1 00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:04,980 I want to shoot. You know, Matt Waldman probably needs no introduction. 2 00:00:05,370 --> 00:00:13,140 Became very famous in many ways for his article The Sun in the Sky, about the ISIS involvement in the Taliban movement. 3 00:00:14,010 --> 00:00:17,850 Cynical everyone's attention and that's pedigree is much deeper than that. 4 00:00:18,540 --> 00:00:25,380 He's research fellow on the International Security Program for the Belfer Centre, a Harvard Kennedy School of Government. 5 00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:33,030 He has practised as an international lawyer in London, serves as a foreign office so far as I can. 6 00:00:33,030 --> 00:00:43,930 UK and the European Parliament's works on Afghanistan and the whole region since about 2005, and he's been Oxfam's head of policy for Afghanistan. 7 00:00:43,950 --> 00:00:50,580 It's been called Centre for Human Rights by his own writing and analyst and commentator. 8 00:00:51,120 --> 00:01:01,710 He spoke in Paris. He's serving most recently as a senior UN official in Kabul, covering conflict resolution, reconciliation with the Taliban. 9 00:01:02,670 --> 00:01:12,270 He's currently organising running research on American foreign policy making and conflict resolution in the context of Afghanistan, 10 00:01:13,430 --> 00:01:20,580 and is a consultant on mediation initiatives in the Middle East and Africa more generally for the NGO Insert Mediate. 11 00:01:21,630 --> 00:01:25,050 Of course I could go on, but nothing particularly new. 12 00:01:26,130 --> 00:01:29,670 Thank you. Thanks, Rob. And thanks, everybody, for coming. 13 00:01:31,380 --> 00:01:38,640 I felt I'd start with just telling you as I came in, flew in a couple of days ago, coming into London at night. 14 00:01:38,970 --> 00:01:44,610 The pilot on the intercom said, if you look out over London, you'll see fireworks in the distance. 15 00:01:44,940 --> 00:01:48,870 That's because we celebrate Guy Fawkes, his attempt to blow up parliament. 16 00:01:49,830 --> 00:01:55,120 There's a little silence. This is the this is the captain again, actually, clarification. 17 00:01:55,140 --> 00:01:58,200 We celebrate the fact that the attempt was foiled. 18 00:01:59,730 --> 00:02:04,950 We do not condone that kind of behaviour here at British Airways pilots. 19 00:02:05,280 --> 00:02:12,630 Anyway, here to talk about something a little bit similar to that, given what the Taliban have been up to. 20 00:02:13,380 --> 00:02:16,830 But I just want to I'll just see if this works. 21 00:02:17,010 --> 00:02:23,820 Anyone so they don't want to hear. Just let me just start with the excellent language. 22 00:02:24,090 --> 00:02:34,690 So talking to colleagues at Harvard. You know, I asked them a few years ago what makes a good talk, and they all resoundingly came back with photos. 23 00:02:34,710 --> 00:02:42,600 So you've got some photos, I'm afraid. I want to start just with my background. 24 00:02:42,810 --> 00:02:46,890 And the reason for that is that I'm not an academic, actually, I'm a practitioner. 25 00:02:47,790 --> 00:02:52,950 And so and I think the background might help to explain where I'm coming from in this talk. 26 00:02:53,490 --> 00:02:58,440 So as Rob said, I was in the UK Parliament and actually, you know, 27 00:02:58,440 --> 00:03:06,870 spent three years purporting to be a foreign affairs adviser and came to the conclusion fairly early on that nobody 28 00:03:06,870 --> 00:03:16,650 really knew what they were talking about and there was very little accumulated expertise on countries like Afghanistan. 29 00:03:17,130 --> 00:03:19,560 People like me were expected to advise on it. 30 00:03:20,220 --> 00:03:31,350 As a result, I went out to Afghanistan and spent five years there living and working there as a researcher, an analyst and a UN official. 31 00:03:32,220 --> 00:03:41,520 And again, a lot of that experience is guided me in the research and in the, you know, the research I've done, the presentation I'll make today. 32 00:03:43,650 --> 00:03:48,330 Perhaps a peculiarity about my experience is that from 2010 to 12, 33 00:03:48,690 --> 00:03:56,940 I had a number of meetings with the Taliban and that was commanders at the local level, 34 00:03:56,940 --> 00:04:05,370 people who would command, say, 40, 50, bend up to figures at a political level and very interesting meetings. 35 00:04:05,370 --> 00:04:13,650 And I can't resist at least just one anecdote which was asking one commander where he got his money from. 36 00:04:14,160 --> 00:04:20,610 The answer, Pakistan's ISI. Trafficking, drugs and kidnapping people like you. 37 00:04:21,300 --> 00:04:24,900 So we then had an interesting discussion about how much I was worth. 38 00:04:25,470 --> 00:04:28,860 He said, quarter of a million. I insisted I was worth at least a million. 39 00:04:30,170 --> 00:04:40,680 Anyway, the the more recent work that I've done is, is Harvard researching U.S. foreign policy. 40 00:04:41,490 --> 00:04:45,390 And that's what I'll be covering in the talk today. 41 00:04:46,260 --> 00:04:54,480 I'm also working at Chatham House and which I can talk separately about a big project on political transition in 2014. 42 00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:06,130 So just an overview of the talk. An explanation is, you know how I came to the research that underpins this. 43 00:05:07,300 --> 00:05:17,530 I'll just briefly look at the situation now as it currently stands and look at some data which I think is helpful to us. 44 00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:28,090 I'm going to argue that there were two major errors that were made in the US intervention in Afghanistan. 45 00:05:28,720 --> 00:05:33,520 I think we misjudged the enemy and we pursued a flawed strategy. 46 00:05:35,740 --> 00:05:44,440 You know, in a way I think what we're saying here is that that's a violation of two of the fundamental tenets of strategy. 47 00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:51,520 That you know your enemy, you develop a viable strategy to achieve your goals. 48 00:05:53,510 --> 00:06:05,230 Now, my the principal interest I had was not in how things went wrong because lots of people have already done that. 49 00:06:05,530 --> 00:06:09,970 Look at Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Look at Ahmed Rashid. 50 00:06:10,330 --> 00:06:13,870 There's a number of people who've looked at how things went wrong. 51 00:06:14,470 --> 00:06:24,770 I'm more interested in why. And, you know, in a sense, what I'm looking at is, you know, we can consider causation at two levels. 52 00:06:24,790 --> 00:06:32,290 Obviously, there's the direct and particular causation of a given individual making a decision that has consequences. 53 00:06:32,530 --> 00:06:36,669 But I think we can also look and that, you know, I see that as being very important. 