Examination of Witnesses(Questions 40-59)
MR CHRIS
AUSTIN, MR
TOM PHILLIPS
AND MS
JAN THOMPSON
TUESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2002
Tony Worthington
40. Could I again ask about how the money is
spent. First of all, the most technical point: Does our money
include International Security Assistance Force contributions?
I believe some donors have included that as part of their contribution
and also their expenditure on Afghan refugees in their own country.
Does our contribution include ISAF at all? What does it mean when
we say we are giving this?
(Mr Austin) For the Tokyo pledge of £200 million
over five years, that is just for the DFID bilateral expenditure.
It does not include UK contributions to ISAF. It does include
UK contributions to UNHCR and IOM (International Organisation
for Migration) for refugee programmes in neighbouring countries
because that is deemed as part of our assistance to Afghans. Nor
does the £200 million figure include global pool money that
FCO, MOD and DFID contribute for security sector reform.
41. I would like to ask about what are called
"transactions costs". Could you explain what they are?
(Mr Austin) "Admin" would be another short
term phrase. In the context of the UK wanting to minimise transaction
costs for the Afghan authorities, it means having a harmonised
system of providing funds and technical assistance. As an example,
I use one from Pakistan rather than Afghanistan: the Social Action
Programme in Pakistan was financed by about half a dozen donors.
Over time it developed a system where there was a single monitoring
process that the Pakistan Government produced that satisfied all
the donors. It took quite a long time to get there and there were
other concerns about that particular programme, but that was a
way to try to minimise the transaction costs for the recipient
government. Similar issues apply in Afghanistan. For the first
few months, when the quick impact project and support through
UN agencies and through NGOs was essentially being led by the
providers of that assistance rather than directed by the Government,
each of the donors, including the DFID, would have its own project
procedures to follow and report and accountability requirements
to meet which imposed transaction costs on us and on the implementing
agencies but did not really affect the Afghan authorities because
they were not part of the picture. As we move forward with the
National Development Framework, any money that is provided to
Afghanistan now that involves the Government is going to require
a discussion with the Government, exchanges of letters of understanding
and meetings and so on, and those are all transaction costs. If
we, the UK, have a set with the Ministry of Rural Reconstruction,
the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Public Health, and then
the Canadians do, the Americans do and the Dutch do, the Afghan
authorities will quickly be overcome by incoming donor missions,
meaning well, offering support but saying, "We would like
a report like this or a proposal like that."
42. When the Committee was in Afghanistan, the
Minister of Finance was very critical about the high overheads
incurred by the United Nations arising from public expenditure
on cars and salaries, per diems and so on. What is your
response to that?
(Mr Austin) I do not know exactly what the costs are
that the UN have had on their direct operations. I know that the
Ministry of Finance has asked the UN agencies and NGOs to provide
a kind of account sheet of: What have you spent money on? Where
in Afghanistan? What is the intended or actual output? How much
have you spent on your direct admin costs. I think there is an
element of needing to create a capacity in the country to be able
to exist there safely, to be able to get around the country and
to be able to plan and design interventions. We have had to do
it ourselves in the UK on a much more modest scale than the UN
agencies. Certainly it is a valid question to ask: Are these efforts
being most cost efficient?
43. Well, are they?
(Mr Austin) I do not know. Part of me does not know
how you would answer that question. I guess what we have at the
moment in broad terms, and this does not encompass everything,
is $600 million spent in 2002 through UN agencies and NGOs as
the input. The output: three million children back in school;
polio almost eradicated; a measles vaccination campaign hitting
a large number of children—and I have heard it reported,
from I think UNICEF, that this vaccination campaign has prevented
a large number of measles-related deaths, which is an invisible
gain; there has been a National Development Framework established;
and systems of financing and accounting established within the
Government for setting its own budget managing public expenditure.
All of those things are positives. Is that a good enough outcome
in return for $600 million? I am sure it could have been done
for $550 million or $610 million, but I think at the moment it
has been worth it. I think there are valid questions now being
asked by the donors themselves about how best to take things forward
from here with the Afghans, to build their capacity to do things.
44. Again, could you answer your own question.
What are the valid questions being asked by the donors about how
you cut those costs?
