift the 401 00:45:35,190 --> 00:45:39,270 main after it out of the south and hurry up and chase the soccer ball of violence to the east. 402 00:45:40,530 --> 00:45:47,540 And although the idea of why Kandahar is still out there, never beyond that point, it did not go. 403 00:45:47,550 --> 00:45:52,350 And I think that kind of ends with the story of our experience in Afghanistan.