54 00:06:36,670 --> 00:06:37,780 We've got to do that. 55 00:06:38,080 --> 00:06:46,450 But we can also look at structural factors, underlying factors, which is what I've tried to consider in the course of this research. 56 00:06:48,250 --> 00:06:58,010 I'm going to argue that I think there are three main structural flaws in U.S. policymaking organisational, 57 00:06:58,030 --> 00:07:02,260 psychological, strategic, psychological, strategic, cultural. 58 00:07:02,980 --> 00:07:05,980 And yeah, there's overlap between them. 59 00:07:08,380 --> 00:07:15,010 And just a brief word on the research that, you know, as I said, I'm drawing on my experience over five years there, 60 00:07:16,810 --> 00:07:23,440 but also on research that I did last year with, you know, in D.C. largely, 61 00:07:23,680 --> 00:07:29,110 but with U.S. officials, 51 U.S. officials and experts, including the majority. 62 00:07:29,140 --> 00:07:32,410 Well. 16 of those were at the Department of Defence. 63 00:07:34,880 --> 00:07:45,110 There's a I've included quotes from those interviews because I think they're instructive and often insightful in terms of, 64 00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:50,720 you know, helping to explain these structural errors. 65 00:07:51,350 --> 00:07:58,400 And I will also, just briefly at the end, look at the implications of this work. 66 00:08:00,390 --> 00:08:08,940 So just the only happy ending that we see today in Afghanistan and we'll go through this very briefly and I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it. 67 00:08:10,230 --> 00:08:19,140 But the intervention, as you note at the beginning, a hands off approach to then very significant investment in terms of troops and money. 68 00:08:19,500 --> 00:08:28,090 And then in recent months and in the last year or two, you've seen quite a rapid withdrawal. 69 00:08:28,110 --> 00:08:34,650 There are now only 51,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan from a height of 100,000. 70 00:08:36,150 --> 00:08:40,710 It's been a costly endeavour. It's cost the United States over half a trillion dollars. 71 00:08:41,730 --> 00:08:48,870 2200 U.S. servicemen and women have died, as you know, over 400 U.K. soldiers. 72 00:08:49,380 --> 00:08:53,670 Costly in terms of Afghan lives, too, since 2007. 73 00:08:53,910 --> 00:08:57,930 16,000 Afghan civilians have been killed. 74 00:08:59,340 --> 00:09:03,720 But what do we have from all of this as what is the outcome? 75 00:09:04,230 --> 00:09:12,540 Well, clearly, I mean, just again, on this very concise, obviously and generalising, but clear gains in development, 76 00:09:13,740 --> 00:09:22,980 especially considering the state of Afghanistan after the Taliban regime and the civil war, and clear gains to in civil liberties. 77 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:29,340 Freedom to to associate freedom of speech. 78 00:09:33,140 --> 00:09:43,280 But again, as you all know, a corrupt, deeply corrupt, predatory regime probably saw that. 79 00:09:43,970 --> 00:09:50,870 Only last week, Afghanistan's judiciary was set to be the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International. 80 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:56,930 Petraeus himself described the government as a criminal syndicate, and he wasn't far wrong. 81 00:10:00,200 --> 00:10:07,820 As you know, since 2005 and by the way, a lot of people misjudge a misstate. 82 00:10:07,910 --> 00:10:11,900 The commencement of significant insurgent activities. 83 00:10:12,050 --> 00:10:15,680 And that was 2005. It was not 2002. 84 00:10:16,010 --> 00:10:21,830 It was 2005. And the reason I say that, because I keep hearing this longest war in history for various countries. 85 00:10:21,860 --> 00:10:27,380 Well, actually, it may be. It isn't, because we didn't have anything like a war until 2005. 86 00:10:28,340 --> 00:10:39,050 But anyhow, since 2005, the Taliban have really, you know, really mobilised, pushed back against ISAF and the government. 87 00:10:39,920 --> 00:10:47,930 And I think one of the things that I'll mention now, because I think it's been overlooked is the Taliban counter surge. 88 00:10:47,940 --> 00:10:54,230 You all know about the surge from 2009 of U.S. troops and obviously an increased increment of British troops. 89 00:10:54,710 --> 00:11:01,640 But really the way the Taliban responded to that was that a number of strategic and tactical adaptations, 90 00:11:01,880 --> 00:11:08,480 which I can go to another point, but centrally the core response was a counter surge. 91 00:11:10,160 --> 00:11:16,700 And if we that I mean, that's ISAF data on enemy initiated attacks. 92 00:11:16,700 --> 00:11:20,060 I mean, look at that from 2008. 93 00:11:20,180 --> 00:11:27,290 They're beginning on the left to towards the end of 2012 here on the right hand side. 94 00:11:27,770 --> 00:11:37,490 And it's worth just bearing in mind that in 2008, the average number of attacks per week that the Taliban was able to launch was about 200. 95 00:11:37,970 --> 00:11:43,280 In 2012, it after the surge, it was about 500 a week. 96 00:11:43,820 --> 00:11:56,630 And essentially what I think we need to be clear about is that the Taliban has emerged stronger after the surge than it was before it even this year. 97 00:11:58,850 --> 00:12:04,730 A number of monitoring organisations is saying that attacks are up on last year. 98 00:12:10,100 --> 00:12:14,930 I think a good measurement. And again, I just but this is briefly touching on the current state of the conflict. 99 00:12:15,080 --> 00:12:19,190 A good measurement is casualties, civilian casualties. 100 00:12:19,400 --> 00:12:23,270 It's an indicator, you know, and that's all. But it's worth considering. 101 00:12:24,170 --> 00:12:29,300 And here, this chart shows average monthly civilian fatalities by cause. 102 00:12:30,470 --> 00:12:36,710 And you can see that. And this is widely available U.N. data from 27 rapidly increasing. 103 00:12:37,850 --> 00:12:40,850 And you can see the slight fall in 2012. 104 00:12:41,150 --> 00:12:48,830 And yet, when you look at 12 of the the first six months of 12 compared to the first six months of this year, 105 00:12:49,160 --> 00:12:57,110 you see that there seems to be an increase of about 20% or so that the UN is very concerned about. 106 00:12:58,610 --> 00:13:06,019 And as you can see, the red that is insurgent caused deaths, whereas the yellow is the pro-government, 107 00:13:06,020 --> 00:13:09,860 that's the ISOF or Afghan National Security Forces own assets. 108 00:13:11,210 --> 00:13:15,480 Worth mentioning also that. Yeah. 109 00:13:16,070 --> 00:13:22,590 And again, this isn't covered often in the media that there's a huge amount of displacement being caused by the conflict. 