Let me get to the business of the day today, if I may, because very quickly,
Brigadier General Matthew Olsen has agreed to come from London and speak to you today about an uncommon what's new about military diplomacy,
much neglected aspects of the change of control. Delighted that he had come to speak to us.
If you want the full biography, I want to refer you to our websites.
But they're all, you know, perhaps important to mention about is that this is somebody who has not only grown up experience.
It's not as if we're having someone coming in with lots of love.
It's a diplomatic education, actually one of the greatest universities in the north of England.
This is somebody who has been on the ground and done this. And if you'll forgive me, I will not read through things here.
Thank you. Experience outward.
But it is worth pointing out, I think crucially, that the CCW programme has a long standing relationship with the Military College of Canada.
We have a memorandum of understanding that we wish to continue to build on that relationship exchange.
We exchanged personnel and we haven't had much happy the last 12 months.
And so it's wonderful why we have, we believe, have become a force for rivalry as well.
And we now re nourishing this relationship with Canada. And I'm delighted that you've come to the crucial.
Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming today.
It's a real pleasure for me to be here, to be out of the office, to be quite frank, in doing things out in the field, as it were.
I don't know if I should. I will. Well, the last time I spoke in front of a university audience, I was a young lieutenant one year out of college,
myself, back talking to my peers about what my experiences were as a as a new subaltern battalion.
And that worked out so well. Apparently, I filled my agreement for 35 years.
We were the first ones to have the experience of being in.
I'm very humble looking at the number of people in the quality of speaking,
trying to talk to you might actually get up at 2:00 as well and hearing what was going on.
Ethics in war, the law of war and how things are turning out extremely be topic in as much as it is in the battlefield where there.
A version of lawyers, an expert in military law and humanitarian law and other aspects of the lawsuit claims.
Military operations for may be perceived as pertaining to operations by commanders on a daily basis,
and that extends back into the preparation for combat or some of the aspects of why nations enter into conflict when they go Cold War,
and how the military fights can be shaped by some of the legal aspects of that.
The senior commanders of the Chiefs of Defence opening lines of their opposition to what goes on with a very active debate,
are very contested space, a lot of points of view and continue to evolve over time to be here.
My background, very briefly as I grew up I mentioned is that I have spent some time as an operative and that this is not my first opportunity.
I found two of the first was as the Army advisor here in London working seven and a
half little bit like that as a precursor to the second in my experiences formally,
which was as the defence adviser in coming in 0909 ten which was a particularly dynamic
period of time travelling to and talking to my experiences there as a military diplomat,
whatever that is, both at home. And I think that has changed. Over the years.
And certainly there's an aspect of it that changed from nation to nation,
depending on what nation you are representing and what nation you're representing,
your nation to be quite benign, aren't quite contesting in people to go along.
Certainly, Campbell, I think it's a very unique space for military forces to top of that.
Some of my other experiences, I've spent a great deal of time in the human resources field infantry as a background to start with.
And I had the pleasure of commanding battalion but have been very involved in the management and leadership of people institution as well.
So that also flavour some of my experience more to look at when I want to talk of military
diplomacy outside the the formal agreement which I'll talk about that a little bit.
So in getting to Afghanistan, I like pretty much every nation that found themselves there at one time or another.
There's a bit of story to how to get how you get there. And I think that's it is useful for me to run over a number of things that formed my
experiences and shape how I view military diplomacy both as an military and not.
So we get that. And I think that's and some of perhaps why I went from exercising my responsibilities as actually the camp in Afghanistan.
And so we'll skip over that quickly.
I'll talk specifically about Cyprus, where I was a young officer with a battalion in peacekeeping operations there.
I talk about Bosnia has Herzegovina governing and the operations that I conducted
there as a member of the European Committee Monitor mission monitoring mission.
And and for that very briefly London the precursor of my camel experience.
And then I count how many you've had military experience how many have been deployed operations on the same number,
how many have been in that actually before. Okay, good one.
So obviously someone can hold up a red card and say you're lying at one point or another.
