Examination of witness(Questions 82-99)
DR MUKESH
KAPILA CBE
MONDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2002
Chairman
82. Dr Kapila, thank you very much for coming
in this afternoon and giving evidence. Just for the record, it
might be helpful if I make the point that you were head of the
Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department at DFID which was
responsible for aid to Afghanistan until the Western Asia Department
took over. You were then seconded to be Special Adviser to the
Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, ie working
as adviser to Mr Brahimi in the United Nations Assistance Mission
in Afghanistan, with a brief of resource mobilisation, and I think
you have been there for six months and are shortly going to go
on for another assignment, is that correct?
(Dr Kapila) Absolutely correct, Chairman.
Chairman: So you come with a pretty impeccable
background and some very immediate experience of what is happening
in Afghanistan and relationships between the UN and other players.
We have a number of questions to put to you and the first is going
to be put to you by my colleague, John Battle.
Mr Battle
83. Dr Kapila, could I ask you in a sense to
set the scene and ask you an opening question about strategy and
the co-ordination of strategy? Here we talk a lot about joined-up
government but we talk about it without it having much effect.
I imagine in the circumstances in Afghanistan it is even more
difficult but there has been comment on the role and the capacity
of the United Nations Assistance Mission and whether it can carry
out that role. Can it stamp its vision and strategy for the future
on the donors and the NGOs? Is it able to get priorities integrated
so that the transitional administration can move on a bit? What
is the role of the UN in that crucial dimension of strategy and
co-ordination?
(Dr Kapila) Thank you. I am happy to answer that.
As you know, the UN Assistance Mission, or UNAMA, was formed earlier
this year by Security Council resolution and in simple terms its
mission is very simply stated. The political mission is to facilitate
peace making and peace building and the assistance mission is
to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance and the
transition to recovery and reconstruction. Now the UN system in
Afghanistan consists of UNAMA, the central UN mission, as well
as the specialised UN agencies funds and programmes which operate
within the framework of UNAMA and the whole thing is led by SRSG
Brahimi. It implies, from that, that UNAMA's and the UN's general
role in Afghanistan is to help the emerging authorities in Afghanistan—initially
the Interim Administration and now the Transitional Administration—and
to make sure that we act as an effective bridge between the international
community and the will of the Transitional Administration. Now,
in this process, a lot of dialogue has taken place in the past
six months: the international committee has had to change tack
from, on the one hand, operating in a context where there was
no recognised authority and a regime which was reprehensible—the
Taleban—and with whom one could not co-operate to one which
is now sanctioned by the international community, the Bonn Agreement
and so on, and in that transition process, the UN system and the
international agencies in general have had to learn to adapt to
having an Afghan national authority again. We made considerable
progress in the past few months: I think there is now agreement
between the UN and the Afghan authorities on the national development
framework, the forward priorities and policies, and the way in
which resources are to be allocated that donors provide through
and outside the UN.
84. The only experience I have of a similar
kind of mission was in East Timor when there was an effort there
and the United Nations and Sergio de Mello was moving to that
transitional government. It was on a much smaller scale but the
real tension was between the UN's priorities and the emerging
priorities of what would potentially be the new government. What
is the relationship between the UN priorities for Afghanistan
and the Transitional Administration's priorities? Is there tension
between them, or is it just a lack of co-ordination sometimes?
(Dr Kapila) I think some of the reported tensions
are grossly exaggerated because they tend to be newsworthy. There
is inevitably honest dialogue and debate on what the right thing
to do is in Afghanistan, and this is a process of mutual learning
on the one hand by the Afghan administration and on the other
by the international agencies as they come to terms with the new
environment, so I think I consider the tension, if there is any,
to be entirely constructive—and indeed if there was not
to be tension then one would not be doing a job to try and do
the right thing. To answer your question substantively, the assistance
mission of the UN, ie the aid part of UNAMA, has a job which is
very straightforward - that is to help the Transitional Administration
to execute its objectives and priorities. There is no difference
of view there. As far as the political mission of UNAMA is concerned,
that is governed by the Security Council and there, of course,
there is an independent mission and that is to ensure that the
peace process in Afghanistan proceeds along the lines as set out
in the Bonn Agreement.
85. And the mission also acts as a kind of a
bridge between the international aid effort and the Transitional
Administration. How is communication there? Is the Administration
well aware of what the international aid effort is about? Is there
good communication there?
(Dr Kapila) It has improved very considerably with
the strengthening of capacity within the Afghan Government. For
example, there are more staff and infrastructure available within
the Afghan aid co-ordination authority, and the rather tedious
process of tracking aid flows and making sense of the numbers
has become much easier in recent weeks as the relevant infrastructure
has been put into place. All that has been done with UN and donor
support to help the Afghan administration. So in short, things
are much better now than they were maybe at the very beginning.
