‘What next for Afghanistan?’ asked a panel of experts at the Frontline Club on 2 April, in an event in partnership with BBC World Service, that looked at the possible outcomes of the upcoming election.

There was a certain measured optimism in the response to this question from the panel and a general feeling that this election is one to get excited about. Chaired by BBC Broadcasting House’s Paddy O’Connell, the panel of experts were grilled on the candidates, the election process, the possibility of a second round and the challenges ahead.

Straight off the plane from Afghanistan, Amnesty International’s Afghan researcher, Horia Mosadiq, told the audience what the feeling on the ground about the election was:

“Despite a series of violent attacks by the Taliban and other insurgent groups, Afghans are looking forward to these elections,” she said. “I spoke to many people from different places and they are saying, ‘Nothing can hold us back from going [to vote]’.”

Michael Semple, who is a visiting professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation at Queen’s University, Belfast, hoped the panel would clarify some of the main assumptions surrounding the election:

“The myths that the Americans pull all the strings, that there is a great power inside the palace that can manipulate the election and that the Taliban can determine the event, will all be shattered. A rather messy process of alliance building and a popular mobilisation is going to determine events.”

The BBC World Service’s Emal Pasarly, who edits the BBC Pashto-Persian Service, said that as an Afghan, he is very excited about this election because “people are thinking there is a new hope, a new person to guide us ahead”.

Former UN secretary general’s personal representative Francesc Vendrell, who has has worked in Afghanistan since 2000, pointed out what he thought were two key factors:

“Firstly, to what degree is this election credible, and the result acceptable, to most of the Afghans. And secondly, will these elections be accepted [by] about 150 key players in Afghanistan [on] whom it really depends if it is going to be a peaceful succession from President Karzai.”

Discussing the candidates, the whole panel agreed that there are only really three frontrunners: former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Dr Zalmay Rassoul.

Describing the difference between this election and past elections, Pasarly said:

“Ashraf Ghani mentioned a lot of stuff you would hear in other parts of the world. He promised to create one million jobs, which is something unheard of in Afghan politics to hear someone come and talk about jobs.”

Semple said many supporters believe Ashraf Ghani can bring what he preached because he has track record of actually trying to do it in the cabinet already:

“People have focused over the last few years on all the things the Afghans didn’t do, but if you look [Ghani’s] track record from the early part of the process, it is delivering the first stages of state building. He has changed the currency, overturned the customs regime to regain control of revenues and he played a pivotal role pushing through the disbandment of the militias.”

O’Connell asked the panel what role the Taliban has in this election and if it is a fourth candidate in an empty chair. Vendrell replied, stating that he wasn’t surprised that the Taliban weren’t even bothering to be involved in the election, “I think their main wish is to disrupt elections”.

Semple added that:

“The Taliban have the capacity to inflict large-scale casualties . . . but I believe they are frightened to do so because they concluded that would be counter-productive.”

Mosadiq pointed out that a security concern still did exist for voters, but “the level of the killings are not the same level as 2009”.

“Despite the insecurities that still exist, what I was amazed at was the level courage that Afghan men and women were having that they still wanted to cast their vote,” she added.

Another major issue of the election is the prospect of election fraud. Pasarly pointed out that for this election the presence of social media and smart phones means that the people can hold the government more accountable than before.

“You will see from the first hour of the election, a lot of videos on Facebook and Twitter. These observers are more important and you will get a lot of the corruption and the fraud cases through there.”

Watch and listen to the event here:

“It’s a town hall style meeting – we quickly come to you,” BBC 4‘s Paddy O’Connell told a sold-out First Wednesday audience at the Frontline Club yesterday evening.  The topic was intervention in Syria, and with four experts by his side, O’Connell led a lively back-and-forth with the night’s attendees.

“Here we are talking about your country and bombing it, which we do regularly in the Middle East, don’t we?” he jibed to Lina Sinjab, who was born in Syria and worked as the BBC’s correspondent there until a few months ago.

L-R: Paddy O’Connell, Scott Lucas, Lina Sinjab, Shiraz Maher, Jonathan Steele. Photo: Jim Treadway

Sinjab, however, emphasised the necessity of stepping in.  With conservative estimates that 80,000 people have been killed and two million have fled the country, she opined:

“The reality on the ground is pushing Syrians – they have no other options. They know the Americans are coming for their own interest, but there is no other way to stop the bleeding of Syrians on a daily basis.”

Only one of the four experts argued against intervention:  Jonathan Steele, a columnist at The Guardian and longtime foreign correspondent.