And anything I say, the the things I talk about in general that you'll see as I go through is, is really in the aspect of how you go about the people.
A very important aspect of military life is from the perspective of perspective,
the all arms team pulling together those people who do different things to work closely and competently to solve the issues.
The problem mostly about the delivery of high explosive onto a particular target to eliminate its operations but covers a host of other means.
We start talking about the strategic level, and particularly in operations which are Afghanistan, the understanding of what is the all arms team?
I think it's still a foreign concept. Believe that we want to talk about civil military cooperation.
Point is, I'm not sure that there is a particularly good understanding these days of what city is now compared to what it might have been,
say, 20 years ago. And it's really a team building and the U.N. can do this.
I've got a very small number of things to do, some pictures to keep it simple.
And what I would do is talk with you. And so as I go along, if you've got questions about why, say,
or you want to challenge me on the issue, please stop me and let's have a conversation about that.
And my notes, I think, will cover about 45 minutes of me talking in the first place.
And so we'll leave all the questions to you before there's another conversation, or we can converse all the way through.
My preference would be to do the latter. That's fine. But that's up to you to decide how you should do it.
So there we are. First experience Cyprus.
My particular job at that time as the second in command administration company and I was actually at
the Nicosia Airport and had a slightly removed perspective from the day to day life on the line,
but certainly got to see a little bit of the ebb and flow of some of the larger pieces
of Cyprus and the provisional peacekeeping operation in the classic sense of the word.
You've got some forces by an international body that interposed between two combatants to keep the military situation stable, quiet,
to allow the political situation to go forward before the great difficulty in Cyprus when I was there in 89,
was that the there was no political solution being solved effectively.
One side had everything that they felt they wanted. The other side was very unhappy and there was no dialogue.
So there was a real of is that I think the writing was on the wall.
It was a bankrupt idea. It was still in force.
It was in a political situation. The military was just there filling the role of people.
Part of essentially two sides militarily didn't want to tangle with each other anymore.
There was, however, some tactical political activity going on. The fact of the matter was the populations had been separated in 72,
and that remorseless impact of the separation of populations that had been to some degree intermingled beforehand was having a chilling effect.
Meeting of Civic Leaders. The old mayor of Cyprus, Nicosia, got together with their city councils.
They all knew each other very well. They were in the 50 seconds,
but they pointed out that their children and certainly their grandchildren had absolutely no idea of the reality of anyone else in Cyprus.
Things of that is were fundamentally the landscape had been changed and there was no way to bridge that gap.
There were some lingering hatreds and unfulfilled expectations.
On the Greek Cypriot side, wounds brought home was a way to get around political status being orchestrated by the Greek
Cypriot government to try and force the issue and bring the political status out of being.
But it was a failed activity that was tactical.
It ran afoul of the Turkish military and really didn't achieve the political engagement that they would
like to because it couldn't cross the frontier and create the problem that from the U.N. perspective,
very stovepipe operations, not between the various lines of U.N. organisations.
They all had their own thing on their own. It's very typical of you in operations.
So the military with some of the more from humanitarian aid from the high commission of their countries,
from the folks taking care of UNICEF, really, and largely everyone felt marginalised because they knew the political situation was going.
And so there was no imperative on our part to really have any dialogue in between.
So there is no party, not very cooperative, certainly no coherent activity on any to any one issue by the team that was there,
U.N. or otherwise, to move things along and see something.
So the criminal law that was my friend for six months,
a largely ossified system that was perfect for the situation in terms of keeping it stable but not actually resolving the problem.
The next experience I had was several years later and a rather unique experience for for a
Canadian is that I became a member of the European Committee for longer missions in Yugoslavia,
which had run out of the EU and was the EU.
And he sees operations in Yugoslavia back to back when the U.N. have not.
You recall from that time when Yugoslavia started falling apart, the U.N. knew that as far away from it as it possibly could.
You decided they need to do something to exert themselves in an organisation.
They sent in a modelling mission which from my understanding, talking to people who were there, both sides as well as the Europeans,
was a to an extent a thinly veiled intelligence operation to find out what was actually
in Yugoslavia more than actually trying to help resolve and mitigate the conflict.
