Mark Sedwill transcript

On Sunday 31 January Sophie Raworth interviewed Nato's Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

Now with the fighting in Afghanistan taking its toll on British troops and opinion polls here showing public unease about the mission, last week's conference in London needed to demonstrate that there is a plan for bringing stability to the country and a timetable for achieving it. Now it's up to all involved to make it work, and a key figure in the implementation will be Mark Sedwill, formerly British Ambassador in Kabul, now taking up an important new role with NATO. And he joins me this morning. Good morning.

MARK SEDWILL:

Good morning.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

Now this … you are basically going to be partnering the military arm, General McChrystal. You are going to be the civilian arm. But I mean this is a big job, a beefed up role as well for you.

MARK SEDWILL:

Well it's a very big task for all of us in Afghanistan this year. It's the critical year, Sophie. We have to regain the initiative against the insurgency; we have to address many of those political tensions that fuel the insurgency, right from local up to national level; and we have to strengthen the Afghan institutions, military and civil. And that requires a military, civilian and political combination, and my job is to try and make sure that the civilian half of this is as coherent as the military. So, yeah, it's going to be a big challenge.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

But your role is being increased, isn't it …

MARK SEDWILL:

Yeah.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

… and there's word that you have a bigger role than your predecessor? Do you think there's some sort of recognition in that that there has been too much emphasis on military strategy and now you really do have to look at the civilian?

MARK SEDWILL:

Well I think if you look at it, the military effort is being beefed up as well. The Americans have doubled their forces in Afghanistan over the past year; we've had an additional 39,000 total just agreed since the beginning of December, 9,000 non-American. So the military effort is being beefed up too. So it's just important that we keep these in balance. I think it's for the historians to judge whether we've always had that balance right, but clearly in this year we need to make sure that the military and civilian and political efforts are all going hand in hand and delivering success.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

It's going to be very difficult though. I mean all this talk of turning the tide. What a task ahead. I mean we've been there, what, 9 years already.

MARK SEDWILL:

Yeah it is and this year will be another very challenging year. I'm sure there will be many more casualties; there'll be an awful lot of violence. That's, I'm afraid, the nature of the conflict. Over the past 9 years, I think we have seen - certainly over the past 4 - security has become more difficult year on year; we had more British casualties last year; but all of the other data around security were also tougher in 2009 than in previous years - the insurgency spread. Governance has really flatlined. The economy and development has done well, and that is the success story of Afghanistan. But we do need to turn all of these issues around. I think at last we have the resources aligned with our objectives and our ambitions this year. I think we do have a good plan on the military side. My job is to make sure that we have as good a plan on the civilian side and we can carry it out.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

So the aim is on the military side to you know flog the country with troops and weaken the Taliban, to the point that they are ready to come and talk to you, to come and do some sort of deal? That's the approach?

MARK SEDWILL:

Up to a point. There are really two elements to it. Firstly is to regain the initiative, to stop the insurgency spreading and deepening their hold on the population, particularly in those key Southern and Eastern areas, including Helmand, where of course British troops have been dealing with the main effort from the Taliban over the past couple of years. And there are over 20,000 American troops coming into Helmand, so that we really will have huge resources there to try and press them back. And that's simply to separate them from the population - to give the population there the confidence that we, in support of the Afghan government, can deliver the security; and then of course the other things, justice and jobs, that they need. The second half of it is to strengthen the Afghan forces. In the end, they have to secure their own country, they have to stabilise their own country, and a huge effort is going in to build up the Afghan National Security Forces. And these operations will be genuinely joined this year. So it's trying to really focus on the population. It's not really focused on the Taliban themselves in a sense. We're focusing on the population.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

But there's all this talk of the great Taliban buyout, isn't there …

MARK SEDWILL:

Sure.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

… and the idea that you can say okay, we will give you money not to fight our soldiers? Isn't it a bit simplistic?

MARK SEDWILL:

I think it is and if that's what we were doing, you'd be absolutely right to make that criticism. But that isn't the approach that we're taking. About three quarters of the Taliban fight within a few miles of where they born and where their families live. About three quarters of the insurgency, in other words, is really local and arises for local reasons. They don't have this al-Qaeda ideology. They're not committed to the same agenda as people sitting in Quetta.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

(over) And do we know that for sure? I mean do you absolutely know? Do we know who we are fighting? Do we know exactly who the insurgency is?

