Because of the huge pressure to introduce to you.
Bridget Jones. He's going to be looking at this state of play in Afghanistan.
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.
We are in the second third of Harold, the seventh from July 3rd fighting the Norman conquest.
Actually three trips being U.S., Chevron and American History Commission on both occasions 1991 2013 available for children and served in Germany,
Northern Ireland and in Bosnia. Of course, it's good as you expect to have a very exciting career indeed.
Come on. The chief of staff to 12 mech brigades in Iraq, 24 rifles to to 2010.
And then obviously the commitment for knights to Patrick, including the proficiency, the election support things.
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.
So I never got that to work with that.
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.
Particularly interesting role of matrix empowered characters.
And I definitely want to go back to review military systems.
The images direct from operations and armed forces presence the advisory board
in the steering group and perhaps remove various and also worked as colonel
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.
I understand and has never been in command of one mech brigade and [INAUDIBLE] be doing that until later this summer.
Indeed. So, Rico, thank you very much. Thank you.
No pleasure. Thank you for that very full introduction.
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,
but actually far more specifically, because as I arrived, I was quite certain were not forthcoming to.
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
training course that used to be on this very site in the days before the Norman conquest far even served with Rob.
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.
But it's a great privilege to be here with you today. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Always welcome the opportunity to talk about that because I think it's much misunderstood
and there's plenty out there who either misunderstand or don't know what's going on.
Indeed, I was on a train recently on my way out to London to give a presentation.
I was in service dress. I wasn't exactly looking inconspicuous and the gentleman off opposite me, it transpired,
was an academic and gave me a conversation and I told him what I was about to do giving a talk.
I talked about progress in Afghanistan and he gave me that knowing look so many people do when you talk about progress in Afghanistan.
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.
I would like to think this body would recognise in the circumstance of the the historic Afghan wars
and what the entire community have been seeking to do over the last decade are very different,
not least has nothing to do with imperialism in this.
I'd like to think, and it has been about developing Afghanistan for the Afghan government, not for our own benefit.
But you can come back to me on that,
but is a much misunderstood endeavour I would suggest I should highlight I'm out of date, so I came home six months ago.
So I'm going to talk about progress in Afghanistan through the optic of the summer of 2013.
I've kept a pretty good handle on what's happened since, so I can delve into that, not least over the election period.
But what has been impressive,
I was saying outside is actually the plan since last summer has rolled out pretty effectively in terms of what had been intended.
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.
Summer 2013 really important period in the campaign. I will be judged as such because that's when the Afghans took the lead,
formally took the lead from international forces, and then went straight into a into a summer fighting season.
So a really, really important period vital that the Afghans succeeded upfront.
And I think the other point was so vital they succeeded.
But if they failed, we would have failed.
And then you get into a really interesting balance in terms of not underwriting their successes, the successes being substantially theirs.
But if they fail, we fail. And you've always seen as a delicate balance in terms of how much you therefore support them.
I talk a lot about him because it is about the Afghans in the lead.
It's no longer about internally.
Her forces saying until about him and his police and indeed civilian counterparts really that the very heart of the story.
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.
ISAF commanders are not writing the plan. Afghans are writing the plan.
We are contributing to that plan. But fundamentally, it's an Afghan plan.
We military tend to be control freaks and therefore we don't like not being in control.
It is very uncomfortable not being in control,
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.
But it is it does occasionally put you in an uncomfortable place.
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.
I said already, 2013, really important year. Irritatingly, of course,
the insurgent also understood it was really important year because he knew that if he was going
to demonstrate that the Afghan security forces were not a credible security organisation,
they had to stop that narrative in 2013 going to 14 until ISAF forces are gone.
You've got to stop the narrative because as every month, week, every month, year goes by, the Afghan security forces get stronger.
So the insurgent knew that he had to hit the Afghan security forces hard from when they took formal control.
The other thing that I think they the insurgents sought to do last year, again, I would argue unsuccessfully.
Who was to begin to paint the narrative that they precipitated the international withdrawal, much talked about as a narrative.