So that caused difficulties, as you imagine.
And the reason I brought in Canada, because when they renewed the mandate and expanded into into a greater portion of Bosnia and in fact,
one of the speculations with some Eastern bloc countries. It's not like countries and Canada for.
North Americans might be hoping for U.S. forces that would join the mission to bring a
sense of equanimity to the mission and reduce the overt intelligence gathering that.
The point at which I write fiction.
You and I started at that point. So there was a significant U.N. peacekeeping force based in Croatia for the situation there, plus Bosnia.
And what I saw was a fairly dynamic situation where militarily it had not been resolved.
You remember through 89, 1991, 92, there was ongoing military operations by one side or the other.
Usually regional or subregional, but certainly a very dynamic military situation going on where there's a perception of
threat for everyone to sort of work one on their plus politically humanitarian situation.
Others all very dynamic, a lot of work being done and a lot of organisations involved making things happen.
Principally the U.N. but there was not a chain of command.
It was very stovepipe. While there were U.N. headquarters and representatives in the very few and organisations that were there.
They largely operate independently, according to U.N. New York guidelines and directions from the various directorates,
without the ability, the mechanism to coordinate to achieve that.
Within that, the High Representative would like to see achieved in.
Operating on its own. And essentially operations seem to just work on its own.
Momentum and desire to connect with time without a lot of information.
Now I say that standing outside with an easy the easy nation had its own problems in
that leadership rotation every six months with the change of leadership of the U.S.,
which meant we had a really difficult relationship with the organisation itself and it
itself was not connected to any of the other EU sponsored organisations that were working,
for example, was as high as modern times in time doing a survey of where, particularly in terms of food aid was,
and to find out that this had already been done by the U.S. food aid agency and they were delivering food aid on a completely different
schedule to different areas where I was operating without having consulted or discussed or even advised us this was going to happen.
Usually embarrassing personally,
but also an indication that BBC was not able to orchestrate what it could be that they had adopted a model that would be more effective.
So increasingly problematic. Um, another example that I think was instructed at the time,
certainly thought we would find out later on was where I was operating was and behalf the Western Alliance,
which became a protected area later on, which caused huge confusion to all and sundry,
including the UN agencies because no one was really sure, whatever that meant when it was home.
Nothing was ever really adequately explained. And certainly the the challenges of the statement was exposed not by the provinces,
but actually by the coalition forces who up until that period of time had lived in relative comfort with that region of Bosnia.
And the fact that was controlled by the Bosnian government by was Muslim them.
They took it upon themselves at the urging of their Bosnian Serb counterparts to actually advance several
miles into into the area to avoid the reaction from anyone and feel how all kinds of the country was.
So it certainly fits. Between contextualisation you each use.
Sorry, I was there in 1979. I was there 93.
So from February 93 until September.
And it's the protected areas of declared a future incorporated largely around the areas of shooting news and from the other.
On if you're interested. But certainly now the surprise would be introduced of that region.
They were also included there. They were. They didn't know what it meant and they were actually quite fearful of what that meant because
it brought them out of the shadows of living a very comfortable life out of the headlines.
Suddenly, when they learned from you something about your experience with Cyprus.
I was there in 1990. So as we sort of transitioned from the classic model of peacekeeping to the more dynamic of military interventions,
interventions that were peacemaking,
peacebuilding, were stopping, doing all sorts of terms were flying around to find exactly what was going on, since it obviously wasn't peace.
It would not be those regimes. Lot a lot of chaos on it, but confusion and loss for a lot of independent factual operations.
My best example of that was in conversations with the battalion commander of the French battalion that was in the region,
who, in a rather candid interview that I and my partner had on on his departure,
pointed out that it was interesting getting directions because he would get directions from not only you,
but he also get instructions from Paris and you get instructions from Europe directly from you headquarters.
And you do allow him great feedback because depending on what he wanted to do,
he can find an order from one of the three of them that would allow him to do that.
