Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-25)
MR RAJA
JARRAH, MR
ROBIN GREENWOOD,
MR DAVID
WALKER, MS
ELIZABETH WINTER
AND MR
SIDDHARTH DEVA
18 SEPTEMBER 2003
Q20 Alistair Burt: I wanted to ask
about your perceptions of the government and the transitional
authority and your sense of whether it was growing in reputation,
whether it is stuck where it was, whether it had slipped back,
the reputation of President Karzai, and also to what extent are
the aid agencies in the UN seen as still providing essential services
as opposed to the Government. What is your sense of those sort
of perceptions?
Mr Jarrah: I think it probably
varies between different regions in Afghanistan. CARE works in
the south and east and there is a good deal of resentment about
the central government which is seen to be a creature of the north
and of the leaders implanted by the coalition after the invasion
of Afghanistan. The Pashtuns are resentful of the fact they do
not have a share in the national say and the national so-called
peace dividend.
Q21 Chairman: How many Patan ministers
are there?
Ms Winter: There are five or six
and they tend to be good and reforming.
Mr Deva: There are three issues
here. One clearly is the relationship of the central government
with the regions. It has not been sorted out and clearly there
is a debate going on about whether there should be in Afghanistan
a federal system or a unitary system. If you talk to Pashtuns
many of them favour a unitary system at least for the time being
but there is also a danger that the regions are being by-passed
and that the regions are being weakened by a centre that is determined
on controlling Afghanistan. I think that these centre-periphery
tensions need to be managed well. The second issue is about the
UN and NGOs working more closely with the Government. We keep
talking about nation building and clearly there is a role for
Oxfam and many other organisations to support the Government in
its nation building enterprise, and the National Solidarity Programme
which is funded by the World Bank is clearly one of the ways of
supporting the Government, and Oxfam and many other organisations
are facilitating partners in this enterprise. The third issue
is about strengthening the role of moderates in government and
also in the wider Afghan society, because even with Kabul you
have the moderates and the extremists and you have moderates who
are ministers of certain ministries and departments, and clearly
there the donors and NGOs have a responsibility to work more closely
with them and develop their capacity much more.
Q22 Alistair Burt: There were some
changes made not too long ago in relation to senior regional appointments
by the Government, has that had any impact or is that still undermined
by incidents such as those reported recently about the Defence
Minister, Mohammed Fahim, and the reported illegal land grab?
Does that go to reinforce people's sense that the President is
not really in control?
Ms Winter: I think it does undermine
it. I think the whole security situation undermines it as well.
People have hoped for some time that their lives would be better,
they are not, it is insecure, and on top of that the Constitutional
Loya Jirga has been postponed, the draft constitution has not
been produced for people to see and discuss. Many Afghans are
pinning a lot of hope on elections which are due in 2004, if they
happen as scheduled, but as the insecurity increases people are
turning to other ways to make themselves feel secure perhaps or
just giving up in despair and hoping that something will come
along, whether it is the international community and peace keepers,
or some ability of the Government to gain revenue and then go
out and reinforce its administration in the regions, which will
mean they do manage to live a better life. But at the moment there
are huge question marks still about the Government, many jokes
made about it, many times Karzai is still called the mayor of
Kabul and so on. It is still a worrying situation. For NGOs we
are in a bit of a double-bind because we do have to work with
the authorities, whether they are central government or whether
in the past they were Taliban or whatever they were, we had to
associate with them in order to bring assistance to the people
who needed it. If we associate too closely with this Government
then perhaps we will be associated with the problems it has, and
if we do not support them and associate with them and help capacity-build,
et cetera, then obviously we are lessening the chances of them
succeeding and doing something good. So it is a dilemma for us
that we do discuss and try and deal with.
Q23 Alistair Burt: Do you think this
is a dilemma also for civil society, because they are also not
sure of who to attach themselves to? Are those institutions beginning
to develop or are they hamstrung with this problem? There will
not be a vacuum, if the centre is not strong enough then people
will seek protection in a regional sense and they will go to their
regional leaders and that will become stronger. Is it conceivable
that the centre can work in co-operation with strong regions?
Or is it either one thing or the other, that the regions dominate
or the centre dominates and it is one or the other and some co-operative
leadership is most unlikely, and that is also holding back the
development of civil society while that is worked out?
Ms Winter: I think it is conceivable,
if they make a realistic attempt to demonstrate that they think
civil society is important. One of the ways is obviously consulting
them about the constitution, another is to make sure that elections
take place. We need more education, awareness-raising and real
consultation with people. We need political parties, they need
to be able to be generated by what is going on. So I think it
is possible but it requires again a multi-pronged approach not
just from the Government but from the UN, NGOs and others in demonstrating
this is what people want.
Mr Greenwood: I think any government,
central or regional, will derive its ultimate legitimacy and success
from actually doing something which endears itself to the population.
That is where working with civil society organisations right down
to community level will make a difference. It is not just that
the communities will vote for the Government but that once they
receive government services and see the Government working for
them they will be able to hold the Government to account and say,
"Yes, we value what you are doing." That could go for
a regional government or a central government. We, as a foreign
NGO, are not going to walk in there and try to sell one form of
government to them over another form of government, we will capacity-build
with regional government and central government and will support
partner organisations to do civil awareness programmes, but we
are not going to nail our colours to one particular mast. We have
managed to support development interventions since the mid-1980s
under regimes of various colours by working in a collaborative
way with the de facto administration and not with trying
to prefer one side over the other.