They hadn't achieved any real substance behind that narrative.
In 2013, they began to try to turn up the tempo in that narrative again, unsuccessfully.
But what we tended to see was where they were. They did attack international forces.
It wasn't harassing attacks. Killing a soldier doesn't get you anywhere very much, except cause quite a lot of sadness.
You've got to do more than that. What they were looking to do was spectacular attacks that would reach Western headlines.
That was that was the aim. And you saw a change in in technique.
The Taliban always very good at evolving their procedures, continuing attempt to evolve their techniques to hit us hard.
The picture did not come out that clearly. But bottom right.
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.
And from memory, I think was 59 injured in two similar attacks or two attacks.
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.
I would suggest you've done that to an American base or to a British base.
The response in Washington and London would have been very, very significant.
The Americans are just as vulnerable in media terms to that sort of thing happening as we are now.
So they probably got their target wrong.
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.
Then I want to touch on that. You might come back to the questions of it.
Interests is that it does mean that you're stage of the campaign where force protection is
fundamental and honest is the point you've got that you've got to maintain your freedom to operate.
If you're taking heavy casualties, you are going to lose your freedom to operate.
Because our politicians are saying that campaign in the final stages.
They want to ensure that we're not losing undue quantities of troops.
And if you suffer significant numbers of casualties, then you will have your freedom constrained in your ability to deliver.
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.
So I'd like to talk a bit about the Afghan security forces sound and talk unashamedly, primarily about Helmand.
But what is going on in Helmand is broadly reflected elsewhere in the country.
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.
But they are broadly reflective. I think most people, most spectators are pretty judgemental about the call to the Afghan security forces.
I should say that the slides are really that just from the kind of visual stimulation, there's no mean text on them.
They're just just accompanied by words that I go through. But we're quite judgemental about the, the Afghan security forces.
But the reality is they have made extraordinary progress.
You would kind of hope they would.
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,
disciplined, poorly equipped force that we were dealing with earlier in the campaign.
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.
And I hope I will persuade you of that through the talk.
Afghan security forces very significantly tested during 2013, not just down in the south, but throughout the country.
For the reasons that I described, the Taliban. The Taliban had to demonstrate these guys were not capable of giving the Afghan security.
They were very heavily tested, there's no doubt about it. But did they hold?
Yes, they did. Of course, they were tested at the end of the insertion, but I'm going to give them an easy ride.
It doesn't matter about whether or not you're tested. What matters is how you respond to that test.
And as a my experience was that they held very,
very effectively and I would say without word to apply the dominant security in Helmand and more widely across Afghanistan.
He's now these people. It's not Western forces. These are the dominant security actor.
And they are delivering effective security.
Vitally, I think that as we gave them their independence, they have flourished.
One of things that we were clumsily trying to measure last summer was winning confidence,
not just success in victories, but winning confidence because it is all about all psychological will and confidence.
We had all sorts of clever metrics as how you could judge winning confidence with with them unless you're interested.
But what you very quickly discovered is the metrics were just backing up what you saw day in, day out.
You go and see a police commander and an Afghan army commander,
and his will and confidence was punching him in the face because he was just he was so buoyant about what they were doing.
They were they were flourishing on their independence.
And so you didn't really need metrics to see how confident they were.
You know, they were like a kid with a toy. You know, they've got the toy and it's theirs.
And they were really pleased to have it. And importantly, I think what we saw last year, if anything,
I did find that developed last year was the degree to which they moved to an operational design
of their own volition that we've been persuading them to move to for the last two years.
But they hadn't gone.
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.
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.
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?
As they last summer, they saw for the first time that we just weren't going to do it for them.
And either they were going to do or nobody was going to do it.
And of their own volition, they started to do all of those things generating reserves where they'd never had reserves,
mounting very big and frequent operations into the depth of the insurgents in a way that they just hadn't previously.
To me it's about basic human behaviours they recognise now nobody else is going to do it for them.
And so they started to do it and they did it really quite effectively.