So he was a very aggressive proponent of the security of area, became essentially the guarantor of security, took his heavy armoured cars,
government positions to point towards the Bosnian Serbs to make the point that this was an issue for him to secure as opposed to anything.
Trying to work around the Bosnian Muslims in the area, and I was very impressed with that.
It pointed out that in an operation like this, you really need to bring something along with you that was unassailable,
that gave you a sense of power, and that you used it ruthlessly.
He understood where his power stemmed from. It was comes ability to project force and protect strength and to to arrange for the transport
of mines because he was the transport tonnage that was given to the combat assets in.
I saw that exercised curiously enough by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
He represented and be understood very, very clearly where the source of his power flowed, and that was because he was responsible for being the host.
He could turn on including. And so he used that to obtain for himself what he needed, which was access to see what was going on.
And over the course of two months and some very tough negotiations with the Bosnian Serbs that beyond to be inaccurate
for reason he secured himself freedom of access and freedom of delivery because they were desperate to get the food.
And really, you think that is not what the ICRC was portrayed as being at the time?
They were seen as being a very soft, very capable organisation.
And he certainly put paid to that to a very ruthless, pragmatic, said negotiations and he was able to get things that the U.N.,
EEC and many other organisations could not because he wielded his weapon.
A very, very effectively was an infamous one.
Also turns that without that ability to influence situations that your credibility
and why you were engaged by various individuals would be very tremendous.
The U.S. didn't bring a lot to the table when compared to the U.N. and other aid agencies.
It was very small rotation, very much monitoring. I came within three background up doing monitoring in the agricultural area, the cultural area,
the legal area, the political area, everything but military that was covered by nobody else.
But I didn't bring the resources with me to actually enforce change in the areas.
I could have great conversations and great situation reports, but then actually came to there's an issue here that needs addressed.
There's nothing I can do. And even when it came to brokering issues between the two forces.
It's a question of credibility.
And we discovered about halfway through that whether the U.N. or the U.S. or else very little credibility to be able to manage issues,
because we discovered that if the problem need to be solved and both sides agreed to be solved, they would just go on solving.
And the classic governance was a lot of things constructed for two months between the U.N. and ourselves,
to broker an arrangement where we would monitor the exchange of bodies because one side or the other seemed to get reticent.
It fell apart because one side pulled out. And then we went back a week and a half later to say, okay, can we try this again?
It's all this done and nobody got sorted out.
We just got ready to talk to each other. And it was done week a week after, about two days after it fell apart, put it together,
made it happen, which really put us into the box of why exactly are we here, what we doing?
And that issue of credibility and the ability to bring something to the table to resolve the situation is very important and we get that lesson
very quickly in the theatres with all of my first opportunity to have a look at what was going on and start developing insights on this,
not just about the military and military, they will have all sorts of international organisations working here the ICRC, UNHCR,
the World Food Program, but also some places individuals like the International Veteran Federation,
the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, very active in the former Yugoslavia,
which is all the National Red Cross is in their presence, acting as a group.
Coming from an outside perspective is that some of the things the Red Cross says is incredibly confusing,
that the Canadian from Manitoba, from Manitoba, Red Cross was acting on behalf of me and Red Cross society, working environment.
We have no idea that that was going on. The Red Cross was even involved in region,
so the players would show up and surprise you quite often and they might have been little to no understanding what other people are doing.
And very good from my perspective, they don't have no way of bridging that gap to figure out how we relate to each other all.
And then what can you do about each other's operations in terms of looking for them or
shaping your own operations to take advantage of whatever it is that they are doing?
That would be bad that you. So separate bought me several years later my first operational experience as a manufacturer.
And I was actually here in London as the Army fighter, and that was from 0407.
And I know I've seen off remember their operational intervention is from a complete perspective,
is that at a strategic level, some of the conversations that led to nations committing forces and at that time,
you know,
for seven is when the mission in Afghanistan really evolved quite considerably from a largely American led intervention with some U.N. presence in.
