On 25 February, a panel of experts convened at the Frontline Club for a discussion on the war in Afghanistan and its ongoing legacy. Chaired by BBC Afghanistan correspondent, David Loyn, the debate spanned the period from 11 September 2001 to the present day.

L-R: Mike Martin, Jawed Nader, David Loyn, Major General Jonathan Shaw and Jack Fairweather

Jawed Nader, director of the British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG) who has worked with both the Afghan Government and Afghan civil society, began by commenting on his experience of foreign military intervention post 9/11. He said, “At the beginning we didn’t know what to make of it. We were upset that all these people were being killed, but then we also thought maybe Afghanistan is becoming important for the international community.”

Loyn asked Nader whether he thought war in Afghanistan was unavoidable. He responded, “I think it was inevitable, and in some ways we really wanted that war to take place. Afghanistan was in war for many years before that and we thought there would be no end to it, and then now a superpower was coming and we thought it would be a decisive war.”

On the subject of public support of the intervention, Loyn provided the audience with an American poll figure which conveyed the staggering shift in opinion. “At the time, 93% [of Americans] were in favour of the action, and last month for the first time Gallup recorded negative support for the war in Afghanistan.”  

Jack Fairweather, former Baghdad and Gulf correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and currently fellow of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, commented on US strategy in the region. “They [the US] took a very stripped down view of what should be done. ‘Light footprint’ was the sort of catchphrase that was doing the rounds.”

The issue of aid was also discussed in depth, as multiple aid agencies flooded Afghanistan following the outbreak of war. Nader commented that “the aid agencies wanted to do good,” but also recognised that “there was an issue that the Taliban or the ordinary people will not be able to identify who were military personnel aids and who were aid agencies… The other issue was a lot of wastage of aid.”

Major General Jonathan Shaw, recently retired from the British Army after 32 years commanding operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, questioned “did we understand Afghanistan? The real problem is that we didn’t…the ahistorical nature of our approach was just remarkable.”

“I think we went into Afghanistan and Iraq in denial of the lessons of history, launching ourselves on an American crusade.”

Helmand was discussed in great detail, and was described as a “historical accident” by Lyon. “What the British decided to do was put in huge amounts of soldiers and very little aid and wondered why it upset the locals,” added Shaw.

“Prediction about Afghanistan is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”. Jawed Nader at @frontlineclub

— Chris King (@DocChrisKing) February 25, 2015

Former British Army Office and pushtu-speaker Mike Martin, who served and undertook extensive research in Helmand during the war, commented on the damage inflicted in the province by UK and US military forces.

“Helmand seems to be a microcosm or a slightly extreme version of what happened elsewhere in Afghanistan…. We completely misunderstood what was going on… In Helmand what you saw was a civil war, it had nothing to do with the Taliban or the government. All of the Helmandis understood that we understood the conflict as a dichotomous good/bad government/Taliban…

“We made it worse: rather than clamping down on the violence we actually made it more violent.”

Shaw spoke on the relationship between the armed forces and Whitehall. “The problem is connecting the military instrument to the political objectives. The military were the wrong tool for the job… The military should have been support of the political plan.”

Nader then moved the discussion onto the West’s tendency to misinterpret the needs of Afghanistan.

“We compare Afghanistan with high standards, of European standards I believe, whereas Afghanistan should be compared with its regional countries,” he said.

Nader closed the debate with a hopeful view of the future of Afghanistan.”Today Afghanistan has changed in three main ways. One, Afghanistan is a better place to live, Second, Afghanistan is more diverse…And third, Afghanistan is more self aware, more critical.

“All of these positive changes would not have happened had you not gone to Afghanistan to topple a very draconian regime, the Taliban.”

Listen and watch back below:

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The question of what has actually been learned from the Iraq war ten years on was put to a panel chaired by Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow at the Frontline Club on 20 March 2013.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former UN ambassador and now chairman of the UN Association started by saying that “Iraq is not in the state that we would have wanted it in 10 years on; bad mistakes were made in the aftermath of the invasion.” However, he hoped that the war would be given objective judgement in the Chilcot enquiry and the mistakes would be looked at, to which Snow suggested that there would be a danger that the verdict would never come out.

Rt Hon Jim Murphy, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence explained that there are lessons learned but there are also consequences of decisions made at the time that could not be predicted.

“I think I’ve had less than half a dozen emails and letters saying we need to do anything about Syria. I think one of the consequences of what’s happened over the last decade is the default reticence that’s now captured in the public’s mind in the UK.”

"Iraq and Afghanistan have created a permanently unpopular concept of intervention." RtHon Jim Murphy #FrontlineClub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) March 20, 2013

Jack Fairweather, author of A War of Choice and former Daily Telegraph correspondent, said that he was happy to hear about a greater reticence for going into Syria:

“Thank God. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that intervention does not equal what we think it means. . . . Budgets are poured into issues around which diplomats on the ground . . . rarely have a deep grasp of these very complex tribal situations. . . . The answer is not to plonk down ten thousand – a hundred thousand – troops and spend 5 billion. Soldiers are not nation builders. Nation builders are the Afghans and Iraqis themselves.”

Caroline Wyatt defence correspondent for the BBC said that there were basic errors made in the Iraq operation from the beginning.

“We had a lot of questions about did we understand enough – should you invade places where you don’t necessarily understand the people, the culture the religion and other sensitivities? . . . I remember going in with the military . . . there were almost no translators so practically nobody could talk to the people of the country they were going into. Not being able to talk to people is a pretty fundamental difficulty.”

Caroline Wyatt on invading Baghdad: "We thought that it wasn't a bad thing but we had questions about the reasons behind it." #FrontlineClub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) March 20, 2013

Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph‘s chief political commentator said that how the government and press dealt with information throughout the war in Iraq has made him very sceptical of believing anything in the future.

“It’s completely transformed me as a journalist. . . . I instinctively believed in the British state and I found it very hard to accept that the state intelligence service could get involved to create the idea for an invasion. I found this utterly shattering when it became clear afterwards.”

Greenstock added that we have learnt that “it’s probably a mistake to knock around the world removing other people’s leaders. The people of the country now only have the legitimacy to remove the leaders. . . . The caution of Obama [in Syria] comes from as much as he’s watching the Iraq experience.”

Cutbacks to the British and European armies mean that an invasion on the same scale as Iraq is no longer possible Snow said:

“The very fact that we’re no longer able to do what we did is probably a terribly good thing because it now means that will only ever be able to do . . . things to other people’s countries if virtually every other country agrees to come along with you and do it within the rule of law. . . . We won’t be able to go to illegal wars any longer.”

Listen to Jack Fairweather on the greater understanding of what soldiers do ten years after the start of the Iraq war:

Listen to Caroline Wyatt on the lessons learned from Iraq:

Listen to Peter Oborne on the lessons learned from Iraq:

You can watch the event again here: