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Because of the huge pressure to introduce to you.

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Bridget Jones. He's going to be looking at this state of play in Afghanistan.

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And I have a bit of history in the sense that when you actually go into the soldier amendment, he is going back to the days of the Norman conquest.

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We are in the second third of Harold, the seventh from July 3rd fighting the Norman conquest.

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Actually three trips being U.S., Chevron and American History Commission on both occasions 1991 2013 available for children and served in Germany,

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Northern Ireland and in Bosnia. Of course, it's good as you expect to have a very exciting career indeed.

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Come on. The chief of staff to 12 mech brigades in Iraq, 24 rifles to to 2010.

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And then obviously the commitment for knights to Patrick, including the proficiency, the election support things.

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What was very interesting was the online actually calls to go and join articulate experts and end up getting diverted to Kandahar and Zabul instead.

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So I never got that to work with that.

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Rumour is what we did in early days as well as he understands all the necessary necessities of being a white warrior essay for interaction operations.

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Particularly interesting role of matrix empowered characters.

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And I definitely want to go back to review military systems.

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The images direct from operations and armed forces presence the advisory board

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in the steering group and perhaps remove various and also worked as colonel

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on strategy to suggest this was I think we focus on the most recently I think probably the high command staff calls what you call glowing reports.

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I understand and has never been in command of one mech brigade and [INAUDIBLE] be doing that until later this summer.

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Indeed. So, Rico, thank you very much. Thank you.

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No pleasure. Thank you for that very full introduction.

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I confess, I stand here with a degree of trepidation because I'm having a very August body and you will very properly scrutinise my words,

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but actually far more specifically, because as I arrived, I was quite certain were not forthcoming to.

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Luckily my driver knew, but as I arrived here I realised I was coming to the venue of what used to be the Oxford University officer

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training course that used to be on this very site in the days before the Norman conquest far even served with Rob.

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So I spent a great deal of my younger days, my formative military time on this very site as a very different site back then.

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But it's a great privilege to be here with you today. Thank you very much for inviting me.

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Always welcome the opportunity to talk about that because I think it's much misunderstood

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and there's plenty out there who either misunderstand or don't know what's going on.

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Indeed, I was on a train recently on my way out to London to give a presentation.

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I was in service dress. I wasn't exactly looking inconspicuous and the gentleman off opposite me, it transpired,

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was an academic and gave me a conversation and I told him what I was about to do giving a talk.

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I talked about progress in Afghanistan and he gave me that knowing look so many people do when you talk about progress in Afghanistan.

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And he then went on to lecture me about the previous Afghan wars, and therefore by extension, it was quite clear there is no progress in Afghanistan.

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I would like to think this body would recognise in the circumstance of the the historic Afghan wars

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and what the entire community have been seeking to do over the last decade are very different,

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not least has nothing to do with imperialism in this.

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I'd like to think, and it has been about developing Afghanistan for the Afghan government, not for our own benefit.

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But you can come back to me on that,

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but is a much misunderstood endeavour I would suggest I should highlight I'm out of date, so I came home six months ago.

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So I'm going to talk about progress in Afghanistan through the optic of the summer of 2013.

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I've kept a pretty good handle on what's happened since, so I can delve into that, not least over the election period.

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But what has been impressive,

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I was saying outside is actually the plan since last summer has rolled out pretty effectively in terms of what had been intended.

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But what I'm a touch outdated I'll use last summer as a vignette in Helmand to reach into a wider subject of progress in Afghanistan.

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Summer 2013 really important period in the campaign. I will be judged as such because that's when the Afghans took the lead,

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formally took the lead from international forces, and then went straight into a into a summer fighting season.

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So a really, really important period vital that the Afghans succeeded upfront.

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And I think the other point was so vital they succeeded.

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But if they failed, we would have failed.

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And then you get into a really interesting balance in terms of not underwriting their successes, the successes being substantially theirs.

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But if they fail, we fail. And you've always seen as a delicate balance in terms of how much you therefore support them.

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I talk a lot about him because it is about the Afghans in the lead.

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It's no longer about internally.

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Her forces saying until about him and his police and indeed civilian counterparts really that the very heart of the story.

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I'm. The campaign. What we've been doing for the last couple of years have been very has been very much about the Afghans.

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ISAF commanders are not writing the plan. Afghans are writing the plan.

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We are contributing to that plan. But fundamentally, it's an Afghan plan.

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We military tend to be control freaks and therefore we don't like not being in control.

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It is very uncomfortable not being in control,

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but we haven't been in control for well over a year now and we've been iteratively handing off control for a considerable period prior to that.

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But it is it does occasionally put you in an uncomfortable place.

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So the summer 2013 is what I can talk about, as in questions we can reach forward in 2014 and indeed looking further out than that.

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I said already, 2013, really important year. Irritatingly, of course,

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the insurgent also understood it was really important year because he knew that if he was going

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to demonstrate that the Afghan security forces were not a credible security organisation,

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they had to stop that narrative in 2013 going to 14 until ISAF forces are gone.