86. Finally from me, what do you think of donor
co-ordination at a strategic level?
(Dr Kapila) I think it is excellent and in my experience
of having been involved in every single conflict and crisis for
the last ten years everywhere in the world this is the best example
of donor co-ordination that I have ever come across, and I say
this with very considerable emphasis and deliberate choice of
words. There is an organised structure of consultative group process
between the Afghan administration and the donors and the international
agencies and NGOs that meet regularly: there are policy documents
which are prepared jointly on all the major sectors. Of course
there are arguments and debates that take place but arguments
and debates are natural and essential and, indeed, to be welcomed,
and not reflective of problems.
87. Lastly, you are not then campaigning for
funds from donors to be channelled through UNAMA rather than being
paid direct to UN agencies?
(Dr Kapila) Not at all. In fact, on that, it is important
to clarify the United Nation's position. Basically a range of
arrangements has been set up and the UN is happy for donors to
fund the Afghan Government directly if they wish to do so. There
are accounts being set up internationally, and accountability
and monitoring arrangements to international standards have been
set up in the Ministry of Finance, for example, so if donors wish
to they can fund the government directly into the budget. If they
feel that the arrangements are not entirely satisfactory, they
have a choice of multilateral instruments. They can fund a number
of trust funds that have been created within UNAMA and UNDP and
one or two other UN agencies, as well as the trust fund of the
World Bank, through which money can also be put into the government
budget.
Chairman
88. Dr Kapila, I know that my colleague Ann
Clwyd is going to want to ask some questions about security but
can I follow on from John Battle's questions about donors and
NGOs? One of the difficulties about Afghanistan is that everyone
says to us, and those who have been there just recently saw it
for themselves, that greater security is absolutely imperative
if the range of the Transition Authority is to run beyond Kabul
and if Karzai is not going to be seen just as the mayor of Kabul.
But I understand that the United States is now briefing colleagues
and friends in Kabul as to their next deployment phase which I
think raises some issues, does it not, because quoting from a
document—and I am not sure of its provenance but we will
find that out and then it can be minuted accordingly in the minutes:
"The primary concern of humanitarian partners operating in
the field is that direct contact and collaboration with Coalition
military units would in some way jeopardise existing long-standing
relationships with local communities. A number of humanitarian
organisations have gained the trust and confidence of the communities
they serve and support. This relationship has ensured that over
the last years, even at times of heightened insecurity, the assets
and personnel of the organisations have been protected. The fear
is that local communities will perceive any direct engagement
with Coalition forces as a forfeiture of neutrality, and that
as a consequence the humanitarian organisations will lose the
support of these communities... The distinctive natures of the
mandates under which the operations of the different international
military formations in Afghanistan are performed has meant that
no formal or structured interface to address emergency and recovery
assistance exists between the government and international assistance
partners, on the one hand, and the Coalition Forces and ISAF,
on the other." It is really a bit of a muddle at the present
moment, is it not? You have ISAF in Kabul, which is very much
a peace keeping operation and everyone in Kabul recognises it
as being so, and that is clear and coherent. Out in the countryside,
where there is also a need for greater security wherever anyone
sees any troops, the instinctive belief is those troops are fighting
troops—they are looking for Al Quaeda and others. If one
is going to try and move security out into the countryside to
protect NGOs and others working with humanitarian relief, there
does need to be some sort of protocol and understanding to ensure
that people know what they are doing and that NGOs and humanitarian
workers are not in some way compromised. Perhaps you could help
us understand how UNAMA sees all these various paradoxes?
(Dr Kapila) Thank you. It is indeed a complex matter,
as you say. The United Nation's view on civil military co-operation
as far as Afghanistan is concerned is that, provided there are
properly worked out protocols, as that commentator said, and provided
there is proper communication and understanding, then good civil
military relations are to be welcomed. We do not believe, as some
humanitarian workers do, that all civil military co-operation
is bad: that effectively the military is something that one must
not mix with. I am afraid in Afghanistan we do not have that luxury.
In Afghanistan the needs for assistance are considerable and provided
there are people of goodwill, able to help in a properly worked
out transparent accountable manner, then there is a role for the
military to play. However, the caveat or the condition is that
military forces which are conducting their normal military duties,
like the coalition forces are in the fight against terrorism outside
Kabul, if they are involved in aid work they must be so visibly
and in military uniform rather than in some of the covert ways
which it was done in the past. Now this has been very actively
discussed on the ground and UNAMA and the military leadership,
both with ISAF and the coalition forces, have been working closer
together to develop some rules of the game, so to speak, to make
sure that misunderstandings do not occur.
