L-R: Dominic Medley, Martine van Bijlert, Quhramaana Kakar, Owen Bennett-Jones, Emal Pasarly, Michael Semple. Photo: Dan Tookey

By Dan Tookey

The Frontline Club abandoned familiar digs in Paddington on Tuesday 17 September in favour of the packed Shaw Theatre on the Euston Road. In partnership with BBC World Service for Afghanistan, they brought together five leading experts on Afghanistan to discuss the country’s recent past and near future.

Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist, host of Newshour on the BBC World Service and chair of the evening’s discussion began by asking Dominic Medley, the Spokesman/Media Advisor to the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan from June 2010 to June 2013, to give the lay of the land from Nato’s perspective:

“At the end of next year the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mission comes to an end. It has been agreed that there will be a new mission called Resolute Support… Which will be a train, advise and assist mission. A lot smaller, a lot different; it will not be a conflict mission.”

“This is the culmination of the transition process that was worked on in the Lisbon summit in November 2010; the transition process of handing over security responsibility to the Afghan army and police.”

He continued that this process has been ongoing, with the ANA (Afghan National Army) now having responsibility for around 90% of the country and ISAF acting in a supportive capacity.

The packed Shaw Theatre. Photo: Will Spens

Emal Pasarly, the multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service, reflected on what 2014 will bring:

“Everyone is asking whether Afghan troops will be capable of securing Afghanistan after 2014. The brief answer to this is yes.”

Although he thought there may be “cat and mouse” games provincially between the Taliban and the ANA, the cities would be secure.

Regarding the upcoming elections, Pasarly said the usual suspects would appear:

“Some will run for president and then withdraw in the hope of getting a cabinet seat. There will be those that know they will not win and will not get a cabinet seat but know that one day they will be known as those who contested the presidential election.”

He also referred to rumours that Dr Zalmai Rassoul, the Afghan Foreign Minister, had President Karzai’s support and, if true, could mean him winning the forthcoming election.

Michel Semple, Visiting Professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation, Queen’s University, Belfast and affiliated to the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, began by saying that “there are many conflicting narratives about Afghanistan.” The biggest problem in his eyes was that the conflict is ongoing:

“We didn’t end the conflict. It’s still ongoing. As NATO steps out, it hands over the conflict to the Afghans and that’s not good enough. Everything that we should have done and didn’t is unacceptable.”

Martine van Bijlert, co-director and co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), was gingerly hopeful:

“Among Afghans I am sensing a feeling that this is actually a new time [and] something is going to happen. In the future, Afghanistan may not only be on the receiving end of international attention. You see the most optimism among the young generation – the educated boys and girls with good jobs – who tend to be in control of their lives.”

She continued that although “disaster, fragmentation is certainly a possibility, it’s not the default scenario.”

She argued that “we in the West have not learned from our mistakes:”

“Some people have said that Afghanistan was not ready for democracy but I think that is the wrong conclusion… The problem is that we will send the same institutions, organise the same sort of conferences. It will still be in the same way. We will design problems and spend money. We haven’t learnt.”

Quhramaana Kakar. Photo: Dan Tookey.

Quhramaana Kakar, the gender advisor for the Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Program (High Peace Council), outlined the successes made over the last twelve years and also attempted to dispel the myths of impending disaster:

“I hope to assure fellow Afghans that we will not be in the same position as in the 80’s and 90’s. We are not going to have another civil war and we are not going to have the Taliban coming to power again.”

She pointed to the American bases that will remain in the country as an assurance that the Taliban will not come to power again. Kakar continued that she believed Afghanistan can be hopeful, so long as the democratic institutions and processes remain.

The decision to go into Afghanistan was necessary as a kind of “acting out” to restore American national confidence and pride in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2001, but it was done with little idea about what was to be achieved by it.

That was the claim of Jean MacKenzie, senior correspondent for GlobalPost and previously programme director for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Kabul, about the decision of president George Bush to send troops into Afghanistan less than a month after the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001.

"We had to go in, America had to kick ass because we had been attacked and we had to prove that we were big guys, and there was very little resistance to going in to Afghanistan, Afghanistan was a very convenient ass to kick, because it was not being really defended," said MacKenzie.