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You've got to stop the narrative because as every month, week, every month, year goes by, the Afghan security forces get stronger.

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So the insurgent knew that he had to hit the Afghan security forces hard from when they took formal control.

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The other thing that I think they the insurgents sought to do last year, again, I would argue unsuccessfully.

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Who was to begin to paint the narrative that they precipitated the international withdrawal, much talked about as a narrative.

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They hadn't achieved any real substance behind that narrative.

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In 2013, they began to try to turn up the tempo in that narrative again, unsuccessfully.

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But what we tended to see was where they were. They did attack international forces.

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It wasn't harassing attacks. Killing a soldier doesn't get you anywhere very much, except cause quite a lot of sadness.

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You've got to do more than that. What they were looking to do was spectacular attacks that would reach Western headlines.

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That was that was the aim. And you saw a change in in technique.

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The Taliban always very good at evolving their procedures, continuing attempt to evolve their techniques to hit us hard.

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The picture did not come out that clearly. But bottom right.

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You know, that is a that is a a Georgian checkpoint that's just been hit by a lorry borne IED in two attacks just north of us, ten Georgians killed.

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And from memory, I think was 59 injured in two similar attacks or two attacks.

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Now, the Georgian Defence Minister was pretty robust about that and I don't think it achieved very much narrative effect with the Georgians at all.

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I would suggest you've done that to an American base or to a British base.

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The response in Washington and London would have been very, very significant.

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The Americans are just as vulnerable in media terms to that sort of thing happening as we are now.

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So they probably got their target wrong.

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But if you've done that to the British or the Americans successfully last summer, I think all respective politicians would have had a nervous moment.

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Then I want to touch on that. You might come back to the questions of it.

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Interests is that it does mean that you're stage of the campaign where force protection is

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fundamental and honest is the point you've got that you've got to maintain your freedom to operate.

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If you're taking heavy casualties, you are going to lose your freedom to operate.

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Because our politicians are saying that campaign in the final stages.

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They want to ensure that we're not losing undue quantities of troops.

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And if you suffer significant numbers of casualties, then you will have your freedom constrained in your ability to deliver.

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Campaign progress will be reduced. So you've got to you've got to protect the force so you can retain your freedom to operate.

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So I'd like to talk a bit about the Afghan security forces sound and talk unashamedly, primarily about Helmand.

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But what is going on in Helmand is broadly reflected elsewhere in the country.

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The Afghan army and police in Helmand are neither better nor worse than elsewhere in the country that think they kind of sit in in a good place.

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But they are broadly reflective. I think most people, most spectators are pretty judgemental about the call to the Afghan security forces.

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I should say that the slides are really that just from the kind of visual stimulation, there's no mean text on them.

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They're just just accompanied by words that I go through. But we're quite judgemental about the, the Afghan security forces.

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But the reality is they have made extraordinary progress.

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You would kind of hope they would.

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We've been working with them for a long time, but they really have made very significant progress that unrecognisable in the main from the pretty old,

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disciplined, poorly equipped force that we were dealing with earlier in the campaign.

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And if you've got in your mind some drug crazed lunatic, that's not the Afghan security force soldier or policeman in the main.

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And I hope I will persuade you of that through the talk.

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Afghan security forces very significantly tested during 2013, not just down in the south, but throughout the country.

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For the reasons that I described, the Taliban. The Taliban had to demonstrate these guys were not capable of giving the Afghan security.

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They were very heavily tested, there's no doubt about it. But did they hold?

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Yes, they did. Of course, they were tested at the end of the insertion, but I'm going to give them an easy ride.

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It doesn't matter about whether or not you're tested. What matters is how you respond to that test.

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And as a my experience was that they held very,

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very effectively and I would say without word to apply the dominant security in Helmand and more widely across Afghanistan.

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He's now these people. It's not Western forces. These are the dominant security actor.

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And they are delivering effective security.

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Vitally, I think that as we gave them their independence, they have flourished.

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One of things that we were clumsily trying to measure last summer was winning confidence,

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not just success in victories, but winning confidence because it is all about all psychological will and confidence.

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We had all sorts of clever metrics as how you could judge winning confidence with with them unless you're interested.

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But what you very quickly discovered is the metrics were just backing up what you saw day in, day out.

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You go and see a police commander and an Afghan army commander,

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and his will and confidence was punching him in the face because he was just he was so buoyant about what they were doing.

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They were they were flourishing on their independence.

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And so you didn't really need metrics to see how confident they were.

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You know, they were like a kid with a toy. You know, they've got the toy and it's theirs.

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And they were really pleased to have it. And importantly, I think what we saw last year, if anything,

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I did find that developed last year was the degree to which they moved to an operational design

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of their own volition that we've been persuading them to move to for the last two years.

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But they hadn't gone.

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So we've been inviting them to generate reserves, to manoeuvre in the depth of the insertion, do these clever things that we Western militaries do.

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And they weren't really doing it. Why? In their heart, because they knew that if they didn't, we would do it for them.

