Examination of Witnesses (Questions 189-199)
RT HON
CLARE SHORT
MP, MR BARRIE
IRETON AND
MR MATT
BAUGH
TUESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2001
Chairman
189. Secretary of State, welcome to you and
your officials and thank you very much for the briefing. I think
you can assume we have all read it, so we need not have a long
opening statement, unless there is anything desperate you would
like to say in addition.
(Clare Short) It is not desperate, but
I would like to say something, briefly.
190. Absolutely.
(Clare Short) I think a lot of the public commentary
on the conflict as well as the humanitarian situation has not
been well-informed. It has been a mixture of partial information,
high emotion—for very understandable reasons—and an
exaggeration of the UK role. The UK is trying to play a constructive
role, and although both militarily and, of course, in the humanitarian
effort, which is a UN-led effort with international support, we
have been one player with a lot of influence (because I have such
an effective department) but sometimes the talk is as though we
are half the military campaign and half the humanitarian effort
and that causes commentary to be distorted. After September 11
when all the international staff were withdrawn there were something
like 13 days when no food moved. That was the biggest worry to
me and my department and our complete focus was on getting the
food moving again, both into the country and across the country,
in very difficult circumstances with a lot of fear and impossible
communications from inside the country because of the Taliban
order of no use of telephones. That is the thing we have absolutely
focussed on. You have seen the daily figures and they went up
consistently. That was the purpose of my visit to Pakistan and
to Peshawar, to see all the UN agencies. I have to say the World
Food Programme has performed magnificently in some of the most
difficult circumstances anyone has seen, in terms of humanitarian
crises with military dimensions. While I was in Islamabad I met
with representatives of the British NGOs that were operating on
the ground, and all but one of them, insofar as they knew what
was going on inside the country, thought their distribution systems
were holding up. The one which was not was Islamic Relief, which
is an enormously impressive organisation based in my constituency,
as a matter of coincidence, or maybe not (it has nothing to do
with me, but it is the quality of the people who live in my constituency)
who were operating around Kandahar. So for understandable reasons
they were having difficulties. At the same time as that the UK
NGOs issued their appeal for the pause in the bombing. I think
they made an error, for, again, understandable emotional reasons.
Everyone hates the idea of a country that is hungry being bombed.
We already understand the complexity of the situation and why
that was happening, but it was based on their hearts and not their
information as humanitarians. It was not true that a pause in
the bombing was necessary to get more food in, because day by
day we were getting more food in. In fact, as I tried to say repeatedly,
what we want is limited bombing and the earliest possible end
to the conflict, not a pause which would just prolong it. I think
that was unprofessional but understandable and not based on real
information. By coincidence, I met there the people operating
on the ground in those organisations just before they made that
call. One other thing I would like to say is that since the military
situation has improved and with the collapse of the Taliban, we
have had humanitarian trouble because the major route into the
country is from Peshawar in Pakistan, with the bulk of the food
going in that way. Because, of course, there was a lot of uncertainty
and movement in that region of the country the Afghan truckers,
who have been the heroes of carrying food in, were unwilling to
move. They are the people with the best possible information of
what is going on inside the country because they are locals and
they have their ways of getting information. For a few days we
could live with this because there were stockpiles because the
targets for the previous month had been over-fulfilled, but that
was getting very worrying. I talked to Catherine Bertini last
night, who is in New York. The World Food Programme had used its
own trucks and employed commercial truckers to take in some food
yesterday to try and explore whether the routes could go open,
which again I think is brave and looking ahead. Afghan truckers
with their own trucks, who had gone right through the Russian
war, know how to cope in Afghanistan. That worked well, and I
understand today—because, of course, it is earlier there
than here—1,300 tonnes have moved, which is fabulous. I
imagine, but do not know, that some Afghan truckers are probably
moving too, today, because I do not think the World Food Programme
alone could get that much going in a day, but we do not know that
for certain. So there we are, we are moving again. The systems
are holding. Some parts of the country are becoming more accessible.
Kabul seems to be calm, and Mazar is uncertain but people are
there (I think some French troops are there now). A prolonged
period of instability and uncertainty would create problems for
the humanitarian effort, but if things move forward in the way
that we would want, most particularly a transitional government
being agreed through the UN and troops moving in just to stabilise
the situation but then a government that wants to co-operate with
the international community, it would become much, much easier
to move to humanitarian-plus; get schools reopened, and Food for
Work and so on. That is the optimistic scenario but the current
situation is very uncertain and troubling, though this reopening
of the border with Pakistan is very good news in the last couple
of days.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Together
with the briefing that is very helpful. The sort of message we
have got from the NGOs on "pause the bombing" is that
they were very concerned about winter setting in and whether they
could get sufficient food in before that. I think events have
overtaken matters.
