Sky News Interviews Gordon Brown on Afghanistan

Last Updated on Sunday, 29 November 2009 13:54 Sunday, 29 November 2009 13:43

Gordon Brown has told Sky News that the President of Afghanistan risks losing international support if he fails to implement crucial reforms. Interviewed by Sky Political Editor Adam Boulton, the Prime Minister said he wanted an extra 5,000 Afghan forces trained in Helmand province by next year, and he wanted detail on reform of the police and government.

Mr Brown said that more progress must be made in Pakistan to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, adding that Britain is prepared to help re-build its education system.

Britain will host an international conference on January 28 to decide a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

Mr Brown said: "I will want to know that by the time we get to January 28 we have a credible plan in place from President Karzai so that we can train Afghan troops.

"Within three months of that I feel we should also have a credible plan about how he's going to reform the police service in Afghanistan... and within six months he has got to have appointed district and provincial governors."

Reforms in Afghanistan could lead to a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops.

Mr Brown said the milestones would create the conditions for control of the country to be handed over, district by district, to home-grown authorities and for UK troops to come home.

Interview Transcript

COLIN BRAZIER:
Gordon Brown has told Sky News that Afghanistan’s President risks losing international support if he fails to implement crucial reforms within his country. The Prime Minister wants details about reform of the police and government and an extra 5000 Afghan forces trained in Helmand by next year. Well the Prime Minister spoke to Sky’s political editor, Adam Boulton, at the Commonwealth Conference in Trinidad and was asked whether we are winning the war there.

GORDON BROWN:
I think there has been huge progress in some areas but not enough progress in others. I think there is an Afghan army being built up so, you know, it is now 90,000 in the army, we want it to be 135,000 or so within a year. There was no effective Afghan army and when we first looked at how many people in the Afghan army were properly trained I remember this two years ago, the figure was 500. So we are moving on the on the training of the Afghan army. We have got a lot to do on the training of the Afghan police, there are some very, very good district and provisional governors like Governor Mangal in Helmand and President Karzai has signalled that his second term must be about the inefficiencies and problems that have existed in central government so in these areas we are making some progress but not quickly enough.

ADAM BOULTON:
Yet we have the sad fact really that this was not a war instigated either by you or by President Obama yet both of you have had to increase troop numbers and see increasing casualties as well.

GORDON BROWN:
I think the strategy, that is the approach that we are taking, I mean obviously we are there in Afghanistan to prevent Al Qaeda coming back into Afghanistan to exercise terrorist activities from Afghanistan as they are doing from Pakistan to affect the streets of Britain but our approach to doing this has changed and rightly so. We are talking about counter insurgency which is winning the support of the Afghan people, that is the test. Can the Afghans themselves, who don’t want the Taliban but who do want law and order, they want security, they want services, can the Afghans themselves start to run their own affairs more effectively and that is going to be the benchmarks over the next few months and by a year from now we will want to have trained up 5000 Afghan forces ourselves in Helmand and we will want an army of more than 50, 45,000 more than we’ve got today so these are benchmarks of whether the Afghans can take more responsibilities for their own affairs.

ADAM BOULTON:
Realistically do the British people need to prepare themselves for another year of hard fighting and perhaps the sort of casualty level we’ve seen this year?

GORDON BROWN:
I think if Afghan forces are coming in with British forces and partnering them and if the local populations can see that this is an Afghan effort as well as a British or American or coalition effort, if the taking of ground and holding of the ground is more done by the Afghans in future then people will see that the Afghan people themselves are being protected by Afghans as well as by British soldiers and I think the Taliban will look more extreme, more out of touch and an insurgency which has got to be both dealt with and to some extent divided, because there are many people in this insurgency who are not ideologically extremist and who may be prepared to renounce violence.

ADAM BOULTON:
We are going to get President Obama’s announcement at West Point on Tuesday, are you going to want to make a further announcement about British troop levels which are already going up?

GORDON BROWN:
I’ll make an announcement next week about this. I will also want to talk about our strategy not just in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. I think we have got big issues to deal with in Pakistan as well and I think when I speak to the House of Commons on this I want to say I am asking more of the Pakistan government as well. If we are taking action and British lives are put at risk on the Afghan side of the border then we need to have effective action taken by the Pakistan government and the Pakistan forces on their side of the border. We’ve seen a lot of progress over the last few months moving in to South Waziristan, taking on the Pakistan Taliban but you know, people are going to ask, seven years, now eight years it is after 2001, eight years after 2001 people are going to ask why is Osama Bin Laden never been near to being caught …

ADAM BOULTON:
You’re sure he is in Pakistan are you?

GORDON BROWN:
We believe he is in Pakistan. Why is it that Sawahiri who is the number two in control has never been caught and what can the Pakistan authorities do that is far more effective to help us make sure that the Al Qaeda threat is dealt with in Pakistan itself and we will want to see more evidence of Pakistan action, not just troops in South Waziristan but the whole of the government machine taking action, the security services as well as the army, to identify those people who are terrorist groups within their own country and to help and work with us so that we can make sure that we are free from …

ADAM BOULTON:
What if they don’t do it?

GORDON BROWN:
I think that the support that we are prepared to give Pakistan which is in a very difficult economic position and the support that we are prepared to give the military is to reinforce their spoken determination. They tell us, and rightly so, that they wish to deal with this problem of terrorism but we want to see actions as well as words and we have seen the start of that, with 30,000 troops in South Waziristan, with the action in the Swat Valley, with the determination on all parts of the political process to deal with the terrorist threat but the fact remains that eight years on, Al Qaeda has a base in Pakistan, that that base is still there, they are able to recruit from abroad and the Pakistan authorities must convince us that they are taking all the action that is necessary to deal with that …

ADAM BOULTON:
You are saying that in terms of, that you are going to see the Pakistani Prime Minister next week, you talk to the President on the phone, this is what you’re saying?