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And it's a long war for them. And why would you go and do these pretty dangerous things if in your heart, you know, somebody else could do it for you?

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As they last summer, they saw for the first time that we just weren't going to do it for them.

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And either they were going to do or nobody was going to do it.

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And of their own volition, they started to do all of those things generating reserves where they'd never had reserves,

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mounting very big and frequent operations into the depth of the insurgents in a way that they just hadn't previously.

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To me it's about basic human behaviours they recognise now nobody else is going to do it for them.

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And so they started to do it and they did it really quite effectively.

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And I can I can come back to that if you would like. The Army specifically.

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You know, the Afghan army, you know, they're a good force, you know, that fielded about 350,000 strong.

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It's not about numbers. Of course it is about quality. And the quality, of course, varies.

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I'm not I'm not claiming otherwise. But where they are good, they are really very good.

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And a phrase that I have been used a lot last summer is if they want to, they can say again, if it's in their interests to do something,

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to clear a piece of ground, to defeat an insurgent, they are more than capable of doing so.

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Whenever the Afghan army, in my experience, came up against the Taliban, there was only going to be one winner.

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And it was the Afghan army. The army would take casualties. Of course they would in an insurgent can kill soldiers very effectively, there's no doubt.

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But but you don't achieve success by just killing soldiers.

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And wherever they came into conflict with each other directly, the Afghan army would win very effectively.

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And you might have seen last summer that the insurgent made a big offensive up in Sangin.

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You're saying in there's always been a bit of a running sore for international forces.

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And they made a big play up in Sangin last summer.

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The Afghan forces reinforced they took the brigade that operates with the British down in central Helmand and pushed it up into Sangin.

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And those photos of 3 to 1 fire brigade, the brigade the British army been working with for the last seven, eight years.

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That brigade is highly impressive. So it should be in the amount of international effort we've put into it over that period.

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So it should be.

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But it went up to Sangin and gave what I can only describe as a masterclass in the manner in which it performed in clearing into very,

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very well-defended Taliban positions that have been held by the Taliban throughout the conflict that we have never held.

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And this brigade went straight through those enemy.

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And any Western force would have been proud of achieving what that brigade achieved.

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And so at some stage, you've got to begin to stop what we have got to stop looking down on noses at

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the Afghan army and give them respect for what they're tactically capable of.

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And it's not right that they throw their artillery pace.

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Those who have been involved in this will know that we haven't done very well with to teach them about artillery.

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It's been a a frustrating journey at best.

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Why? Well, in part because they always knew that we would provide them with artillery support.

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Well, they know we're now not going to provide them with artillery support.

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So funny old thing, they go back to their guns and they dust off the manuals and they're really quite good with their artillery.

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So again, it comes back to human behaviour. If they know we're going to do it for them, they won't necessarily step up to step up to the plate.

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So I mean, really very, very impressive. And please come back to me later and pick my brains.

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But the Afghan army, the good bits of the Afghan army,

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more than capable of clearing and holding terrain for for the Afghan government, there are shortfalls.

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And I'll come back to those later. The police, you'll know that the you know, the journey with the police wasn't always very pretty.

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We, the Western community, didn't do a very good job up front at the start of the campaign.

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We certainly didn't carry across the right lessons from Iraq and didn't do it well with the police in Iraq either.

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But there were plenty of read across from what we got right and wrong in in Iraq that we didn't carry across in Afghanistan.

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Front that because of that or in part because of that,

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the Afghan police never had a dependency culture toward towards international forces in the way that perhaps the Afghan army did.

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The police never had that dependency. So we've helped them. We've developed them, but they've never been wholly reliant on us.

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Again, you will be able to point to examples where policemen in Afghanistan do bad things.

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But if you step away from these individual vignettes, again, my experience in Afghanistan and Helmand is that the police do an okay job.

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They really do. They've come on enormously.

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They've got good leaders, genuinely impressive, charismatic commanders who want to deliver security, unlike the army.

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The police tend to come from the provinces where they are policing.

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They have got a vested interest in providing policing.

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And you see genuine incidents, incidents going on of something you would recognise to be community policing.

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The Helmand monitoring that's being done by the Foreign Office for the last four or five years provides excellent polling data,

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and one of the most interesting bits of polling data they come up with is to do with policing.

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Again, a little bit out of date on this.

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But the statistic last late last year was that the Afghan police in Helmand have a well over 90% approval rating.

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Well, I think most of our police forces would like a 90% approval rating back here.

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Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that the Helmand police are better than the police in Britain.

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Of course they're not. But what what sits behind that approval rating is, I believe,

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a general view amongst amongst the people of Helmand that the police are giving them

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an acceptable form of security and that they're paying a reasonable price for it.

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Price. Open bracket. Corruption.

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Taxation. But those people are willing to pay that taxation to get the security that they get in return.

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And again, we should be careful of being too judgemental about that form of institutionalised corruption.

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And again, I'll probably come back to that in questions.

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So I would suggest to you the police, Neil, and we have made really, really good progress, not the finished articles.