Ann Clwyd
191. During the weekend there has been a lot
of publicity surrounding the Bagram airfield. I wondered if you
could tell us what role is envisaged for that airfield. Is it
going to make it easier to bring humanitarian aid into the country,
or what? How essential do you think it is that more of the British
military are deployed in Afghanistan?
(Clare Short) I cannot tell you authoritatively. I
have not seen any military instructions. I probably could if I
asked but I have been at the World Bank meeting in Ottawa as well,
although I have tried to brief myself since I returned. My understanding
from the special Cabinet meeting was that this is the airport
nearest to Kabul, and just returning diplomats to Kabul, including
our own (I think the French are there, the Turks and Vendrell,
the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General and
the UN team have been there) and getting the airport under control,
open and operational is part of normalisation, is part of Kabul
being able to operate and is part of international efforts being
able to come and go. That is all part of creating the conditions
in which humanitarian assistance can improve, rather than just
the humanitarian operation.
192. We heard Catherine Bertini talking last
week and we were supplied with a UN map which showed various corridors
where humanitarian aid could be brought into the country. How
were those corridors working at the moment? Are they working?
Is this just a map with aspirations?
(Clare Short) I have not seen Catherine Bertini's
map but I have to say she has done an admirable job. They did
a very good job in Kosovo but they have excelled themselves. I
do think most people in countries like ours have not heard of
the World Food Programme and do not know it is a very efficient
UN operation that gets food to people who would otherwise go hungry
in some of the most difficult situations in the world. I think
we should give credit, and people should know that this part of
the UN system works enormously well. So I have not seen her particular
map, but I presume they are the same corridors that we all talk
about. Broadly, they are all working with the newly open one from
Tajikistan, which is the one that the UK helped to support the
Russian emergency operation to get operating there, and has over-delivered
on food targets. The big problem was, as I said in my opening
remarks, that the movement from Peshawar in Pakistan, which was
the major corridor, was not operational for the last few days
and now the very good news is that yesterday and today more food
is moving again. So far so good, but, as you will understand,
instability and uncertainty creates enormous difficulties for
humanitarian operations. We need things to move forward and more
stabilisation. If we get that we will be able to do not just as
well as we were doing but even better across the parts of the
country that are not in Taliban control. I am optimistic but we
are not there yet.
193. During the crisis in the Sudan you repeatedly
called for a halt in the bombing but now you seem to have said
fairly consistently that you are not calling for a halt in the
bombing in order to get humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. What
is the difference between the two situations?
(Clare Short) In the crisis in the Sudan I did not
call for a halt in the bombing, I called for an end to the war.
What I said was that the food is delivered by plane into the Sudan
and one of the appalling realities is that 90 per cent of the
humanitarian relief going into southern Sudan is spent on planes
and a tiny part of the cost is actually on food for real people.
We and others have, over the last ten years or so, spent considerable
amounts on humanitarian relief for the Sudan, only a tiny proportion
of it having got to the people. There was some evidence that military
forces were diverting some of that limited supply and what I said
was that to focus simply on the humanitarian and calling for more
humanitarian was not good enough; that there was some sense in
which you could argue that that was propping up this endless war
and we needed a much bigger effort to get the peace process in
Sudan. That remains my view. That is what I said, which was thought
to be very controversial, and I still think that is astonishing,
because I think it is complete good sense. Still, the situation
in the Sudan is a little bit more hopeful about getting the peace
process moving, but I think it still needs more effort and energy.
As I said in my earlier remarks, the call for the pause in the
bombing to deliver humanitarian aid took no account of the fact
that we were increasing the deliveries day-by-day at the time
when the call was made. So it was not based on any objective reality.
As I have said repeatedly in the House, we should all hate bombing,
we should all want it to be minimised and brought to an end as
soon as possible, and I am glad I live in a country where that
is the general sentiment of the people, but we have also got to
be hard-headed about what we have got to accomplish and accomplish
it as quickly as possible, otherwise you prolong the suffering
of people. It was not based on an objective reality. If there
had been a pause claiming that it was necessary and was not based
on the facts of increased delivery day-by-day I think it would
have been very likely to make humanitarian supplies and obstructing
them part of the conflict, because if you could bring about a
pause in the bombing by having difficulties with humanitarian
supplies then obstructing the humanitarian supplies would be a
way of stopping the bombing—so that was a very great danger.