MARK SEDWILL:

We have a pretty good idea. We have an awful lot of intelligence - most of it from the Afghans themselves. And if you talk to the Afghans, they will talk about how the sons of one particular tribe have gone off to fight for the insurgency; in some cases because of a local tribal dispute or because that tribe feel excluded. And that's what I meant about resolving a lot of these political tensions that fuel the insurgency. If we can deal with those, then we can probably reduce around three quarters of the insurgency to a much lower level and therefore - there'll be pockets of course - and then we're left with the real hardcore Taliban associated with al-Qaeda, determined to overthrow the Afghan state and be a venue for international terrorism. But that's a very different problem to the one that we face at the moment where we have this widespread insurgency across the South and East.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

But at some point, you are going to have to talk to some pretty unsavoury characters, aren't you?

MARK SEDWILL:

Well we probably aren't, but the Afghan government almost certainly will. And it is a feature of any civil war, any civil conflict that in the end people who fought each other and in many cases carried out some pretty appalling acts on either side have to be brought together. That's already been the case in Afghanistan. There are people already within the government system, supporting the government, who were responsible for some dreadful acts during the Afghan Civil War. And the only way in the end to bring a civil conflict to the end is to accept that those people have to be brought in, and that will be true of the Taliban too.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

(over) And you're going to have to do those kind … Those talks with the Afghan government - as you say, we'll have to have those talks, very soon won't they, because you need, as you say, to turn the tide. The tide has got to be turned fast. I mean there's not long before the public I suppose run out of patience with all this and demand something else.

MARK SEDWILL:

Well I think the public rightly question in all NATO countries - and of course you know it is important to remember we're dealing with an alliance of 44 countries, NATO and many others who are dealing with this - and the public in all of those countries are absolutely right to question are the sacrifices their troops are making worthwhile, do we have the right strategy, can we deliver the success that they rightly demand. And you're absolutely right that people are impatient because they have seen that this has not gone well over the past few years. I believe, however, if we can deliver success this year, if we can roll back the insurgency this year, if we can show that the Afghans are capable of taking responsibility themselves for their own state and stabilising the South, then public opinion will start to turn and we will get the patience we need.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

(over) And is that going to happen by the end of this year?

MARK SEDWILL:

I think we will show this year … I'm confident that we can show this year that we have a grip on this and that we have turned this around both militarily and on the civilian side, and that's the plan.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

(over) So that progress has been made, but that won't have been achieved by this year?

MARK SEDWILL:

There'll be progress made I believe this year, significant progress made this year. We won't be at the end game by the end of this year. That is clear. This is still going to be several years until we're in a position to be really confident that we've succeeded, but I think we'll see by the end of 2010 that a declining situation we've seen in the past few years has been reversed.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

The problem is that there is no magic solution there, is there?

MARK SEDWILL:

Absolutely.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

I mean you've lived there, you've been in Afghanistan. You know the culture, you know the ideology and you know what drives a lot of the people there. There's no magic solution. I mean the best really is that we can hope we can get the troops out in many years to come and have a somewhat fairly shaky hold of some government that can just about control it?

MARK SEDWILL:

I think you're absolutely right, there is no magic solution, and that's why some of the headlines that this reintegration fund is the … you know is exactly that and is just going to bring the insurgency to an end are misplaced because it is a complex phenomenon and it's a very, very difficult country to deal with. The reason we're there of course is not because of Afghanistan. It's because it was the haven for al-Qaeda and they attacked us.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

And how many years before we get out? I know it's difficult to put a figure on it, but …

MARK SEDWILL:

Very difficult to say. My own view on this is that we will be - and indeed this is the Afghan government view - is that we'll probably still have troops in these frontline roles for three years, maybe three to five years. We will have, I believe, many foreign troops there in training and supporting roles probably for a decade or more. And of course we'll have development aid - this is one of the poorest countries in the world - probably for 20, 30, 40 years even. But those phases are very different and our aim is to take those troops who are in combat roles at the moment and gradually move them back by building up the Afghan capability to deal with that themselves.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

Mark Sedwill, we'll have to leave it there, but good luck with the new job.

MARK SEDWILL:

Sophie, thank you.

SOPHIE RAWORTH:

Thank you very much.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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