(Mr Austin) For DFID we are looking at continuing
to provide technical assistance for the Ministry of Finance for
building up its budget and at the moment we are doing that through
a consultancy contract. There would be questions about the next
stage. For example, the design for customs reform has been prepared.
There would be questions for us about how best would we support
the Afghan authorities if they wanted us to help take that forward.
Would it be through providing a team of international expensive
consultants or would it be working through Afghan officials in
the Ministry of Finance, maybe at a slightly different pace, maybe
in a slightly different model? As the first example that comes
to mind, that kind of question I think would be going through
other agencies' minds.
Mr Khabra
45. Around half of DFID's money committed so
far has been channelled via the United Nations. The money which
was given to the United Nations by the United Kingdom, does this
money go via UNAMA to support UNAMA strategy or does it go directly
to the various UN agencies? That is one question. The other is:
How should money be channelled to maximise long-term reconstruction
in Afghanistan? Should there be an increasing percentage going
through Afghan Government institutions? Given that almost all
of the Transitional Administration's budget is spent on civil
service salaries, what plans are there to reform the civil service?—because
there have been allegations of money being misspent on giving
salaries to public services. Could you answer these questions?
(Mr Austin) I will try. You are asking the same questions
we are asking ourselves, so I apologise if my answers sound as
though I still have the same questions but no responses. The first
one is slightly more easy: UNAMA or UN agencies? Most of our support
through UN has gone direct to UN agencies like UNHCR or UNICEF
or WFP for programmes that they are implementing in Afghanistan.
We have also provided some resources through UNAMA for the political
process. For example, some of the costs of the logistics of the
Emergency Loya Jirga were supported by a grant that we
gave to UNAMA from DFID. In terms of channels for the figure,
I think this is very much a moot point for us and for other donors.
The Afghan Government has made it clear that its preference would
be for donor funds to go through the Afghan budget and they have
devised systems for tracking expenditure either for sector specific
programmes or general budget support. A second best preference
for them is the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund which is another
way of pooling donor resources. At the moment the capacity at
the Ministry of Finance for line ministries to manage their own
budget is still fairly young and developing. From where I sit
at the moment, the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund looks like
a better vehicle for providing money in a way that the Afghans
will be able to direct how it is used. Some of it may well go
through its own expenditure systems if the implementing body is
going to be one of the line ministries or if the line ministry
is going to contract, but similarly that pot of funds could equally
be directed straight to a private sector private contractor, for
a road contractor, for example, or to an NGO or to a UN agency
for a programme that it was going to implement. Civil service
reform is a massive agenda. I think the Committee has had some
of the data on the recurrent, but, just to recap, the Afghan set
themselves a fairly austere recurrent budget for this year of
$483 million, of which about $400 million was going to be dependent
on external finance. Of that budget, I think 80 per cent is for
civil service pay roll, including military and police related
expenditures. The civil service is somewhere between 200,000 and
250,000 people. I think it is fair to characterise the Afghan
public services as poorly paid, poorly organised and, probably,
in large measure poorly qualified because they have been operating
either in a vacuum for several years or people's skills have atrophied
a little bit. The Afghan Government is very keen to develop plans
quickly for a large scale reform looking at the structure of the
civil service, the pay roll and the criteria for entry and for
promotion to certain levels and to get a pay system that is more
differentiated between the senior levels and the junior levels.
We have offered an advisor to the vice-president who is responsible
for that, to help him formulate the plans. I am sure there will
be massive specific technical assistance required for different
bits of it and the costs of it will be enormous as well.
Ann Clwyd
46. I was one of those who went to Afghanistan
and of course we were hearing this all the time, the resentment
by the Transitional Authority about the UN and what they saw as
lavish expenditure by people who had come into the country. I
wonder if you could give us some examples, when you talk of poorly
paid civil servants, of how poorly they are paid in comparison—and
I do not know how you make the comparison. Perhaps you could you
just give us some indication of what sort of scale you are talking
about.
(Mr Austin) Yes. The figure that sticks in my mind,
because the Finance Minister uses it quite often, is that deputy
ministers get $34 a month. I am not sure if that can be applied
to civil servants as well. The other thing that I have heard often
is that there is really no differentiation between permanent secretaries
and most junior clerical grades, but it is that sort of order
of several tens of dollars per month or the equivalent in Afghanis.