And I can I can come back to that if you would like. The Army specifically.
You know, the Afghan army, you know, they're a good force, you know, that fielded about 350,000 strong.
It's not about numbers. Of course it is about quality. And the quality, of course, varies.
I'm not I'm not claiming otherwise. But where they are good, they are really very good.
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,
to clear a piece of ground, to defeat an insurgent, they are more than capable of doing so.
Whenever the Afghan army, in my experience, came up against the Taliban, there was only going to be one winner.
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.
But but you don't achieve success by just killing soldiers.
And wherever they came into conflict with each other directly, the Afghan army would win very effectively.
And you might have seen last summer that the insurgent made a big offensive up in Sangin.
You're saying in there's always been a bit of a running sore for international forces.
And they made a big play up in Sangin last summer.
The Afghan forces reinforced they took the brigade that operates with the British down in central Helmand and pushed it up into Sangin.
And those photos of 3 to 1 fire brigade, the brigade the British army been working with for the last seven, eight years.
That brigade is highly impressive. So it should be in the amount of international effort we've put into it over that period.
So it should be.
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,
very well-defended Taliban positions that have been held by the Taliban throughout the conflict that we have never held.
And this brigade went straight through those enemy.
And any Western force would have been proud of achieving what that brigade achieved.
And so at some stage, you've got to begin to stop what we have got to stop looking down on noses at
the Afghan army and give them respect for what they're tactically capable of.
And it's not right that they throw their artillery pace.
Those who have been involved in this will know that we haven't done very well with to teach them about artillery.
It's been a a frustrating journey at best.
Why? Well, in part because they always knew that we would provide them with artillery support.
Well, they know we're now not going to provide them with artillery support.
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.
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.
So I mean, really very, very impressive. And please come back to me later and pick my brains.
But the Afghan army, the good bits of the Afghan army,
more than capable of clearing and holding terrain for for the Afghan government, there are shortfalls.
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.
We, the Western community, didn't do a very good job up front at the start of the campaign.
We certainly didn't carry across the right lessons from Iraq and didn't do it well with the police in Iraq either.
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.
Front that because of that or in part because of that,
the Afghan police never had a dependency culture toward towards international forces in the way that perhaps the Afghan army did.
The police never had that dependency. So we've helped them. We've developed them, but they've never been wholly reliant on us.
Again, you will be able to point to examples where policemen in Afghanistan do bad things.
But if you step away from these individual vignettes, again, my experience in Afghanistan and Helmand is that the police do an okay job.
They really do. They've come on enormously.
They've got good leaders, genuinely impressive, charismatic commanders who want to deliver security, unlike the army.
The police tend to come from the provinces where they are policing.
They have got a vested interest in providing policing.
And you see genuine incidents, incidents going on of something you would recognise to be community policing.
The Helmand monitoring that's being done by the Foreign Office for the last four or five years provides excellent polling data,
and one of the most interesting bits of polling data they come up with is to do with policing.
Again, a little bit out of date on this.
But the statistic last late last year was that the Afghan police in Helmand have a well over 90% approval rating.
Well, I think most of our police forces would like a 90% approval rating back here.
Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that the Helmand police are better than the police in Britain.
Of course they're not. But what what sits behind that approval rating is, I believe,
a general view amongst amongst the people of Helmand that the police are giving them
an acceptable form of security and that they're paying a reasonable price for it.
Price. Open bracket. Corruption.
Taxation. But those people are willing to pay that taxation to get the security that they get in return.
And again, we should be careful of being too judgemental about that form of institutionalised corruption.
And again, I'll probably come back to that in questions.
So I would suggest to you the police, Neil, and we have made really, really good progress, not the finished articles.
However, of course, we'll be doing a lot for them. We're not doing the fighting anymore.
But again, you know, commentators will then will highlight that the critical what we call the enablers that really underpin our success.
Well, we've been doing that for the Afghans, have we? And once you take away, these are generally called the Big Five enablers.
Once you take away these big five. Well, it all fall apart, won't it?