GORDON BROWN:
Our campaign to free the British streets from terrorist influence must start in Pakistan from where three-quarters of the plots against British citizens have been masterminded and we must see more progress in Pakistan itself in dealing with that threat. Now we are prepared to support the Pakistan people because we know that the propaganda in madrassas and even in the ordinary schools in Pakistan is such that people are being fed material that is supportive of extremist action. We are prepared to help rebuild the education system in Pakistan, Professor Michael Barber who did so much in the British education system is now working on a project to help people in the Pakistan education system, so we understand that there is a whole set of issues relating to education, into the influences on a group of vulnerable young people, a lot of unemployment in Pakistan which feeds dissent and everything else, a whole set of issues which the Pakistanis themselves have got to deal with in relation to how people see the Pakistan state but you’ve got to ask yourself why after eight years, after September 11th, after all the effort that we’ve put in, Osama Bin Laden still is free, Sawahiri is still free, there has been no evidence that has allowed us to get to them and yet people in Pakistan know where they are.

ADAM BOULTON:
And do you think there is perhaps, as David Cameron suggested this week, been too much tolerance of Islamism amongst the British Pakistani population?

GORDON BROWN:
I don’t want to get into that instance where I think very serious mistakes were made by the Conservative party and the way they put this but what I want to emphasise is that we are doing two things in Britain. One is we are trying to reinforce in the minds of the public that those people who are part of the decent hard working majority of British citizens include the vast majority of the Muslim population but secondly, wherever there are terrorist influences and wherever there are influences coming from Pakistan into Britain, we are determined by the legislation we have taken, by the expansion in our security forces, to deal with that potential threat and I think you’ll find that over the last two years in particular we have stepped up our action, giving the security services more power, giving them more resources and whilst we are clear that the influences are coming from Pakistan, asking the Pakistan government to do more to support us in dealing with these potential terrorist threats.

ADAM BOULTON:
How much more difficult is it made for you to make this case by the fact that the Chilcott Enquiry into Iraq is now underway and clearly public opinion is questioning whether that was right?

GORDON BROWN:
Well the are two very separate issues. Iraq as you know was a campaign that divided the country from the very beginning, it divided Europe and it divided the NATO alliance. Afghanistan is an effort that began in 2001 with every single member of the United Nations supporting the effort, every single member of NATO and people beyond NATO, so there are 43 countries in Afghanistan. I think the difficulty with Afghanistan is that after eight years, people want to see the results. They believe it is right to free the British streets, as far as we can, from the threat of terrorism from abroad, they understand that the threat is coming from Pakistan and Afghanistan but they want to know that the results that we want to see are going to be achieved and they want to know I think in particular, from the statements that are made by all the NATO and other leaders, that we have got this Afghanisation strategy now in the right place.

ADAM BOULTON:
Do you agree with Jeremy Greenstock that Iraq was of questionable legitimacy?

GORDON BROWN:
I think it is a matter for the enquiry now to look at all the evidence. I take my responsibility as a member of the cabinet for the decisions that we made but I think it really is now a matter for the enquiry to look at the evidence and I will wait until I see what the enquiry says.

ADAM BOULTON:
Where do you think we are domestically in politics? We have got a new polls this weekend suggesting in marginals Labour is in bad trouble, yet we had that poll a week or so ago suggesting that perhaps Labour was catching up and people hadn’t quite bought David Cameron’s Conservatives.

GORDON BROWN:
I think the way that news has been reported in the media over the last two years has been essentially a referendum on the government so for the last two years, whether it is over the economic crisis or MP’s expenses or whether it is over Afghanistan, the critique has been has the government made the right decision on these issues. I think this is now entering another phase, this is about a choice and people have got to look at whether what we’ve said on the economy and what we’ve done on the economy, they have got to look at how that compares with what the Conservatives said so when people start to see that on every major economic call in this recession, the Conservatives have made the wrong decision and we are, I think, proven to have made the right decisions, then I think when it becomes that choice then I think people look at things in a different light and of course people don’t expect to make a choice until an election actually happens but the closer you get to an election, I think people see this is more than a referendum and more than about what the government did in the past but a choice about what we do for the future.

ADAM BOULTON:
Finally, the UN Secretary General speaking here in Trinidad, said that now is the time to seal the deal on climate change. You are going to Copenhagen come what may, how confident are you that there will be a deal?

GORDON BROWN:
Well I think we made progress this weekend. I think the very fact that the Commonwealth represents rich and poor, small and large states, island states, mainland states, everybody who is experiencing in different ways the experience of climate change, the very fact that we can come together and reach a common view means that if we can come together, the world can come together.

ADAM BOULTON:
It’s going to cost us though in Britain isn’t it?

GORDON BROWN:
I think we’ve set aside the necessary money for the next few years for what we can do to mitigate and help adaptation on climate change, that has been part of our budgeting process all along. It does put a call on the rest of the world and they are going to have to answer that call and I am very clear that the rest of Europe and America, Australia and other countries will have to pay their share and I think there is a general recognition that that’s got to start very soon. The good thing about what we have found out this weekend is that people are ready to start action now and it may be that we can have climate change action starting to deal with mitigation and adaptation even before we have a legal treaty signed.

ADAM BOULTON:
Prime Minister, thank you very much indeed.

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