In late October, Camp Bastion, Britain’s biggest overseas base since World War Two, was handed over to Afghan control, marking the end of 13 years of British combat operations in Afghanistan. With countless civilian and military casualties, many will now be asking what has been achieved.

We will be joined by those who served in Afghanistan and the journalists who covered the country, to take a comprehensive view of the conflict from its inception after 9/11 to the withdrawal. Looking at the decisions that were made and the consequences of those actions, we will be examining the lessons that should be learned by British and coalition forces.

Chaired by David Loyn, the Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC. He is the author of Frontline: Reporting from the World’s Deadliest Places and Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan.

The panel:

Jack Fairweather is currently a fellow of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University. He was the Daily Telegraph’s Baghdad and Gulf correspondent for five years. He is an expert on the American and British military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and author of A War of Choice: Britain in Iraq 2003-9 and The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan.

Mike Martin is a former pushtu-speaking British Army officer who spent almost two years in Helmand both serving and researching. During that time he also worked as an advisor to four senior British officers in charge of the British Helmand campaign. Last April, he published his history of the conflict, An Intimate War, in the face of an attempted ban by the Ministry of Defence.

Major General Jonathan Shaw recently retired from the British Army after 32 years during which time he commanded operations at every rank up to Major General. He has gained extensive operational experience in the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is author of Britain in a Perilous World: The Strategic Defence and Security Review we need.

Jawed Nader is the director of the British & Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG). He has extensive experience of working with both Afghan civil society and the Afghan Government. Since 2002, he has been working on promoting civil society and good governance in Afghanistan. He has worked as Programme Adviser and Director of the Afghanistan Land Authority in the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture (2009-2011), and as Advocacy Manager with the Afghan Civil Society Forum (2002-2006).

Picture: UK Ministry of Defence

As the final stage of the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan begins, we will be bringing together leading experts to look at the country’s roadmap and the legacy of the past 12 years.

How is the transition progressing and who are the main actors? We will be examining that process and the role of parties such as the Taliban. With continuing transition of security from NATO to Afghan leadership, we ask if the Afghans are ready and able to manage their country’s security.

Finally with an election approaching in early 2014 we will be looking ahead at the political process and which figures will play leading roles in Afghanistan’s future.

Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries, he is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain. He has also written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Republic and the London Review of Books.

The panel:

Dominic Medley was the Spokesman/Media Advisor to the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan from June 2010 to June 2013. He has worked in Kabul since February 2002 including two years with the UN Mission. He has been a leading figure in the development of journalism in Afghanistan and he is the author of the Kabul Guide.

Emal Pasarly is the multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service. He was born in Northern Province of Kunduz, Afghanistan and as a result of the Russian invasion, his family migrated to neighbouring Pakistan. He moved to London in 1993 and began working with the BBC World Service in 1996. He also writes fiction in Pashto and has published two novels and four collections of short stories.

Michael Semple is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation, Queen’s University, Belfast and affiliated to the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. He conducts research on the Afghan Taliban Movement, conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan and approaches to reconciliation. He has specialised on Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1985 and speaks Urdu, Dari and Pashto. During this period he has worked with international NGOs, the United Nations and European Union, including serving as Deputy to the European Union Special Representative for Afghanistan 2004-08. Since 2008 he has worked as a scholar and adviser, focusing on opportunities to end the conflict in Afghanistan and the region.

Martine van Bijlert is co-director and co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN). She grew up in pre-revolutionary Iran and has spent large parts of her adult life working and living in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. She was a student researcher in Pakistan in the early 90s, a diplomat in Tehran from 2001-2004, and an aid worker from 1997-98. She served as EU political adviser from 2004-08 and has been an independent researcher in Afghanistan since 2007.

Quhramaana Kakar is a leading figure in Afghanistan working for women’s empowerment. She has served as gender advisor for the Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Program (High Peace Council). She has worked for women’s social and political empowerment, and leadership development at advisory senior level positions with USAID, UNIOM and other International organisations. Kakar is the founder of the organisation Women for Peace and Participation, which works for social inclusion of Afghans, inside and outside Afghanistan. She was the young ambassador of the US main aid organisation representing refugee women and is the winner of the United Nations 2012 Role Model for Peace award.