Thirdly, we must act on the basis of reality but what we want,
surely, is a success for the purposes of our operation in Afghanistan
as rapidly as possible, with bombing used carefully targeted and
brought to an end as soon as possible, not a pause that actually
prolongs it all. For those three sets of reasons I think it was
a mistaken call, but it obviously struck a chord with lots of
caring people who hate the idea of hungry people being bombed,
and they thought that if organisations as prestigious as Oxfam
and Christian Aid were calling for it they must know what they
are talking about and it ought to be supported. I think it is
extremely unfortunate that they put themselves in that position,
but there you are.
Mr Colman
194. The media have suddenly gone very silent
about the potential for a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.
The evidence you have placed before us shows, if you like, a new
area of potential internally displaced persons and internally
stranded persons going up from 5 million (which was your original
figure) to a possible further 2 million on top of that, so 7.5
million people who are internally displaced. Do you think those
sorts of figures have credence? You are saying that food is getting
in but do you think people are realising how difficult the situation
is now and how it has potentially got worse over the last couple
of weeks because of the much higher numbers of people who are
internally displaced?
(Clare Short) Firstly, on the silence on the problems
of Afghanistan, there was deafening silence before September 11.
We had a potential humanitarian catastrophe of very large proportions
before September 11 and the media, and most other people, were
not in the least bit interested. As Catherine Bertini pointed
out, the UN was feeding 5 million people out of a population—I
am not sure of the exact number—of about 20 million before
September 11. It is very important that everybody remembers that
we had a catastrophe brewing in Afghanistan before September 11.
September 11 and its consequences complicated that. The UN appeal
that was issued shortly thereafter talked about 7.5 million people
potentially in need, and that was based on 5 to 6 million in need
of food aid inside Afghanistan and the potential for a further
1.5 million people to move as refugees across the borders, on
top of course of the 2 million already in Pakistan and approaching
that number already in Iran. That was the UN's best prediction.
It did not come about. The 1.5 million did not move over the borders,
but that is not just because the borders were technically closed;
people were getting across the mountains and vulnerable people
were being let through. The latest figure I saw of the numbers
that have probably moved across the borders was 100,000 or so.
So very considerably less than the 1.5 million that was projected
in that appeal. There has been internal movement, as you would
expect, of people moving from cities to villages nearby. There
has been a bit more of that movement near Kandahar recently, but
again not the 1.5 million-type numbers, just people moving about
as military activity took place. So there has been further movement
of internally displaced people around Kandahar currently, but
I do not recognise the description you gave of suddenly, massive
millions of internally displaced people inside. It is not as dramatic
as that. They were internally displaced before because of the
drought and the fighting and other troubles. In the military situation
we have got success but if we can stabilise it and keep moving
forward we will make it possible for us to massively improve humanitarian
provision. Up until recently, remarkably, it has kept up, but
if we had a long period of instability then we would be in grave
difficulty.
195. How bleak do you think the potential could
be for displaced people, particularly in the rural areas this
winter?
(Clare Short) You can imagine all sorts of scenarios.
The worst scenario would be what happened to Afghanistan after
the Russian withdrawal. I do not think there is any prospect of
that happening but if you have got that kind of chaos and factional
fighting on top of the potentially enormous humanitarian disaster,
it would be a truly appalling situation. That is to be avoided
and, I think, will be avoided. I feel in my bones, if you know
what I mean, optimistic that the UN will make progress on the
transitional government. That will change things remarkably. Then
we will have a government that the UN can fully recognise, and
UN staff can return in big numbers, with all the legitimacy of
that and the legitimacy of some troops from other countries to
help stabilise the situation on behalf of the legitimate Afghan
government. If that moves fairly rapidly and the continuing collapse
of the Taliban goes on, we could be in a very much better situation
in a matter of weeks. However, I cannot give you absolute certainty
now. As you know, the situation is unfolding as we speak, and
I am hopeful that it will improve but if we got more instability
then we could get humanitarian troubles. That remains the case.
196. We did have evidence that people had fled
to the cities to avoid the drought and now have fled back to the
country to avoid the bombing. Is that your assessment of this
sort of movement that has gone on?
(Clare Short) Yes. There was movement of people, not
in the sort of numbers you have been using, from cities at the
beginning of the bombing, but not far out. Again, our information
is limited. There is some satellite information. Because of the
ban on the use of telephones, Afghan staff employed by the UN
and everyone have performed heroically through this—keeping
everything going with limited information. So there seems to be
that kind of movement but not the vast distances and not the sort
of massive numbers that you were indicating.
(Mr Baugh) I think what we saw as well were people
leaving cities and moving back to villages where they had friends
and family as well. That was a process that we saw at the outset.