“It would be a disaster,” Steele said.  “We don’t know what the repercussions would be… In Iraq and Afghanistan, we were told it’d be short and quick and surgical and all the rest of it, and they turn out not to be.”

But Syrians today are in a different position than Iraqis or Afghans a decade ago, Steele’s co-panelists felt.  Shiraz Maher is an expert on terrorism and Islamic groups in the Middle East, and to him, a critical factor is how much Syrians want an intervention:

“The Syrian people themselves have been calling for some form of intervention, for some form of outside help to come into Syria and tip the balance, and just to level that playing field…

” I’m not saying it would be clean [or] perfect. . . . Yes, if the West intervenes, we will inevitably kill, indirectly, and unintentionally, some civilians. But if we stand back, [Assad’s] regime continues to do the same thing – every single day.”

What should an intervention look like, then?

Sinjab, Maher, and Scott Lucas all withered at the idea of limited bombing.  Lucas, a professor at Birmingham University and expert on U.S. and U.K. involvement in the Middle East, explained:

“The question [shouldn’t] be on bombing. It should be on a longer term question of support for the insurgency. . . . It is a myth that Al Qaeda groups are dominating the insurgency. It’s a question of arms supplies: do you provide anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry to the insurgents which negates the weapons that Assad continues to have to basically maintain dominance? Do you support a no-fly zone or a protected zone that took place in Libya in 2011, which allowed people to be protected, and the opposition therefore could move against Qaddafi?”

The greatest danger to Syrians, Sinjab, Maher, and Lucas feared, was an intervention too weak or misguided.

“For Assad, for the Syrian Ba’athists,” Maher said, “this struggle is an existential one…  They [will] kill whatever number it takes [to survive].”

To protect Syrians, they saw a need for much more than just “a shot across the bow,” as U.S. President Obama has imagined.  In Sinjab’s words, Syrians

“are very fearful of:  if the Americans only did a ‘shot across the bow,’ and it was [only] a limited target, then the Assad forceswould retaliate big time on the people.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-syria-crossing

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-syria-crossing

On 20 August last year President Barack Obama gave a speech declaring that if Bashar al-Assad’s government used chemical weapons it would cross a “red line”. It appears that line has now been crossed. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it is “undeniable” that the Assad government is responsible for the use of chemical weapons after an attack on 21 August left hundreds dead.

With the shadow of Iraq hanging over them, MPs in the UK voted against possible military action in Syria. We will be asking what are the implications of this move towards inaction, and whether it will have any impact on a US-led attack.

As the rhetoric about intervention in Syria escalates, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine the arguments for and against, and the implications of action or inaction.

If intervention were to occur, what form would it take? What reaction would we see from Syria’s neighbours and other countries already involved in the conflict?

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4′s Broadcasting House.

With:

Lina Sinjab was the BBC’s correspondent in Syria until a few months ago. She has been reporting for the BBC since 2007 and closely covered the uprising in Syria since it sparked in March 2011.

Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView. He is a specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran.

Shiraz Maher is a Senior Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London, and a contributor to The Spectator. He studies terrorism and Islamic groups in the Middle East, and is currently working on project to map the Syria opposition.

Jonathan Steele is a columnist at The Guardian, roving foreign correspondent and author. He has reported on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and many other countries. He was Washington Bureau Chief, Moscow Bureau Chief, and Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Guardian. He is author of many books, most recently Ghosts of Afghanistan.

Picture courtesy of multimedia journalist Ayman Oghanna.

The Taliban have made steps towards wanting to be seen as a legitimate political force, by setting up an operations office in Qatar on 18 June this year. The First Wednesday discussion chaired by Paddy O’Connell at the Frontline Club on 3 July asked: Is talking to the Taliban a solution?

Dawood Azami, Frank Ledwidge, Lucy Morgan Edwards. Credit: Sally Ashley-Cound

John D McHugh, a multimedia journalist and filmmaker said that talking to the Taliban is the only option:

“Politics is the solution to war so sooner or later we’ve got to talk to these f—ckers so let’s make it sooner and lets ease the pain.”

Not long into the discussion, basic problems in communicating between different parties involved were brought up – what language would talks be held in?

Dawood Azami a journalist working for the BBC World Service replied:

“If you don’t speak the language you cannot communicate, you don’t understand the complexities of the situation… There are so many players; there’s history, ideology, nationalism, grievances…and so many other things.”

