Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed?

Transcript Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed?

Major General Gordon Messenger, Strategic Communications Officer, Ministry of Defence Chair: Dr Paul Cornish, Head, International Security Programme, Chatham House

Wednesday 29 September 2010

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Major General Gordon Messenger: Thank you very much. A bit of a first for me, because I'm actually at a personal transition point, because vanity has precluded me from wearing glasses at these things previously, and I'm increasingly struggling and the book's getting further and further away. So I'm at a point now where I've brought them with me just in case they're needed. But I'm aiming to keep them stuck in the pocket.

I thought I'd cover three things. The first thing is some of the challenges of communications that I, as a novice communicator, have experienced specifically on the Afghanistan mission.

Secondly, to examine, in more detail, my perspective on the strategic rationale for our mission in Afghanistan.

And then thirdly, give you some insight on how things are going on the ground, based on a visit as recent as last week.

My title is the sort of rather unsexy CDF Strategic Communication Officer, and of course one of the challenges we have is that we haven't really properly defined strategic communication. Although there is some doctrine on this, it is pretty loose and woolly.

But I choose to define strategic communication through the nature of the message that you're trying to impart, i.e. the message needs to be a strategic message. So it's not the means of delivery, it's not the audience. It's the level of the message that you're imparting. By strategic messages, I mean the 'why we're here', 'how long we're staying', 'what does success look like' type messages.

Now those messages have relevance domestically in all contributing nations. They've also got implications and interests regionally. And of course, they can and should play out at the very local level, at the sort of community level where our soldiers are dealing with. So strategic communication isn't necessarily standing up in capitals and making the point. I think it spans everywhere.

So what are the challenges of communicating? I think the first thing is that we don't own, no one owns the information that you are seeking to communicate. Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago that it was simple. That it was about you, your message and your audience. And if you got that right, then it worked.

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The problem is that it isn't just you. As you know as well as anyone, the campaign in Afghanistan is an international campaign. It is an international campaign being waged in the country of Afghanistan, which is an increasingly sovereign dynamic in this whole thing. And each of the players in this game of communication comes with very firm ideas and agendas of what they are trying to say and what they are trying to do.

I'm quite clear that, as a communicator whose principle audience is the domestic public, i.e. the UK public, that I should be slightly behind, yet entirely in step with the messages that are coming out from the Afghans and from ISAF and NATO. I have to say, it is not always too easy to recognise exactly what those are to remain entirely in step and slightly behind, but that is something I think we're very comfortable in doing.

But we shouldn't kid ourselves that all the agendas naturally align. A great example would be the story last week of the handover of Sangin from the British forces to American forces. In theatre, and absolutely justifiable reasons, that was portrayed as normal military, sensible reconfiguration. Because frankly that's what it was. You know that there's been many thousands of Americans coming in and with that the need for a realignment of boundaries.

Sangin was very much a part of that. That's how it played out in ICAF and that's how NATO wants to play it for entirely justifiable understandable reasons. However, and they recognise this, I wouldn't say, we weren't entirely stove piped in this, from the British perspective, of course Sangin matters.

Sangin matters because we lost a lot of people in Sangin. Sangin matters because it's kind of etched in many peoples' minds as the most difficult place in which we've operated. And therefore, we had a responsibility in some ways to highlight to that and to highlight the endeavours and sacrifices of those that have served there.

And even if we didn't want to do it, I can tell you the press would have done. Therefore it was in our interests to go slightly front foot with that. So there was a healthy tension. I'm not saying that NATO resented it; NATO recognised this need. But let's not kid ourselves that everyone has got the same objectives out of this.

The second challenge is, and I'm not into media-bashing. I think I now know enough of the strengths and weaknesses of the media. But I think sometimes we expect too much of the media as the principle means of delivering our message.

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In the first place, much of what I'm trying to say is, as I said, strategic business. It's deep messages about why we're there that endure. The press quite understandably and legitimately are interested in readership, in the story, in the dramatic to a greater extent.

And therefore, whilst they get, and I speak a lot to the defence commentators and they're a good bunch of well-informed, well-meaning defence correspondents by and large, they get that. That doesn't sell newspapers. In some ways, we ought to be looking for a different way of getting out those sorts of deep strategic messages other than the media.

The second issue of the media, and I hope I don't sound unfair here, but I think there is a propensity to report negatively. I think that exists more in this country perhaps than in others. But the negative and the unexpected makes news whilst the positive and the entirely predictable tends not to.

