A Journey (64 page)

The Taliban had collapsed by the end of 2001, remnants melting back into the Pushtun populace in southern Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas. It was important to ensure that Afghanistan did not return to ungoverned space within which terrorist training and preparation could flourish. International forces therefore remained to provide security and stability, to combat residual Taliban and al-Qaeda elements, and to support the development of Afghan security forces.

At that time, the coalition was still intact, the weight of opinion with us, the objectives clear. In view of what happened subsequently, it is worth stating what the goal was. The analysis we had was that Afghanistan had been a failed state; the Taliban had taken over; and as a consequence extremism under their protection was allowed to grow. An additional destabilising factor was the drugs trade. Afghanistan had become the source of 90 per cent of the heroin that found its way on to the streets of Europe.

Now, years later people say: But the mission isn’t clear, or it’s confused. It isn’t, and it wasn’t. To us then, and I believe this to be true now, there is no neat distinction between a campaign to exorcise al-Qaeda, or to prevent Taliban re-emergence, or to build democracy, or to ensure there is a proper, not a narco, economy. There is no ‘or’ about it. Allow the Taliban to re-emerge, fail to build governance, and you will have the same failed state with the same consequences. The problem is not that we have tried to do too much; it is that to do it requires a complete and sustained engagement, backed by the resources and the will over a very long period.

Up to and through 2004, while the huge scale of the challenge was clear, things nevertheless seemed slowly to be working. I will come later to the decisions of 2006, by which time it was clear that progress had stalled, but from 22 December 2001 when the interim government was installed, through to the 2004 presidential elections when turnout was 70 per cent and large numbers of women voted, through even to the provincial elections in autumn of 2005, Afghanistan seemed to be basically on the path to being a better state, despite the constant diversions, excursions and setbacks aplenty.

By the way, I am emphatically not saying we did everything well or could not have done many things better. So it is with any such situation. But above all, I certainly misjudged the depth of the failure of the Afghanistan state; and the ability of the Taliban to immerse themselves into the local communities, particularly in the south, and to call upon reinforcements from across the border in the mountainous highlands that seemed a law unto themselves. Thus immersed, they were able by a continuation of intimidation, organisation and sheer malevolence to reassert control of parts of the territory, or at least to disrupt the work we were doing.

Also, their fanaticism meant that the end justified the means. They would kill, terrorise and torture without compunction or conscience. Villagers, uncertain of which masters they were going to have to deal with, hovered between support for the allies and obedience to their local religious extremists. Meanwhile, the central government in Kabul, led by Hamid Karzai, struggled to have their writ run.

What happened was that even as 2001 wore on, even as the news eventually moved on – at first reluctantly, but then gladly – what had been a supreme international effort started to resemble more and more an effort by the US and its closest allies. We didn’t get another September 11. The stories of chemical attacks gradually slipped away. The world consciousness of a menace needing to be confronted slowly melted, losing its shape and its prominence, as life got back to and seemed normal. Hesitantly at first, but then picking up confidence, several strands of opinion emerged that were to have a deeply corrosive effect on the will to keep going.

The first of these was that over time, and as the pictures of allied bombing missions made their impact, the strength of Muslim support for the campaign started to waver. The mindset that our enemies sought desperately to impose – namely that this was a war against a Muslim nation – gained traction. Much more fundamentally, from the outset this was seen as an essentially Western affair. There were Turkish forces involved and later others, but for Arab and Muslim opinion, the offensive was conducted for America, not against terrorism. Those elements deep within Islam that saw it as a victim reasserted themselves, questioning our motives, seizing on any language of an unfortunate nature. Both George and Silvio had used the word ‘crusade’. It was completely obvious that they were using it in a generic sense, as one would refer to a crusade against drugs or crime, a term commonly used in our politics; but it was twisted to suggest they used it in reference to the Crusades of old. Many of the Arab and Muslim governments did not see – perhaps unsurprisingly – the cause of democracy as one to which they should rally.

The moral force with which the action had been launched began to dissipate in Western circles as well. For a few years after Afghanistan retreated from the top of the bulletins, this dissipation seemed to make little practical difference, but it meant that time and time again when we needed top-quality focus, it wasn’t there, except from the US and UK; and it was clear we could not do it all on our own. The Europeans were with us, but within limits set by their own public opinion, which was prepared to support the mission in general terms but was deeply reluctant to commit forces and to suffer casualties.

Without doubt things could have been done better and differently; but the principal reason for progress stalling was that our enemy began to sense the boundaries of our endurance and the strength or otherwise of our stomach for the long fight. In both Iraq and Afghanistan they started to understand that we were unprepared for a fight that might mean we take substantial losses; that if they showed they were prepared to carry on, day in, day out, in territory they knew well, and with a people who had seen so much brutality and oppression over the decades, then they could win, not by superior force or greater resources or a broader appeal, but by dint of perseverance.

In my darker moments, I would consider the parable in which Jesus asks: ‘Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?’ We had counted on a long steady march; we had of course counted on immeasurable difficulties along the way. But we had not counted on the deep grip this extremism could exercise on the imagination, will and way of life of its adherents.