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However, of course, we'll be doing a lot for them. We're not doing the fighting anymore.

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But again, you know, commentators will then will highlight that the critical what we call the enablers that really underpin our success.

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Well, we've been doing that for the Afghans, have we? And once you take away, these are generally called the Big Five enablers.

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Once you take away these big five. Well, it all fall apart, won't it?

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Well, possibly. I mean, the first thing I'd say by going through through each of these in turn,

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is that we've been stepping back from the Afghans and what I think is a very responsible manner over the last at least 24, 36 months.

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You know, you edge back, you edge back, you edge back.

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Always consciously reassuring yourselves the Afghans are ready for the next stage of their independence.

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And once you get to where we were last summer, we weren't providing the support.

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I mean, it was it was available if it was really, really needed. And I mentioned earlier that if they failed, we would have failed.

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And therefore, the constant judgement you're trying to make as a commander is when do you need to step in?

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And there's a number of different ways of doing that, of course. Our broad conclusion was what we called like an early was the best way.

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So broadly, if you see an anang, an Afghan force conceptually stumbling, you would step forward,

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give a very like hand to their elbow, steadied them, and then step straight back away again.

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Our experience was that was the more effective way of doing business.

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The alternative is to let them genuinely fall to their knees, you know, nose in the sand and then yank back to the feet.

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Our preference was light early, pretty transparent to the Afghan population,

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and then step away again as judging how to do that in the midst of an incident is quite difficult.

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So how would the Afghans do to provide these sorts of support?

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Because this is all pretty high tech stuff that we potentially provide them with.

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Well, let's start with counter improvised explosive device support.

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Well, the first thing is we're done. The Afghans can do this. And they've been in this place for well in excess of 12 months now where they're the

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Afghan army and the police who are slightly behind when brought to the same place.

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They don't need our own disposal experts. They've got bomb disposal teams that are more than capable of doing this.

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And all nine are structured in a sustainable manner that in musical acts and technologies.

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But they've been trained to use that technology.

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So on disposal done, they genuinely do not need or support quick reaction force or what they call for a quick reaction force.

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What they mean is they want an Apache attack helicopter to come over the horizon and drop bombs.

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Well, that's what they need is quick, quick reaction forces. They want their own troops coming quickly.

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And as I said, you're ready. They recognise that we're not going to provide the quick reaction forces any longer.

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And they have these forces at their disposal and they recognise that they need to have them have them available all the time.

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Currently evacuation, which is a really, really big one. I'll come back to attrition in a minute.

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Everyone's always said, you know, once, once we're not part of the county evacuation, they're going to struggle.

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Well, the harsh reality is when we're not evacuating their casualties, their morbidity rate will go up.

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Of course it will. You know that you know, we know that to be the case. But that's what that cardiovascular calculation looks like.

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They'll bring a vehicle and they will drive the casualty to the nearest hospital as their morbidity rate will go up as a result.

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But the police have not been using all county evacuation for a long time.

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They put them in a vehicle and they drive them to the hospital.

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Of course, that will influence how they operate because they knew the helicopters were available.

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Sometimes they would operate quite aggressively because they knew all helicopters were there to back them up.

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Human nature, they will just draw themselves back a little bit.

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They'll be a touch more cautious. But they have got their own casualty evacuation.

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And again, I can talk in questions if you'd like, about the work that's been done to develop a credible hospital capability for them.

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Helmand was really the that the the Afghan core area that was weakest in terms of leaving a an enduring hospital facility for them.

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But that's caught up considerably in the last year, particularly the last six months surveillance.

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So we provide them all all in what I call exquisite technology, technology that, you know, Rob certainly didn't have as a adapting commander.

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I didn't have as a company commander. The Afghans don't need that technology.

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Western armies didn't have that technology until very recently.

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The Afghans, rather, like the fact that they operate operating alongside.

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It's got this wonderful technology. They certainly don't know how to use it.

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And they recognise in themselves that, hey, it wouldn't be sustainable if they had it and secondly, they don't need it.

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Of course, one of the critical reasons why we need our exquisite technology is they know what's going on.

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Afghans know what's going on far, far better than we do, because in the case of the police, it's their province.

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They understand the human dynamic in a way that we simply don't. And therefore, the human intelligence is much, much better than ours.

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And therefore, all the time we're using high tech equipment to plug a gap because we just don't really understand because,

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well, Western Army operating in Afghanistan and then the foreign one that people always point to is fires.

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And as I think I'll point to already, they recognise that our fires ongoing and therefore they are they're working very hard.

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They're making real progress now with their own interior fires.

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I've talked about their artillery pieces. They shoot mortars for the first time last year.

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We should be training the mortar teams who are training them.

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They would highlight the Afghans seem to have have a natural aptitude for using mortars genuinely.

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So they've got their own fires. And then I'm touched on again we can talk about in questions the work is ongoing to develop their their air force,

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which has been a difficult journey as you've been involved in it will know about it.

