SPEAKER Foreign Secretary, David Miliband

EVENT Afghanistan elections

DATE 21/10/2009

Foreign Secretary David Miliband commented on the prospects for the second round of Afghan elections during an interview with the Today programme on Wednesday 21 October.

Read the transcript

James Naughtie (JN), presenter: Well, we’re joined now by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.  Foreign Secretary, good morning.

David Miliband (DM), Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: Good morning.

JN: Do you think it’s possible within the next couple of weeks to have an election in Afghanistan which will be credible?

DM: Yes, I think that it is possible to have a credible election that provides a legitimate expression of the will of the Afghan people. I think that the measures that Ban Ki-moon has announced are important and I think the recognition of both the leading candidates, President Karzai and Dr Abdullah, that there had been attempts at widespread fraud, checked in significant part by the efforts of the International Electoral Complaints Commission, is important in that respect.

I also think, and this is key, that line one of the plan for the future of Afghanistan must be not just a credible government, not just a legitimate government, but a government with a coherent programme, a consensus programme for the future of the country, and that’s what we need to ensure comes out of the debates in the run-up to 7th November as well as the actual running of the election itself.

JN: Well, you say President Karzai has recognised the inadequacy of the previous poll. I mean, he was dragged to this position kicking and screaming. There’s no evidence at all that he’s changed his view that he should have remained as president after that election – he’s been forced into this. Why should we believe that those who engineered the last election on his behalf – and that’s what’s accepted in New York, in Washington and in London – won’t do the same again?

DM: We established the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission – that’s the international UN-backed body – to make sure that fraud was checked on any side, and as I say, both candidates have accepted that there was attempted fraud on all sides. President Karzai got 54% in the 2004 election; every candidate in any election wants to win on the first round; any candidate often meets more of their own supporters than they do of other people’s supporters. 

But I think the fact that reality set in, that the fact that while President Karzai seems to have got, and I think everyone agrees, got more votes than Dr Abdullah – Dr Abdullah’s performance was significant and a serious improvement on the second-place candidate in 2004 – we’ve now got the position where we can say not just that there could be a credible next round and a credible conclusion, but that a government would emerge which is a legitimate expression of the will of the Afghan people. That loyalty of the Afghan people to their own government is absolutely key to progress.

JN: Well, we’re talking about an election which is going to take place in November. The snow is already falling in Afghanistan. In many outlying areas it’s going to be difficult for people to get to the polls. There are also security worries, of course. If there is a tiny turnout – you know, some people are talking about 20% - would that be a credible mandate for any government? 

DM: You’re right to raise the seriousness of the difficulties, both the security situation, and you’re right to say that the fact that the conclusion of the first round has taken such a long time, five or six weeks, makes life more difficult.

I don’t want to set arbitrary limits now or arbitrary targets now because, of course, in different parts of the country the turnout was quite differential. This is the first Afghan-led election – in some areas it headed for 50%, in other areas it was much lower. 

There’s still some dispute about the overall turnout, 25-30%. But what we know is that we need to maximise the opportunities for people to vote and we need to ensure that the legitimate expression of their will through the candidates they’re voting for come together in the interests of the whole country. I do think it’s important, the following point, that in 2004 the second-place candidate got only 17% and this time Dr Abdullah was in the lower 30s. 

That points to a competitive election and anyone who watched, and I think you reported on the rallies, the debates, the TV arguments in advance of the election, will say this was a proper, competitive fight and the competition has been preserved by the actions of the Electoral Complaints Commission, and that’s right.

JN: Must there be an election? What if, in the interim, President Karzai and Dr Abdullah Abdullah and perhaps others agreed to produce some kind of government of national unity or under some umbrella name of that sort?  Would that be acceptable, do you think, to London and to Washington?

DM: Well, we’ve got to respect the Afghan processes. There’s one point which may sound detailed but which, I think, is incredibly important. Both the candidates yesterday spoke out against a coalition government. By that they mean a government in which ministries and governorships are doled out on a power-broking basis. In Afghanistan if you talk about a coalition government, it’s a bit like talking in Germany about the Weimar Republic – it brings a neuralgia, for obvious reasons. 

However, I talk about a consensus programme, a programme in which large majorities of the Afghan people can see in the commitments to clean appointments, in the commitments to local governance, in the commitments to improved Afghan national security forces, in the commitments to reaching out to the insurgency, the Afghan government talking to Taliban foot soldiers and commanders to say if you’re willing to live within the constitution, there’s a place for you in politics in Afghanistan – that consensus programme is something that we should hope for, and I hope that the debates and then the eventual run-off produce that.

JN: People are talking a lot about what the aim is in Afghanistan and perhaps how it’s changed since 2003 when the troops went in. Isn’t it true that the aim now is much, much more modest than the one, at least as it was stated rhetorically, was put to us all those years ago? In other words, if Kabul can be stabilised, if the regional capitals can be secured and roads can run between them, that’s about it. 

The truth is that out in the lands where the warlords hold sway any idea that democracy can be introduced, imposed, held, is now for the birds.

DM: But the military effort in Afghanistan was founded on a simple premise, which is that in the 1990s and the early 2000s it was the incubator of choice for international terrorism, leading to the terrible events of 9/11.  So the founding purpose of our military mission in Afghanistan is not that Afghanistan is the fifth-poorest country in the world, which it is, not that it doesn’t have a modern democracy or didn’t have a modern democracy, which it doesn’t, it’s that it was a threat not just to regional stability in Pakistan where we have such massive interests, but also to our own security directly in the western world. 

So that founding purpose is a security purpose, and that remains the case today.  However, in order to serve that purpose of ours we don’t just need international effort on the military and the civilian side, we certainly don’t need to try and create a colony in Afghanistan – that would be completely wrong. 

What we do need is Afghan governance of a kind that is credible in the eyes of its own people, we need Afghan security forces that are able to defend their own country, we need a political system that divides the insurgency and brings those who are willing to live within the constitution within it, and finally we need a relationship with its neighbours – above all Pakistan – in which all recognise that Pakistan has got to be a neutral state, not a client state. 

That is the four-point plan that is the foundation, not just of what we’re doing now, but what we did since 2001.  Now, you make a good point: there was a, sort of, rhetorical inflation in some quarters in the 2000s.  I think less so in the UK, actually, I don’t remember in this country…

JN: No, that’s fair.

DM: …I think it wasn’t here. But you’re right that we’re there in military terms, we’re sacrificing the lives of our soldiers are being put on the line because of our own security, and that is the only reason that a Government in this country would put people’s lives, our soldiers’ lives in danger – the security of our country. 

We have all sorts of good aspirations for tackling poverty and the rest of it, but that is not the reason that we are there militarily.  The reason we are in Afghanistan militarily is that we know the consequences of allowing the badlands of Afghanistan or the Afghan/Pakistan border to become an incubator for international terrorism.

JN: Foreign Secretary, thanks very much.

DM: Thank you.

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