MacKenzie, who was taking part in a recent discussion titled: Counterinsurgency and the "War on Terror": Doomed to fail? agreed that America had to react to the terror attacks in New York and Washington. The problem was not the decision to intervene, but  the fact that it was done without a clear idea of what it would accomplish, she said:

"We didn’t need to go in with this open-ended brief of we’re going in there to get rid of al-Quaeda, now we’re going in there so that little girls can go to school and maybe we’re there so women don’t have to wear burqas and now we’re there, as Time magazine tells us, so that women’s noses are not cut off. Where does it stop? We needed to define our goals from the very beginning."

There was also a lack of clarity about who the enemy was, said MacKenzie, who claimed local groups could manipulate NATO or the International Security Assistance Force into fighting their battles by claiming their opponents were Taliban:

"We go into an area, like in Kunar, where two groups are fighting over logging rights – another gets close to us and says they are the Taliban. We start fighting them and they fight back and as soon as they do, they become an insurgency."

As a result of the lack of clarity the rhetoric about the US mission in Afghanistan had taken on a life of its own, MacKenzie argued:

"It’s a very broad statement but I think we are now fighting the Afghan people, the Afghan society. We say the Taliban stone women for adultery, the Taliban stone young couples, the Taliban throw acid in the faces of school children.

But in most of these cases, if you unravel it, it’s not the Taliban, it is the community that has done these things. So if we are fighting those manifestations of Afghan culture, we are not fighting the Taliban, we are fighting Afghan society, we are fighting a culture that we find noxious. That, I think, is quite a bit beyond our brief."

Ten years on, the mood in Afghanistan was one the “darkest despair”, said MacKenzie, adding that there is little trust on the ground in the ability of the Afghan forces to protect the people. In addition, things have gone "way beyond the point" when outside nations could impose anything on the country:

"There was a point at the beginning when there was a certain amount of hope and goodwill among Afghans, but I don’t feel it there any more," she said.

"The Afghans are more and more pessimistic, they have given up on their own government, how do you fight counterinsurgency when you have no legitimate government to partner with? How do we begin to do anything?

Yet the US is likely to leave Afghanistan with "honour and dignity in the strategic communications sense," said MacKenzie, who predicted that from now until the end of 2014 the US administration was going to be "busily engaged in painting a narrative of victory":

All that is required for us to have won is for the media to pack up and go home so there’s no focus on what’s actually happening and for us to redefine victory and to move the goalposts as it were."

Malte Roschinski, a security consultant, political analyst and author who reported from Afghanistan for AFP news agency, was also pessimistic about the future of Afghanistan and said he believed the best that the US could do was to "come up with a good PR strategy and hope for the next six months or so it’s going to stay fairly quiet".

"After that the media focus will have moved away from the country. There will be stories afterwards but the media works in cycles and public attention has just so much bandwidth anyway so it’s just going to be a PR exercise."

Three military episodes are dominating headlines following reports from the German parliamentary ombudsman to the military.

– The treatment of officer-cadets onboard the German Navy tall ship Gorch Fock, including events surrounding the death of a female midshipman after she fell from the ship’s rigging during a training exercise, and whether several fellow midshipmen behaved in a way that could be deemed mutinous. Currently the vessel is in Argentina. The captain has been relieved of his command. An investigation is underway and the vessel has been ordered to return to Germany. (DW-TV report in English)

– The investigation into the death of a soldier in December last year at the Pol-e-Chomri base in Afghanistan. It was first suggested an accident occurred while the soldier was cleaning his weapon. German media are now reporting up to 10 troops may have been fooling around and the soldier was killed by the weapon of a comrade.

– Feldpost: the unauthorized opening and tampering of letters posted by soldiers deployed in Afghanistan.

Minister zu Guttenberg obviously has a lot of explaining to do about what’s happening inside the German military and his own department. He is also under pressure from opposition parties over whether he’s adequately informed parliament about the Gorch Fock incidents.

All of this comes at a time when Germany’s troop commitment in Afghanistan (and the timing of a possible withdrawal) is under debate, as well as what is the future of a smaller, professional German armed forces following the ending of compulsory military service.

