 Welcome back. In the previous two sessions, we heard the prosecution's opening statement. We were made to understand the legislative context of this case and heard a brief history of the United Kingdom's involvement in Afghanistan, beginning with the Great Game, the original Cold War between the Russians and the British, and ending with the 2001 invasion. We heard historical testimonies from Manira Hashemi and Gullwally Paselai. We now begin trial session three. Prosecution, you have the floor. Thank you. It goes without saying that the testimonies we heard this morning from Manira Hashemi and Gullwally Paselai clearly demonstrate a history of British colonialism and the resulting generational trauma. Britain has clearly breached international humanitarian law in recklessly killing civilians. The use of bombs and heavy artillery described by Gullwally is also completely disproportionate and cannot be justified in civilian areas, such as Gullwally's small village. We argue this extensive bombardment qualifies as aggression under Article VIII, subsection 2B. We now would like to investigate the political reasonings behind this excessive use of force. Could we please have archive footage? One, two, three, four ready, please. The reasoning behind the UK's military 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was allegedly threefold. One, a self-defense mechanism. Two, assisting their allies in fighting the war on terror. And three, the improvement of living conditions in Afghanistan. We would now like to show you some archive footage of various senior members of the government publicly discussing the rationalization behind the war on terror and the, in our view, illegal invasion of Afghanistan. There are three parts all equally important to the operation of which we're... There are three parts all equally important to the operation of which we're engaged. Military, diplomatic and humanitarian. The military action we are taking will be targeted against places we know to be involved in the al-Qaeda network of terror or against the military apparatus of the Taliban. This military plan has been put together, mindful of our determination to do all we humanly can to avoid civilian casualties. I also want to say very directly to the British people why this matters so much directly to Britain. First, let us not forget that the attacks of September the 11th represented the worst terrorist outrage against British citizens in our history. The murder of British citizens, whether it happens overseas or not, is an attack upon Britain. But even if no British citizen had died, it would be right to act. This atrocity was an attack on us all, on people of all faiths and people of none. We know the al-Qaeda network threatened Europe, including Britain and, indeed, any nation throughout the world that does not share their fanatical views. So we have a direct interest in acting in our own self-defense to protect British lives. So this is a time to show strength, determination and complete resolve. This terrorism is the 21st century threat. It is a war that strikes at the heart of all that we hold dear. And there is only one response that is possible or rational, to meet their will to inflict terror with a greater will to defeat it, to confront their philosophy of hate with our own of tolerance and freedom, and to challenge their desire to frighten us, divide us, unnerve us with an unshakable unity of purpose, to stand side by side with the United States of America and with our other allies in the world, to rid our world of this evil once and for all. And alongside Tony Blair and Jack Straw, I have one to underpin the Middle East political roadmap with an economic roadmap that gives hope for prosperity in that region. And I will continue to visit the region to push it forward. And as we all tackle injustices that breed resentment, we must show that by the empowerment of poor countries through debt relief, aid, support for education, healthcare and economic development and trade, that globalization can be seen not as the cause of injustice and poverty, but as the force for social justice on a global scale. So I believe that 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 around 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's 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 regions of Afghanistan, they too are our cause. Just a few examples behind the thinking of the invasion of Afghanistan, of the hundreds of interviews, conferences and speeches we have reviewed, there are two major recurring themes. Firstly, the role of the economy in participating in the war on terror. There were many references to trade, financial system, or effects on economy when discussing the need for a war on terror. The significant financial influence of war is reflected in the huge financial defense budgets legitimized by the need for protection against threats. Secondly, we notice the various ways in which government actors legitimize wars by creating an exaggerated fear of the other, especially in the speeches given by David Cameron and Tony Blair. The stereotyping and scapegoating have the effect of instilling fear against certain communities or individuals in a weak attempt to rationalize a crime of aggression. We now want to call Nick Bearden, who will be playing anonymous British ambassador to the stand. He will provide us with insight of the success and intent of British foreign policies in Afghanistan, alongside details of the inner workings of the coalition. The following testimony has been taken verbatim from a recorded interview with the anonymous British ambassador, and will