110 00:13:22,610 --> 00:13:28,370 So on average, 2300 Afghans displaced every week. 111 00:13:29,180 --> 00:13:35,150 That's figures for the first half of this year. There's a total of over 600,000 displaced in Afghanistan as a whole. 112 00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:41,870 But just to look a little deeper at those figures, the civilian casualty figures, 113 00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:48,440 I think it's worth noting and again, I just bring this to your attention is it often isn't highlighted. 114 00:13:48,830 --> 00:13:59,870 Is that the as a part of that number of civilians who are being killed, you've got this increment here, 115 00:13:59,870 --> 00:14:04,300 which is the average monthly targeted killings by the Taliban, essentially. 116 00:14:04,580 --> 00:14:12,409 The reason I highlight this, because I think it's important and it shows that on average you are seeing, 117 00:14:12,410 --> 00:14:22,880 you know, in, say, 2013 here you're seeing over 12 civilians a week are being assassinated by the Taliban. 118 00:14:23,360 --> 00:14:30,860 And I highlighted because I think it's it has a huge effect in terms of those people who feel. 119 00:14:31,190 --> 00:14:34,730 Yeah, are making decisions about who to support in their communities. 120 00:14:34,850 --> 00:14:41,000 That's just the people who are killed, not the people who are threatened or intimidated in other ways. 121 00:14:41,210 --> 00:14:48,200 That's huge impact on the ability of the Taliban to, you know, sustain their campaign, 122 00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:54,560 to move amongst the population and to have a a relatively benign operating environment. 123 00:14:57,450 --> 00:15:07,500 Just want to look at this graph, which shows ISOF and A.F., the Afghan security force casualties. 124 00:15:07,920 --> 00:15:14,730 And again, I want to show you this because I think it says a lot about what is currently happening in the conflict. 125 00:15:15,240 --> 00:15:25,980 So you can see the blue here is ANP, Afghan National Police, the yellow is Afghan National Army, and the red is ISAF. 126 00:15:26,910 --> 00:15:37,020 And these are fatalities. So what you can see there is a massive increase in the number of police that are being killed by the Taliban. 127 00:15:37,260 --> 00:15:45,600 In fact, the average for the first half of 2013 was 75 a week and a hundred wounded. 128 00:15:45,970 --> 00:15:53,170 We're thinking about, I mean, that there is a slaughter going on of Afghan national police less. 129 00:15:53,290 --> 00:16:02,939 Yeah, that's absolutely clear. And in fact, the latest figures from the government just from a few days ago show that that has risen to 85 now, 130 00:16:02,940 --> 00:16:07,910 85 a week on average for the past six months. 131 00:16:07,920 --> 00:16:11,820 That is, by the way, 85 week and 200 wounded a week. 132 00:16:12,180 --> 00:16:23,340 That's just the police. So, again, what you're seeing, that's just reflecting the fact the Taliban are turning their guns on Afghan national forces, 133 00:16:23,460 --> 00:16:32,370 having in the early days or a few years ago, been equally concerned with with international forces. 134 00:16:37,370 --> 00:16:44,900 So I want to come now to you. Okay. I said, you know, I thought there were two major errors that the US or the West made. 135 00:16:45,350 --> 00:16:48,409 The first, as I said, was misjudgement of the Taliban. 136 00:16:48,410 --> 00:16:52,010 And I'll just cover that briefly and look at next. 137 00:16:52,370 --> 00:17:03,500 The second was the the floor strategy. So misjudging the Taliban, I think we misjudged the. 138 00:17:03,950 --> 00:17:10,060 Just to begin with the strength of the Taliban and the support they had. 139 00:17:11,690 --> 00:17:22,190 I happened to be working in Parliament for a largely marginal political individual, Nick Clegg and I. 140 00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:30,440 I submitted a parliamentary question on his behalf in 2006 asking the British government. 141 00:17:30,530 --> 00:17:36,410 This was just as British troops were being deployed, what they thought the strength of the Taliban was. 142 00:17:36,920 --> 00:17:39,020 And they replied about a thousand. 143 00:17:39,740 --> 00:17:45,020 By the way, I submitted about a dozen other questions before and it it's quite difficult to get that estimation out of it. 144 00:17:45,380 --> 00:17:51,650 They said about a thousand, I think British forces probably killed a thousand and in 2006. 145 00:17:52,850 --> 00:18:01,970 But but as a former commander of ISAF said to me, NATO's grossly underestimated the strength of the Taliban. 146 00:18:02,210 --> 00:18:14,480 I think that is abundantly clear. Now, of course, you know, the Taliban was smaller in in strength in those days in 2005 and six. 147 00:18:14,810 --> 00:18:22,430 But I think we didn't appreciate even then that their strength we didn't also appreciate the 148 00:18:22,430 --> 00:18:28,400 extent to which the Taliban were able to galvanise a level of support within communities. 149 00:18:28,430 --> 00:18:37,100 Now, the Taliban are not popular in Afghanistan. The people who actively support them, probably 10%, I would guess something in that region, 150 00:18:37,130 --> 00:18:41,390 no one really knows 10 to 20% maybe in parts of the south or the east. 151 00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:52,180 But but they were able to at least have the acquiescence of communities, especially in Pashtun areas. 152 00:18:52,190 --> 00:18:58,100 And of course it's acquiescence that they need. They need people not to inform on them. 153 00:18:58,310 --> 00:19:02,000 That is what the Taliban need. And in many cases that is what they got. 154 00:19:05,480 --> 00:19:10,010 I think we misjudged their motivation and objectives. 155 00:19:10,850 --> 00:19:21,530 I was told by a very senior U.S. diplomat that in mid 2009 we had almost no intelligence on what the Taliban wanted. 156 00:19:22,880 --> 00:19:31,970 I personally, being in Kabul over that period every year, I was being asked by by diplomats, senior diplomats and spies, who are these guys? 157 00:19:31,980 --> 00:19:36,230 What do they want? It was only in 2010 that things changed. 158 00:19:36,380 --> 00:19:38,570 We really started to get an idea. 159 00:19:38,750 --> 00:19:46,040 We, of course, I'm referring to the US and to some extent the Brits and others that they really started to start to understand what was going on. 160 00:19:47,150 --> 00:19:53,780 And finally, I think we misjudged their resolve and their regenerative capacity. 161 00:19:54,170 --> 00:20:05,900 And I think here the key element to consider is the fact that for many Talibs they believed that we were invading forces. 162 00:20:06,500 --> 00:20:09,500 Now we weren't. But that's not the point. 163 00:20:09,530 --> 00:20:12,799 The way is that they source those individuals. 