In the donor community, again it is hard to generalise, and I
do not have our own salary scales entirely in my head and I would
not want to embarrass my colleagues in Kabul, but people are more
likely to get something like $200 a month working in a UN agency
or even in an international NGO, so there is quite a differentiation
there. And there is a limited labour market, that NGOs particularly
have been very concerned about since before Tokyo, that this donor
invasion, whether it is a light footprint or not a light footprint,
does not snaffle up all the best-qualified Afghans to work in
the external environment and not work in government.
47. The Transitional Authority also feels, as
you know, that its own authority is undermined by not having enough
money to do what it wants to do. We were given the example of
the President himself. They are saying that he is now nicknamed
the "Mayor of Kabul" because in his own area there has
not been any obvious signs of him being in power. Of course all
politicians know that unless you can deliver for your own home
area then you are going to be undermined in that area. Is there
any idea about putting that right, apart from what you have talked
about?
(Mr Austin) One of the road projects to which I referred
earlier will connect Kabul to Kandahar, which is the President's
home area. It used to be the centre of the Taliban Government,
so it is one of the most unstable in the country. It has also
suffered most acutely from the last four or five years from drought.
When I was there at the end of last month it was very evident
that the infrastructure has been poorly neglected for some time:
I can call it agricultural land, but there was a sense of desert.
Nevertheless, we saw one or two positive examples of things beginning
to happen. There was a raisin factory, employing a lot of local
people, including a large number of women, that was producing
for export to Eastern Europe and other parts of the world and
there is potential more demand for that kind of thing. I think
the authority of the President and of the Government around the
country is linked as well to the issue of security and how that
can be achieved beyond Kabul and its immediate environment, and
to what extent the federal government can exert the right kind
of control over the provincial governors and several regional
power brokers who operate in a fairly autonomous state. The Southern
Region is the same size as Bangladesh or Nepal (I forget which)
but different parts of Afghanistan are fairly large and at the
moment inaccessible, both in practical terms but also in terms
of extension of power and authority.
Chairman
48. Ann's question really leads on to another
concern that was raised to us, a parallel concern. There was the
concern about the total amount of aid, and we have explored that.
That was clearly one part of their line to take which was repeated
at practically every meeting we attended. There were two other
concerns. The second concern was that, of the total international
community aid budget, a very small part was actually going to
the Interim Authority Fund—I think only about 14 per cent
so far. So they are saying, "We have all these responsibilities,
the civil service and civil service reform, but you are actually
giving us a tiny amount of money, and, what is more, out of the
rest of the money you have you are paying very substantial salaries
to anyone who is competent so they are all being sucked away."
How do you see the time scale for the international community
giving more of its funds to the Afghan Transitional Authority?
When do you see that capacity building, such that they are really
competent to cease to be a transitional authority and become the
government? Could you clarify for us the Afghanistan Reconstruction
Trust Fund? This seems to be a bit of hybrid vigour between the
international community on the one hand and the Afghanistan Transitional
Authority on the other; there is this sort of trust fund which
has the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. I have to say
that for those of us who met the Asian Development Bank representatives
in Kabul, "impressed" was not a word which would immediately
come to our vocabulary. No one questioned whether it would not
be better to start giving greater responsibility and hence greater
funds to the Interim Authority.