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It's been a pretty slow journey. But but I think it's fair to say there is finally a reasonably sustainable bit of work being done to

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really get the Afghan air force into the sort of place that the Afghan government would want it to be.

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Probably I forget the exact time frame, but it was brought out about 2017 ongoing work with particularly with the United States.

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So I would argue they they don't even need our neighbours, they certainly need people like me,

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that they really need our soldiers and they don't need our neighbours. The next area that people would point to is attrition.

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Well-educated Afghans are in the lead, but they are taking a lot of casualties, aren't they?

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Would go the relatively defeatist narrative and of course that is a yes, of course are taking more casualties there in the lead.

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You know, we were taking the casualties on their behalf.

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And Afghan commanders recognise that a look at wolves roles of honour of Western forces and I've heard a number of commanders do again it'll

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turn out you've taken you give me your sacrifice is now our turn to take the sacrifice so of course that casualty numbers are going to go up.

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Actually, they haven't gone up as high as many people would suggest they have, but vitally.

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We should view their casualty figures through their optic, not our own.

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So this is a non-discretionary campaign for them. And therefore, you know, they they recognise they have got to take those casualties.

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And vitally, they judge those casualties against their own progress and against the number of casualties they've imposed on the insurgent.

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Another matter that we would wish to do is slightly take you back to sort of the Vietnam body bag sort of metric,

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but this is their metric for their own audience.

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So aside, they judge their own coaches very much about what their achieving against the enemy and the progress that they are making.

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I said already that that's certainly not the the finished article.

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But what we've done iteratively is lift off the more and more and more subs that were barely on the ground with them anymore.

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This is where the focus has been increasingly for the last 12 or 18 months and is very firmly focus now

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is on the institutions up in Kabul getting the ministries as well sorted as they should be down through.

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In the case of the army and the police out in the provinces to the corps level, the equivalent of our divisional level.

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So the major general level and the equivalent the police are really deepening the institutions.

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This is where there continues to be work to be done.

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Particularly on their sustainability. So the police and the army can go out and fight very effectively at the tactical level.

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And they, as I think I've suggested, will win.

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That is not to say that the the manner in which the brigade and the police district and docks together up through the last command,

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into the into the ministries in Kabul, are as sophisticated as they they could be.

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The resupply structure, the procurement structure, the way budgets flow through the police and the army are not as sophisticated as they need to be.

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And that's where the real efforts are all going on at the moment.

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You might argue, not unreasonably, that the international community should have done more of that earlier,

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and I think that it would be a very fair observation.

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Why is it only now that we're really beginning to teach them about budget flows into that Corps headquarters, for example?

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But that's why there's a lot of work going on at the moment.

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That, incidentally, is a photo of what's called the Regional Core Battle School.

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Anyone who knows what I'm talking about. So Brecon and Things is where they teach their infantry is pretty advanced soldiering.

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A huge part of that said in Helmand, very, very proud of it.

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This is a police equivalent. You know, we're barely involved anymore.

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These guys run these courses and they've overcome the institutional blockage about wanting to learn.

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Historically, Afghan soldiers are places won't be policing and fighting.

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Increasingly, they've understood that they're better fighters if they come out to the lines some of the time and come to places like this.

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And again, good, good, good progress. Not the final answer, but good progress.

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I'm just a very quick sort of belief, understanding, if you like.

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There has been a little bit of a narrative over probably the last year that British forces in Josh forces aren't on the ground anymore.

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That's deeply disingenuous. It does a gross disservice to our soldiers and I think is misleading to your average newspaper reader.

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He or she will be quite disappointed to discover that soldiers have been killed if he or she believes has no troops on the ground anymore.

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There are there have to be. There must be right up until the very end.

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Firstly, because as I've indicated, we're lifting off the Afghans iteratively.

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And therefore, you know, some of the time we are on the ground with them.

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We've got to keep a relationship with the Afghans right to the end, not least because we need their support as we extract from Afghanistan.

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Unless we have an enduring relationship with them, they won't support us in those final stages.

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And secondly, because for as long as you have got troops in all cases in Helmand, Helmand is an inherently dangerous place.

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And the insurgents will wish to make our journey out of Helmand as uncomfortable as possible.

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And you cannot just sit back in your bases,

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rely on the Afghans to provide you the protection because the insurgent will come to your bases and he will ruin your day in a very real way,

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because the Afghan forces very properly will be focussed on Afghan security.

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And therefore, you can't really expect them to be doing security for your bases as well.

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So please is understand, you know,

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we continue spend quite a considerable amount of time on the ground protecting ourselves in in depth and again having talk about questions,

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if you'll be interested. I want to talk a bit about talk about the security line of operation.

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The reality is district governors and governors not really interested in security anymore.

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We are going to sit down with them and they're just not really interested why they

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don't believe some security is passé and move beyond that security in many places,

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not everywhere in many places is taken as a given.

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In places where you were fighting two or three years ago. The district governor is taking it as a given.

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What he wants to talk to you about is flood relief, crop cycles, elections, things that.

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Our councils might talk about.