When was the last time you heard an equipment story in the newspapers? Well, an equipment story is actually the guys on the ground are extremely well-equipped, there's been a marked increase in the last 12-18 months. Which means that the reach forces are the envy of most with whom they serve.

If you have an interview with an American general, for example, if he happens to stray and may say something which is mildly critical in one sentence of one interview of the British forces, that will be latched upon. Well, I can tell you that I've spoken to a lot of generals and there's an awful lot of them are genuinely hugely complimentary of the British effort. And in a deep way. That's not something that is necessarily going to be report. I think we just have to accept and live with that.

The other issue of the media, and I think we need to take a little bit of responsibility for this, and we certainly try and raise this game, is that it is rather too Helmand focused, and it's rather too military focused. I hope we all know that Helmand is not necessarily representative of what's going on in the rest of Afghanistan. And indeed that the military effort there is but one of many efforts there. In fact, it is the bit that delivers what really matters, which is the governance piece and the development piece.

Our approach tends to reinforce that, in that we have embedded journalists because of the security situation out there. And of course embedded journalists fly to Afghanistan, predominantly on military aircraft, embed in military units, keen to report the sort of more crunchy end of what's going on. So there tends to be something a little bit self-fulfilling about this and we are

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 4 Transcript: Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed? looking at how we might, whilst certainly not reducing that legitimate and enduring interest, perhaps widening that lens a little bit better.

So how can we do better at this challenge of communication? Well I think firstly, strong, consistent and credible political messaging. Not just in this country but everywhere else, is something which is a key plank to this. I know that governments over time have been keen to do that.

Perhaps we should increase the sort of pyramid selling type methodology, that sort of word of mouth whereby those in the know feel suitably confident in the argumentation and also almost morally obliged to without becoming tub- thumping zealots, using the opportunities to get out some of those key messages. That would require, I think, rather better internal communications than we currently have. I have spoken to many military colleagues who profess to not feeling confident that they can accurately and sensibly depict the reasons that we're there.

Should we, instead of going for unpaid media which is essentially what you see, should we look at some sort of public awareness campaign? And pay for, in the same way that we had swine flu vaccinations or whatever, have some public awareness campaign. We owe it to the British public to best represent what we're doing and why we are putting so much blood and resource into that country. It would run the risk, I think of flying close to propaganda. But there may be merit in investigating that.

We're keen to get more Afghan voices out there, both in this country and in Afghanistan. There are more and more credible and capable and willing Afghan interlocutors who could fulfil that remit. That's something that I think we will see improvement.

Going back to my original point about strategic communication not being simply about a domestic audience, actually I think we do need to perhaps improve our delivery of strategic messages at the tactical level. By which I mean, getting some of these big rationale points over to local populations.

This is a criticism that we've had levelled at us. A degree of legitimacy, as I said when we were over there last week, there is an awful lot of work which goes on in terms of supporting the Afghans in getting over messages to its public at the lowest level. But it's mostly about supporting the Afghan government, the Afghan government's doing this... and that's absolutely right.

But perhaps we have, in our keenness to emphasise the Afghan lead, perhaps we've rather underplayed the need to explain to populations why there is an international force in that area. What it is doing there, what the www.chathamhouse.org.uk 5 Transcript: Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed? situation might look like when it changes its relations. So that is another thing that we're doing.

It all really boils down to reality and perception, which is why I will quickly cover a rubbish joke on this. It's to do with the guy who went to the pub on a Friday night and he ordered three pints of beer. He took them to the table and alone drank them at the table, went back to the bar and said, 'I'll have three pints of beer, please.' And the barman said, 'Of course. But just be aware that if you order them one by one, they'll be fresher, they'll be colder and you'll probably enjoy them more.'

So he said, 'You don't understand. My brothers used to live here but one's now gone to South Africa, one has gone to Australia. And we said that every Friday night we'd gather in the local pub and we'd have a beer each to commemorate our time together.' Fine.

Three years later, every Friday that has been going on. He comes in and says, 'Two pints of beer, please.' The barman says okay, gives him the two pints of beer, went back, drank them, came back and said, 'Two pints of beer.' The barman said, 'I don't want to intrude but I really ought to offer you my condolences. Obviously something's happened and you've lost one of your brothers.'

He said, 'No, no, no. It's not that. It's just that I've given up drinking.'