(Clare Short) As you would expect, but we do not know
the numbers either. It did not seem to be overwhelming numbers.
Of course, the World Food Programme was set up before September
11 because we had a big crisis so they had trucks and routes and
warehouses, but as the military campaign started they took off
more routes and delivered more directly out to rural areas, which
they did very quickly. So they were following where the people
went, broadly.
Mr Walter
197. Secretary of State, you talked about political
instability and your concerns about that being prolonged. Is there
any evidence so far, either on the question of aid or on the question
of the movement of people, that within the vacuum we have got
and the various bodies who seem to have moved into that vacuum,
as the Taliban has withdrawn, there is any obstruction to aid
going in or any obstruction to the movement of people from those
people who appear, from the media, to be freelancing, to some
extent?
(Clare Short) Although the Taliban have obstructed
by saying "no telephones; women cannot work for the UN; girls
cannot go to school" and made all sorts of difficulties for
humanitarian efforts, because they knew the people of the country
were dependent on the UN they never 100 per cent obstructed. Even
now they do not 100 per cent obstruct because it would be lunacy,
would it not? How can you obstruct people, of whom you claim to
be the government, being able to eat? Similarly, the Northern
Alliance, and other groupings, are not obstructing the food. It
is the disorder and mess that makes it too dangerous for humanitarians
to operate and the Afghan truckers feeling too unsafe to be able
to move that is our biggest enemy. Then you get some freelancing,
of course; stealing of equipment and supplies. The Taliban did
take over the warehouse in Kandahar and the Red Cross warehouse
in Kabul was bombed. There is a dispute about why, what could
be seen and why it was bombed, but that was a loss of equipment.
So we have had those kind of troubles, but it is disorder that
is our biggest enemy.
Mr Robathan
198. Secretary of State, I am rather wary of
mutual backslapping, but can I just say it was particularly gratifying
last week to hear Catherine Bertini of the World Food Programme
and other UN agencies say that the UK and your department had
been at the forefront of providing humanitarian assistance. I
think we were all pleased to hear that, if I may say so. I would
like to ask particularly about the position of the 50 per cent
plus of the population of Afghanistan which has had nothing to
say about recent political developments and whether it is possible,
despite, enormous difficulties, for the delivery of aid to be
particularly targeted to women and, indeed, children dependent
upon those women in Afghanistan and to give them some greater
position within Afghanistan, given the huge cultural difficulties
there are there. We hear the Northern Alliance might take a not
dissimilar position with regard to the position of women as the
Taliban did. Beyond that, I would like to know what you think
we could do to encourage development of women and their position
within politics in the reconstruction of Afghanistan?
(Clare Short) Thank you. Compliments to the department
are deserved. It is an enormously capable department, respected
in the international system, and its competence in humanitarian
is one of the fastest and the best quality, and the country should
be proud of their civil servants. That is their reputation across
the world. This emergency has been more complicated than, say,
Kosovo in which, to a certain extent, we had a UK operation. We
have had to help an international operation operate better by
being there ready with money, people and equipment to get the
thing to move, which is more difficult than doing it yourself.
They are extremely good and they deserve those compliments. On
the position of women in Afghanistan, as you all know, the Taliban's
determination to return Afghanistan to medieval conditions gave
them these false notions (which are not based on any teachings
of Islam, as I think we all understand) that girls should not
be able to go to school, women cannot work and women cannot be
university lecturers. So there was the closure of girls schools,
then the boys schools because the women are the teachers predominantly,
and then the universities because there were women lecturers and
nearly half the students in Kabul were women. Then women had to
wear burkas even in areas where it was not traditional, women
could not go out without a male relative, and even the windows
of houses that have women in them have to have black put over
them so no one might look in and catch a glimpse of a woman. As
I understand it, it is all because men are so incapable of controlling
themselves that if they saw a woman they might misbehave—which
says something about what they think about men. Remarkable and
terrible. We have seen lots of situations where women are misused
but this is taking it to an evil logic that is difficult to imagine,
except that it is not in the real world we are living in now.
This had been going on for some time, and the UN has tried to
keep humanitarian supplies moving and not collude in any way with
the Taliban doing this to women, which has been a very, very difficult
operation, over the years. So, for example, they said they did
not really want women internationals in the UN operation and obviously
the UN could not agree to that, but did agree to bring in more
Muslim women. Then they said Muslim women working for the UN had
to bring a male relative with them, and difficulties like this.