Well, possibly. I mean, the first thing I'd say by going through through each of these in turn,
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.
You know, you edge back, you edge back, you edge back.
Always consciously reassuring yourselves the Afghans are ready for the next stage of their independence.
And once you get to where we were last summer, we weren't providing the support.
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.
And therefore, the constant judgement you're trying to make as a commander is when do you need to step in?
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.
So broadly, if you see an anang, an Afghan force conceptually stumbling, you would step forward,
give a very like hand to their elbow, steadied them, and then step straight back away again.
Our experience was that was the more effective way of doing business.
The alternative is to let them genuinely fall to their knees, you know, nose in the sand and then yank back to the feet.
Our preference was light early, pretty transparent to the Afghan population,
and then step away again as judging how to do that in the midst of an incident is quite difficult.
So how would the Afghans do to provide these sorts of support?
Because this is all pretty high tech stuff that we potentially provide them with.
Well, let's start with counter improvised explosive device support.
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
Afghan army and the police who are slightly behind when brought to the same place.
They don't need our own disposal experts. They've got bomb disposal teams that are more than capable of doing this.
And all nine are structured in a sustainable manner that in musical acts and technologies.
But they've been trained to use that technology.
So on disposal done, they genuinely do not need or support quick reaction force or what they call for a quick reaction force.
What they mean is they want an Apache attack helicopter to come over the horizon and drop bombs.
Well, that's what they need is quick, quick reaction forces. They want their own troops coming quickly.
And as I said, you're ready. They recognise that we're not going to provide the quick reaction forces any longer.
And they have these forces at their disposal and they recognise that they need to have them have them available all the time.
Currently evacuation, which is a really, really big one. I'll come back to attrition in a minute.
Everyone's always said, you know, once, once we're not part of the county evacuation, they're going to struggle.
Well, the harsh reality is when we're not evacuating their casualties, their morbidity rate will go up.
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.
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.
But the police have not been using all county evacuation for a long time.
They put them in a vehicle and they drive them to the hospital.
Of course, that will influence how they operate because they knew the helicopters were available.
Sometimes they would operate quite aggressively because they knew all helicopters were there to back them up.
Human nature, they will just draw themselves back a little bit.
They'll be a touch more cautious. But they have got their own casualty evacuation.
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.
Helmand was really the that the the Afghan core area that was weakest in terms of leaving a an enduring hospital facility for them.
But that's caught up considerably in the last year, particularly the last six months surveillance.
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.
I didn't have as a company commander. The Afghans don't need that technology.
Western armies didn't have that technology until very recently.
The Afghans, rather, like the fact that they operate operating alongside.
It's got this wonderful technology. They certainly don't know how to use it.
And they recognise in themselves that, hey, it wouldn't be sustainable if they had it and secondly, they don't need it.
Of course, one of the critical reasons why we need our exquisite technology is they know what's going on.
Afghans know what's going on far, far better than we do, because in the case of the police, it's their province.
They understand the human dynamic in a way that we simply don't. And therefore, the human intelligence is much, much better than ours.
And therefore, all the time we're using high tech equipment to plug a gap because we just don't really understand because,
well, Western Army operating in Afghanistan and then the foreign one that people always point to is fires.
And as I think I'll point to already, they recognise that our fires ongoing and therefore they are they're working very hard.
They're making real progress now with their own interior fires.
I've talked about their artillery pieces. They shoot mortars for the first time last year.
We should be training the mortar teams who are training them.
They would highlight the Afghans seem to have have a natural aptitude for using mortars genuinely.
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,
which has been a difficult journey as you've been involved in it will know about it.
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
really get the Afghan air force into the sort of place that the Afghan government would want it to be.
Probably I forget the exact time frame, but it was brought out about 2017 ongoing work with particularly with the United States.
So I would argue they they don't even need our neighbours, they certainly need people like me,
that they really need our soldiers and they don't need our neighbours. The next area that people would point to is attrition.
Well-educated Afghans are in the lead, but they are taking a lot of casualties, aren't they?