(Mr Austin) On the time scale, I think there are two
parts to this. The sense that I got from the Implementation Group
meeting in the middle of October, which I think other donors shared
and which was reflected in Finance Minister Ghani's discussions
with the Secretary of State subsequently, is that the Government
wants to be the channel for external assistance but not necessarily
the mechanism, the distinction being that the Government recognises
that to implement roads projects, to build up its education and
health systems across the country, to have a strategic approach
to rehabilitating irrigation schemes and so on, it is going to
rely on local communities, on private sector, including domestic
private sector, on NGOs and on UN agencies to do all of those
things. What it would like to change from now is that it has a
say in where resources are directed and for what purposes, so
that the National Development Framework/the National Development
Budget embraces everything that might be implemented directly
by a bilateral donor or a multilateral donor but the Government
has the strategic direction. That is what ought to happen from
next year. The Afghanistan Development Forum in February or March,
just before the start of the next fiscal year, will set out the
Government's priorities in more detail for the coming year, and
the Government is in the process, between now and then, of trying
to get some idea of what donors' plans are for levels of resources,
sectors of operation, financing mechanisms. The Government wants
to sort of iterate this into a plan of: "Okay, if the Dutch
are going to do this and the Germans are going to do it that way
and the Brits are going to do it another way, it all sticks together
and looks like the following thing, and we think there are some
gaps and some areas that we want to modify." I see that as
being the kind of conversation at the Development Forum of how
much external aid is planned for Afghanistan over the coming two,
three, four, five years; what kind of mechanisms; and are the
Government's priorities being covered. To come to the Reconstruction
Trust Fund, it was established as a way of pooling bilateral resources
in a way to reduce transaction costs for the Afghans first and
for the donors second. It can finance recurrent costs, which is
principally what it is doing this year; it can finance investment
projects; and it can finance support for return of qualified Afghans—and
there are proposals in the latter two categories that the Government
is beginning to develop with some UN and World Bank support. The
management of the Reconstruction Trust Fund was originally World
Bank, Asian Bank, Islamic Development Bank and UNDP, but as the
Interim Administration evolved into the Transitional Government,
the Ministry of Finance now has the kind of leading chair in that
table and the Government will direct how the resources are used
through the trust fund. There is a question for us and for other
donors for next year and beyond: How soon do we think it is feasible
or sensible for the Afghans to move to direct budget support to
the Afghan Government and to what extent should we be directing
resources to the trust fund because that is a more efficient way
of getting it to the implementing agencies, with the Afghans determining
what those end-users are for things to happen? I suspect we are
going to look at a bit of a balance but, until the civil service
reform questions have begun to be tackled, donors could be looking
at financing large numbers of poorly paid civil servants not delivering
much in the way of public services. Is that as sensible way for
donor money to be used in the very short-term?
49. A certain concern which was raised to us,
in a great development buzz phrase, was "resource mobilisation".
President Karzai and the Minister of Finance would say, "It
is all very well, the international community have pledged all
this money but, of the $1.9 million that was pledged to be spent
in 2002, only $1.4 billion has actually turned up." I hasten
to add that DFID was not in the frame for any criticism. I think
it is fair to put on the record that wherever we went, all our
interlocutors said that DFID had been in the forefront of ensuring
that money was spent. But there was, I think, a concern, not just
in relation to transaction costs they had not foreseen but generally,
that the money was not coming through—not just as fast as
they had hoped but as fast as it had been originally committed.
Do you think that is a fair impression? If it is a fair impression,
what more do you think that DFID can do as one of the leading
players in Kabul to place up other agencies and other organisations?
(Mr Austin) I suppose, I question whether that is
a fair assessment. We are now in November. The disbursement figure
may be around $1.4 billion, it may have edged up a little bit,
against $1.8 billion or $1.9 billion pledged for this year. I
think for most people, including the Afghans, that is their fiscal
year, which runs to the end of next March, so it is actually quite
a high rate of disbursement, given where we are in the financial
year. Nevertheless, there are a large number of needs for finance
in Afghanistan for emergency supplies for winter, which is now
upon the country, as well as for longer-term reconstruction. I
think what the Implementation Group meeting last month achieved
was a shift in the conversation, from: "How do we respond
to the next two/three months of food aid, pipe line or emergency
shelter or the next batch of returning refugees?"—which,
again, is larger than we had anticipated—and has moved ahead
to: "What is the game plan for agriculture, for irrigation,
for transport over the next three, five, 10 years? What capacities
does the Afghan Government need to have at the centre and around
the country to manage those processes and therefore what are the
alternative instruments and sources of finance for meeting those
needs?" So we have moved to a kind of medium-term perspective.
I think there is a role for us and for others to keep examining
our own plans and proposals and the level of finance we are looking
to commit over the next three years to see whether we have the
right instruments, whether we are following our own objective
of wanting to let the Afghan Government lead, but at the same
time to make sure that there are not vulnerable pockets of the
population that miss out. That is not to suggest the Afghan Government
would ignore them, but there is a trade off for us between, for
example, money through WFP for supplementary feeding versus money
through the budget for civil service salaries. We cannot do the
same amount of money for both, so how do we divide it up?
Chairman: There is clearly going to be
a long-term issue there of when we increasingly hand over the
reins of responsibility to the Afghan Government to take responsibility
for themselves.