89. Just very briefly, then, you are envisaging
that if troops go to help on humanitarian purposes outside Kabul,
they will do so in uniform and it will be clearly indicated they
are doing this work for humanitarian purposes?
(Dr Kapila) Yes.
90. And there will be some distinction between
troops in uniform and troops on fighting activities?
(Dr Kapila) Absolutely. In an ideal world one would
not wish the military to be involved in humanitarian assistance
because the military is a precious instrument and it should be
used for what it is there for to bring security, not to provide
assistance. However, in Afghanistan we do not have the luxury
of just standing on theory, and therefore the American plans which,
as I understand them, consist of essentially teams of joint civil
military officers working in parts of the country to bring about
better co-operation and win the confidence and trust of the local
population, and reach areas which are difficult to reach for civilian
agencies, are to be welcomed.
Mr Colman
91. I am sure my colleague will be following
up these security issues shortly but, if I can follow on, you
were talking about the resources and where they were going. There
are two parts to my question: firstly, obviously, UN agencies
and secondly, the funding directly of the transitional government.
In terms of the money going to UN agencies, are you happy with
the criticism out there that a large proportion of the aid which
is going through the UN agencies is in fact being creamed off,
as it were, and going back to New York and Geneva in terms of
paying for the UN personnel who are allocated there from those
two centres—a figure of 9 per cent seems to be at the lower
end—and, if you are not happy, what are you intending to
do to cut back on these transaction costs which people are apparently
charging at the UN to deliver the aid to Afghanistan?
(Dr Kapila) This is a commonly held misperception
and, if I may use strong language, the people who say this are
talking nonsense and are completely misguided but for the record,
with your permission, Chairman, I want to get some figures straight
which may be of benefit to the committee in its report. In Tokyo,
when the donors met, they pledged a total of $5,087 million, just
over $5 billion, to the assistance of Afghanistan. Since Tokyo,
a further $730 million has in addition been pledged which gives
us a grand total of more or less $5.8 billion—$5,800 million.
This is for about four or five years—well, up to six years,
because most donors have given for one year; a few others for
longer. If you compute the 2002 share of that pledge, in the current
year, 2002, this amounts to almost exactly $2000 million, $2 billion.
Of this sum of $2 billion for the current calendar year, 2002,
$1.8 billion has been committed and as we speak roughly $1.5 billion
has been disbursed and in my experience of a very considerable
number of countries in similar situations, this is a world record
in terms of both generosity of donors, the speed with which funds
have been made available, and the speed with which certain funds
have been spent on the ground. To come to your question about
the UN's share of all this, in the early part of this year, the
first six months of this year, the Afghan administration was in
the middle of designing its policies and strategies: we were just
recovering from the effect of the liberation, the bombing, the
hard winter, the return of refugees and so on, and quite a lot
of assistance was inevitably humanitarian and, by tradition and
experience, donors have learned that the most effective way to
channel humanitarian assistance in large quantities so as to provide
generalised benefit for the general population, as opposed to
small projects here and there, is through the UN family and the
UN system because of long established presence and access. Of
course, NGOs and the UN work very closely together and the Red
Cross movement do as well. So yes, a very large proportion of
the funds that have been disbursed so far, $1.5 billion, I would
say certainly half, if not more, of those funds, have gone through
the UN agencies. I think that is a reflection of both the competence
as well as the programming ability of the UN agencies, and you
as a member state and the European Union and beyond, should have
confidence in and applaud the fact that we have an instrument
that is able to reach out to these millions of people suffering
over a very long period of time, as you know. So I see this as
a sign of success and confidence rather than a point of criticism.
Coming to the specific issue of efficiency—
92. Transaction costs?
(Dr Kapila) Yes, and so on—there is a lot of
misunderstanding on this one, firstly, in defining what are acceptable
transaction costs. For example, many of the UN and international
staff more widely that are seconded to the Afghan Government at
the present time who are paid on international salary, helping
the Afghan Government within Afghan ministries, could technically
be called overheads if one was to take the traditional definition,
but clearly it would not be very fair to the UN to be accused
of having high overheads when the people are working within the
Afghan administration. The rates of pay and the overheads are
set by the member states and then there is a long established
list of states, including the UK, which are signed up to a certain
ways of working, and I think under the circumstances any genuine
overhead of 5-10 per cent in a country which is extremely difficult
to work in—and members of the Committee have visited it
and know—is extremely good value for money. I defy any alternative
organisation, military or commercial, to provide the level of
output that has been achieved by the UN system in the last six
months for the amount of money that has been invested through
the UN system and I defy anyone to find a more efficient way of
doing business than has been the case over the last year.