164 00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:18,290 I'm not talking about the whole population, but the way that many Taliban source was as invaders. 165 00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:27,470 And of course, if your local mullah, who you respect, is telling you that's what we are or Westerners are, then you'd be inclined to believe it. 166 00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:37,070 People who think that their country and their sovereignty is at risk will fight and they will fight and die, 167 00:20:37,340 --> 00:20:42,020 as many of us perhaps would if if we felt our countries were invaded. 168 00:20:42,350 --> 00:20:47,630 So huge sense of purpose amongst not all Talibs. 169 00:20:47,840 --> 00:20:56,900 There were many who were criminals and thugs, but amongst a number, especially foot soldiers who genuinely believed that Afghanistan was invaded. 170 00:20:57,830 --> 00:21:01,560 And of course, that gave the Taliban great ability to regenerate. 171 00:21:01,580 --> 00:21:06,350 So despite all of the losses, which were very significant, especially during the surge, 172 00:21:06,590 --> 00:21:13,160 they were able to regenerate their numbers, and they're now larger than they were back in 2006, seven, eight. 173 00:21:13,970 --> 00:21:18,860 In my view, I mean, and again, if you look at, say, Antonio Justo Z, 174 00:21:18,890 --> 00:21:25,879 probably one of the world's leading experts on the Taliban, he would make that case that they are in strength overall. 175 00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:35,660 They are bigger than they were before the surge. A few words about what I would say was a flawed strategy. 176 00:21:37,450 --> 00:21:42,070 I think it was a failure to match means and ends. 177 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:50,049 I think that is beholden on any country prosecuting a campaign such as this to 178 00:21:50,050 --> 00:21:59,500 consider rigorously at regular intervals what the principal goals are and how. 179 00:22:00,190 --> 00:22:06,700 Considering the context and considering the obstacles, how yeah, how those goals could be achieved. 180 00:22:07,990 --> 00:22:17,320 And I think we lost sight of the principal goal of the intervention, which was mitigating the threat from Al Qaeda. 181 00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:23,379 In a sense, I think what happened is there was the perception at the beginning that the way to 182 00:22:23,380 --> 00:22:28,390 mitigate the threat from al Qaeda is to remove the Taliban from power and subdue them. 183 00:22:29,710 --> 00:22:37,960 And that that continued to be a sense of how to achieve our goals, actually became an end in itself. 184 00:22:38,710 --> 00:22:46,870 That became the subduing of the Taliban rather than actually dealing with the threat from al Qaeda. 185 00:22:48,970 --> 00:22:52,030 And finally, I think we had. 186 00:22:54,010 --> 00:23:07,690 A whole panoply of unrealistic objectives, building a liberal and democratic state through principally our activities rather than Afghan work, 187 00:23:07,690 --> 00:23:11,980 to do that radically improving development over a short period of time. 188 00:23:12,310 --> 00:23:18,910 I think many development experts would say that is just not possible to do, especially in a sustainable way. 189 00:23:19,930 --> 00:23:22,300 Winning the support of the population through COIN. 190 00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:32,320 Defeating the Taliban is unrealistic, in my view, not always consistent and went well beyond the original goal. 191 00:23:32,980 --> 00:23:41,360 And just for fun, I've included the COIN plan for Afghanistan. 192 00:23:41,470 --> 00:23:44,230 Let us not be surprised that it didn't work out very well. 193 00:23:46,510 --> 00:24:01,780 So I want to come now to the core of my talk, which is the structural factors that help explain why we made those errors that I talked about, 194 00:24:01,780 --> 00:24:13,000 misjudging the Taliban, getting a strategy wrong. And first of all, and to talk about organisational factors and within that these three points. 195 00:24:15,430 --> 00:24:20,079 So first of all, acquisition of information, it's pretty obvious, isn't it, 196 00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:26,590 that if we're going to make good decisions in policy makers are going to make good decisions, they've got to have good information. 197 00:24:27,310 --> 00:24:31,870 But actually, I think in the case of Afghanistan, that's actually rarely the case. 198 00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:35,020 Why was that? 199 00:24:35,830 --> 00:24:43,300 First of all, I mean, there's an obviously a huge number of factors here, but I'm trying to narrow it down to what I see as the most significant. 200 00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:44,920 First of all, rotations. 201 00:24:46,850 --> 00:25:00,080 That's one ambassador telling me that just as you learn the job, you're an 80 to 90% of the U.S. embassy in Kabul rotates out on an annual basis. 202 00:25:02,370 --> 00:25:09,900 How do we expect people to understand a country that is so different today as that is so complex. 203 00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:13,740 In the space of 12 months. 204 00:25:15,270 --> 00:25:23,910 And that applies right at the top. General Dunford is Isa's 15th commander in 11 and a half years. 205 00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:27,310 Risk aversion. 206 00:25:27,670 --> 00:25:36,159 So these people who deploy for Afghanistan to Afghanistan for a year actually rarely get out and actually talk to people and engage with them, 207 00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:42,790 build trusting relationships. And actually, if you don't build a trusting relationship, an Afghan is not going to tell you what he really thinks. 208 00:25:43,210 --> 00:25:49,720 It's going to take time. It's going to take years, actually, before he will tell you he or she will tell you what they really think. 209 00:25:52,420 --> 00:26:02,290 And as I was told by a very senior U.S. diplomat, most diplomats never leave the compound, the embassy compound. 210 00:26:02,290 --> 00:26:10,840 That is, I think, another problem with operational bias to intelligence gathering. 211 00:26:11,690 --> 00:26:24,250 So and as I told here, a senior DOD official, most of the intelligence is focussed on trying to understand where the next attack is going to be. 212 00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:29,080 So the big consideration of force protection, especially now the withdrawal is underway. 213 00:26:29,650 --> 00:26:35,440 And of course, that needs to happen. I mean, soldiers need operational intelligence, 214 00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:44,830 but you can't neglect some of those other fundamentals about the social, political nature of the enemy. 