be played by Nick, an actor. I do solemnly, sincerely and truly affirm that the evidence I shall give as anonymous British ambassador shall be the truthful to the anonymous British ambassador's testimony as it was video recorded, and shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I'm appearing in the anonymous British ambassador's stead to protect their identity. You were British ambassador to Afghanistan in the 2000s. At the time, how did you feel representing Britain in Afghanistan? Well, I felt enormously proud to be representing Britain. It was a very important time in our engagement in Afghanistan. We were greatly increasing our presence there. We were doing, as we thought, a great deal of good across the country. But in Helmand in particular, we were the second players, the external players after the United States. And at the same time, even before I left London, I began to have doubts about whether we had a strategy worthy of the name. I wondered about the wisdom of having taken on Helmand. I had reports that the advice to Tony Blair, which Tony Blair had rejected, had been that it would take a very long time indeed to stabilise even Helmand, let alone the whole country. And I was concerned that the whole enterprise was driven by the military, in many cases, who were only in Afghanistan for very short tours. So you said that Tony Blair ignored the advice regarding Helmand. Why did he ignore the advice and who gave him the piece of advice? Well, the advice was from a team that went down to Helmand to look at the situation there. And they said that in their view, it would take at least 10 years to stabilise Helmand and put in place, just have to kill this, put in place the systems they wanted. But the reality was that Tony Blair wanted it done in three years. And his advisor told the team that 10 years wasn't good enough. It had to be done in three years, regardless of the fact on the ground. Why three years? It was driven entirely by politics. And what were your thoughts at that time? Well, I went down to Helmand and I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the military. But you know, I saw that this was much more than a military problem. It was a political and economic and social problem. And the Taliban were, in many respects, the authentic representatives of their people. They weren't particularly the representatives we liked or we wanted to deal with, but they were conservative nationalist resistance fighters. And they, particularly in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, represented a stream of thinking that was alien to the West, but was nonetheless authentically Afghan. And I thought from the very beginning that if we wanted a serious settlement in Afghanistan, we had to include the Taliban in it. But the Americans refused to talk to the Taliban. I remember talking to the head of MI6, asking how we got a message to Mullah Omar and he said, we're not allowed to talk to Mullah Omar because the CIA doesn't want to talk to, doesn't want to talk to the Taliban. You know, it's this typical American approach of excluding anyone whom they regard as evil of putting them in the political equivalent of a supermax prison and throwing away the key rather than trying to engage. And it just seemed to me not really sustainable in the long term that it was as though we were treating a patient with cancer with localized doses of morphine. It might suppress the pain locally and temporarily, but we weren't dealing with the underlying political problem in Afghanistan, which was that of a failed state with a broken political settlement. So what do you think would have happened if dialogues or negotiations had actually been attempted with the Taliban? I think it would have been incredibly difficult and taken a lot of time and a lot of patience, but the process that David Miliband, the foreign secretary and I had in place was sort of a double-decker bus with on the lower deck of the bus, all the internal parties to the conflict, and on the upper deck of the bus, all the external parties to the conflict, including Pakistan and India and Iran and all the neighbors, China. And this would need to be broken by, brokered by muscular American diplomacy supported by the UN and the EU, because of course the Americans wouldn't talk to Iran. And it would take a very long time as it did in Northern Ireland, where the eventual settlement in 1998 was described as one MP as the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 for slow learners. You know, it takes a very long time to get a political settlement. I thought we should have created a safe space in say, an air base in the Emirates where the parties to the conflict could meet and get to know each other and oversee the process, but it would have taken an empowered American civilian of the caliber of Richard Holbrooke to bring the parties together, force them together and keep them together and oversee the process. But America, the American Republic doesn't have the strategic patience or the vision to do that. America's approach to problems is to throw money at them or to apply violence to them, to use violence or the threat of violence or to throw money or both, not to engage in the sort of rather unsatisfactory shades of gray negotiations that takes a very long time and doesn't produce results and doesn't produce the sort of black or white results you can present in Congress or put on the evening television news in the United States. Why do you think that the Americans did not want to negotiate or even talk to the Taliban? Well, it goes, it's part of the American psyche that, you know, is