Would go the relatively defeatist narrative and of course that is a yes, of course are taking more casualties there in the lead.
You know, we were taking the casualties on their behalf.
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
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.
Actually, they haven't gone up as high as many people would suggest they have, but vitally.
We should view their casualty figures through their optic, not our own.
So this is a non-discretionary campaign for them. And therefore, you know, they they recognise they have got to take those casualties.
And vitally, they judge those casualties against their own progress and against the number of casualties they've imposed on the insurgent.
Another matter that we would wish to do is slightly take you back to sort of the Vietnam body bag sort of metric,
but this is their metric for their own audience.
So aside, they judge their own coaches very much about what their achieving against the enemy and the progress that they are making.
I said already that that's certainly not the the finished article.
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.
This is where the focus has been increasingly for the last 12 or 18 months and is very firmly focus now
is on the institutions up in Kabul getting the ministries as well sorted as they should be down through.
In the case of the army and the police out in the provinces to the corps level, the equivalent of our divisional level.
So the major general level and the equivalent the police are really deepening the institutions.
This is where there continues to be work to be done.
Particularly on their sustainability. So the police and the army can go out and fight very effectively at the tactical level.
And they, as I think I've suggested, will win.
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,
into the into the ministries in Kabul, are as sophisticated as they they could be.
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.
And that's where the real efforts are all going on at the moment.
You might argue, not unreasonably, that the international community should have done more of that earlier,
and I think that it would be a very fair observation.
Why is it only now that we're really beginning to teach them about budget flows into that Corps headquarters, for example?
But that's why there's a lot of work going on at the moment.
That, incidentally, is a photo of what's called the Regional Core Battle School.
Anyone who knows what I'm talking about. So Brecon and Things is where they teach their infantry is pretty advanced soldiering.
A huge part of that said in Helmand, very, very proud of it.
This is a police equivalent. You know, we're barely involved anymore.
These guys run these courses and they've overcome the institutional blockage about wanting to learn.
Historically, Afghan soldiers are places won't be policing and fighting.
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.
And again, good, good, good progress. Not the final answer, but good progress.
I'm just a very quick sort of belief, understanding, if you like.
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.
That's deeply disingenuous. It does a gross disservice to our soldiers and I think is misleading to your average newspaper reader.
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.
There are there have to be. There must be right up until the very end.
Firstly, because as I've indicated, we're lifting off the Afghans iteratively.
And therefore, you know, some of the time we are on the ground with them.
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.
Unless we have an enduring relationship with them, they won't support us in those final stages.
And secondly, because for as long as you have got troops in all cases in Helmand, Helmand is an inherently dangerous place.
And the insurgents will wish to make our journey out of Helmand as uncomfortable as possible.
And you cannot just sit back in your bases,
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,
because the Afghan forces very properly will be focussed on Afghan security.
And therefore, you can't really expect them to be doing security for your bases as well.
So please is understand, you know,
we continue spend quite a considerable amount of time on the ground protecting ourselves in in depth and again having talk about questions,
if you'll be interested. I want to talk a bit about talk about the security line of operation.
The reality is district governors and governors not really interested in security anymore.
We are going to sit down with them and they're just not really interested why they
don't believe some security is passé and move beyond that security in many places,
not everywhere in many places is taken as a given.
In places where you were fighting two or three years ago. The district governor is taking it as a given.
What he wants to talk to you about is flood relief, crop cycles, elections, things that.
Our councils might talk about.
And again, if security is not on their agenda, that tells you something quite significant to think about the progress that has been made.
Indeed. You know, you got a couple of photos that people voting not from the recent national election,
but the the district council elections that have been held in the last 12 months or so in Helmand.
I say how? Because most places don't have district councils, but Helmand does.
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.
They recognise it gives them a voice in their local business and their local area.
Well, again, you know, that's a really powerful narrative. That's not us imposing democracy on them.
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.
Of course, many of the people who are elected are the same sort of people who might have given tribal governance anyway.
