sure Afghanistan was our number-one security priority. On my first full day in Downing Street, I convened the new NSC. We were a country at war, I told the assembled ministers, and this would be our war cabinet. We wouldn’t just be setting the strategy and leaving the heads of the army, navy and air force to fill in the gaps. We would seek to shape events more directly and take urgent action. We would have monthly published reports on progress and quarterly statements – by a cabinet minister – to Parliament. This would not become a forgotten war. We started with a boost for the troops, doubling the operational allowance they were paid while on tour.
I was clear where action was needed most urgently: Sangin. President Obama had rightly ordered a ‘surge’ in the number of US forces in 2009, increasing them from 30,000 to 90,000. Britain meanwhile had committed to an increase from 9,000 to 9,500 troops in Helmand, where we had taken over security in 2006.
I didn’t object to the increase; I objected to how thinly spread we would end up being in comparison to the Americans. The advice was that our numbers would be sufficient. But I commissioned some figures that revealed that while the US would now have up to twenty-five soldiers per thousand members of the Afghan population, we would have just sixteen.
Sangin demonstrated this lopsided deployment. This small town is where we sustained nearly a quarter of all our losses during the conflict. I knew that we had to match America’s densities of troops. But we had carried more than our share of the burden – we made up only a tenth of the fighting force in Afghanistan, but suffered a third of the casualties – so the option of increasing UK troop numbers seemed wrong. Taken together, this meant getting out of Sangin. I overruled the advice and secured agreement for the withdrawal.
The US Marine commander who took overall responsibility for Helmand was a splendid man called Brigadier General Larry Nicholson. As if marching straight out of Central Casting, he crushed the bones of my right hand with his handshake and declared that he had come straight from Fallujah – one of the toughest battles in Iraq – and was ready to take the fight to the Taliban. He proceeded to use a dried opium-poppy stick to point at the map on the wall and run through his plans. He recognised that our decision was a reasonable one, and US forces took over what remained one of the toughest jobs in the country.
Partly because of this redeployment, our casualty numbers fell dramatically. In 2010, 103 British troops were killed. In 2011 and 2012, that fell to forty-six and forty-four respectively. For the final three years we were in Afghanistan, the British death toll dropped to single figures each year.
The move also improved our performance in the rest of Helmand. But action wasn’t just needed in adjusting the force; it was needed on the state of our equipment, which had become something approaching a national scandal. I knew from my previous visits the key improvements needed: more helicopters, faster casualty evacuation, more rapid improvements in body armour. And, above all, better-protected vehicles.
The Taliban’s weapon of choice was the improvised explosive device (IED), which was becoming ever more sophisticated. Every time we increased the armour on our vehicles, they would find a new way of burying more explosives. Every time we developed a metal detector with more sensitive scanners, they would find a way of using fewer metallic components. IEDs became the primary instrument for killing and maiming not just our troops, but local people, including children. Our forces’ ageing Snatch Land Rovers were no match for these roadside bombs. To be fair to my predecessor, plans were in place for improvements, but I did everything I could to add to them and speed up their delivery.
The action we took in the NSC – including expanding a new system that bypassed bureaucracy and delivered equipment more quickly – aimed to give 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