It was also unclear as to who Western negotiators would be talking to as Frank Ledwidge, former Naval reserve military intelligence officer said:

“They – whoever ‘they’ are – are the opposition [whether the officials in Qatar or local fighters on the ground] . . . the time has come to stop fighting for the sake of fighting. However we put it, what we have is existential war.”

https://twitter.com/MWStory/status/352495888985387008

If talks were to be held, would the office in Qatar even reflect what’s going on in the ground? Azami replied:

“It’s the other way around. People on the ground have control over people in in Doha. . . . They don’t control the fighters, the commanders. The commanders have more power than those in the Doha office.”

McHugh said that there is a difference between “those who claim to be in command and those who are doing the nasty… fighting and killing – the disconnect is huge. . . . There are people in Qatar that are saying they can do X, Y and Z, and I’m not convinced that they can at all.”

An Afghan audience member added:

“People in Afghanistan… now believe this is a conspiracy. A game. The Americans are leaving, that we’re going to be left alone; who knows what happens. We’re going to be handed over to the Pakistani government. . . . We need more transparency.”

McHugh reiterated that there was concern over the lack of transparency in talks as a friend on the ground had told him:

“The lack of transparency is the biggest fear. He said ‘we don’t know what’s being talked about’. . . .  There’s a fear that concessions are going to be made.”

Lucy Morgan Edwards, author and researcher at Exeter University agreed:

“Talks, if they did happen are likely to happen behind closed doors and run by foreigners. I believe they should be run by Afghans.”

However any talks taking place could seem halfhearted, with the knowledge that the West will be pulling out of Afghanistan in 2014.

Ledwidge felt that the British have no say at all:

“People pulling the strings here are not British diplomats – nobody trusts us and we have no influence anyway. The US and Pakistan, they’re the players here.”

McHugh continued:

“We [the West] look like people who are trying to get out and will talk to pretty much anyone who offers a way of getting out and saving face.”

A member of the audience, who had served with Ledwidge in Iraq, suggested the West needs to be smarter in the way they use military force alongside talks:

“There is a much more fluid situation . . . where people are quite willing to pursue talking and at the same time to apply military pressure and to very skillfully weave those two things together. . . . Using the violence in order to further the talks.  The Taliban are more skilled at doing this because, quite frankly, they’ve had more practice.”

O’Connell asked what the panel thought should, or would happen to bring about successful talks.

Ledwidge said that the most successful peace conference would involve “all parties, all surrounding countries, all interested nations without preconditions and you talk to whoever will talk back.”

McHugh added:

“If Pakistan are not involved you’ve no hope.”

@frontlineclub @LMorganEdwards #Pakistan holds all the cards here. #Taliban #Afghanistan @frontlineclub #BBC

— Roxanna Shapour (@roxbox2) July 3, 2013

Azami finished by saying:

“Afghanistan has been a battlefield for other countries adventures… They deserve peace and the rest of the world should help them.”

Watch the full discussion here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-is-talking-to

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-is-talking-to

On 18 June Nato handed over security for the whole of Afghanistan to the Afghan government. At the same time in Doha, Qatar, the Taliban opened an office, establishing a political face to the movement.

The newly announced peace negotiations with the Taliban have been met by division. Attacks on security targets have not abated, a suicide bombing near the presidential palace killed seven on 25 June. The Karzai government pulled out of the first arranged meeting stating: “As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar.”

Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4′s Broadcasting House will be hosting a panel of experts to take an in-depth look at what negotiations with the Taliban mean for Afghanistan. If talks are to go ahead how should they be conducted?

The panel:

Frank Ledwidge is a former Naval reserve military intelligence officer, he served on front-line operations in the Balkan wars and in Iraq. In civilian life he practised as a criminal barrister for eight years before specialising in international development and human rights law. He has since worked as a civilian advisor all over the world, including in Afghanistan and Libya. He is author of Losing Small Wars British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan and Investment in Blood The True Cost of Britain’s Afghan War.

Lucy Morgan Edwards is author of The Afghan Solution and a researcher at the CAIS, Exeter University. She first worked in Afghanistan during the Taliban period. After 9/11 she experienced the ‘transition’ as an election monitor, a researcher on transitional justice for the ICG, correspondent for the Economist, Political Advisor to the EU Ambassador and ‘Country Expert’ to the Chief Observer of the 2005 Parliamentary elections. She is also co-author of A Better Path to Peace – submitted earlier this year to the Select Committee on Defence. The paper argues that talking to the hardliners of the Taliban will not achieve lasting peace in Afghanistan.

John D McHugh is a multimedia photojournalist and filmmaker. Since 2006 he has worked extensively in Afghanistan, covering the war against the Taliban. He has embedded with US, Canadian, British, Danish and Afghan troops. His work has been published in Newsweek, Time magazine, The New York Times, The Guardian and many others. His latest film Afghanistan: Drawdown was shot in Kandahar in April/ May 2013 and has recently aired on Al Jazeera English.