So it's going. Often it's people being voted in who are part of the part of the tribal structure.
But again, that's a good thing. You know, you don't will be running against the Afghan governance green.
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.
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.
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.
And it was a pretty successful election. No great surprises.
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.
But the two main candidates are, you know, in a good place. They're both pretty competent operators.
And the Taliban, I'm sure, will have another go at the runoff later this month.
But I confess, I found it quite disappointing that the international community,
indeed the international media, are more interested in trumpeting that Afghan election.
We're discussing it for. And it's not it's not us being triumphalist, it's not us.
We haven't done it. It was an Afghan election very effectively delivered.
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.
The next thing that we need to see before we have too much confidence is the run off being successful and then vitally,
of course, the transition of power from Karzai to his successor.
And if that can happen and if Kabul can come through that handover of power with stability, then then I think, you know,
those who are cautiously optimistic can begin to think that that, you know, that their view might be vindicated.
They won't talk for too much longer. But I will say a couple words on the insurgent.
The insurgent would wish to disrupt this process. The insurgents would wish to disrupt the forming the elections.
The fact that people now have roads where they've never had them before that transformed society.
The Taliban is not the force that it once was. Of that, there is no doubt.
He can still kill you very happily. He can still mount a spectacular and get newspaper headlines.
But he is not the force that he once was. He's conflicted.
He is struggling. He's short of money. He's short of weapons in a great many places.
He's now short of public support. Why is he short of public support?
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.
Why is the jihad over? Because the infidels go home.
And when you've got district governors saying that to tribal elders, the jihad is over.
If you ever believed in the jihad, it's over. That is very, very damaging to to the Taliban narrative.
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.
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.
Okay. But those have been tracking this campaign since its early days.
Think back to the Taliban flags flying over district centres. I don't believe the Taliban want to do that anymore.
Why don't I think they want to do it? Because they've got nothing to offer when they get that.
I use the analogy a bit like a Labrador that steals a chicken and wants to get it to once again.
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.
In most places it took a district centre because anything to offer the people.
At the moment the people have got an offer. It's much better off than that ten years ago.
And it is to do with schooling. It is to do with access to some form of health care.
It is actually some kind of security. The Taliban coming to offer them that.
Now, again, I'm an idealist, but again, you know, insurgencies are not decided by the insurgent nor insurgency decided by the security forces.
Insurgencies tend to be decided by the people.
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.
Some form of governance, some form of elected organisation.
And again, I've been to have a discussion about that later.
Okay. Very briefly then, I want to talk about a couple of other bits and pieces.
Because progress has been going so well. International forces have accelerated the rate at which we've stepped back from the Afghan forces.
You've heard about base closures. You might have seen this report on the media recently.
You know, we at one point had high tide at 200 bases in Helmand.
We, the British, now have to. If you include Bastion, is one of those two really British bases, the international base.
There's one other won't be that for very much long. That really not very much longer.
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.
We certainly seen any reduction in the security situation result. We genuinely haven't.
You know, we're stepping into the next summer fighting season. I was reading the weekly reports this morning.
No change to the security situation. I think it's quite interesting the degree to which the end of 2014 pronouncement by all,
by all politicians was a positive or negative because go back when it was made, I call May 20th 1011.
I think that pronouncement was made of lots of people sucking the teeth and it's got to be conditions based,
not time based, not least by the military saying that sort of thing.
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.
Because I think that deadline of the end of 14 has act as a really powerful force in function.
Same say our Prime Minister placed some pretty hard nosed deadlines on British forces for last Christmas.
5200 was a hard figure, he said. We would be down to by last Christmas.
And again, people get very agitated about they should deadlines. For me, Dave acted as a forcing function.
We the military would have stayed there to a, you know, forever, you know,
just slowly polishing the Afghan forces, trying to make them better and better.
What I hope I've shown to you is actually they can only really get better when we leave them to it.
When we step them, step right back and just lift off to the institutional level.
So I think that that is forcing from that those pronouncements were actually quite powerful.