215 00:26:45,670 --> 00:26:53,380 I think it's worth you know, that is absolutely consistent with what we know about the CIA and their preoccupation with actually 216 00:26:54,130 --> 00:27:01,180 carrying out some of some operational activities rather than rather than information gathering. 217 00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:07,470 You know, in fact, there's a quote here I saw recently from Michael Hayden, the former CIA director. 218 00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:20,680 A lot of things that pass for analysis right now is really targeting, secondly, under this category, interpretation of information. 219 00:27:20,980 --> 00:27:28,300 Now, of course, it's going to be difficult under any circumstances to interpret information in Afghanis, because really a lot of it. 220 00:27:28,540 --> 00:27:37,630 We know from the NSA that, you know, it's going to be an awful lot of it, but it's going to be fragmentary and it's going to be inconsistent. 221 00:27:38,170 --> 00:27:46,180 And I think actually one of the big problems is, is just understanding what it means. 222 00:27:46,300 --> 00:27:50,110 As one U.S. ambassador told, it's not that they don't have the information. 223 00:27:50,110 --> 00:27:56,470 It's actually understanding it. And that's why I think one of the key things here is a lack of specialists. 224 00:27:57,580 --> 00:28:00,460 Now, just one quote here. 225 00:28:00,550 --> 00:28:09,700 I mean, you're probably all familiar with this kind of point, but one quote, I couldn't name a single Pakistan expert, a State Department. 226 00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,000 Now, just think about that. 227 00:28:13,540 --> 00:28:25,870 That extraordinary country of 180 million that has nuclear weapons, that is home to al Qaeda, the hosts, and has supported the Afghan Taliban. 228 00:28:26,290 --> 00:28:31,540 And there isn't a single known expert on Pakistan, a state bomb. 229 00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:38,050 Why is that? Well, that's because there is there are human resources rules that favour generalists. 230 00:28:38,290 --> 00:28:48,040 And people don't want to be, you know, in most cases, just focussed on one, you know, one area, all of that career. 231 00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:54,670 And therefore you have this kind of extraordinary absence of expertise. 232 00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:02,950 I mean, it's worth perhaps mentioning that, you know, in 2000, if you look at language speakers, 233 00:29:02,950 --> 00:29:09,370 which sometimes are a reflection of the number of specialists in 2011, 234 00:29:09,370 --> 00:29:19,960 early 2011, the U.S. had a hundred thousand troops in Afghanistan and six Pashtu speakers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 235 00:29:21,430 --> 00:29:25,470 And of course, they have twice as many Pashtu speakers in Pakistan as Afghanistan. 236 00:29:26,710 --> 00:29:35,770 The UK in 2010 had 10,000 troops, three local language speakers, only one of whom spoke Pashtu. 237 00:29:36,250 --> 00:29:39,130 And I knew that actually because he was a spy and he was a friend of mine. 238 00:29:39,460 --> 00:29:43,840 And he said to me, Do you know, I heard the Prime Minister, the dispatch box the other day saying, 239 00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,170 we are deploying language speaking people who can speak Pashtu to Afghanistan. 240 00:29:47,380 --> 00:29:50,200 He said, I was looking at that thinking, [INAUDIBLE], that's me. 241 00:29:53,650 --> 00:30:01,300 So secondly, in terms of interpretation of information, we don't have the specialists in our governments. 242 00:30:01,570 --> 00:30:09,610 So what do they do? Very late in the day, they import expertise. 243 00:30:10,900 --> 00:30:17,680 The problem there is that when you look at the people who are on McChrystal, General McChrystal's team or General Petraeus, 244 00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:25,400 his team they hadn't spent on this was I mean, this was a member of McChrystal's team told me this. 245 00:30:25,490 --> 00:30:28,960 Most of them hadn't spent much time in Africa. They didn't actually know much about Afghanistan. 246 00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:37,000 Rather, they had they were, some of them military experts or experienced in counterinsurgency. 247 00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:49,780 And there was a sense that they're appointed because they kind of would be likely to agree with what the generals wanted. 248 00:30:51,750 --> 00:30:55,559 And there's a concern also that when you bring someone in and again, 249 00:30:55,560 --> 00:31:03,390 this was this was a comment made to me by one took by by one of the experts that was recruited by Holbrooke. 250 00:31:05,100 --> 00:31:08,490 You know, he said they won't really trust us, so we can advise you. 251 00:31:08,580 --> 00:31:14,970 And actually, this individual was very familiar with Afghanistan, but they wouldn't take his advice because he wasn't one of them. 252 00:31:16,860 --> 00:31:22,410 And I think, finally, that the problem of, you know, we know that there are preconceived, pre-existing, 253 00:31:22,890 --> 00:31:30,990 preconceived ideas about, you know, what the campaign is about, who the enemy are, what we're trying to do. 254 00:31:31,350 --> 00:31:36,900 And there's a lot of pressure on people to sort of fit information into those paradigms 255 00:31:37,170 --> 00:31:44,940 as the quote makes clear that finally under organisational factors is the absence, 256 00:31:44,940 --> 00:31:49,260 in my view, of self-evaluation and. 257 00:31:51,860 --> 00:31:59,510 As it was, I was told by U.S. official U.S. officials that there was a reluctance to give back. 258 00:31:59,540 --> 00:32:04,759 No one wants to give bad news. Not good for the career, sometimes. 259 00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:15,480 Not good for the institution. And there's a reluctance to challenge openly official policy. 260 00:32:15,870 --> 00:32:20,700 So you see these quotes here which reflect that. 261 00:32:21,630 --> 00:32:29,370 I mean, that's an extraordinary quote there underneath about, you know, not being able to say you made the wrong choice. 262 00:32:29,370 --> 00:32:35,790 Of course, it's very difficult to change course if you can't admit that you've made a mistake in the first place. 263 00:32:35,970 --> 00:32:41,280 Of course, there are some measures that are taken. 264 00:32:41,310 --> 00:32:52,590 So there's military red teaming. But of course, that is largely an attempt to identify vulnerabilities and is largely operational and 265 00:32:52,590 --> 00:32:56,490 is also constrained by the lack of knowledge and experience that I just mentioned. 