why the original settlers went to America, this belief that you can build heaven on earth, that you can exclude evil. So if you have an out, you know, if there's a problem in the wild west, you drive people off the reservation. You literally outlaw them. And it's this very black and white, Manichean view of the world, which doesn't, in my view, I'm afraid, accord with the realities of the world, which is much more nuanced. And there was also, in the American mind, a confusion between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And the truth was that al-Qaeda had been dealt with in Afghanistan within a few weeks of the first arrival of Western forces in October 2001. But the attention of the Americans then switched to the Taliban, bringing down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and installing, what in their view, was a Western liberal democracy. It wasn't, of course, anything of the sorts. And they convened a peace conference at the outside bond, the Kernigsberg outside bond in, I think, December 2001. That wasn't a peace conference because the Taliban, who hadn't even been vanquished, weren't invited. It was a nonsense conference. And then they imposed on Afghanistan a constitution that was totally out of keeping with Afghan political history, political geography. You know, it was drawn up by a French constitutional lawyer and was a perfect product of 18th century constitutional architecture. Not at all relevant to tribal Afghanistan that had suffered over 20 years of civil war. And how do you see Britain's colonial past in Afghanistan as affecting the situation that you were brought into when you started your post? Well, I think we're all frighteningly ignorant of it. But in Helmand, certainly the Taliban and the locals thought we'd return to Helmand to avenge the past, to avenge the defeats of the past. And the bones of British soldiers could be found in Helmand who'd been killed 100 years before. And there was this awful sense of us repeating history of embarking on another failed attempt to pacify the state. But the trouble was that the military were in charge and the military's view was that we had to please the Americans. And the military, of course, rather enjoy a good war. Better than sitting around on Salisbury Plain training or at Caterick in Yorkshire. And for them it was a war with a rather sort of feeble second grade enemy. It was rather enjoyable roaring around the desert in armored vehicles. And of course it was dangerous, which made it serious and meant that they felt they'd earned their medals and were appropriately blooded. But this was about pleasing the Americans, showing particularly after the disaster of Basra that we were good allies. It was also for the British army about fighting the treasury and the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force for resources, showing that the army needed resources. And the head of the Joint Defense Committee, the head of the Armed Forces said to me that if he didn't use the battle groups coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, then he would lose them in a defense review. He said, use them or lose them. So the troops were being sent to Afghanistan not for any sort of strategy associated with the policy, which in any way didn't really exist. Did you have any contact with British troops or speak to ordinary soldiers? Yes. Yes, I saw a lot of them and they were very brave and very determined. But what was infuriating was they were only there for six months. So every battle group commander sort of reinvented the past. He rubbish what his predecessors have did. They all had rather, you know, purile courses on Afghan political culture and got people who looked like Afghans to talk to them in their barracks before they left in England. And then six months later, they were gone and a new team had come in. You know, I tried to get that changed, but that was resisted. I mean, for the fighting men, I think six months was plenty, but only a minority of modern armies actually fight. The rest sort of, you know, dealing with supplies and their cooks and mechanics and medical support and engineers and fat RAF corporals sitting around the base, not really doing very much. So it wasn't a serious campaign, I'm afraid. It was all about the army and not about stabilizing Afghanistan. Did you ever get the sense that the Taliban were an immediate threat to the United States or to the UK? None whatsoever, no. The Taliban were no threat whatsoever to the United Kingdom or the United States. They hosted Al Qaeda. They were appalled at what Al Qaeda did. They held a couple of Shuras in Kandahar in September and October 2001, where they were debating about what to do about the Arab aliens in their midst and how they abused the Pashtun traditions of hospitality by launching his attacks on civilians in New York and Washington. And had Bush been prepared to wait, which he wasn't, you know, he needed violent revenge for what had happened, I think they probably would have rejected the Al Qaeda from Afghanistan having abused their traditions of hospitality. And, you know, we were attacking the wrong enemy in the wrong country, in the wrong way. And we knew it, Holbrook said as much to me, but we got ourselves into this mess and getting out of it was very difficult. The sad truth was that Condi Rice, Obama, Hillary Clinton all understood this, but none of them had the guts or the will to change it. They went on with a strategy which was driven by the generals, which was doomed to failure and based on the idiotic premise that the way to secure Afghanistan was to train up, spend billions