It's getting onto the whole strategic rationale. Here, I think, we have to get the balance between simplicity and credibility. We have to boil down the rationale for our involvement there to lines that people can quickly understand and comprehend. But nor do we want to make them so simple that they become banal and meaningless. An example would be it's all about domestic security. Now that is something which I think is too simplistic for people to get. And therefore to get that balance, I think is a real challenge.

But I think it's fair to say that you can boil it down into a couple of lines. And I hope it doesn't come as a surprise to say that the strategic rationale for the international force in Afghanistan is to ensure that international terrorism can never again exploit the ungoverned or poorly governed country of Afghanistan.

That is the only end that we're seeking to achieve. And the way that we are seeking to achieve that is by supporting and developing the Afghan government to a point where it can look after its own residual security challenges. That is, I think, a balance between the simplicity of this being domestic security at its heart and perhaps unpacking it a little. You can www.chathamhouse.org.uk 6 Transcript: Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed? unpack it a lot more; I'll try and do a little bit of that. But I think, as a sort of ends and ways, that pretty much sums it up.

Is that achievable? And what does success look like? Well that's key. If I was going to put up a PowerPoint slide, which you'll I'm sure be pleased to know I haven't in a very unmilitary fashion, it would have an up arrow and a down arrow on it. The up arrow, and this would be essentially encapsulating the campaign. The international campaign in Afghanistan.

The up arrow is about building Afghan capacity. It's about building Afghan capacity to govern itself and to secure itself. That is very much the main effort of what both the civil and military efforts in Afghanistan are doing. And then you have a down arrow, which is about reducing the residual security challenges that we will leave the Afghans. Into that bracket falls tackling the Taliban, tackling the narcotics dependency, reducing corruption although I can see how that fits into both.

The very simple and I accept over-simplistic statement where the up arrow, when the up arrow exceeds the down arrow, and there is confidence that there is no likelihood of reversal, then that is what success looks like. The point at which the Afghans can cope with their own residual security challenge. So that plays directly, I think, back into the issue of the single objective that we are there.

I have to say, and there will always be debate about this, but to my mind, with a bar set there and no higher, that is a goal which is imminently achievable. There are a number of counters to this argument, and let me just try and take a couple of them head-on. You may have more in question.

The first is, why in Afghanistan, not elsewhere? Well, firstly, there was an immediate threat of post-9/11, which led to us going into Afghanistan, and that immediate threat has been dissipated by the US and the NATO forces that went in.

There's also the view that other places represent a larger potential international threat, namely Pakistan, but also a number of areas around the world where there are nascent Al-Qaeda or internationally focused groupings. Somalia, Yemen, the Maghreb and others.

I think there is a consistent logic to what we're doing. I think the ends are identical in those countries as they are in Afghanistan, which is about developing the indigenous capacity of the government to deal with internal security threats that could provide an international dimension. But the ways in which we're doing it are very different. They're much more focused in those www.chathamhouse.org.uk 7 Transcript: Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed? countries on the contain and the present to avoid the likelihood or necessity for large scale military intervention, rather than the more overt military.

So in all those countries, something is being done. It's being done in a very different way, but it has the same objective, which is to build the capacity of those indigenous countries, so they can deal with their own problems.

The second counter to the strategic rationale is the, are there other ways of doing it other than large-scale counter-insurgency campaigns? And we will have all heard of those that prosthelytising a more remote and intelligence- led, a sort of whack-a-mole, strike them as they pop up type of operation. Which would require less people, up threat, and up risk. Here, I think, and I'm not suggesting for a second that there isn't a debate to be had. But I've got some principle concerns with that counter.

The first is that such an approach requires very good intelligence and very good situation awareness. Achieving that remotely is a very difficult thing to do. And achieving it whilst understanding the first and second order consequences of your actions in things like civilian casualties, and the like, is a very very difficult thing to do remotely. Actually having people on the ground and operating within a framework of a counter-insurgency campaign, actually allows you to do that more targeted operation far more effectively.

It's no accident that whilst the Americans started very much with a counter- terrorist agenda in the east initially, it very quickly started to look and feel like a counter-insurgency in terms of the number of people they're putting in and the way that they were approaching it.

The other concern that I have with this model is that, to my mind, going back to the original rationale, we need to be able to transfer the authority and responsibility to the indigenous government at some point. And having a model which doesn't have indigenous capacity-building at its heart, sets us out for a remote campaign such as this which I can't foresee an end date. And therefore, I can't get beyond the need to build up a credible Afghan government to which to pass the mantle.

