Afghanistan: Some First Impressions

The following is a guest post by Nic Hailey, who was a Counsellor – Political, Press, and Public Affairs in the British Embassy in Washington, now the new Deputy Ambassador at the British Embassy in Kabul. He writes about his initial impressions after his first few weeks in Afghanistan.

After four wonderful years in Washington, I’ve just taken up a new job as Deputy Ambassador in Kabul and kindly been invited to write an article about my first impressions.

It’s been a fascinating time to arrive in Afghanistan. After a series of high-profile international conferences that demonstrated the international community’s long-term commitment to Afghanistan (including the May Chicago conference), we’re now settling down to the business of ensuring that Afghanistan is firmly on the path to security, stability and prosperity, by the time the last of our combat troops leave at the end of 2014.

Of course that security transition doesn’t start this summer – it’s been going on for some time, as Afghan forces have taken the lead for security in more and more of the country, and it will continue. Afghan forces will soon have taken the security lead in areas home to 75% of the population.

But transition isn’t just about security handover. It’s also about making sure that everything which the UK and others are doing now helps to build up the capacity of the Afghan government to keep its people safe and secure for the long-term – helping protect our national security by ensuring that Afghans can take control of theirs.  For example, my Embassy colleagues include prison governors, policemen or experts in counter-narcotics whose job is to train and mentor their Afghan counterparts – or increasingly to train those counterparts to become trainers and mentors themselves, so they can pass on what they’ve learnt.

This has been fascinating, but in one sense it’s the kind of work I was expecting.  What’s surprised me more has been some of the other things going on.

In my first week, I met the director of the Afghan National Institute of Music, which turns talented kids from across the country into impressive young classical musicians.  As a keen musician myself (though I doubt I’d pass the institute’s entry auditions!) it’s inspiring to see kids getting to fulfill their musical dreams despite the huge challenges they and their country face.

I’m looking forward to meeting the guy who’s developing Afghanistan’s football league and a football-based TV reality show, which the Embassy (as the representative of the world’s greatest footballing nation) has helped to support – see David Ignatius’s piece in the Post.

Afghanistan’s Olympians have been competing in London – and have won a medal too.  Everyone here is proud of them – as one Minister told me, it’s not so much about winning medals as about the fact that they can be there in the first place and represent a different face of their country to the world.

And last week, my colleague Colin Crorkin handed back to the Afghan national museum a set of artifacts from Afghanistan’s past, brought over from the UK by the RAF with help from the British Council – a moving reminder of this country’s rich and multilayered history.

It’s all too easy to think about Afghanistan through the prism of our military campaign, or to focus only on this country’s difficulties and challenges.  Those challenges are of course very real.  But the young musicians, the football entrepreneurs, or just the ordinary Afghans taking pride in their history or their nation showing its sportspeople to the world, are a good reminder that Afghanistan is about a lot more than that – and of what has been achieved here.