For the Record. David Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ our forces what they needed. After a couple of years, no one raised concerns with me about poor vehicles or a shortage of helicopters. Some even said to me that in some regards our equipment was superior to that used by US troops.

      The biggest decision, though, would be about our long-term involvement in Afghanistan. After nine years of the conflict – and four bloody years in Helmand – people were rightly asking: when will our work be completed? And when will our troops come home?

      To answer those questions, we needed to be far more precise about exactly what it was we were trying to achieve. And while some elements of that nation-building would be important – getting children into school, improving healthcare, constructing infrastructure – we had to show common sense and keep a grip on what was possible.

      Early on, I called a seminar in Chequers, packed with experts from the worlds of military, academia, aid and policy. There was a debate between ‘The war can’t be won’ on one side and ‘Stick with the mission’ on the other. But the seminar did point me towards a third option: concentrate more on training the Afghan army and police as the route for our exit. This was a middle way. Don’t leave immediately, job undone. Don’t stay indefinitely, a war without end. Set some sort of deadline.

      So that was my decision: to withdraw from Afghanistan, but only after giving the military enough time to prepare and to hand over to the Afghan forces. I chose the end of 2014, because I thought that left us enough time to do the work we needed in order to prepare.

      I set out the plan at the G8 in Muskoka. No cabinet meetings, no pre-briefings, no public rows between the military and civilians – just private agreement with George, William and Nick, and a statement to the press. To give a strong lead to our troops and change the tone, I knew it was one of the things that needed to be done quickly.

      But I didn’t want us to leave and that be that. We were committed to financial contributions, both in terms of aid for economic development and funding for the Afghan security forces. Together with Obama, I would lead the charge at subsequent NATO summits – in Lisbon, Chicago, Cardiff and then finally Warsaw in July 2016 – to help secure similar commitments from other countries.

I knew my history. The Afghan government didn’t collapse in the 1990s when the Russians left; it collapsed when they withdrew funding for the military. The other way we could help make Afghanistan more stable beyond our military input would be by helping to foster a political agreement that brought at least some of the Taliban into the political settlement.

      After all, the big mistake had happened at the beginning, back in 2001, when the West insisted on a settlement that was free of Taliban involvement – whereas my view is that true peace is only possible if it includes at least elements of the Taliban.

      In many ways, of course, war suited both sides. The Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his allies could use war to favour their own tribes. The Taliban could use that fact to portray the government as tribalist and anti-Islamic. Plus, talking to the Taliban wasn’t exactly easy. (One fact illustrates this perfectly. We were being told repeatedly – right up to 2015 – that their willingness to cooperate depended on the permission of Mullah Omar, whereas we now know that Omar died in 2013.)

      In the end it would have to be Afghan talking to Afghan, but we hoped that – with our strong relationship with Pakistan – we might be able to help get the ball rolling.

      There was, however, a chronic lack of mutual trust between the two governments. The Pakistanis thought that the Afghans were too close to their rival, India. The Afghans thought that Pakistan was harbouring the Taliban, hedging its bets by allowing terrorists to weaken its neighbour, and still had designs on redrawing the border to unite all Pashtuns inside Pakistan.

      I reasoned that one of the best ways to make progress would be to try to strengthen the personal relationships between the leaders and – where possible – include their military and intelligence chiefs in their discussions.

      In opposition I had got to know Karzai quite well, and he was the first foreign leader I received at Chequers, shortly after taking office. He was charming and wily, and claimed to have a real affection for Britain. He believed that, because of our history, we had a greater understanding of the situation in Afghanistan than did the United States.

Part of my job, as I saw it, was to help focus him on making his government work and ensuring that the country was run properly, for example appointing governors, passing basic laws and dealing with rampant corruption. Karzai himself had been dogged by corruption claims in both the 2004 and 2009 elections: Hugh Powell had visited a polling station in Helmand with a turnout of three hundred which had reported 15,000 votes for Karzai.

      One of the reasons some Afghans turned to the Taliban was because they seemed better at dispensing justice and ensuring order than the legitimate authorities. And corruption was so ingrained in the country’s culture that Karzai could never quite accept that we were there because we genuinely believed in the mission as part of an international coalition. In January 2012 I remember him asking me what was it – minerals? mining rights? – that we really wanted from Afghanistan.

      He could be hard work. He would criticise the activities of British and American troops, even though they were making extraordinary sacrifices and were essential for his regime’s survival. And he found it too easy to play the nationalist card and blame all his problems on Pakistan.

      But there was enough there for me to be able to use the relationship I had built up, and the fact that the Pakistanis trusted us more than the Americans, to help build the trust between Afghans and Pakistanis.

      The high-water mark of my efforts came at the Chequers summit in 2013 when Karzai and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan spent two days in talks. They slept in adjoining bedrooms, each with a guard outside sitting ramrod-straight and wide awake in his chair. I came downstairs the next morning to find the two presidents joking about which of them had been snoring the loudest.

      We agreed a series of small steps to build confidence: publicly praising each other’s leadership; agreeing visits to each other’s countries; and – crucially – recognising that the security of one was the security of the other.

      We aimed to move on to talk about border security and the import­ance of dealing with terrorist safe havens on both sides of the Durand Line (the controversial border between the two countries). We wanted to get some of their military and intelligence personnel to sit together and work together – even suggesting joint patrols. A further series of coordinated steps would then follow to help deliver a peace process: the release from Pakistani custody of potential Taliban peacemakers so they could carry out talks, hints that Afghanistan would consider constitutional reforms, and so on.

But Karzai couldn’t bring himself to trust Pakistan. Zardari was often willing, but as we know, it is really the military that makes the key decisions.

      The Americans were supportive and appreciative of our efforts. They took up the cudgels for contacts with the Taliban, but ultimately the distance between the two sides, and their half-heartedness about a compromise, was too great to make meaningful progress.

      This is the agenda I most wish had come off. But I am convinced that it remains crucial today, and that it can be done.

      So, for all the blood spilt and treasure spent, was Britain’s involvement in the Afghan war worth it? Historians say it’s too early to say. It is incredibly depressing whenever the country slips back. Sangin is back in Taliban hands. Their flag flies over Musa Qala. Opium fields still stretch across Helmand. These are painful things to write.

      But at the same time, in 2014 Afghanistan saw its first peaceful, democratic СКАЧАТЬ