Mr Jarrah: The shadow which hangs
over all this discussion is the belief by most Afghans that they
still have a culture where any differences of opinion are resolved
over the barrel of a gun. CARE has just completed a wide ranging
survey as part of a consortium of NGOs in Afghanistan on public
attitudes to security, and disarmament is by far the number one
priority of people and their biggest fear about the prospects
for the future.
Q24 Mr Walter: I was going to move
on a little. Part of the remit of this Committee is the oversight
of the work of DFID and there has been some criticism of the Afghanistan
Country Plan of DFID. Briefly, what are your views on DFID's Afghanistan
Country Plan?
Ms Winter: We welcome the fact
they consulted us on it and they did listen to what we had to
say. We are told it is work-in-progress, that it is not set in
stone. They are obviously concentrating on capacity-building for
the government institutions, which of course we support. They
are now talking about supporting civil society engagement. What
I think we would like to see is those things they talked about
actually having plans to them, actually happening on the ground,
things actually taking place, but I think my colleagues may have
other things they want to say.
Mr Greenwood: As one of the critics
of an earlier version of the Country Plan, I would emphasise what
Elizabeth has said, which is we welcome the fact DFID has listened
widely both here and in Afghanistan to what civil society has
had to say and has actually recognised the importance of civil
society for the future. We recognise that the current plan is
a transitional plan and so we would just urge DFID, when it comes
out of the transitional mode and starts to look at longer term
planning, to really put some resources behind building up civil
society institutions within Afghanistan, and we recognise that
DFID actually has a lot of organisational strength in this field
from work elsewhere in Asia and in Africa.
Mr Deva: Again, on civil society,
I would emphasise that it is important for DFID and for the UK
Government to support women's organisations and women's networks.
There is a lot of rhetoric when it comes to Afghanistan about
gender equity but very little that is happening. It worries me
again that even though the Ministry of Women's Affairs has been
given a lot of money, in fact it is not working effectively as
a ministry, it is not working effectively with other ministries,
and I think a lot of money which has gone in has gone into all
sorts of little projects which have been based on very little
needs assessment, I am told with advice from UNIFEM, the United
Nations Development Fund for Women. I think DFID has a role to
play in strategically incorporating gender equity issues into
its work but also in strengthening the capacity of women's organisations
and of supporting women in effecting change in Afghanistan. I
do not see that in this document. There is much talk of gender
mainstreaming but very little effort done to operationalise this
concept and adapt it to the Afghan context. So if DFID is going
to help strengthen an Afghan civil society it must focus on supporting
women's organisations and their networks in Afghanistan.
Mr Walker: From our perspective,
we welcome DFID's plan as one which is sensible, very pragmatic,
and we particularly support the urgent need to build capacity
for the transitional administration, public sector reform, et
cetera. A specific point on that, it is very welcome that the
British Government is supporting to some extent the current cost
needs of the transitional administration. Clearly it is based
on conditionalities and meeting certain performance targets but
we would urge that this is monitored very closely, given the fragility
of the transitional administration capacity, just to make sure
that even if progress is not met they are watching very closely
to see there is not a step back being taken rather than forward.
The other thing to say from the perspective of Save the Children,
we would like to have seen some reference as well to the importance
of adherence to human rights in general but specifically rights
of children. Certainly we will be talking to DFID about that in
the future. A broader point, we welcome DFID's support of the
national development framework which is an incredibly positive
development, with the transitional administration in the driving
seat. As we have seen various sectoral plans develop out of that,
our experience is that the needs of children and young people
and indeed women are not really referred to at all other than
as beneficiaries of services. So while it may not be realistic
to expect that certainly at this stage, it is something which
agencies like ours will be pursuing as we try to engage with the
way development programmes evolve.
Q25 Chairman: With all fairness to
Ann Freckleton and the team, when we saw them my impression was
that the DFID team on the ground were doing their hardest to work
with women's groups, and other groups too, and it may just be
one of those sort of "politics of the possible" type
issues.
Mr Deva: A lot of money has gone
into UNIFEM and there were a great many organisations that at
the time of the Taliban did all sorts of interesting work on girls'
education in Kabul and also in other parts of Afghanistan. Many
of these NGOs have set up offices in Kabul and other cities in
Afghanistan but they are short of funds. We need to be putting
money into these organisations and building the capacity to deliver
programmes that help women and address gender inequality issues.
There is no doubt that a great number of Afghan NGOs are not terribly
competent perhaps because they do not have the capacity, they
do not have good management skills. But it is possible to develop
them and help them become better in what they do. I come from
India where there is a thriving NGO sector and Oxfam works through
Indian NGOs and I do hope that one day, say in five years' time,
all of us will work with Afghan non-governmental organisations,
including women's organisations to overcome poverty and suffering
in Afghanistan.
Chairman: That brings us back to the
great and overwhelming question, does it not, whether you increase
the funds to the transitional authority and build up the transitional
authority, or whether you create almost an alternative government
with all the complaints that Presidents Karzai has about all these
land cruisers going around Kabul top-slicing the best people for
NGOs rather than working for the transitional authority. That
is, I am afraid, the great and overwhelming question. Anyway,
that is a great and overwhelming question which we can perhaps—before
we get stuck into why the WTO did not do as much as they should
do—put to Baroness Amos when we see her and give her a starter
for 10, "Please sort out this problem." Thank you very
much for coming this afternoon and keeping the Select Committee
briefed on this. We will try and return to the issue of Afghanistan
on a regular basis . We will all look at the transcript of today's
meeting and think of Parliamentary Questions and other questions
arising as a consequence. It is very important, and the Prime
Minister has said we will not abandon Afghanistan, that we stick
with it and I think we owe it to all of those, like the many who
went back from ministries and many Afghans in everyday life, to
try and ensure their standard of living gets better rather than
worse. Thank you.
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