Picture courtesy of multimedia photojournalist John D McHugh

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Some of the violence that erupted in Iraq could have been avoided if the British commanders had listened to what people were saying about the growing violence of militia groups in Basra.

Frank Ledwidge, author of Losing Small Wars, a book examining British failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, said during a discussion about counterinsurgency at the Frontline Club on Wednesday that he had not felt “particularly seriously threatened” during his first few months in Basra in 2003 .

But having been welcomed by people who threw roses at him and his colleagues, the former military officer who served in Bosnia, Kosovo as well as in Iraq, said the base was under attack "pretty much every night" by the time he left in 2004 : 

“Shootings were regular and IEDs were a real problem,” said Ledwidge, who went to Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction as part of the Iraq Survey Group.

At the heart of the failure of “counterinsurgency” strategies was the inability of British commanders to listen to what Basrawis or British soldiers on the ground were saying about the need to protect people from the violence of militia groups that were beginning to form.

“The trouble was that our commanders weren’t listening to what the people of Basra were saying, they were looking for an enemy that essentially didn’t exist, looking for foreign fighters when the only ones in Basra were us, we were looking for an al-Quaeda shiboleth that wasn’t there.

"But what was there was a growing serious threat of militia violence against the people of Basra and they were constantly asking British soldiers ‘please do something about this, protect us from them’ and we didn’t and we reaped the whirlwind of that harvest three years later,” said Ledwidge.

During the discussion that was chaired by the BBC’s international development correspondent, David Loyn, Ledwidge said part of the problem was the presumption by the British army that because of its experience in Northern Ireland it was equipped to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq:

"What we forget is, most soldiers who served in Helmand and Iraq, never served in Northern Ireland. You may get a Battallion commander who served as a junior commander in Northern Ireland right at the end of the campaign, but that experience is now a long way gone.

"There was a presumption in our military that these skills came with the clouds in the rain, that they were genetically endowed, which is complete rubbish and has been proven to be time and again."

By Allan Williams

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega has until Monday to appeal against his extradition to Panama. The 77-year-old is currently serving a prison sentence in France after being convicted of money laundering in July 2010.

On Tuesday attention turns to Japan when the Parliament elects its sixth Prime Minister in five years. Incumbent Naoto Kan announced he was stepping down over plummeting approval ratings, following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.

Wednesday sees Canada release its second quarter GDP figures. Fears of the economy contracting grew following an announcement earlier this month that manufacturing sales declined 1.5per cent in June, to their lowest level since November 2010.

Also on Wednesday South African President Jacob Zuma makes a state visit to Norway at the invitation of King Harald V. The two-day trip includes a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Monument and a meeting with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

In the UK, on Thursday, repatriations of deceased British troops move from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton. RAF Lyneham and the parade through the nearby town of Wootton Bassett have made the headlines with the dignified way locals have mourned the fallen.

In Thailand that same day, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the liberal news website Prachatai, has her trial for lese majeste offences recommence. It is alleged that Premchaiporn failed to screen comments on her website that were critical of the Thai royal family, and if convicted faces up to 20 years in prison.

Attention turns stateside on Friday, when a US district court decides whether to order a retrial of former baseball star Roger Clemens, who was accused of lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using anabolic steroids. The original trial was declared a mistrial on 14 July.

In London on Saturday the far-right English Defence League are expected to demonstrate in the borough of Tower Hamlets, against what it sees as militant Islam. The march is expected to be banned by the Home Secretary, but the action group Unite Against Fascism has arranged a counter-protest against the EDL.

On Sunday the UN Special Representative on Somalia Augustine Mahiga convenes a conference in the east African nation to provide clear timelines and benchmarks for the Transitional Federal Institutions.

And in Germany there’s a test for Chancellor Merkel’s coalition when state elections take place in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with local elections coming under increasing scrutiny as a gauge of popularity for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.