 Good afternoon, I'm pleased to welcome you for this IEEA webinar. We're delighted to be joined today by Edward Burke, Assistant Professor in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, who has been generous enough to take time out of his schedule to speak to us. Dr. Burke will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so and then we'll move into a Q&A with our audience, both of which are on the record. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once we come to the Q&A. Please also feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IEEA. I will now formally introduce Dr. Burke and hand over to him. Dr. Edward Burke is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include peacekeeping, stability operations, civil military relations and the history of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. Dr. Burke has spent prolonged periods researching conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. From 2010 to 2011, he was Deputy Head of the International Police Coordination Board in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dr. Burke has also worked as a foreign policy fellow at Frida in Madrid and at the Centre for European Reform in London. So with that, over to you, Ed. Thanks very much, Ross. And my thanks to the Institute as well for inviting me to to talk about Afghanistan today. I have to say it's been, you know, it's been in terms of the last number of weeks is it feels extremely personal in terms of the, you know, some of the friends and former colleagues that I have there who are, you know, currently in hiding and unfortunately we're not able to make it out of Kabul in time. Nonetheless, I'll do my best to sort of reflect on what has been without doubt a humiliating, you know, number of weeks for, I would say, for the United States, but also for the wider NATO organisation and of course as well for the European Union, which invested so much in Afghanistan, not least through its police mission, but also through assistance via the delegation. So I'll try and I think it's certainly a time for a lot of humility and reflection. So I'm really pleased that the Institute has taken the opportunity to host this event. I'm really looking forward to the Q&A with such an experienced range of people who joined us today. In beginning, I want to, you know, first of all, draw attention to President Biden's speech nine days ago, the 31st of August, that deadline that was set in terms of the year to end the withdrawal from Kabul Airport. And Biden in that speech said a quote that, what is the vital national interest? In my view, we have only one, to make sure Afghanistan can never be used to launch an attack on our homeland. Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place? Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, and they were based in Afghanistan. We delivered justice to bin Laden on May 2, 2011, over a decade ago. Al-Qaeda was decimated. And for me, the critical word here in Biden's speech is the past tense of was. I mean, you know, he doesn't refer, of course, to the number two of al-Qaeda. I mean, I was a Salihiri who was believed by the US Department of Defense and the CIA to be presently in Afghanistan. And as UN secretaries and other US Department of Defense reports have made clear, the reality is, of course, that al-Qaeda has been resurgence in Afghanistan. We've been sort of very much focused on Islamic State Khorasan over the last number of weeks, but by far the more robust, stronger organization Afghanistan, in terms of international Jihadi terrorist network organization, is, of course, al-Qaeda. And its number one short-term aim in recent years has been to secure the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Also, I hear you and others have described it as the enemy acknowledging its defeat. And according to US Central Command Assessments, al-Qaeda continues to lead al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in recent months. And so this is very much in terms of his long war. This has been the short-term objective now for a number of years. And in terms of how al-Qaeda has been operating, well, they have been really linking to that insurgency in terms of we see them in the Taliban security apparatus, particularly with regards to the Haqqani network in the east and the south of the country. But al-Qaeda, of course, we are not looking at a group that are Afghan nationalists. They have a strategy which a presence seems to be consolidating its strength in South Asia. And so we've also seen al-Qaeda training quite a number of Turkey Taliban, Pakistani terrorist group fighters, and in recent years developed new ties with jihadi organizations in Central Asia and Kashmir, including groups that are opposed rather than linked to the Pakistani state. And so this is something that is profoundly alarming. And of course, President Biden didn't confront that and didn't talk about it. So what is clear then is, of course, that we have a robust strengthening organization in al-Qaeda. And its leadership do remain committed to attacking the west. But that does not mean that a major attack is imminent in the west. For now, as I say, this seems to appear to be, to a certain extent, a strategy of consolidation in South Asia and to some extent as well as Central Asia. But the risks of a Taliban that is, of course, journey supportive of al-Qaeda should be evident, I think, to most people. And indeed, the Taliban have, of course, learned the art of propaganda very well since the rather chaotic years of late 1990s. Unfortunately, there is really little moderation to be found within its inner circles, even if some of its tribal supporters, of course, are far less militant. And so this linkage between the Taliban-Hakali network, the support and frequent dialogue between al-Qaeda and the Taliban's leaders are, of course, well documented. And indeed, if we look at the top of the new government or regime that we have in Kabul, we can see that in terms of the Taliban emir, Mullah Habitullah, I mean, he himself is, you know, his own son was a suicide bomber in 2017. The new minister