Mark Sedwill, former special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a London seminar that western governments had failed to aallocate the cash needed to stop the insurgency and improve the economic situation of Afghans. Photograph: Susannah Ireland /Rex Features

Mark Sedwill tells London seminar that mistakes were made over exclusion of Pashtun tribes and British troop deployment

One of Britain's most senior diplomats has delivered a stinging critique of the government's approach to Afghanistan in the past and damped down expectations of the state of the country when UK combat troops pull out in three years.

Mark Sedwill told an audience in London that it was a big mistake to exclude Pashtun tribes in the south, the Taliban heartland, from the international conference in Bonn that drew up a new constitutional settlement for Afghanistan a decade ago.

The Taliban's "support base felt alienated" and the Taliban "exploited that sense of exclusion", Sedwill, the government's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said.

He made it clear that for years the British and other western governments failed to devote the necessary resources to quell the growing insurgency and improve the economic plight of Afghans. He described 2009 as probably the toughest year facing foreign forces there. There was a spike in British casualties, especially in Sangin, a Taliban stronghold in northern Helmand, Sedwill recalled.

More than 100 British troops were killed in Sangin, considered to be the most dangerous area in Afghanistan. In a remarkably frank comment from a serving senior diplomat, Sedwill referred to an "unseemly row between the military and political leadership which broke out in public" at the time.

The dispute, over the number of British troops who should be deployed in Helmand and an alleged lack of adequate equipment, meant public support for the British military deployment there "evaporated", Sedwill added.

It was clear that the ambassador's comments – at a meeting of the Global Strategy Forum thinktank – were prepared in advance and it is unlikely he would have spoken so forthrightly about past mistakes if they had not been cleared in advance.

Sedwill's remarks suggest the government is preparing public opinion for a British withdrawal from Afghanistan that would leave the country in a less stable state than ministers or officials have suggested. And part of the problem, the government clearly believes, lies in the raft of strategic, tactical, and political mistakes over the past decade.

Sedwill's address was titled, "Afghanistan: Are British Objectives and the Timetable for 2014 Still Intact?" He said the government had made an "absolutely clear commitment" to withdraw British combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. "There is no prospect of that changing." he added.

He said there were three strands to current British strategy. One was to help turn Afghanistan into a "viable state". Sedwill noted it would take decades to "turn around" a poor country whose illiteracy rate was still "staggeringly high".

Second, was building up Afghan forces to a state where they were "resilient enough" to deal with a continuing insurgency. Third, was a political process leading to "regional reconciliation". Talks with the Taliban were at a "very, very, delicate stage", he said.

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