266 00:32:57,030 --> 00:33:00,059 And of course, there's a Government Accountability Office in the United States. 267 00:33:00,060 --> 00:33:02,760 Does SIGAR the special inspector. 268 00:33:03,540 --> 00:33:13,320 But I think there's a problem there anyway, because many of the indicators that we use to measure what is happening have a success bias. 269 00:33:13,530 --> 00:33:20,940 So in other words, they measure inputs and outputs rather than quality utility and impact. 270 00:33:22,980 --> 00:33:30,060 So the second main area that I want to look at in terms of structural causes of errors is psychology. 271 00:33:32,670 --> 00:33:40,320 And these are the three points that I want to cover, and you'll be familiar with a lot of the theoretical work that has been, 272 00:33:40,470 --> 00:33:45,150 you know, Robert Jervis, Virts, Berger, Tetlock, Stein. 273 00:33:45,150 --> 00:33:48,780 You know, a lot of people have written about these sorts of factors. 274 00:33:51,940 --> 00:34:04,540 So first Manichaean struggle. Now, what I found in the course this research was that the idea of the struggle of right against wrong, 275 00:34:04,540 --> 00:34:16,250 good against evil was that it lasted long after George Bush and his with or with against, you know, you're either with us or against us philosophy. 276 00:34:18,820 --> 00:34:22,690 I think it manifests itself to some extent in a reductionism. 277 00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:29,860 So a simplification of what is inevitably quite a complex situation. 278 00:34:30,910 --> 00:34:39,400 And I think, by the way, I don't think this is a marginal issue. I consider this to be one of the fundamental reasons that we got it wrong. 279 00:34:41,710 --> 00:34:52,780 We assumed that if there was an enemy, it was, and that all of the people who are fighting us must be must be bad. 280 00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:57,730 And of course, as you know, that simply isn't the case. 281 00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,390 As I said, many people were fighting because they thought they were invaded. 282 00:35:01,660 --> 00:35:08,320 They decided to sacrifice their lives because they felt that that was the right thing to do. 283 00:35:09,130 --> 00:35:17,110 Now, of course, they were wrong. Actually, they weren't invaded with the intention was never to occupy and exploit Afghanistan. 284 00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:20,140 But many people thought that was what we were there for. 285 00:35:20,230 --> 00:35:28,090 And when you consider the number of civilian casualties that we were causing and the, you know, the propaganda, 286 00:35:29,110 --> 00:35:35,920 the myths, the history of Afghanistan, the easy to understand how people could have that conception. 287 00:35:37,420 --> 00:35:43,810 I think what happened when you when you take that kind of binary approach, 288 00:35:44,290 --> 00:35:50,350 you misjudge your allies because there's an assumption that my enemies enemy is my friend. 289 00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:56,890 And that is not always the case, as is clear with the government of Afghanistan. 290 00:35:57,820 --> 00:36:09,520 And many of those figures were in it for themselves and were exploiting the people, exploiting their positions of power. 291 00:36:11,020 --> 00:36:18,340 See that that that quote from an adviser at the Department of Defence. 292 00:36:19,780 --> 00:36:24,760 And the final point here, I think, is this oversimplification and demonisation of the Taliban. 293 00:36:25,060 --> 00:36:36,430 The idea that the Taliban are somehow less than human, perhaps you might, you know, can do sort of analysis you might say is ethnocentric bias. 294 00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:48,820 And again, we're unable to see the sense in which they may be driven by legitimate grievances or ideas. 295 00:36:52,880 --> 00:37:03,800 I think the consequence of all of this, by the way, is that it led to a kind of perspective which saw the conflict as a zero sum confrontation, 296 00:37:04,250 --> 00:37:11,420 and that, in turn, precluded the idea there could be any kind of outreach or negotiation with the Taliban. 297 00:37:11,510 --> 00:37:13,060 And, of course, that happened. 298 00:37:13,070 --> 00:37:24,170 That has happened in the last three years, really to two and a bit years in a complete reversal of international policy. 299 00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:28,940 And I because I think this is so important, I just wanted to look at. 300 00:37:29,420 --> 00:37:35,060 Just very briefly. Briefly, if is why why that happened, why do we see it in this way? 301 00:37:35,420 --> 00:37:43,970 Well, some of the interviewees I talk to, you know, I talked to said it was propaganda, polarised rhetoric, the Cold War and the war on terror. 302 00:37:46,250 --> 00:37:55,160 I think, and it came through some of that in some of the interviews that lack of empathy and perspective taking has something to do with this. 303 00:37:56,180 --> 00:38:02,210 As this military official told me, we didn't get inside their minds. 304 00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:14,210 And a sense that actually trying to really understand why they were doing what they were doing was dangerous or wrong. 305 00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:17,089 And clearly, in my view, 306 00:38:17,090 --> 00:38:30,800 you've got attribution error at play where obviously undesired behaviour ascribed to dispositional rather than situational factors. 307 00:38:33,350 --> 00:38:36,650 The quote there from a US official, 308 00:38:38,810 --> 00:38:47,660 and you know that last quote reflecting what we know and what we should expect when we see attribution error that you know, 309 00:38:48,590 --> 00:38:53,720 we won't appreciate how we are seen by the other side and, 310 00:38:54,100 --> 00:39:02,270 and the extent to which perhaps we cause their behaviour and of course vice versa to exactly the same on the Taliban side. 311 00:39:05,030 --> 00:39:15,890 The final point I'll make on psychological factors is to sorry to more than two more points, but overconfidence. 312 00:39:18,190 --> 00:39:25,480 This ambitious war fighting counterinsurgency and state building goals. 313 00:39:27,490 --> 00:39:34,030 If you look at the London Compact 2006, it looks like a work of fiction. 314 00:39:35,830 --> 00:39:42,220 And this is me perhaps being overconfident in thinking I could persuade General Petraeus that he was wrong. 315 00:39:45,850 --> 00:39:54,220 And why is that? You know, the can do attitude, the idea that, you know, no mission is impossible. 