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And again, if security is not on their agenda, that tells you something quite significant to think about the progress that has been made.

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Indeed. You know, you got a couple of photos that people voting not from the recent national election,

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but the the district council elections that have been held in the last 12 months or so in Helmand.

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I say how? Because most places don't have district councils, but Helmand does.

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It's a rugby scrum to vote on and they're mad for it. You know, they understand what what democracy potentially does for them.

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They recognise it gives them a voice in their local business and their local area.

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Well, again, you know, that's a really powerful narrative. That's not us imposing democracy on them.

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That's a system being put in place that they have bought into and that they want and that they recognise that it's a way of getting a voice.

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Of course, many of the people who are elected are the same sort of people who might have given tribal governance anyway.

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So it's going. Often it's people being voted in who are part of the part of the tribal structure.

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But again, that's a good thing. You know, you don't will be running against the Afghan governance green.

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The national election the other day, which was met by a pretty muted response, I think it's fair to say, by most Western journalists.

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Hugely significant. You know, all the talk, all the commentariat for the 12 months leading up to the election said, yes, but wait until the election.

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You know, that'll be the big acid test. Well, the big acid test came and it went and the Taliban broadly failed to disrupt it.

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And it was a pretty successful election. No great surprises.

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They've got to go to a runoff. That's the way the Constitution is written. And the runoff will happen this this later this year.

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But the two main candidates are, you know, in a good place. They're both pretty competent operators.

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And the Taliban, I'm sure, will have another go at the runoff later this month.

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But I confess, I found it quite disappointing that the international community,

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indeed the international media, are more interested in trumpeting that Afghan election.

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We're discussing it for. And it's not it's not us being triumphalist, it's not us.

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We haven't done it. It was an Afghan election very effectively delivered.

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And with the security given by Afghan forces, I think, you know, in terms of a metric of success, that that was very, very powerful.

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The next thing that we need to see before we have too much confidence is the run off being successful and then vitally,

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of course, the transition of power from Karzai to his successor.

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And if that can happen and if Kabul can come through that handover of power with stability, then then I think, you know,

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those who are cautiously optimistic can begin to think that that, you know, that their view might be vindicated.

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They won't talk for too much longer. But I will say a couple words on the insurgent.

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The insurgent would wish to disrupt this process. The insurgents would wish to disrupt the forming the elections.

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The fact that people now have roads where they've never had them before that transformed society.

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The Taliban is not the force that it once was. Of that, there is no doubt.

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He can still kill you very happily. He can still mount a spectacular and get newspaper headlines.

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But he is not the force that he once was. He's conflicted.

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He is struggling. He's short of money. He's short of weapons in a great many places.

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He's now short of public support. Why is he short of public support?

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Is it not much to offer? And then that's made really hard when district governors really inconvenient insurers point out that the jihad is over.

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Why is the jihad over? Because the infidels go home.

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And when you've got district governors saying that to tribal elders, the jihad is over.

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If you ever believed in the jihad, it's over. That is very, very damaging to to the Taliban narrative.

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So the Taliban in most places, again, you can point to examples where this isn't the case, but in most places, the Taliban are struggling.

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I believe and again, you can come back at me on this, that in most places the Taliban don't want to take a district centre.

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Okay. But those have been tracking this campaign since its early days.

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Think back to the Taliban flags flying over district centres. I don't believe the Taliban want to do that anymore.

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Why don't I think they want to do it? Because they've got nothing to offer when they get that.

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I use the analogy a bit like a Labrador that steals a chicken and wants to get it to once again.

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Its mouth has been embarrassed when they know what to do with the chicken. The Taliban won't know what to do with a district centre.

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In most places it took a district centre because anything to offer the people.

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At the moment the people have got an offer. It's much better off than that ten years ago.

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And it is to do with schooling. It is to do with access to some form of health care.

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It is actually some kind of security. The Taliban coming to offer them that.

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Now, again, I'm an idealist, but again, you know, insurgencies are not decided by the insurgent nor insurgency decided by the security forces.

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Insurgencies tend to be decided by the people.

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And again, I think in most places, what you're seeing is that the people are making that judgement and the judge that they're supporting the future.

382
00:38:12,660 --> 00:38:16,440
Some form of governance, some form of elected organisation.

383
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:19,620
And again, I've been to have a discussion about that later.

384
00:38:21,820 --> 00:38:28,960
Okay. Very briefly then, I want to talk about a couple of other bits and pieces.

385
00:38:30,730 --> 00:38:39,070
Because progress has been going so well. International forces have accelerated the rate at which we've stepped back from the Afghan forces.

386
00:38:39,430 --> 00:38:43,630
You've heard about base closures. You might have seen this report on the media recently.

387
00:38:43,900 --> 00:38:48,100
You know, we at one point had high tide at 200 bases in Helmand.

388
00:38:48,580 --> 00:38:55,150
We, the British, now have to. If you include Bastion, is one of those two really British bases, the international base.

389
00:38:55,750 --> 00:38:59,320
There's one other won't be that for very much long. That really not very much longer.