Dawood Azami is an award winning broadcast journalist working for the BBC World Service in London. From 2010-2011 he was BBC World Service Bureau Chief and Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is also a visiting scholar and taught at the University of Westminster, London, and the Ohio State University, USA.

In association with BBC Services for Afghanistan.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-who-will-be

On 14 June Iranians will go to to the polls to vote for a president to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but what significance does this election hold? Iran’s Guardian Council has approved eight candidates from the list of more than 600 hopefuls. Two notable exclusions were leading contenders Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

We will be joined by a panel of experts to ask if these disqualifications signal a demise of hope for peaceful change in Iran and a move towards absolute dictatorship. What does this mean for the reform movement?

Join us to analyse the approaching election, the main players and what the result will mean for the future of Iran.

Chaired by Martin Fletcher, former assistant editor and foreign editor of The Times. He covered the 2009 presidential election in Iran.

The panel:

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by the Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.

Roberto Toscano was the Italian Ambassador to Iran for five years (2003-2008). As a career diplomat, he has served in a number of other posts (India, Chile, USSR, Spain, United States, as well as at Italy’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations at Geneva). He is the author of books and articles on human rights, peacekeeping, conflict prevention, ethics and international relations.

Saeed Barzin has been an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. He has written extensively on Iranian politics, media and society for general audiences, internal BBC customers and UK government officials. Over the past 15 years he has written for a number of current affairs journals and has published several books, including the Political Biography of Mehdi Bazargan which was among the top ten best-selling books in Iran in mid 1990s.

Roger Cohen is a journalist, author and op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He joined The New York Times in 1990 where he was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting foreign editor on 11 September 2001, and foreign editor six months later. Since 2004, he has written a column for the International Herald Tribune and 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times. He is author of Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo and Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble, he has also co-written a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, In the Eye of the Storm.

This session is in association with BBC Persian Service.

Paddy O’Connell started this month’s First Wednesday with a tribute to Marie Colvin who was killed in Homs a year a ago.

After introducing the panel O’Connell got straight on to the news announced today by Foreign Secretary William Hague that the UK will be sending a £13m package of logistical and humanitarian support to Syria and asked the panel what they thought.

Julien Barnes-Dacey, policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, was the first to give his reaction to the news:

“I think it’s insignificant…I don’t think a few 4x4s and bullet proof jackets are really going to make [a difference]. There’s a big jump between that and providing weapons… What’s significant is that they’ve begun a direct conversation with the opposition…It points to a the trajectory of where things are going, that we are drip feeding more and more and eventually you’ll see an escalation.”

Julien Barnes-Dacey on UK contribution announced today: "It's too little too late. They're always 5-6 months behind." #FrontlineClub #Syria

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) March 6, 2013

On the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent tour to the Middle East Sakhr Al-Makhadhi, a journalist who has covered Syria for the past decade said: “[The US is] trying to salvage its reputation and no more… America started this revolution with credit, it had a good reputation; Obama had fans among the Syrian people and there were Syrians who were counting on him… It just went on too long and the Syrians were left dangling for far too long.”

Dr Rim Turkmani, a founder member of Building the Syrian State movement, added that Syrian people want international discussions between the US, Russia and the international community:

“It is now an international conflict, the root of this conflict started in Syria… social, political, sectarian, deeply history roots, completely justified conflict however right now it has been internationalised there are international interests. If they don’t sort out their matters I don’t see this conflict being resolved.”

Turkmani on how international powers should approach discussions with a problem solving attitude:

Al-Makhadhi said that there was little chance that political negotiations would take place with Bashar al-Assad and that it is now up to the international powers:

“What should the UK and the US do? Pour in humanitarian aid… I don’t support the militarisation of the war, but if you’re going to do it, do it properly. Send in enough weapons to overthrow Bashar al-Assad or don’t do it at all and support political negotiations. Don’t sit on the fence and do neither because that’s just going to prolong the war.”

Firas Abi Ali the Head of Middle East and North Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis failed to see what the international powers would actually talk about in the event of political talks happening to which Turkmani impressed that they could reach a peaceful reconciliation between the many sides present in Syria and not through a gradual military takeover:

“I don’t want Iran and Russia to support the regime and on the other side the Americans and the UK to support another party… I want support of a solution on the table not somebody around the table.”

Abi Ali added that the regional powers including Qatar, Iran and Saudi Arabia are continually threatened by each other and he feared that the lines between the conflict in the region would soon be incomprehensibly blurred:

“It is a series of localised civil wars rather than Iraq declaring war on Lebanon or something like that…These conflicts are becoming one big conflict.”