The fact was that even many who were not extremists nevertheless shared the sense that they were justified in fighting us; that this was a battle between the West and the people of Afghanistan. Such an argument was patently false, since the people of Afghanistan had shown in an election what they desired. I tried to counter it by constructing a broad strategy based on values that required soft as well as hard power.

In my conference speech of 2001, I set out what I thought could and should be a new order of things. I drew a historical parallel with the defeat of revolutionary Communism. Military strength played its part, of course – if the Soviet Union had not understood that its might would be confronted with our might, it could have triumphed despite what was right – but ultimately it was defeated by the strength of an idea: human freedom. In time, people saw Soviet Communist regimes for what they were: dictatorships. Communist economies in practice were disasters. Communist societies deprived their people of all that motivates and enriches the human spirit. Along the way our mistakes were manifold, but our insistence on waging a battle was right.

As the twenty-first century opened, those battles for political ideological supremacy had fallen away. Even in China – socialism with Chinese characteristics – the system had become a balance between market and state. Other than in North Korea, the collapse of the Berlin Wall had indeed ushered in a new era.

Now we were confronted with a new battle – one about culture and religion more than politics per se, yet the route to victory was, in my judgement, the same: stand up militarily, but realise that the way to defeat a bad idea is with a better one. I thought we had to provide a comprehensive strategy for changing the world and in doing so exhibit the values that, at our best, we believe in and act upon.

Western nations have many faults, but as I always used to say, there’s a simple test of a country: are people trying to get into it or get out of it? On the whole, immigration not emigration was our problem. In the final analysis the people were the boss, not the politicians. We also stood for justice; so I set out how, as part of this broader fight, we had to show our determination on Middle East peace, our concern for Africa – ‘a scar on the conscience of the world’ – and our commitment to the environment. We had to demonstrate, in sum, that what we wanted for ourselves, we wanted for all.

The premise of my speech was the world’s defining characteristic of interdependence.

Round the world, September 11 is bringing governments and people to reflect, consider and change. And in this process, amidst all the talk of war and action, there is another dimension appearing. There is a coming together. The power of community is asserting itself. We are realising how fragile are our frontiers in the face of the world’s new challenges.

Today conflicts rarely stay within national boundaries. Today a tremor in one financial market is repeated in the markets of the world. Today confidence is global; either its presence or its absence. Today the threat is chaos; because for people with work to do, family life to balance, mortgages to pay, careers to further, pensions to provide, the yearning is for order and stability and if it doesn’t exist elsewhere, it is unlikely to exist here. I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.

I set out the need for concerted action across the range of international issues and described the challenges of globalisation. I then said:

The issue is not how to stop globalisation. The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice. If globalisation works only for the benefit of the few, then it will fail and will deserve to fail. But if we follow the principles that have served us so well at home – that power, wealth and opportunity must be in the hands of the many, not the few – if we make that our guiding light for the global economy, then it will be a force for good and an international movement that we should take pride in leading. Because the alternative to globalisation is isolation.

Confronted by this reality, round the world, nations are instinctively drawing together. In Quebec, all the countries of North and South America are deciding to make one huge free trade area, rivalling Europe. In Asia, ASEAN. In Europe, the most integrated grouping of all, we are now fifteen nations, with another twelve countries negotiating to join, and more beyond that. A new relationship between Russia and Europe is beginning.

And will not India and China, each with three times as many citizens as the whole of the EU put together, once their economies have developed sufficiently as they will do, not reconfigure entirely the geopolitics of the world and in our lifetime?

When we act to bring to account those who committed the atrocity of September 11, we do so not out of bloodlust. We do so because it is just. We do not act against Islam. The true followers of Islam are our brothers and sisters in this struggle. Bin Laden is no more obedient to the proper teaching of the Koran than those crusaders of the twelfth century, who pillaged and murdered, represented the teaching of the Gospel.

It is time the West confronted its ignorance of Islam. Jews, Muslims and Christians are all children of Abraham. This is the moment to bring the faiths closer together in understanding of our common values and heritage, a source of unity and strength.

I also gave a strong defence of America, not just as a nation but as a concept:

America has its faults as a society, as we have ours. But I think of the Union of America born out of the defeat of slavery. I think of its constitution, with its inalienable rights granted to every citizen still a model for the world. I think of a black man, born in poverty, who became chief of their Armed Forces and is now Secretary of State Colin Powell, and I wonder frankly whether such a thing could have happened here. I think of the Statue of Liberty and how many refugees, migrants and the impoverished passed its light and felt that if not for them, for their children, a new world could indeed be theirs. I think of a country where people who do well don’t have questions asked about their accent, their class, their beginnings, but have admiration for what they have done and the success they’ve achieved. I think of those New Yorkers I met, still in shock, but resolute; the firefighters and police, mourning their comrades but still heads held high.

I think of all this and I reflect: yes, America has its faults, but it is a free country, a democracy, it is our ally and some of the reaction to September 11 betrays a hatred of America that shames those that feel it.

So I believe this is a fight for freedom. And I want to make it a fight for justice too. Justice not only to punish the guilty, but justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world.

And I mean: freedom, not only in the narrow sense of personal liberty, but in the broader sense of each individual having the economic and social freedom to develop their potential to the full. That is what community means, founded on the equal worth of all. The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.