316 00:39:55,210 --> 00:40:02,440 What was interesting and I didn't really expect was that that's also found at State Department to. 317 00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:14,020 And the sense that you can all argue for something that is mediocre and that is a big problem in a 318 00:40:14,050 --> 00:40:22,600 part of the world where the vast majority of outcomes of anything you do are likely to be mediocre. 319 00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:34,150 Again looking at why? Well, people, you know, had different explanations as to why some of them are mentioned there. 320 00:40:36,230 --> 00:40:39,650 Clearly there are some benefits to confidence. 321 00:40:40,250 --> 00:40:47,660 But as you well know, dangerous, too, if you're attempting to do things which cannot be done. 322 00:40:49,820 --> 00:40:57,230 And then the fight. So this is the final point on on psychological factors is processing of unfavourable information. 323 00:40:57,830 --> 00:41:10,760 And as you know, all of these types of response to bad news were at play in Afghanistan. 324 00:41:12,500 --> 00:41:18,140 And it's summarised nicely by that quote from a senior U.S. diplomat. 325 00:41:21,110 --> 00:41:24,349 You know how many times we heard we'll break the Taliban in? 326 00:41:24,350 --> 00:41:30,980 Never happened. And yet they always found claim. They always found facts to substantiate those claims. 327 00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,650 When I think you then look at all the factors. 328 00:41:36,770 --> 00:41:38,060 So prospect theory, 329 00:41:38,330 --> 00:41:52,130 the fact that you on the whole it seemed that people were willing to take more risks to avoid losses than they were to make further gains means that, 330 00:41:52,580 --> 00:41:57,110 you know, we were defending what we'd achieved in those early years. 331 00:41:57,350 --> 00:42:04,970 We didn't want to let it go. When you add to that the weighing of sunk costs, which of course not a strictly rational thing to do. 332 00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:09,440 Yeah, we've let this we've lost this many lives. We spent this much money. 333 00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:16,130 We have to keep going. That kind of attitude, when you consider all of these things together, 334 00:42:16,940 --> 00:42:27,950 what I think it means is that you there is a powerful effect of, you know, weighing against the revision of defective policy. 335 00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:41,360 So when I've just come to the third and final element to the structural factors that I think help explain major errors, 336 00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:49,130 and there are these three that I want to look at. First of all, faith in force. 337 00:42:50,180 --> 00:42:55,370 There is a postcard that I picked up at ISAF headquarters. 338 00:42:58,070 --> 00:43:00,110 Not one I sent back to my mountain, by the way. 339 00:43:02,660 --> 00:43:14,480 I think, you know, there's often the assumption that decision made decision makers are capable of making good strategic decisions. 340 00:43:15,470 --> 00:43:18,490 I do not believe that to be the case. 341 00:43:22,660 --> 00:43:31,090 Tendency to turn to force even to address political problems. 342 00:43:32,020 --> 00:43:39,640 It's interesting, if you look at you know, if you read the Woodward book and look at the debates inside the White House in oh nine, 343 00:43:40,030 --> 00:43:47,620 the choice there was between counterinsurgency and drone strikes, essentially counter-terror approach. 344 00:43:48,160 --> 00:44:01,000 It wasn't a consideration of a political approach of seeing whether U.S. ends could be achieved through negotiations now. 345 00:44:01,030 --> 00:44:08,950 And, of course, the U.S. did come to that conclusion in 2011 12, by which time it may. 346 00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:17,739 We still don't know. It may have been too late. Most you know, and again, 347 00:44:17,740 --> 00:44:24,760 this is coming from what I'm being told by U.S. military officials who are speaking frankly and in 348 00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:33,070 a non attributable basis that the there was a heavy pressure to deliver results in the short term. 349 00:44:33,430 --> 00:44:38,800 Got to show some progress so that often even at the highest levels can. 350 00:44:39,190 --> 00:44:46,209 You know the concern with achieving. And what can you most easily achieve on a short term basis? 351 00:44:46,210 --> 00:44:51,970 Either building stuff or killing people? Very often it was the latter. 352 00:44:53,470 --> 00:45:04,660 And as one very senior U.S. military figure told me, there was this conception that when you kill bad guys, what you leave behind will be better. 353 00:45:05,590 --> 00:45:13,390 Obviously, as we all know, that simply isn't the case, certainly in Afghanistan and in many other places. 354 00:45:15,940 --> 00:45:24,849 I think, you know, if you look at some other work that's been done on this, you you know, you can see why that simply didn't apply. 355 00:45:24,850 --> 00:45:32,499 And actually, even in the American military, if you look at a paper by General Mike Flynn, who's a very talented intelligence officer in Kabul, 356 00:45:32,500 --> 00:45:42,490 who said it's an inescapable truth that merely killing insurgents usually serves to multiply enemies rather than subtract them. 357 00:45:43,540 --> 00:45:49,419 Yeah, I think that's a fair proposition. I think it probably applied in Afghanistan. 358 00:45:49,420 --> 00:45:57,940 Yet still, the emphasis, particularly under General Petraeus, was to kill as many insurgents as he possibly could. 359 00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:08,170 Again, linked to this point, the idea that politics is subordinate or you do it later. 360 00:46:10,540 --> 00:46:18,459 And really at the end of the day, I think the consequence was instead of strategy as a substitute for strategy, 361 00:46:18,460 --> 00:46:27,940 what we had is an effort to build more forces or deploy more of our own forces or build more Afghan forces. 362 00:46:28,990 --> 00:46:33,370 It was a sense that force was the only real tool that matters. 363 00:46:35,380 --> 00:46:48,700 The second point I want to cover on the strategic cultural factors was this idea that if you work hard enough, you will achieve results. 364 00:46:49,300 --> 00:46:58,000 And it's a lovely quote that from, again, a DOD official, the activity is equated with success. 365 00:46:58,030 --> 00:47:04,720 Of course, that is not rational and is not necessarily the case and often will not be the case. 366 00:47:05,020 --> 00:47:08,980 If if what you're doing does not contribute to your goals. 367 00:47:09,970 --> 00:47:14,740 And alongside that, you had the flood of aid, which we're all aware of. 368 00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:20,919 And I've just shown it graphically then and consider for a moment that the U.S. that the 369 00:47:20,920 --> 00:47:29,230 Afghan government's revenue from its own sources within the country was around $2 billion. 