Dr Rim Turkmani on the Syrian conflict involving surrounding countries "it's spilling and it's going to spill more and more." #FrontlineClub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) March 6, 2013

Firas Abi Ali on the spread of conflict in Syria and its surrounding countries

Al-Makhadhi on how a solution for Syria must come from the west:

Watch the event back here:

On 11 May Pakistanis will go to the polls and for the first time in the country’s 65-year history the current democratically elected civilian government will transfer power directly to the newly elected government.

Set against a backdrop of violence and extremist attacks, this is a big test for Pakistan’s democracy. We will be examining the challenges facing the incoming government.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4′s Broadcasting House.

The panel:

Wajid Shamsul Hasan is the High Commissioner of Pakistan to the UK, a position he has held since 2008. After graduating from the University of Karachi in 1962 he joined Pakistan’s largest media group, the Jang Group of Newspapers. He became editor of its English newspaper the Daily News in 1969, he also edited its English weekly magazine – The Weekly MAG.

Pir Zubair Shah is the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He joins CFR from the New York Times, he was a reporter in Pakistan, working in the Waziristan tribal area along the border with Afghanistan. He shared the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his work at the New York Times and was the 2012 Nieman Fellow.

Irfan Husain is a columnist with Dawn newspaper in Pakistan and author of Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West.

Umber Khairi is a producer and radio broadcaster with BBC Urdu at the BBC World Service. She worked in Pakistan from the late 80’s through the 90’s, during which time there were four elections.

The complex situation of the French-led intervention in Mali and the issues in the surrounding region was untangled somewhat on 6 February 2013 at the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday: A new front in the fight against terrorism?

Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House was the chair and started things off by asking the panel to give their impressions of the region.

Ibrahima Diane, a journalist and editor at BBC Afrique, said that common thought is that the fight is between “Islamists against the southern Mali and it’s more complex than that”.

Wilfred Willey, president of the Malian Community Council in the UK, reinforced Diane‘s point that the complexities must be understood:

“Mali has known several rebellions since it took its independence in 1960. But none of them have had the impact and severity that this one has brought.”

Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News’ International Editor, who had returned from Mali only two days before said that the Malian people are rejoicing now that François Hollande has intervened, but “liberator soon becomes occupier”. There is “hatred and vitriol” building for the Tuareg, a nomadic community spread out over Mali, Niger and Algeria, with people looking for who to blame for Mali’s situation.

The debate moved on to the complex number of forces in the region: the MNLA, Ansar Dine, Al Qaeda, Mujao and the Signed-in-Blood Battalion. While some of these forces have been around for years before the Arab Spring, there are some more opportunistic rebel groups who have, as Willey pointed out, “used the opportunity to have a go and take over the whole region”, such as the Signed-in-Blood Battalion who instigated the Algerian hostage situation.

On the question of whether Hollande was right to intervene in Mali, Willey had no doubt that it was the best thing to do at the time:

“There were those on the frontline who had lost all hope . . . and their intervention gave that hope back. . . . Mali has suffered up to 10 months under the Sharia law. . . . We just wanted someone to come and help us with these people. So yes, the French were right to intervene.”

But what should be done going forward in Mali?

Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and UN High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said:

“The Prime Minister has said this will last 10 years. . . . If you think of Afghanistan and Iraq as a model for the next 10 years then you’re going the wrong way and my worry is that a prevailing thought that is in Whitehall at present.

“Using the purely military option as we did in Afghanistan, as we did in Iraq, and as we’re in danger of doing in Mali, not only doesn’t work . . . but anyway we can’t do it. We don’t have the troops any longer, we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the defence budgets. And actually that may be rather a good thing. If this lasts 10 years, it’ll be because we do this in a different, cleverer, smarter way.

“We get ahead of the curve. . . . We begin to use all the networks of skill that we have in order to build up the structures in those countries so that they can do this job for themselves.”

“I want to be optimistic about the fate of Mali and the fate of this region,” Diane said about the next move for Mali and its elections later this year.

Ashdown disagreed, he thought that creating a rule of law would have a greater effect:

“In a post-conflict country . . . if you do not first of all create the rule of law as best you can . . . [elections] will embed the corrupt structures into the process of an elected government.”

Hilsum finished off with a final thought about the people she had met throughout her time in Mali:

“For me the most important thing is that there has to be a process which involves reconciliation, . . . the rule of law and the installing of human rights. Because if you don’t have that then the people I’ve met and . . . have been very excited and delighted at this intervention, those people will be let down and those people’s lives will never improve.”

Watch the full discussion below:

You can watch highlights from this event here.