Kevin, you report to the U.N. and the international community preparing to expand
the operation to work in greater partnership with the Americans and actually
negotiate a transition from a national specific U.S. operation to a multinational operation and largely centred on Nico under a U.N. authority,
although it wasn't even operation. The the interesting thing about that,
from my perspective watching the report was that there was actually two conversations occurring at the same time.
The first was, what do we do about Afghanistan and the large piece about country, about what is happening in Afghanistan?
And how does the international opinion on specific and the U.K. respond to the American declaration of an Article five attack five attackers
articulated in their operations in Afghanistan to eliminate the arc of where they believe the chances of the attacks in the United Kingdom.
How do you deal with that aspect within the neo cons about what does that mean?
How do you make that work? How you respond? Is it right? The second thing is, is Afghanistan the right place to do it?
The other conversation that occurred was in fact more into the needle on the future of NATO's than anything that actually was going on in Afghanistan.
And that was the Cold War is coming to a close.
Bosnia's we're looking for the future. Looks like what the heck is they need to do now?
Is it purely and simply an article one organisation that guarantees collective security in Europe,
or is it something that can now extend the Article five relationship and the security
and the cooperation and the mutual security and interoperability and can use that,
go beyond regional and start playing a more significant role in the global context.
In a very difficult time to separate the two.
My perspective on this is that while people are concerned about the Afghanistan situation, make sure we did that right.
It wasn't so much about Afghanistan. But the concern and hopefully the place in which all the.
And I think over the course of time, if you watch some of the dialogue out there,
it is very much about everything thought Afghanistan and everything about video collective security cooperation,
interoperability and are we going to maintain the real naval alliance and how are we going to do that?
And I know that the stay at home defence versus extradition,
but still continue to play off the states as they go forward next summer and
continue to talk about what are the investments required to make that happen.
And that was very pointed to the Afghanistan. The.
And it was very much about how does Canada play a role and then even play a role when you have some significant interest in what's going on.
And certainly American interest was made sure that they had their allies with them.
They had already an Iraq that was in full swing.
They were determined to make a better player of what was going on in Afghanistan.
How was the UK and Canada going to relate to that?
We had some really good discussions about how that relation works and where was this threat to come.
And the end result for that was a Canada aside from Kandahar and a fairly significant way with the United
Kingdom very much of the mind that in order to ensure that NATO's continue to be seen as role in the world,
the U.S. is a strong leader in Afghanistan.
So South was not a partner nation for this very much discussion.
Let's get there. Let's make sure we're doing something really important.
And it is as much about saving you and our relationship with our allies as back.
So again, it goes back to that relationship is how you determine where he is and how do you then act in contact with him, make things happen.
Are you joined up?
One of the things that wasn't discussed at that point, it all began was how did Natal relate to everybody else that was sitting there?
And there is very much American forces, natal forces.
But the dynamic of the political reality, the orchestration of that piece in relationship with the U.N. was there already.
And all the agencies, all the agencies, the other pieces over there really didn't get much discussion, know, focus on the military.
So that then set the stage for me to be in Afghanistan.
I was there from oh 9 to 10 and.
I had to try and figure out, what do you do? This is what I was taught to do as I actor actually in London.
Okay. Free Internet provider is on reputation coordination,
monitoring between a department in the armed force and the department and Armed Forces
industry and other party agencies in the UK to support paying forces in national projects.
I provided that advice to the High Commissioner and I would do all the work between ourselves in the armed forces of the UK.
Make sure with good, personal and professional relationships in this crucial location with that background was what set me up to go to to Afghanistan.
There was where I have my relationships. As you can see, it's not all about the military, significant relationships and many,
many other organisations from places like here to RUSI Ices to the Foreign Commonwealth Office to veterans organisations,
other think tanks, you know, all over the place, local leaders, civic leaders of all candidates and armed forces.
And here in particular, you take a lot of the history about the fact that a great deal of the history is quite literally buried in the U.K.,
is that we have well over 100 memorial services that we attend,
either through my commission staff, victims, naval officers here in the UK, from the north of Scotland,
down through to Dover, not counting even goes on, which is not my agreement.
And it goes on in Belgium and France that's handled by the French.