390
00:39:00,010 --> 00:39:08,620
And they're all back in Bastion. Have we seen any? The Americans almost complete the final, what they call retrograde out of northern Helmand.

391
00:39:08,950 --> 00:39:13,570
We certainly seen any reduction in the security situation result. We genuinely haven't.

392
00:39:14,290 --> 00:39:19,300
You know, we're stepping into the next summer fighting season. I was reading the weekly reports this morning.

393
00:39:19,540 --> 00:39:29,540
No change to the security situation. I think it's quite interesting the degree to which the end of 2014 pronouncement by all,

394
00:39:29,650 --> 00:39:38,310
by all politicians was a positive or negative because go back when it was made, I call May 20th 1011.

395
00:39:38,350 --> 00:39:43,239
I think that pronouncement was made of lots of people sucking the teeth and it's got to be conditions based,

396
00:39:43,240 --> 00:39:46,370
not time based, not least by the military saying that sort of thing.

397
00:39:47,670 --> 00:39:54,310
I think they might have been they might prove to have been really wise, even if they didn't know why they were doing it.

398
00:39:54,430 --> 00:40:00,010
Because I think that deadline of the end of 14 has act as a really powerful force in function.

399
00:40:00,490 --> 00:40:07,660
Same say our Prime Minister placed some pretty hard nosed deadlines on British forces for last Christmas.

400
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:12,700
5200 was a hard figure, he said. We would be down to by last Christmas.

401
00:40:13,090 --> 00:40:18,460
And again, people get very agitated about they should deadlines. For me, Dave acted as a forcing function.

402
00:40:18,700 --> 00:40:22,359
We the military would have stayed there to a, you know, forever, you know,

403
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:26,410
just slowly polishing the Afghan forces, trying to make them better and better.

404
00:40:26,740 --> 00:40:31,790
What I hope I've shown to you is actually they can only really get better when we leave them to it.

405
00:40:31,810 --> 00:40:37,360
When we step them, step right back and just lift off to the institutional level.

406
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:42,670
So I think that that is forcing from that those pronouncements were actually quite powerful.

407
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:52,570
I'm. Looking to that to the to the future.

408
00:40:52,570 --> 00:41:01,059
Then, in the interest of time, I'm not going to talk too much about what the Army might and the military might have deduced from this campaign,

409
00:41:01,060 --> 00:41:04,660
but definitely would like to pick that up in questions if it's of interest to you,

410
00:41:05,530 --> 00:41:10,900
because I think it's a matter of public record that, you know, this campaign has not been a bed of roses all the way through.

411
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:16,610
The international community has a great deal to learn and militaries have a great deal to learn.

412
00:41:16,630 --> 00:41:20,350
I think we learned a great deal as we as we went through it.

413
00:41:21,340 --> 00:41:28,480
And I think that's a very interesting thing that tells you about militaries plural as learning organisations.

414
00:41:28,810 --> 00:41:34,540
I think that tells you some quite interesting things about what we might conclude over the next ten years.

415
00:41:34,540 --> 00:41:41,260
I think we won't really know how good a learning organisation we've been from this campaign for another decade.

416
00:41:41,530 --> 00:41:44,560
I think we eventually did quite a good job learning in stride,

417
00:41:45,610 --> 00:41:51,190
but have we really learned to begin to think will take us a decade or so for us to to really understand?

418
00:41:52,150 --> 00:41:58,360
But I don't want to I won't cover that now, but I'd certainly be interested in your thoughts and questions.

419
00:42:00,380 --> 00:42:02,720
I think we, the military, have got a challenge.

420
00:42:03,150 --> 00:42:09,500
You know that soldier in Afghanistan, hugely well-prepared, exceptionally well equipped, really, really well trained.

421
00:42:10,310 --> 00:42:17,719
He knows exactly what he's doing in Helmand. Now, if he is hasn't had multiple tools, the bloke who is left in his right may certainly have.

422
00:42:17,720 --> 00:42:21,760
All his commanders have done multiple tools. He knows what to do in Afghanistan.

423
00:42:21,770 --> 00:42:28,370
He knows how to make that that place better. And he knows that it generally doesn't come out the bullets, the barrel of his own gun.

424
00:42:29,330 --> 00:42:35,690
The challenge is, how do you make him just as competent for future conflicts wherever they may be?

425
00:42:35,720 --> 00:42:39,530
You could chuck out any number of interesting places where he might find himself in the future,

426
00:42:39,890 --> 00:42:44,060
fighting a very different sort of operation to the one he's faced in Afghanistan.

427
00:42:44,300 --> 00:42:49,940
I think it's very interesting questions for the British Army as to how you do that, because we can't afford ten years.

428
00:42:50,300 --> 00:42:56,720
We can't afford that. The learning experience we had in Iraq and Afghanistan to get him to where he needs to be.

429
00:42:56,960 --> 00:43:01,340
We need to head to the next campaign in a much a much more ready place.