for the interior that was announced is, of course, the Akhani network leader, Siraj Akhani, who is, of course, a long-standing ally in support of al-Qaeda and one of the US's most wanted. I think we shouldn't be naive about sort of holding out hopes that leopards have a lot to, have a lot of spots to change here. I think, and so it has been excruciating to some extent to listen to some Biden administration officials sort of, and indeed in the UK as well, so try and avoid, you know, using pointing out that, you know, the Taliban is still, has these individuals, I'm very much at the center of power, and then trying to avoid using words like, you know, an enemy of the United States or people like Akhani, who's again on the FBI's most wanted list, you know. I mean, it's been an excruciating experience, I think, for the Biden administration for the Department of Defense and the State Department. But what is consistent, however, about the United States' approach to Afghanistan is that every time a US president says the job in Afghanistan is done, things get worse. And that was definitely the case under President Bush in 2002, I'd say President Obama in 2014 after the cessation of US NATO major combat operations as part of the inter-colour transition process. President Trump, of course, in February 2020 after his disastrous deal with the Taliban, which the latter organization, of course, steadily violated over a 61 period. And President Biden now facts have really, unfortunately, not gotten the way of timetables that are influenced by US domestic politics. So let's go back 20 years and ask where we, the international community are, I suppose, more accurately, NATO and the European Union went wrong. First of all, it was, I think, was a failure in 2001 to acknowledge that we were intervening and recalibrating what was already a very long civil war in Afghanistan. And nearly 20 years ago in November 2001, then Irish Foreign Minister, Brian Kahn, made a speech at the UN Security Council. And he said, we believe that a fully representative and broad-based government will express the will of all its people and ensure long term peace and security in the country. As to the best way of achieving these objectives, Ireland can consider strongly that the process should be led by the United Nations. As a member of the Security Council, Ireland will work to ensure that a sufficient mandate was developed and the evolving situation on the ground would necessitate flexibility and adaptability. So in terms of what Kahn hoped for, well, unfortunately, what we saw there and once thereafter was an extremely punitive approach by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, punishing those who were aligned on one side with the sort of broad Taliban network, but may have had very just local grievances for joining the Taliban insurgency in the mid-90s due to abuses carried out during the Afghan civil war by some of the individuals who now found themselves key figures in President Hamid Karazaz's new government, transition government in 2002. As a longstanding UN and EU diplomat in Afghanistan, Francesc Vendral put it, the warlords were the original sin and those Taliban-affiliated tribes so now found themselves really sort of under the thumb of their former enemies or adversaries in a local context, particularly in the south and east of the country. Attempts by local tribal leaders formerly allied to the Taliban to reach out to the new Afghan government in the United States were often rebuffed. Some were killed after surrendering, others imprisoned, including a background in Guantanamo for many years. The seeds of insurgency I would argue lay there and they flourished with every mounting grievance. I don't think, unlike people, Roy Stewart has talked about how we lacked enough knowledge. I don't think this was necessarily particularly in foreign ministries, etc. I don't really buy that, I think actually there was a significant amount of knowledge. There were many diplomats and Afghan experts who could see what was happening and reported to their governments, but I think the United States and its allies just either did not care or did not act in these critical years after 2001, so between 2001-2005 or even later, I'd say, still opportunities perhaps up to as late as 2008-2009. Diplomats and Afghan experts such as senior EU diplomat Michael Semple, Mervyn Patterson, the former senior UN official who tried to reach out and sort of persuade tribal networks to realign themselves with a different reformed Afghan government were ultimately expelled, of course, by President Hamakarzai for their mediation efforts. And I think, unfortunately, the West, the United States, Europe, etc., we were largely silent about that and we did very little in response. This was a humiliating thing to do to senior international civil servants and we didn't make too much of it, unfortunately. However, nonetheless by 2006-2007, NATO was, of course, worried about devising insurgency, but clumsy attempts to rectify the situation could often make the situation, could often make matters worse. For example, the UK's insistence on replacing the admitted corrupt governor of Helmand Province removed one of the most powerful tribal leaders in the province, but did little to assuage tribal opposition to President Hamakarzai's government. And that approached, of course, flip-flops again in 2010 when the US started championing Kanda Hari, Chief of Police, Abdul Razak, despite his reputation for large-scale abuse and grafts. So sometimes we were in favour in terms of dealing with corruption, it was rather haphazard and lacked a clear political guidance or strategy. I would say also that, of course, the urgency of the US-imposed military timeline meant that they had little time for insisting on political reform. And it was often strange to me that successive ISAF commanders used to quote David Galula, who was, when he came to designing plans to counter the insurgency in Afghanistan. Galula, of course, wrote his famous book on counterinsurgency based on his experiences in Algeria. But US officers, while appreciating his