But we have regular opportunities to interact with Britons here because they are very clear
about what happened during two world wars and that's going to be good for years year's imagine.
So you can see that that's a rather interesting preparation to step into an active theatre of engagement.
I hesitate to say war, but a lot of things were going on very dynamic, kinetic environment of Kabul.
Some of the personalities you'll recognise on the left hand side, two significant personalities,
one of whom continues to play a fairly significant role within Afghanistan today.
The other one not so much in the centre. You have Ambassador Crosbie, who is my boss from the theatre, who spent two years in Afghanistan,
unusually most than one year, very effective in doing what he need to do.
And I'll talk about in the second on the right again, President Karzai and then General Petraeus and then the types of activities from,
you know, the community interaction, the patrolling, everything in between the picture there in the centre.
This that is partially covered is actually off of Kabul at night.
That's a city of several millions of people, actually.
Massive, uh, just thriving, thrumming metropolis that is unbelievably,
I'm not sure how many people have had the opportunity to go there any kind of life, but the fact that in fact, completely they've done it, not at all.
But I would expect when you've seen the pictures and videos of what was going on in Afghanistan,
in the rural areas, and then compare that to Kabul is just night and day.
And even even those pictures that do come from Kabul, I don't think really convey well the nature of the city.
Quite curious. When I arrived there, October of oh nine, it was in the aftermath of the first round of new elections that re-elected President Karzai.
It was the most depressive.
Depressing atmosphere to work in I have ever stepped into.
I have coined as schizo institutional schizophrenic PTSD.
It would be the. If.
It was, I think, an absolute atmosphere of failure, complete and utter failure, despite the successes that had occurred at the time.
The way in which the election panned out in terms of results and conduct while showing a great deal of increase in the democratic process,
were so far below the unnaturally high expectations that people had allowed himself to buy in, even at the senior leadership level on the ground.
It came as such a terrible shock and disappointment that everybody retreated into four shells.
When I arrived there, there was no connectivity between myself, which was on the verge of a massive increase,
a tidal wave of resources that was never sure if an ISA between the end and the embassy,
the ISAF and the UN and I completely had their reputation destroyed.
Even the limited utility they had in their rather disjointed,
stovepiped approach being completely destroyed, and their credibility to run, monitor, advise on elections,
to see some of the excess,
the the insult to injury was added just after I arrived in the UN House that was about a half longer away from me was attacked.
And you recall that where the suicide bombers broke in and started trying to kill the U.N. employees were there the only
foil because there were two security agents there who had not turned in their weapons bomb or didn't know about them.
They were able to hold off the bombers until the security forces were able to break in several hours later and killed the bombers.
So you had a great number of people that that completely devastated the UN's confidence in itself.
And they really had the struggle for many months thereafter to to believe in themselves and even the science regarding.
I'll give Mr. Dean a third who became a new and briefer credit for restoring some of the confidence and some of the credibility of the U.N.
Brokering issues for future members. It was on the verge of the impending U.S. military arrival.
And that wasn't just the military arrival, which was overwhelming in its own right, but the billions of dollars that were devoted to aid,
as well as massive failings of civil servants and others that showed up in concert with the military trying to completely overwhelm the area.
It was the opinion of many, I'm sure, an embarrassment of a purchase.
It was too much of a good thing. And really this enable the ability of.
The organisations themselves plus the Afghan government contemplate incredibly to deal with what is going on around the real problem.
I said no one is talking to each other. Everyone was really unhappy about where they were at.
Dismayed with the level of attention they were getting and the the approach that was being taken by the U.S. and.
As concerned as ever with the level of corruption that was extant within the country.
And a number of interesting discussion about corruption, Notre Dame very involved in this big,
of course, with the amount of money that they were controlling,
some would say inappropriately, because they shouldn't have had control of the money being floated to aid development,
especially the things such things as the Agriculture Ministry, the Interior Ministry,
the Health Ministry, the Education Ministry and quality programs,
their ability to identify appropriate uses for the money and then appropriate mechanism to make sure the money was spent there.
More military officers themselves don't have that level of experience, don't have the familiarity of some of those.