93. We note your advocacy but going forth over
the next six months and maybe the next twelve, do you see the
vast proportion of the money going direct to the Transitional
Administration? You told my colleague that bank accounts have
been opened and you are urging this to take place. Do you see
this switch from, if you like, UN civil servants to local Afghan
recruited civil servants, and are you making sure, if you like,
that the UN agencies, if they are continuing work, are employing
UN civil servants who could take over that work going forward?
(Dr Kapila) Certainly a sign of success in the coming
six months would be more and more resources going directly to
the government budget and then Afghan Government officials being
responsible for executing the programme.
94. This is an exit strategy?
(Dr Kapila) Absolutely.
95. Over what timescale?
(Dr Kapila) I would say that the international community
will be there, I hope, for the next 10-20 years. However, their
role will shift and the numbers of staff and so on will hopefully
reduce very rapidly. To answer your question more fully, already
the operational budget which is a running cost budget of Afghan
administration for this year, which is roughly $460 million of
which they were going to raise $80 million from revenue and the
remaining $380 million from concessional aid, is more or less
funded, so whatever the government has asked for has been given—more
or less. When we meet in the consultative group next March when
the government presents its next budget for 2003, I am confident
that those budgetary requirements will be met as well. So, in
other words, I think it is up to the Afghan Government to ask
for what it needs and to convince the world that it is ready to
spend the money on offer, and our job, of course, in the UN is
to help them build the capacity to be able to do the programmes
effectively. Certainly the progress made in the last few months
has been very considerable in that direction. I should just say
one thing, however, and that is that I think that judging success
or failure on the simple criteria of where the cheque is banked,
if you like, is a rather weak basis on which to look at the circumstances.
For example, the government in Afghanistan is adopting a very
sound macro economic and fiscal policy, and it says that it is
not the job of government to do everything. The job of the Afghan
Government, it says, is to create an enabling framework rather
than to be in the business of providing services on everything.
Therefore the government—
Chairman: A good Thatcherite approach!
Mr Colman
96. I was thinking of Gordon Brown at the pre
Budget statement this Wednesday!
(Dr Kapila) No doubt the Afghan administration has
learnt the from around the world both good and bad practice, and
so the government of Afghanistan has actually said that it would
prefer money to go directly from donors to certain implementing
agencies, NGOs or UN or commercial contractors, where it makes
commercial sense to do so, but we are on the same side in terms
of improving efficiency and transaction costs.
97. But working within the government's objectives?
(Dr Kapila) More than that, within the government
budgetary framework, because the government budget is fundamentally
the best way of disciplining and prioritising expenditure
John Barrett
98. The Committee has taken evidence that 80
per cent of the Transitional Administration's budget has been
spent on civil service salaries but there is also concern that
public services are not being effectively delivered. There is
some evidence that salaries have been paid to ghost workers in
the military and education. What has been done to address these
problems?
(Dr Kapila) These are real problems, and this is very
tricky situation. In a sense, though this is not necessarily said
officially, the payment of civil service salaries is like a social
safety net, so it is obvious that the tens of thousands of civil
service who have been paid are not working fully or effectively,
and undoubtedly the payroll is inflated. The Taliban, for example,
created a lot of civil servants in the last months in power and
it is a very onerous business trying to distinguish between real
civil servants and fake. However, even fake civil servants have
families and there are two ways of looking after them: they can
get some money which effectively forms a social security, $30
dollars a month, or they can go to the charitable sources for
food and shelter and so on that are being made available. So in
a sense the government for political as well as pragmatic reasons
has taken a fairly permissive approach so far—understandably
so in this first year of administration. Now, under Vice President
Arsala, a civil service commission is looking at the tough issues
of what sort of civil service the country needs and can afford,
and how the transformation from the present to the future is going
to take place. This is as much a political issue as a technical
one—a technical issue to which the UN is contributing in
terms of various models, if you like, particularly the balance
between the central civil servant as well as those who work in
the regions. The technical solutions are fairly straightforward.
I think the more difficult question is going to be how to institute
changes and when to do so in a way that does not destabilise the
country.
99. What timescale is there on these reforms?
(Dr Kapila) I would say that downsizing from the current
number—which is anything up to 200,000 perhaps, 160,000—down
to maybe 30-40,000 may be quite in accord. Incidentally 200,000
is not a great number for a country the size of 24 million but
it is arguably too much for the services being delivered. But
in any case this transformation is probably a task that is going
to take a good two or three years ahead.
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