tactical guidance, often missed his key messages on strategy. And that was the real lesson of Algeria. In Algeria, the French military was thoroughly embedded with the local population. Paris deployed thousands of military officers specialising local governments and fluent in Arabic. For a while, for the use of local militias, developing projects and careful intelligence gathering, the French gained the tactical upper hand against the Algerian insurgency. But the political context was fundamentally wrong. The government in Paris had no long-term political solution to the conflict in Algeria. And so, of course, France lost politically, not militarily. And that was Galula's key message, the primacy of policy over military tactics. France, to be fair, in the case of ISAF, I think France understood that lesson in Afghanistan much more than the United States. Following the election of Barack Obama, when President Sarkozy raised France's troop deployment to ISAF to just under 4,000 and indeed assumed a lead military role in Kabul and neighbouring Kapisa province. However, in 2010 and 2011, France's experiences in Kabul and Kapisa raised serious questions over the political viability of the ISAF mission. They found that ultimately, their most dangerous adversary in Kapisa province was Hamin Karzai's provincial governor, who was collaborating with the insurgency and directly responsible for the coalition deaths and violent extortion among the local population. And eventually, after a sustained French diplomatic campaign, the governor was actually removed by President Hamin Karzai. But French diplomats were then appalled when the Deputy Attorney General, who was supposed to investigate the former governor, was removed by President Karzai. This Deputy Attorney General had also started a number of investigations into corruption or collusion by some Karzai's closest associates. So throughout 2010 and 2011, French diplomats expressed their concerns over these rising levels, this type of behaviour and rising levels of corruption. And actually, U.S. military senior officers often admitted that their contracting and oversight procedures were deeply flawed and that they caused corruption on a massive scale in the part of Karzai government. And of course, we're indirectly funding the insurgency through the payment of protection money by subcontractors. But despite the leavenance of reform on the part of the Afghan government, several, of course, several Afghan anti-corruption agencies were shut down, had been set up by the international community and were deliberately shut down or obstructed by President Karzai. And despite this, U.S. assistance to Afghanistan almost trebles from 2008 to 2011. And when the IMF tried to move in in 2011 and say that actually there needed to be a negotiation by future financial aid packages to Afghanistan because the failure of the Afghan governments to respond to the theft of billions of dollars of aid money and allegations around Kabul Bank, particularly. And they were supported by Germany and France, but opposed by U.S. military and U.S. military's rationales that Congress had given a lot of money to spend in a very short time period and that they had to do that. And ultimately, France and Germany were interfering with ISAF's campaign cycle. Ultimately, the military prevailed and again missed opportunity to deal with a really endemic systematic corruption at the heart of government in Kabul. And of course, France then removed its troops early from the ISAF mission in 2012 in response to what regarded its political failure to influence the United States or the Afghan government. So I think what we've seen is, you know, in terms of the, as we move then into the transition cycle, of course, we didn't we didn't see a significant shift in this type of behavior. And some extent it got worse. And NATO was in a hurry to extricate its combat troops and was less willing to deal with or listen to serious allegations of corruption or abuse. And one of the ways to try and get around what was seen as an inefficient or corrupt central government, of course, was setting up local militias such as the Afghan local police. But of course, there was very little oversight over these initiatives. They were not plugged into the Afghan central central government, and they tended to be dependent upon particularly US special forces assistance. So there was government in a box, sort of hand these are the attempts to engineer this just this district level type governments that was ultimately divorced from central government may have given a sort of short term tactical effects, perhaps, but in terms of long term, it was entirely unsustainable since the Afghan government was not particularly involved in much of it. And certainly it was not, you know, it did not have the capacity to sustain any of the perhaps short term achievements that were gained. So to conclude, because I believe my time is pretty much up. I would say even if we leave outside the morality of Biden's decision, I think in terms of the US national interest, I would argue that the rush 2020 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan was and is an astonishing high risk gamble. I mean, just because there was sort of so much problematic behavior, much of it linked to our excessive sort of splurge of assistance in a very tight time period in country with very weak capacity and politically, it was essentially, it politically incoherent and I would say a government that was too abusive and until we had sort of used some leverage to try and reform the government that levels of aid spending should never have been injected into the country. But nonetheless, that does not mean that sort of sudden withdrawal is a responsible thing to do either. And I think 10 years later, Afghanistan is still the sharpest of reminders in terms of how domestic hubris, particularly in the US capital can lead to foreign policy disaster. The politics of the war in Afghanistan, the civil war dynamics, of course, were wrong. But so too was this sudden disengagement, I'd say instead of trying to maintain influence, which if