A lot of concern about that.
It was an environment I walked into prepared as I was with with the institutional, strategic piece of dealing with a relatively stable,
stable ally and a strategic plan and walked in saying, okay, what does all this mean in a very confused situation,
very depressed organisation and a lot of uncertainty about where to go next
because there's been so much hope invested in the in the aspect of elections,
bringing a shining light to the events and that things would start getting better rapidly because democracy would have taken hold in Afghanistan.
There was also a great deal of confusion about who was going to lead the effort.
My staff reorganised into the strategic headquarters, plus the Joint Force headquarters,
which ran the military operations and then the military training.
When I knew that the establishment building within the security of the future,
they had a weight that couldn't be ignored and money and time and effort and other people off that they could not be ignored.
They were obviously can play a very significant role, but there were other players out there as well.
The U.N., everyone agreed morally, ethically needs to play a role, but they were bankrupted at the time and needed a chance to regroup.
They could not provide the leadership.
Nature was not seen as a particularly credible leader for the entire effort because of the what was perceived to be a
particular focus on military operations and security piece and in an inappropriate for leadership role in any other name.
If you look at the Red Cross and other aid agencies, they could possibly play a role in certain areas,
but they were restricted because of their philosophy for certain aspects of the counterinsurgency versus a nation building exercise versus say,
let's get rid of outside exercise, which no one was really sure which one it was,
and even those that were sure they knew what it was that wasn't shared between everyone.
So who was going to lead the operation? Who was going to talk with a real problem?
What was going on? And certainly the nations, to my experience, proved to be a bit schizophrenic on this as well.
Where they would act one way within the senior structure, NATO headquarters in Brussels.
This seemed to play out slightly differently in the ISAF headquarters in terms of the way that the national representatives,
whether civilian military would betray certain aspects.
And then you have the embassies that were there as well, some of whom had a level of control over the national agents,
various aid agencies that were nationally based and some that didn't.
And even those embassies seemed to portray a slightly different perspective on what was being done within ISAF, within their headquarters.
And in that regard, I would say that the United States,
probably as much as anyone else in that they had some very significant players within country with some significant resources taking.
And they, I think, had difficulties in tough times, making sure they had coordinated their activities,
but not because in any one case, someone was actually working against anyone else in a malicious or evil manner.
It's because they all had their own perspective. They were all working very hard to achieve success the way they thought was necessary.
But there was clearly a lack of coordination that you could rely upon from time to time.
So I walk in brand new, a little bit of understanding the Afghan situation, what I do.
I spend most of my time building bridges. And most of my counterparts do that now.
And there were a number. I spent the time doing it.
Theoretically, I was the senior military adviser of the nation to the ambassador, who is the senior official of Canada,
to represent the perspective of Canada to the the Afghan government and anyone else would have to be in the area.
The reality was that as an overall officer, I had five general officers.
I was a colonel at the time by general officers. At least 1 to 2 ranks more senior me that were much more regularly talking to national headquarters
and operational command that generated me operations and so we were a much better place for my.
The advice that they find.
Exactly occasionally if after you if you think that being and in terms of the, uh, the national perspective, um, it wasn't clear.
Either Canada went up, the ambassador had the final say because there was an independent adviser to the mission in Kandahar
who's providing political and national advice for the operations of peace forces down there,
plus most of them that likes the Kandahar government that they work to keep on going.
But they were two different people working two different areas with two different areas of responsibility and one at the national level and regional.
And so we've been focussed on a structure that could be used for as much as we pointed out that the uh, the difficulties not because organisations.
So I spent a lot of time building bridges because I was tired at that point of watching
organisations go about doing their own business their own way without any regard anyone else.
And I had to do that as much within the embassy where that sense of depression and despair was, was present as much as they were else.
And I would find myself in the pre position because I was dressed mostly like this most days.
The only way the embassy staff were able to distinguish between me and them was that I would carry a pistol and they wouldn't,
which they found really good thing. I think I'm a very popular person actually going back and forth myself headquarters
because I would walk and they would have to wait for an armoured car. They went with me, they could walk so I had some great.