The World Food Programme, had previously had Work for Food Programmes
across the country, and as Catherine Bertini said they were probably
the biggest employer in Afghanistan: people doing irrigation systems,
building schools, fixing roads, in local communities, always employing
women—often as leaders—because they are very good
in communities, especially when men are off fighting. There are
a lot of widows. Similarly, the World Food Programme provided
food for schools and kept children going to school and special
additional, at the end of the month, oil for families if girls
stayed in school (they do this in different parts of the world
just to get girls to school) but they had to stop doing it in
the end because the Taliban would not allow girls to go to school,
and the World Food Programme decided it would be wrong to carry
on providing the food to schools; they would be absolutely colluding
in the exclusion of girls from schools. I wanted to emphasise
that this battle has been going on for a long time and the UN
has really tried to resist and find ways through. For example,
it was the World Food Programme that negotiated with the Taliban
the bakeries in Kabul. When they made the order that women could
not work there were many, many widows of men who died in the fighting
and because of the fighting and the landmines all over the country
there are many families with disabled heads of households, so
the order that women could not work would mean many families would
simply starve. The World Food Programme negotiated that the widows
could run these bakeries in Kabul, and the World Food Programme
took in the wheat, the women cooked the Naan bread and kept vast
numbers of households, including households headed by disabled
men, going. I just want you to know the UN has been really working
in an enormously difficult situation trying not to collude, and
resisting the oppression of women. What can be done in the future?
The UN is brokering the establishment of the transitional government
and the UN protects and holds all the conventions we have on the
elimination of discrimination against women, the rights of the
child—which includes girls as well as boys—and so
on. It will not collude in this kind of misbehaviour. The UN has
to uphold the norms to which we have all signed up. Participation
of women in politics is a chief part of that. I must actually
make an effort to communicate with Ambassador Brahimi on this.
I feel confident that the issue of women's participation in politics
is being taken forward, but I must get myself a report and I will
do that and let you know. I do know that the World Food Programme
is poised, as soon as there are any areas of the country that
are safe, to move beyond the immediate humanitarian back to Food
for Work and Food for Schools. Then we will be going to local
communities, saying "What is your priority? We will be looking
for women's leadership in those communities. We can deliver food
to your community, you tell us what projects you are all going
to work on." People are paid for their labour, which will
be building schools or irrigation systems, many of which have
been smashed. Similarly, the World Food Programme is poised to
return with Food for Schools and the incentive of the extra oil
for girls who attend schools. So I can assure you, insofar as
it is possible in this very difficult situation, the UN, in the
way in which we operate, will do all in our power to bolster the
position of women and to get girls back to school. Let me say
this final thing about girls' education: it is not just that it
is desirable—which it is, of course, and a basic human right—and
it is oppressive and wrong that girls should not be going to school,
but the research evidence now is overwhelming that of any single
intervention you can make in a poor country (and, of course, you
should never only make one) the most powerful is getting a generation
of children through even just primary education, including the
girls. As they grow up girls who have been to school will transform
their country. If you can get a generation of them through they
marry slightly later, have less children, who are massively more
likely to survive, the household income increases when girls have
been to school, they are better at getting their children into
school and they are better at getting health care. So we will
focus massively on really getting primary education rolling as
well as, of course, opening up all the other institutions.
199. The concern is that whomsoever is winning
the war in Afghanistan—be it the various factions of the
Northern Alliance or whoever—their attitude towards women
is not that much different to the Taliban's, yet back in 1973
in Kabul women used to be as free as men, one is told.
(Clare Short) Indeed, and in Herat, which is a very,
very famous, ancient city, where women were leading academics
and all sorts of leaders. Obviously, Afghanistan was very under-developed
and there were villages with very little development, but there
were very civilised cities and lots of educated women amongst
the cities. The Northern Alliance, I think, did not go to quite
the mad extremes as the Taliban in terms of closing schools as
a matter of absolute policy to prevent girls being at school,
but yes, I do not think, they have a record of respect for equality
for women. Let us all be clear, they will not be the government
of Afghanistan. It is absolutely agreed by the coalition, by all
the neighbouring countries, by the UN Security Council, that there
has to be a transitional government that is representative of
the ethnic groups in proportion to their proportion of the population.
That is what the UN is working on. Enormous efforts will go into
establishing that government and there will not be a Northern
Alliance government. Those parties that are part of the Northern
Alliance would have a part in the government, but there will not
be a Northern Alliance government. Obviously, at the moment, people
try to take Kabul and have ideas of declaring themselves the government,
but that will not be recognised by the international community.
Getting the transitional government recognised by the UN and then
fully co-operating in the international system is the prize to
get massive normalisation, and that work is taking place very
intensively now and, I hope, will produce results as soon as possible,
because it gives us a whole new way of working, as soon as we
have got a legitimate government recognised by the UN. It will
not be a Northern Alliance government.
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