the behavior of the Taliban, the Afghan government, the Trump administration set a course for unilateral withdrawal, whether any obligations are much incentive for the Taliban to fulfill part of their part of the full their part of the withdrawal agreement signed last year. So despite corruption and dysfunctionality at the top, Afghan soldiers were, I would say, remarkably willing to keep fighting as long as they have limited use of the United States Air Force on their side. After all, the Taliban were and are not popular in large portion of the Afghan population. But once this component of US military assistance was substantially and rapidly reduced, then the Afghan military's morale collapsed. And so what can we do now? Well, I mean, it is, of course, just as a side note, it's of course interesting to note that France is one of the few countries to more accurately predict the collapse of the government of President Ashraf Ghani. But in terms of that's that's now in the past. And we have to think about what Ireland, particularly maybe this month in the UN Security Council can do and what the international community are. And of course, the West can do to sort of, I think we still have a moral obligation simply walking away from this is not moral either. And you can look at it as a reparation of as a sort for but I think that many people in Afghanistan who are living in fear and living under a new and very brutal regime would not thank us for simply saying that we've done enough harm and we can't do any and insist that we can't do any good. I think we can do some good. I would say that in terms of some of the immediate lessons that come to mind, I think the first of all the authority of the United Nations should never be squandered. And I think really it's Ireland can work hard now and is I believe working hard to put the UN back at the center of international negotiations mediation with the Taliban in Kabul. If you look at the history of the US, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkish mediation, etc. Saudi mediation, I think it has both proved to be quite partial, you know prejudice towards national interest and ineffective. And so I think we really need now as a sort of UN very high powered special envoy. And I think the Biden administration should be persuaded to back this and channel much of its relations on the future of Afghanistan through him or her. I think there can be a special envoy. This is no disrespect that several lines the current special representative, but I think there can also be a sort of senior political special envoy for strategic political engagement with the Taliban leadership in a series of talks. And then there can also be ahead of Yunama to deal with the growing the exceptionally growing rapidly growing work that the United Nations has to do in terms of operational delivery, not least humanitarian assistance inside the country. I would say sanctions should be applied where necessary, but not unilaterally. And these must be through the United Nations and again Ireland is a good place to insist on that now. I think we need to acknowledge as well that there will be a lot more war in Afghanistan. The Taliban movement is likely to fracture to some extent. We don't know exactly to what extent. And there will be more resistance in Afghanistan. I'm afraid that the nature of the Taliban's rule and the atrocities that is carrying out will foster resistance. And we in Europe need to think very carefully about how we view and respond to that resistance. I don't think we should overstate how factional the Taliban movement is, but we should never cease to look for opportunities for parts of that movement to reject more extreme elements, including even in its leadership. And we should not confuse stability under a brutal Taliban regime necessarily for progress, particularly if the Taliban continues to support, as it has increased to be doing international terrorist groups that severely destabilize the region and are launch attacks elsewhere. I think the West is actually not alone in this concern. I mean, despite their sort of hubristic celebration of the bloody nose to the United States, the UK and others, I think Russia, China and Iran, although, you know, are also concerned about this prospect. And I would say so are elements within the Pakistani state. Second, I would just say that, you know, we should also never forget in the future that there's no such thing as purely technical or humanitarian assistance in countries are emerging from conflict. A former head view poll once said that he was there. He did not need political advice since his mission was a technical one. Working in Afghanistan, a place where we can highly politicize civil service, it is essential to understand the wider context in which training programs and assistance is delivered in order to recognize and prevent abuse. There is no point, for example, working with the Attorney General and anti-corruption, even if he is continuously proven to be the source of much corruption. And the same applies to Mali and elsewhere where we are currently, where the EU is currently engaged. I think also bottom up can never replace top down, you know, the United States and NATO tried to engineer the way district by district around a corrupt Afghans-led government without understanding that, you know, ultimately, that was unsustainable. And the center of gravity was not necessarily in Helmand, you know, province with three to four percent of the population of the country, but in Kabul. And it is all, I would say finally, it is always right to tell allies when they are wrong. I think ultimately, you will be more respected as a result. In 2012, some UK defense analysts, you know, always a touch competitor, of course, of both relations with Washington, observed that Paris will be punished for its stance in Afghanistan. I don't think it was. And if anything, I think US respect for French defense capabilities has risen since. Sadly, I am not convinced that the same can be said for the UK. So I'll leave it there. Thank you. You're looking forward to the discussion and the questions.