MAJOR GENERAL James Cowan, who led the British Army operation in Afghanistan as the head of Task Force Helmand in 2009-10, says Britain needs to “swallow our pride and support a moderate wing of the Taliban”  to avert a “catastrophe,” a “humanitarian disaster” and a “civil war.”

Major General Cowan now runs the Halo Trust, a de-mining charity, which has over 2,000 staff still working in Afghanistan removing deadly mines and “IEDs” planted during decades of war.

The fact that the man who led the life-and-death fight against the Taliban for Britain now argues this suggests that a British deal with the Taliban is inevitable – it’s just a question of when. Major General Cowan’s argument is that sooner is better than later.

Cowan made the argument at a “Conservative Friends of Afghanistan” fringe meeting at the recent Conservative conference, which I discussed in the Morning Star a couple of weeks ago. I want to go back and emphasise Cowan’s points, because they are so starkly laid out. He did not mince his words.

He said “we have to confront the reality of the situation” in Afghanistan, arguing there are “three possibilities”: the first “is a liberal opposition formed around the brain drain of 100,000-plus Afghans who have left,” using this exile opposition for “at some point a reinsertion of a moderate, liberal Afghan government. I’m afraid to say, much as I would love that, I just don’t think there is a political will in the West to make it happen.”

The second is “much the worst possibility, it is that we ignore Afghanistan, we deny the aid and we drive a fissure between the moderate wing of the Taliban, the Kandahari Taliban and the hardliners, the Haqannis, and that we create a civil war upon Afghanistan, and we inflict upon Afghanistan a catastrophe that follows this disaster.”

Instead, he argued for a third way, saying “I therefore believe there has to be a realist middle way, by which we swallow our pride and we support the moderate wing of the Taliban, who are not committed to international terrorism and want a conservative country which will not be in line with Western values but will be better than the extremism of the Taliban Mark I. 

“And we have a very short window of opportunity now to make it happen through our decisions we make in terms of international aid and the relations we form with that moderate wing of the Taliban.”

He told the Tory delegates – who reacted with a sort of shocked silence – “It’s not nice, it’s not desirable, but I’m afraid it’s the only realistic opportunity we have.”

Cowan’s argument shows how limited options are for Afghanistan. The Taliban have won, militarily – I think they won because military occupation did not bring “democracy” or “freedom” to Afghanistan. The “benefits” of the occupation were wildly overestimated – there wasn’t really a healthy democracy bringing widespread freedom, there was a corrupt client government siphoning off cash in return for doing the occupying powers’ bidding, and this came at the cost of brutal war which caught up entirely innocent Afghans. 

This allowed the ultra-conservative nationalist Taliban to win, once the overwhelming force of the Western armies was withdrawn.

Supporters of the occupation also accept it is now over, even if they have different explanations for the failure, so we have to deal with the situation as it stands. The 20-year occupation shaped the economy, so unlike truly independent nations, a huge part of Afghanistan’s government reserves are held abroad. 

The nation is also very heavily dependent on aid. The US and other Western nations both froze billions of pounds of Afghanistan’s central bank money, which is held outside Afghanistan, and aid when the Taliban took over. 

Without this money Afghanistan cannot pay hospital workers or the people who maintain urban water supply or deliver food aid. The West argues they don’t want to let the Taliban have money – or at least not until they extract promises from the new government. But Afghan people are the ones who will suffer what Major General Cowan calls a “catastrophe.”
Cowan’s argument was – by his own admission – a pretty bleak one. He said early engagement could, at best, encourage 
“a moderate Taliban regime, really no nicer than that which rules Saudi Arabia, an ally,”  and possibly lead to a government “which allows women to go in the workplace, albeit segregated, which allows girls to go to school, albeit segregated, which does not export terrorism and does not destabilise the region.”

I think an agreement between the Western powers and the Taliban is almost inevitable – at the same meeting, Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said Britain would probably have to “hold its nose” and do a deal with the Taliban , although the minister mostly said the government would do this to try to beat competition for influence from competitor nations like China. The only question is how long they will delay such an agreement and whether by delaying they will create a humanitarian crisis or even a civil war in Afghanistan.

The failure of 20 years of occupation, the fact that all that blood and treasure created a completely hollow government that could not stand up to the Taliban, or as Major General Cowan put it, the way “a bunch of men in flip flops armed with AK-47s were able to defeat one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world” means the debate about Afghanistan’s future looks very bleak.

It’s also striking that this very downbeat debate was taking place at the centre of the Conservative conference, among  Tory ministers and senior military officers: it is a real contrast to the unrealistic reporting of the Afghan defeat in the media, which focused instead on claims of “betrayal” by the United States in order to avoid discussing the depth of the defeat and deep failures of the Afghan occupation.

Solomon Hughes writes every Friday. Follow him on Twitter @Sol_Hughes