430
00:43:01,340 --> 00:43:07,700
And again, I'll be interested in discussion on that. And I've not discussed.

431
00:43:10,730 --> 00:43:14,150
Well, let me put it another way. I mean, I think that.

432
00:43:16,410 --> 00:43:22,380
Through all through the international community's efforts and the huge efforts and sacrifices the Afghan government and people.

433
00:43:23,490 --> 00:43:28,840
We've given Afghanistan, if nothing else, an opportunity. It is a transformed country.

434
00:43:29,260 --> 00:43:33,820
You know, they have access to to technology that they couldn't have dreamt of ten years ago.

435
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:38,380
Mobile phones everywhere. You know, that's a that's a metric of technology.

436
00:43:38,620 --> 00:43:44,010
You know, it's out there, concrete roads, you know, all these things that they could access to markets.

437
00:43:44,020 --> 00:43:49,720
They have. They have an opportunity. Again, this idea that life is cheap, it's not cheap out there anymore.

438
00:43:49,990 --> 00:43:55,360
They have something to lose. Most people want what we want, and that is a livelihood for their families.

439
00:43:55,750 --> 00:44:03,280
So my thesis would be that the country is broadly transformed, certainly not the finished article,

440
00:44:03,580 --> 00:44:08,380
and that the Afghan people have been given an opportunity that was really all that we could do.

441
00:44:08,410 --> 00:44:13,560
I think the international community has a definite responsibility to underwrite an opportunity going forward.

442
00:44:13,570 --> 00:44:19,450
And, you know, there's there's undertakings by our governments that we will do that,

443
00:44:19,900 --> 00:44:24,460
but they certainly not the finished article, the Afghan security forces much further to go.

444
00:44:25,510 --> 00:44:28,660
You know, we can have a discussion around corruption, which we've talked about.

445
00:44:29,050 --> 00:44:35,560
We have consciously not talked about narcotics. You know, the narcotics is, you know, the elephant in the room much of the time.

446
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:41,800
And the Western community, you know, it hasn't been our finest piece of the campaign.

447
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:51,190
So quite interesting Afghan initiatives in terms of how you slowly suppress the poppy harvest.

448
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:55,630
Again, if you want to go into that in questions.

449
00:45:00,220 --> 00:45:09,640
As an interest of time. What I don't want to do is talk too much about what this tells us about the Army, lessons for the future and things.

450
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:13,120
But I'll certainly be interested in taking questions on that.

451
00:45:13,810 --> 00:45:22,270
What I'd like to just make one final plea, if I may, and it's a plea that Nick Parker often uses, who many of you will know.

452
00:45:22,510 --> 00:45:27,880
And I think it's really, really important. You.

453
00:45:27,890 --> 00:45:33,860
You also you are security politics. Experts have an interest in this in this subject.

454
00:45:34,220 --> 00:45:39,500
But the general public, they view this campaign through the optic of sympathy.

455
00:45:41,650 --> 00:45:50,070
They will focus on the courage and the focus of sacrifice on they'll focus on sacrifice and they'll talk about the Help for Heroes charity,

456
00:45:50,070 --> 00:45:54,220
you know, looking after injured servicemen. And, of course, that is hugely important.

457
00:45:54,940 --> 00:46:04,630
But what that that sympathy has done is to quite a significant degree, has compromised what the campaign was really about.

458
00:46:04,750 --> 00:46:08,710
And the reality is, we don't want sympathy. Our casualties don't want sympathy.

459
00:46:08,950 --> 00:46:13,890
What we will be would do is to is to focus on the achievement, what has been done out there,

460
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:19,450
the courage, the sacrifice is an inevitable by-product of of the achievement.

461
00:46:20,470 --> 00:46:25,880
So I'd encourage you, if you if you buy into the achievement, if you buy into the fact that, you know,

462
00:46:25,900 --> 00:46:32,889
there's about to be another successful election with with a transfer of governance, that this is this is about the achievement.

463
00:46:32,890 --> 00:46:38,890
And what we really want people to do is to recognise what the Afghan people have achieved.

464
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:46,299
And in your small way, spread. Spread the word because the narrative is not out there and you will have your views.

465
00:46:46,300 --> 00:46:51,580
They may well be very similar to mine as to why our governments and indeed our media

466
00:46:51,970 --> 00:46:56,740
haven't trumpeted progress in Afghanistan as much as somebody like me might wish.

467
00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:06,700
But. But that the by-product of that is that much of the public have no idea as to the achievement that has been delivered.

468
00:47:07,270 --> 00:47:13,059
And, of course, in so many of our campaigns now, there's no such thing as winning and losing.

469
00:47:13,060 --> 00:47:17,380
It is about success, and the narrative is fundamental to your success.

470
00:47:17,740 --> 00:47:26,140
It's about perceptions. So if your government, if your media haven't been telling the story of success, have you actually achieved success?

471
00:47:26,830 --> 00:47:30,580
I'll leave that with you to consider. Robert, I'll leave it that.

472
00:47:30,970 --> 00:47:31,960
Thank you very much indeed.