The late Julian Amery once informed me that as a child in the 1920s he had been taken by his father, Leo Amery, to watch the arrival in London of King Amanullah of Afghanistan on a state visit.
As the King appeared in an open coach, Amery overheard two Cockneys in front of him. “Who’s that?” said one. “That’s the King of Arfghanistan,” replied the other. “Oh,” said the first. “Who’s the king of the other arf?”
Some things don’t change. Such is the limited authority of the current Afghan Government that President Hamid Karzai is often, unkindly, referred to as the mayor of Kabul.
This is not just a matter for the Afghans. British and American troops are being killed and injured in significant numbers in order to make Afghanistan safe for democracy. The current, unresolved, presidential election is making a mockery of that strategy. In part, the problem has been the poor turnout of the electorate, especially in Helmand and the south, where the Taleban appear to have been successful in intimidating voters. That cannot be blamed on President Karzai.
But even more depressing has been the growing, irrefutable evidence of widespread cheating and ballot rigging. Such electoral corruption is not peculiar to Afghanistan but, having condemned similar practices in Iran and Zimbabwe, the British and the Americans cannot give unqualified support to a tainted regime.
President Karzai should recognise a harsh truth. He needs us more than we need him. Unless he moves speedily to deal with these malpractices, support in Congress and the House of Commons for the current Nato strategy will collapse. Whether or not the official figures show that Karzai has passed the 50 per cent hurdle in the first round of voting, he should take the initiative and declare that there will be a second round between himself and Abdullah Abdullah, his nearest rival. He must also concede credible international supervision of that second round of voting to prevent repeated abuse.
If he wins, freely and fairly, he will deserve our continuing support. All other things being equal, it is preferable, at this time, for the President to be a Pushtun from the south of the country. But any advantage disappears if Karzai loses the legitimacy that only a free election can provide.
The presidential election may turn out to be the easier of Afghanistan’s problem to resolve. The war against the Taleban is not delivering the desired outcome, despite the courage and military skill of US and British troops. It is difficult to imagine the Taleban having been expelled from Helmand and the south in the next few years. As a guerrilla force, they just melt back into the local community when under pressure and re-emerge when Nato has moved on.
But although Nato is not yet winning the war, the Taleban are light years away from becoming, again, the government of Afghanistan.
The British and Americans are not being defeated in combat by the Taleban. There is no prospect of a Vietnam-style Dien Bien Phu in Helmand. British fatalities have not been the result of face to face battles. Overwhelmingly, they have been caused by IEDs, improvised explosive devices, on the roadside. Other casualties have been the work of suicide bombers. While such tactics can damage morale, the Taleban would, at some stage, have to turn to more conventional tactics if they wished to march on Kabul.
Comparisons with the Mujahidin who defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan are misleading. They received massive, international support, not least from the United States, the Saudis and the Arab world. The Taleban have few friends, apart from some in Pakistan. Iran and the Arab world are solidly against them.
Now is the time for the United States and Nato to adopt a new strategy that will enable our Forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan in the next three years without permitting the Taleban to regain power, and without enabling al-Qaeda to use Afghanistan again as a base for international terrorism.
There should be three components to this strategy. First, there is the need for an accelerated build-up of Afghanistan’s own national army. It is, currently, about 100,000 strong. President Obama, in March, pledged American support to increase its size to 260,000 over five years. If at all possible that target should be reached in three years. Combined with the Afghan Police Force, which is due to increase to 100,000, that would enable the Afghan Government to have enough soldiers and militia to deal with the Taleban without the need for continuing American and British troops on the ground.
But that would not be sufficient to ensure success. President Obama should make clear that even when Nato ground forces are withdrawn, Nato air power will be available to work with the Afghan Government to attack and destroy any Taleban army seeking to retake the country. The combination of Afghan troops and US air power was sufficient to drive the Taleban from power in 1991. It remains sufficient to prevent them from resuming power now and in the future.
Third, Nato would need to obtain from the Afghan Government legal authority to allow Nato Special Forces and air power to be used to destroy any new al-Qaeda bases or camps that might be detected in territory not controlled by the Afghan Government. Our intervention in Afghanistan in 1991 was not to destroy the poppy trade, improve human rights or ban the burka, desirable, though these would be. It was to ensure that Afghanistan could never again be used as a base for international terrorism by al-Qaeda or others. That objective has already been largely achieved.
The strategy I have outlined would ensure that our troops have not died in vain. It would also enable us to resist any temptation to try to deliver that which is not within our power to deliver. That is what good government should be about.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom between 1992 and 1997.