and billions of dollars training up the Afghan national security forces to fight the Taliban for a cause they didn't believe in. The Taliban were rebels with a cause. The Afghan national security forces, as we've seen in the last few weeks, didn't believe in the cause for which they were being trained to fight. And so without a political settlement, the whole, you know, ramshackle or house of cards was bound to collapse. What was the view of the local population on the invasion and military presence? Well, it varied area by area. And here, you know, we like the Russians before us did a great deal of good for the women of Afghanistan, for women's education, for girls' education, for women's employment, poured billions of dollars into the industry, raised the standard of living. And you know, that was a great thing to have done. The tragedy is it wasn't done in a sustainable or intelligent way. So the population, I think many parts of the population welcomed the Western presence. They welcomed the riches that came their way. I remember being ashamed to discover that a cleaner in the British embassy, an Afghan cleaner was paid more than an undersecretary in the Afghan ministry. So, you know, massive inflation of wages. There was a massive, a lot of people did very well out of it. Corruption took off, of course. But, you know, good was done. One has to acknowledge that. It's just, it would have been so much better if it had been done in an intelligent and sustainable way. But the military wanted results. They wanted results quickly. You mentioned the cleaners employed at the embassy. And that makes me think of all the Afghan people who worked with the British and American forces, who have now been left behind and denied safe passage to the UK. How do you feel about that? Well, very bad. I mean, many of them will get out. I think the Taliban will be much more sensible about exacting revenge on those people than they were last time or would have been in the past. But there will be some bloody settling of accounts. There will be a pretty serious disorder. And I'm afraid the civil war will continue in a different shape and fashion. So, you know, we've taken sides in this civil war for 20 years. We've given support to an element in that war. And now we've withdrawn that support. And what I fervently hope now is that the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Service try not to repeat the mistakes of the past by pouring money and weapons into one party in the civil war. They should be banned from doing that. We interfered in the civil war in the past trying to drive the Russians out and helped in a way to create the Taliban. You mentioned that the generals and military were pushing for war. Did you ever see pressure coming from the arms trade? Not directly in Afghanistan, but certainly the arms trade did extremely well out of it. There were emergency requests for all sorts of equipment. Money was thrown around in the most appalling way. I mean, when we, at one stage, NATO didn't need any more jet fighters in Afghanistan, but the British insisted on sending them because they wanted another type of aircraft to have experience in combat. Nothing at all to do with the needs in Afghanistan. So the arms trade did extremely well out of it. The suppliers of armored vehicles and equipment, the contractors, you see great piles of food and equipment just being thrown away. You know, the military can fight, but they're not very good at counting. They can't really count. So, and you know, the excuse was we're in a war. We haven't got time to account for things. So it was an appalling waste. And even as we were leaving Helmand, the military were putting up great steel and concrete hangers, you know, permanent buildings in a base that is now deserted, rather like those statues of Ozymandias in that poem by Shelley. Were you approached by arms companies while you were serving as ambassador? No. How do you see the future of Afghanistan in its current position? I think it's obviously extremely concerning. I hope we learn the lessons from the past. I hope we engage with the Taliban, with the new regime. And we do our best to try to tamp down what is likely, I'm afraid, to be the continuing civil war. And as I said, the one thing I hope we don't do is to provide covert weapons and funding to one side in that war. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you very much. You can return to your seat. The prosecution would like to call Richard Folk to the stand again. As Professor Folk is currently abroad, the interview has been prerecorded. Would you like to swear or affirm? Swear. Would you like to swear or affirm? Swear. Would you please read the oath? I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Mr. Folk, could you please tell us what your background in international law is? I was a member of the faculty of Princeton University for 40 years and held a position as the Albert G. Middle Bank Professor of International Law and Practice during most of those years. And then after my retirement in 2001, I moved to the California program of global studies, global and international studies, and taught courses, mainly graduate courses in international law. I want to read you a quote by Tony Blair and just to get your reaction on it. Tony Blair declared, Britain has learned that lesson many times in our history. We only do it if the cause is just. This cause is just referring to attacking Afghanistan. In your view, was that a just war? Not only was it not a just war, but it was not a just quote because Britain, perhaps as much as any country has a history of manipulating