I use that as an opportunity to actually get to know many of the embassy staff in a way that they
would not normally have done and use that in order to start talking about what was going on.
I spent a lot of time with embassy staff and international relations staff who've
never actually had a conversation with anyone military in the two years they've been
there to explain what was going on in my staff headquarters and how they were as much
bound by the situation that these guys were and where were the opportunities to talk.
And by the way, you just can't ignore the elephant in the room.
You have to you have to work around with them to be aware of.
You cannot just go and do stuff because you will lose your effect or you'll be overlaid by something that is being done by them.
You work across purposes.
So for about my first six months of a ten month tour, it was building bridges and getting people talking inside the embassy essentially,
and using exactly the same technique on the no brakes on the United States, because 99% of the headquarters of military I could walk in.
And while they would look at me, the staff with like, what's the city doing here?
I had access past from my Norfolk status. I was able to relatively quickly once they realised I was carrying a pistol,
no one else did that was in civilian attire get across the bridge in military for a number of reasons.
So I've been talking to some of those left wing folks we've been ignoring for the last four months in the building
up and doing things that I know you're working hard to help and you're making plans and this and this and that.
You talk with these guys because even more conservative advisors last two months, two years, 20 years,
they have some great content and great situational awareness and they can actually tell you what's going on because they know talking to you,
you haven't talked to the Department of Health you for doing your years, making plans for how you can help them.
Took about six months for them to actually start having off. There was one Marine Corps officer working that I think was in their joint plans who
absolutely from the get go thought that he was worth a thousand other people because
he understood that concept was actually really good and talked to people who worked
on the uniform and he became the the agent in the side on a continuous basis,
people from this war. He was able to sell within eyesight because the idea of a weekly meeting to talk about interagency cooperation,
where he got several of the other cells to sit down, managed to get the embassy sitting in and actually get the other agencies coming in.
By the time I left, we had about 30 people at the table when we started with three,
three months before that, and that actually led to a senior level conference with them.
So they would have a room that actually built in was, you know, a conference where the ambassadors,
the agency heads, what, six senior leaders of ICE up would sit down and share some perspectives and consult.
Didn't always agree,
but I did see within both the international agencies and my staff a change in some of the behaviour of the way of doing things with actually
talking and considering that person viewpoint didn't change the objectives they had to work on and the fact that I staff largely responded.
It's new and a good measure naturally to the US President.
That they had their own meaning that they had me, but they certainly started changing their behaviours in the way you were doing things.
To do that, you have to say that what happened was Afghani, of course, is the currency of Afghanistan.
And I'll give General Christman real credit for managing that change as well,
because he brought with it an approach that had not necessarily been well rooted prior to his arrival.
He really came with the aspect that he was in support of the Afghan government and the Afghan military.
And the firms and vetted that and the way he dealt with them.
And I thought his staff, the staff who he brought in as partners to the the weekly and daily big accounts,
has given this matters to the Afghan commander who was there with him,
his support formations when they had the video conferencing capability with warning.
This was that went off like a bomb inside the operations centre because they had never had an Afghan side or an Afghan connected to the environment.
And he said, no, we're supposed this morning,
let's get them in and talk to them about what we think we ought to do and then be clear about when we're talking to ourselves that they're included.
It was a tremendous step forward, did engender a lot of change in the way that I sat there working,
didn't make everything good, didn't get everyone on the same page.
On whether or not they were fighting a counterinsurgency where they were doing a any and not very neat operation,
really doing a nation building operation where they in the long term development opportunities was a large amount of very poor being there,
but at least you had people talking about what's going on and it could be very helpful for them.
So you didn't automatically step on each other. It was a tremendous step forward and really, really well appreciate.
I think over the course of time, certainly I represented the minister, as I said, when he got on the ground,
was very active in working that as well and partnering in an obvious way with
the senior civilian representative now as well as the commander to present.
Whenever they had big issues to talk about, the three of them would sit down with the players to do that.
They were no longer meeting on a regular basis by themselves.
I think it was a really important change for.