The third counter, and I accept that both those counters have some validity and there is a debate to be had. But the third, I'm struggling to find the compelling nature of the argument against it. This is the sort of 'why don't we cut and run?' It's a negative way, the sort of 'why we can't leave now?' argument, I quite accept is a rather negative way of trying to rationalise your presence there. But nonetheless, it's a good fallback one, because here I think there are much more cut and dry reasons.

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If we were to leave as an international force, I think the repercussions would be catastrophic, both within Afghanistan, regionally, and internationally. In Afghanistan, the recriminations of the many who supported progress in Afghanistan, the inter-ethnic conflict that would inevitably result, would be a very difficult and tumultuous environment, into which internationally focused terrorism could re-energise.

Regionally, I don't need to tell you of the sort of tinderbox nature of that region and the danger of having a vacuum in its midst. Internationally, whether you think this is important or not, I think it's important, the credibility of international community would be holed below the water. And I think the commensurate re-energising of radicalism that that effect would have would lead to far more downstream problems in years ahead than those that I accept we face now there.

So it's my strong view that now is not the time to start looking at cutting and running. My final piece is to really say why I don't think we need to. Because you would be surprised, I think, as readers of the media, at how much progress, momentum and optimism is being felt in Afghanistan now.

The campaign is delivering real results. I'll condition that a little. I don't want to come across at some rose-tinted optimist. The combination of time, time doing the same thing, and resources, which as we know have had a huge uplift in the last year, not just international but also Afghan, is paying the dividends that we expected time and resource to pay when we adopted this approach more than a year ago.

We have an approach that works. The approach of focusing on the population and the loyalty of the population, providing a force density in those critical populated areas to allow Afghan governance to have an effect on its people, and partnering with the Afghan security forces so that they can operate alongside us and build their capacity in stride, is a model that is working.

I won't give you endless examples of where the issue of time, resource and correct approach is starting to make a real difference, but every time I go back, it becomes ever more stark that there is no need to revisit our original assumptions.

We've got a much better set of trusted governors at the provincial and district level, and officials at all levels, through which to conduct the campaign and with whom to conduct the campaign. They are taking the lead much more frequently than they did in my time just over a year ago.

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The ANA, as well as increasing in size, is increasing in capability. Actually, those two things aren't unrelated. An increase in size allows a more sympathetic training regime, allows a degree of rotation of forces around Afghanistan, and that in itself builds professional status and builds a more capable force.

The ANP are, let's say, improving. No one's going to pretend that there are not challenges with the Afghan National Police. There are. But by focusing predominantly on identity, and improving the local nature of the training and improving leadership at the medium and senior level, it is starting to pay dividends. There are many examples, even in the most challenging areas, such as Helmand and Kandahar, where good leaders and well-motivated police are actually the predominant security force in the area.

And the Taliban. The Taliban are being hit hard. I probably would have said that a year ago, and I would have probably said that there are signs of fatigue and there are signs of disruption. I probably would have said that a year ago. But it is a cumulative effect which is having more and more of an impact. It isn't simple, wishful thinking, that they as a force are hurting. They are. They are an endurable force. That's something that isn't going to melt away. But they are hurting and they are less effective as an adversary than they were.

This sounds all very optimistic. And if you go to Afghanistan, you don't have to look that far for bad news. If you go there and you visit an ANA unit, you'll pick up two or three things that you can write about and it'll appear comical or pathetic depending on which. You'll go to an event and you'll be able to pick up a number... There is no shortage of bad news there. If you look for it, you'll find it. I'm not pretending otherwise.

But what I would say is that the good news, this inexorable progress, this inexorable momentum, is something which is really picking up, is what is the predominant sentiment of those who are engaged both in the civilian and military sectors in Afghanistan. And it far out-weighs those elements of challenge and bad news that exist.

That was all I was going to say. I think there are challenges that remain. If I were to highlight two, I think the first is central Afghan government credibility and capacity and the relationship between Kabul and the provinces and below

I think that's something which is going to be very much the focus of the next year. A lot of effort is being put into that. And the second, I would say, is the police. As we envisage, as the Afghans envisage, the police being the primary interlocutor with the population. They still have some way to go www.chathamhouse.org.uk 10 Transcript: Afghanistan: Can the Mission Succeed? before they can adopt that sort of constabulary or gendarmerie role on their own.

That was all I was going to say. I hope that sort of ticked the remit that the synopsis outlined. I'd be very happy to take questions.