international law to achieve unjust purposes. And its whole colonial practice, nearby in Ireland and in Africa and Asia, confirms that its record is dominated by its sense of national interests. And it only upholds international law and just war, the just war framework when it's convenient for it to do so. Can you please explain how humanitarian intervention has been used in regards to Afghanistan? Well, humanitarian intervention supplies a moral dimension to a use of force that is neither authorized by the UN Security Council nor can qualify as a example of legitimate self-defeat countries or, and particularly this appeals to the liberal democracies that want to make their own public's beliefs in the morality of their foreign policy. They use humanitarian arguments as a justification for intervention, which can usually be explained better by other considerations. So it operates as a rationalization, and it's a rationalization that has some resonance in international law because of the reality of the human rights violations that have prompted the argument in the first place and often the example of Kosovo is given 1999, where there was definitely serious human rights violations. On the other hand, there was no adequate legal justification for the intervention, and it was probably motivated by showing that NATO was still a useful alliance despite the end of the Cold War. Attempt to get away from that language of humanitarian intervention and the UN and Security Council began just talking about the responsibility to protect. And that seems like less of an assault upon the sovereign right of the country that is the target of intervention. When did this shift between humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect happen? It was a response to the objection to the humanitarian intervention rhetoric that came to the surface as a way of reimposing Western hegemony but under the banner of humanitarian intervention. So the West retreated normatively by formulating its claims to use force under this responsibility to protect norm. Was the responsibility to protect invoked in one? It was not invoked, at least in a formal way, as far as I know. It was discussed, of course, both by diplomats and in the media. But it was never the central justification which had to do with the continuation of the war on terror and the attribution of responsibility to the Taliban regime for the Al-Qaeda presence within its borders and providing safe haven to international terrorism. So the really dominant legal justification of rather weak, as it was, focused on a counterterrorism argument. So would you say that the responsibility to protect was only used ideologically in the communications to the wider society? It may have been intended in good faith to serve as a way of enlisting the international community in protecting vulnerable people against abuse. But in the major instances where it's been invoked, it seems like a change of rhetoric without a change in behavior and that it continues to be a useful geopolitical tool for intervening government. Why has the United Nations not been called on for this invasion in your view? I've really given an authoritative answer because it depends on undisclosed reasons. But it seems to me that the intervening countries anticipated various kinds of objection or resistance from China and Russia and maybe some other countries as well. And they didn't want to have any interference in their execution of the state building part of their intervention. Because even though it was proclaimed to be something necessary for the war on terror, it really had as its purpose after the initial defeat of the Altaida presence in Afghanistan to create a Western-oriented secular government in Afghanistan. And it was that failure, which is a kind of remarkable failure considering the resources that were devoted by the most powerful countries in the world, and the outcome of that effort showed that it had no resonance for the people of the country. But as much as they were abused and feared the return of the Taliban, there was no will to resist. And there was a strong desire to get the intervening countries to leave. The war did not follow the guidelines of international law. Does it constitute a crime of aggression in your view? Yes, in the sense that it was not properly authorized by the United Nations, or more specifically the Security Council. In your view, what was the reason for this recourse to war? It represented a pretext for the then leadership of the United States to project its power in the post-colonial world in a manner that upheld its conception of global security. Thank you very much. No further questions. Thank you. The evidence that we have seen this evening shows how Britain had a definite strategy to gain control or so-called stability, satisfying the intention to commit a crime of aggression in Article VIII, subsection I. British forces entered Afghanistan in 2001 in a similar way to how they first invaded in 1839. Ill-prepared, ignorant of the local customs, and unwilling to learn. The British government knowingly attacked a country that had not committed any violence against the UK, nor any of the UK's allies. The British were guided by a desire to make a mark, to earn medals, to spill blood. This was purposeful violence. This was an illegal war. This was a crime of aggression. Nothing further. Thank you. This concludes Trial Session III. We meet again tomorrow at 10 a.m. with Trial Session IV, which looks at the treatment of women and domestic legislation. We hear testimony from Arzul Nalbaha, Sahar, and Asim Qureshi. Thank you all very much.