I'm. Looking to that to the to the future.
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,
but definitely would like to pick that up in questions if it's of interest to you,
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.
The international community has a great deal to learn and militaries have a great deal to learn.
I think we learned a great deal as we as we went through it.
And I think that's a very interesting thing that tells you about militaries plural as learning organisations.
I think that tells you some quite interesting things about what we might conclude over the next ten years.
I think we won't really know how good a learning organisation we've been from this campaign for another decade.
I think we eventually did quite a good job learning in stride,
but have we really learned to begin to think will take us a decade or so for us to to really understand?
But I don't want to I won't cover that now, but I'd certainly be interested in your thoughts and questions.
I think we, the military, have got a challenge.
You know that soldier in Afghanistan, hugely well-prepared, exceptionally well equipped, really, really well trained.
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.
All his commanders have done multiple tools. He knows what to do in Afghanistan.
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.
The challenge is, how do you make him just as competent for future conflicts wherever they may be?
You could chuck out any number of interesting places where he might find himself in the future,
fighting a very different sort of operation to the one he's faced in Afghanistan.
I think it's very interesting questions for the British Army as to how you do that, because we can't afford ten years.
We can't afford that. The learning experience we had in Iraq and Afghanistan to get him to where he needs to be.
We need to head to the next campaign in a much a much more ready place.
And again, I'll be interested in discussion on that. And I've not discussed.
Well, let me put it another way. I mean, I think that.
Through all through the international community's efforts and the huge efforts and sacrifices the Afghan government and people.
We've given Afghanistan, if nothing else, an opportunity. It is a transformed country.
You know, they have access to to technology that they couldn't have dreamt of ten years ago.
Mobile phones everywhere. You know, that's a that's a metric of technology.
You know, it's out there, concrete roads, you know, all these things that they could access to markets.
They have. They have an opportunity. Again, this idea that life is cheap, it's not cheap out there anymore.
They have something to lose. Most people want what we want, and that is a livelihood for their families.
So my thesis would be that the country is broadly transformed, certainly not the finished article,
and that the Afghan people have been given an opportunity that was really all that we could do.
I think the international community has a definite responsibility to underwrite an opportunity going forward.
And, you know, there's there's undertakings by our governments that we will do that,
but they certainly not the finished article, the Afghan security forces much further to go.
You know, we can have a discussion around corruption, which we've talked about.
We have consciously not talked about narcotics. You know, the narcotics is, you know, the elephant in the room much of the time.
And the Western community, you know, it hasn't been our finest piece of the campaign.
So quite interesting Afghan initiatives in terms of how you slowly suppress the poppy harvest.
Again, if you want to go into that in questions.
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.
But I'll certainly be interested in taking questions on that.
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.
And I think it's really, really important. You.
You also you are security politics. Experts have an interest in this in this subject.
But the general public, they view this campaign through the optic of sympathy.
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,
you know, looking after injured servicemen. And, of course, that is hugely important.
But what that that sympathy has done is to quite a significant degree, has compromised what the campaign was really about.
And the reality is, we don't want sympathy. Our casualties don't want sympathy.
What we will be would do is to is to focus on the achievement, what has been done out there,
the courage, the sacrifice is an inevitable by-product of of the achievement.
So I'd encourage you, if you if you buy into the achievement, if you buy into the fact that, you know,
there's about to be another successful election with with a transfer of governance, that this is this is about the achievement.
And what we really want people to do is to recognise what the Afghan people have achieved.
And in your small way, spread. Spread the word because the narrative is not out there and you will have your views.
They may well be very similar to mine as to why our governments and indeed our media
haven't trumpeted progress in Afghanistan as much as somebody like me might wish.
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.
And, of course, in so many of our campaigns now, there's no such thing as winning and losing.
It is about success, and the narrative is fundamental to your success.
It's about perceptions. So if your government, if your media haven't been telling the story of success, have you actually achieved success?
I'll leave that with you to consider. Robert, I'll leave it that.
Thank you very much indeed.