Thomas Wiegold of the excellent German defence blog augengeradeaus.net has produced a good Audioboo summary of the Gorch Fock reports in English.

And a Süddeutsche Zeitung interview with Minister zu Guttenberg also tries to zero-in on what the Minister did or did not know about these events and what action he is taking. A translation is below.

(Interview conducted by Peter Blechschmidt, published 21 January 2011.)

SZ: Minister, is the Bundeswehr covering up unpleasant truths?

Guttenberg: That should never be the strategy of the Bundeswehr, and that is also not the case.

SZ: But in the case of the soldier killed in northern Afghanistan also with the situation onboard the Gorch Fock has your Ministry not told the whole truth?

Guttenberg: Nonsense. In the case of the soldier killed it was officially known on the day after the accident, that possibly a second person was involved. The public prosecutor’s office were immediately informed and is investigating. With the investigation underway to gain evidence of the actual events, we can not make comments out of respect to those involved.

SZ: And of the alleged mutiny onboard the Gorch Fock, you hadn’t heard anything up till now?

Guttenberg: I was informed about that accusation through the documents of the military ombudsman dated 17 January. I immediately directed the Inspector of Navy and the head of the legal department here in the Ministry to clarify the facts. You will not hear any pre-judgement from me. But if these accusations are true, then there will be clear consequences. Generally speaking: degrading drill can not be tolerated. And the accusation of mutiny is a very serious one, in light of what I know so far.

SZ: But aren’t the accusations relating to the Gorch Fock so grave that you as Minister should have been informed?

Guttenberg: Part of the investigation will be to determine if the lines of communication were respected. If there were failures there will be consequences. All of that must be clearly explained. On this matter I have little patience.

SZ: After the death of the female midshipman aboard the Gorsch Fock the training exercise was suspended. At that time the impression came about this appears to have been merely an act of compassion.

Guttenberg: The responsible Inspector of Navy had decided out of technical reasons to suspend the training and to send the training crew back to Germany. The Gorch Fock though should continue her journey.

SZ: And you hadn’t heard about the opening of letters posted from Afghanistan?

Guttenberg: The responsible military leadership in charge did not have any knowledge of this. My mind reading skills are therefore very limited. But here too the investigations are in full swing.

SZ: Are these emerging developments now not posing the question of whether the inner leadership of the Bundeswehr has failed?

Guttenberg: Should the allegations turn out to be true we will most likely be dealing with individual failings. The inner leadership is successful and widely accepted within the Bundeswehr. To draw conclusions about the majority of Bundeswehr from potential individual misconduct – after all it’s about 250,000 soldiers – would be totally unjustified.

There are plenty of interesting insights in the Captain’s dispatches and the blog is well worth latching on to, if you haven’t already.

Here are a couple of recent posts by way of introduction:

1. "Oh, that’s nice": The Captain receives an email from the Taliban. 

2. "Fear and Loathing in Loya Paktia": On Special Forces, a jirga meeting in Gardez, and the ISAF representative.

I contacted ISAF, (NATO’s multinational International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan) and they confirmed that the Twitter feed is an official ISAF operation.

A spokesperson said the project "is in its infancy", but ISAF hope to use Twitter as a way of getting their message out. In the first instance, it will be used as another way of issuing ISAF’s news releases.

The spokesperson explained ISAF’s rationale for using Twitter:

"As with any organisation transmitting our information and getting it seen by as
many people as possible is very important and we feel that Twitter could
provide us with the means to transmit our messages to a new, and wider,
audience."

ISAF expect Virgil Magee, a member of the Media Analysis team, to be doing most of the tweeting.

As I’ve noted on the blog before, there are plenty of problems with military organisations using social media given the nature of conflict, but there have also been calls for NATO to ‘plug in‘ to the global conversation online. This represents a step in that direction.

It’ll be interesting to see how the feed develops. While Twitter is an effective method of disseminating press releases, I have never felt that using Twitter in this way maximises the potential of the tool.  

While I’ve been writing ISAF has made its first tweet:

"Two ISAF troops were killed as a result of direct fire today in eastern Afghanistan. For more info visit www.nato.int/isaf"