370 00:47:29,950 --> 00:47:36,070 And U.S. this is U.S. assistance was $15 for 2010 and 11. 371 00:47:36,490 --> 00:47:43,420 Absolutely. Flooding Afghanistan and of course, perpetuating corruption. 372 00:47:46,030 --> 00:47:57,130 And yeah, one might also make the point here that, you know, more putting more resources into a policy that is not working does not make it work. 373 00:47:58,270 --> 00:48:04,000 Fairly elementary, but we violated simple principles such as that. 374 00:48:05,500 --> 00:48:10,000 The final point I want to make on strategic cultural factors is misreading of history. 375 00:48:10,300 --> 00:48:15,340 Sorry about the line that I'm not trying to cross analogies out. 376 00:48:15,370 --> 00:48:20,680 I think that's an important part of it, a misreading of history and false analogies. 377 00:48:21,340 --> 00:48:30,640 So I think the oversimplification of history or neglect of it was a major problem. 378 00:48:31,720 --> 00:48:41,770 And as a very senior former diplomat told me, he thought America was beguiled by its victories over Germany and Japan, 379 00:48:42,460 --> 00:48:48,460 which again play into that sense, that fusion of force and your derive results. 380 00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:59,199 Obviously, the United States could have learned from the experience of the Soviets in Afghanistan where 381 00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:05,830 there are some remarkable parallels in what happened and their own experience in Vietnam. 382 00:49:05,860 --> 00:49:19,900 You only need to look at the works like Barbara Tuchman, Gordon Goldstein, to know that, again, many of the same kinds of errors were made in Vietnam. 383 00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:26,590 And I think one might add to this the seduction of prevailing doctrines. 384 00:49:26,710 --> 00:49:35,410 So, of course, neo conservatism, the counterinsurgency doctrine treated as religion. 385 00:49:35,710 --> 00:49:37,780 As one official told me. 386 00:49:38,830 --> 00:49:50,920 And the idea that you just find what works elsewhere or supposedly works and you apply it to another situation to, in this case, Afghanistan. 387 00:49:51,310 --> 00:49:57,970 And there a comment made to me that we carried all the Iraq lessons to Afghanistan, and some or many were not. 388 00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:01,299 The attempt, obviously, in mind with this, 389 00:50:01,300 --> 00:50:10,240 the idea that one could replicate the Anbar Awakening when there were very different circumstances in Afghanistan. 390 00:50:12,190 --> 00:50:20,080 So I just want to review. Okay. What I've argued that there were two major errors misjudging the enemy bungling strategy, 391 00:50:20,710 --> 00:50:25,210 and then I think they're explained by interrelated structural flaws. 392 00:50:25,220 --> 00:50:29,080 Of course, there are direct and particular explanations too, 393 00:50:29,350 --> 00:50:37,000 but in this case I'm interested in the structural explanations, and I think they fall into those three categories. 394 00:50:37,870 --> 00:50:42,070 One might add to that the problem of domestic politics. 395 00:50:43,030 --> 00:50:50,700 And of course, as you know, Obama presided over the surge. 396 00:50:51,370 --> 00:50:58,000 And as I was told by senior political aide, the idea was to surge and get out. 397 00:50:59,020 --> 00:51:05,740 And of course, many would argue that that in itself undermined the prospects for the surge succeeding. 398 00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:12,670 It is worth, I think, bearing in mind that so far as I am aware and tell me if I'm wrong, 399 00:51:12,940 --> 00:51:24,970 there is no precedent in history for a commander in chief to announce the date of withdrawal for forces that have not yet been deployed. 400 00:51:25,570 --> 00:51:28,510 If you know of such an example, please tell me. 401 00:51:28,990 --> 00:51:41,200 But I think that was extremely problematic because it undermined U.S. political leverage and it gave the enemy an advantage. 402 00:51:41,710 --> 00:51:49,020 It knew our plans, the Taliban, to put in simple terms, knew that they could outwait the United States of America. 403 00:51:49,030 --> 00:51:53,950 And they did. And they all doing now. What's the consequence? 404 00:51:54,910 --> 00:52:06,100 I think it's system failure. I think the system doesn't succeed given these flaws in it. 405 00:52:07,450 --> 00:52:13,149 And just as a final point, I mean, I think there's a number of things that we could do. 406 00:52:13,150 --> 00:52:18,040 But I think recognising these flaws, greater humility and prudence, 407 00:52:19,270 --> 00:52:28,180 and I think inevitably there's got to be structural changes in the system to compensate for those flaws. 408 00:52:28,390 --> 00:52:35,050 And these are the sorts of things that I think might or could potentially make a difference, 409 00:52:35,290 --> 00:52:40,090 especially given that the United States will intervene elsewhere in the world. 410 00:52:40,750 --> 00:52:46,270 And if we want to see them, if we want to see them avoiding the kinds of errors they made, 411 00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:54,190 I think they've got to see these kinds of changes, whether it's building expertise, and that means country or regional expertise. 412 00:52:54,730 --> 00:53:00,600 I think we've got to see them self evaluate rigorously and also test assumptions and beliefs. 413 00:53:00,790 --> 00:53:07,050 I think assumptions arise and they just perpetuate it and they don't get challenged within the system. 414 00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:14,020 My view that's going to happen. And finally, you'll be relieved to hear. 415 00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:22,210 I think actually what is necessary is an attempt to empathise. 416 00:53:22,750 --> 00:53:26,080 And this is not going to solve all of the problems. 417 00:53:26,950 --> 00:53:38,109 But I think it's clear to me that the United States failed to understand fundamental attitudes where these people are coming from, 418 00:53:38,110 --> 00:53:46,810 as one interviewee put it to me. They didn't get inside the minds of the enemy or their allies. 419 00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:57,010 And whether you're thinking of the Taliban, the government of Afghanistan, or senior security figures in Pakistan, 420 00:53:57,310 --> 00:54:09,970 and I think that has to be a critical factor in avoiding the kinds of major errors that were made in Afghanistan anyway. 421 00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:14,310 I've taught for long enough. But many thanks. Look forward to the question. 422 00:54:14,320 --> 00:54:14,680 Answer.