Letter to the Financial Times July 28 2009

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3dc824b8-7b0d-11de-8c34-00144feabdc0.html

David Milliband’s article in today’s FT (“How to help Afghans defeat the insurgency”) was a tedious rehash of all the traditional arguments that have been trotted over the years in favour of intervention for the sake of it. With current troop levels, the increasing public distaste for the bodies of our brave soldiers coming back home, and the lack of options to do something about it, there is no way NATO can credibly create an Afghanistan that will stop being a haven for Al-Qaeda. The Taliban fighter tolerates casualties and military defeats, because he is looking at the longer term when NATO will inevitably not be around.

Our best chance of reducing the Al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan is by co-opting Afghanistan’s neighbours – Pakistan and Iran. Securing Pakistan will require the active co-operation of India, who need to put the past behind them. India need to understand that if Pakistan disintegrates under Taliban pressure, the jihadi element will be at their doorstep. India need to enable Pakistan to divert troops to their Western frontier so that the army can put pressure on the Pakistan Taliban and prevent them from gaining a hold. Britain and the West can certainly help in securing the frontier areas through measures designed to boost civil society.

With Iran, the recent turmoil has shown that it has the makings of a normal society that has aspirations like the rest of us, and this fact needs to be exploited. Mr Milliband needs to consider steps that secure a strategic alignment of interests between Iran and the West. The Iranians do not like the Taliban any more than we do. The threat of drugs is a very real danger to Iranian society. Post 9/11 there was a degree of co-operation between the West and Iran. We need to revive it.

If Mr Milliband considers NATO’s role to be a limited engagement, putting pressure on the Taliban while we secure Pakistan and Iran, it would make a lot of sense. But we cannot let our soaring ambition be converted to military targets when we really do not have the capability or the willingness to do anything about it. Britain should help Afghanistan’s neighbours believe it to be in their interest to defeat the Taliban and do something about it, and if they succeed, our job will have been done.