Tony Worthington
50. I want to turn to the issue of co-ordination,
how it has been done and what you think of it. You have a multiplicity
of UN organisations, you have many nations, you have innumerable
NGOs. There was a report by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation
Unit, which we have seen, saying "... there are a multiplicity
of strategies being pursued by various foreign governments, donors,
NGOs and multilateral agencies in Afghanistan, not necessarily
all sharing coherent or even complementary objectives." They
said that too much time and resource is being spent on co-ordination
rather than getting down to doing the work. That is easy to say,
b ut what is your impression of the way in which co-ordination
is developing?
(Mr Austin) I think it is getting there. I think we
experience in DFID ourselves some of the transaction costs of
meetings either in Kabul or with various groups that meet internationally
to discuss Afghanistan, with the Afghanistan Reconstruction Steering
Group, the Afghanistan Support Group, the Implementation Group,
the World Bank annual meetings and so on, all of which tend to
involve the same officials and include the same officials from
the Afghan Government. I think there is an overdue need to rationalise
these. I think the decision to move to a Development Forum (also
known as a consultative group in other countries) is very welcome.
That seems to be the ideal forum for bringing together the Afghan
Government, donors, both bilateral and multilateral, and the NGOs
and the Government made it clear last month that it wants NGOs
to be part of this Development Forum. A number of us have been
saying that that is the direction we should move to as quickly
as possible. "Multiplicities of strategies" and competing
objectives—I am not familiar with the report you have mentioned—I
know that there have been a number of sector-related missions
and strategies done by the Afghan authorities with the Asian Bank,
with different UN agencies, with the World Bank, with the European
Commission covering transport, agriculture and so on, and those
have informed the National Development Framework and the priority
programmes and they ought to be the framework within which all
external assistance is channelled. I am sure it is right that
at the moment that is not the case, although I know from the evidence
I have seen, which the Committee has had for this hearing, and
from conversations of the Implementation Group, that that is the
direction in which most donors and NGOs want to move as quickly
as possible.
Chris McCafferty
51. Whilst we were in Afghanistan we met with
continual calls for the expansion of ISAF. President Karzai himself,
members of the Afghanistan Transitional Administration and in
fact members of the Afghanistan community were all at one that
they felt this was important. We could see that delivery on reconstruction
outside of Kabul, particularly, was very important for the Government,
and clearly stability is an important part of being able to reconstruct
Afghanistan. I would like to know if you feel there is any prospect
of ISAF being extended outside Kabul.
(Mr Austin) Could I pass that to Tom.
Chairman
52. Of course.
(Mr Phillips) Thank you. I do not think there is any
prospect of ISAF being expanded outside Kabul. That would require
a change in the UN mandate and to date there has been no real
appetite from potential contributors to go down that road. However,
I think we fully agree with you that the issue of security in
the regions is critical to the reconstruction effort. A number
of ways are being looked at to—the term is—"expand
the ISAF effect" to the regions and I think some of these
are becoming more conceivable now as the security situation evolves
nationally. So that consideration is under way on that front and
one of the favourite ideas out there at the moment is of fairly
small teams going out to main areas in the regions, civilian and
military, with a range of responsibilities, including linking
into the reconstruction world. Our initial view of that evolving
concept is quite favourable, but there are a lot of questions
to be answered about it.
Chris McCafferty
53. Do you think it is likely that NATO troops
might be brought into the framework to help deliver on this? Have
the Americans made any other proposals for the increasing of the
security angle?
(Mr Phillips) Of course a lot of the nations that
are involved out there at the moment are from NATO countries and
when the Germans and Dutch take over ISAF 3, which they have agreed
to take over from the Turks, they are planning to use the joint—I
think it is called—"high-readiness HQ", which
is a NATO developed concept. The Americans are certainly looking
at ways to tackle security in the regions, and when I talked about
this concept of regional teams, that is one that they are themselves
working on and we are in discussion with them about.
54. Whilst we were there, we were conscious
that several of the girls schools that had been opened had been
bombed. There clearly is a concerted effort going on to destabilise
the Government. Supporting democracy in Afghanistan is clearly
very important, so I am pleased that other countries feel that
this is something they should be supporting. Who or what do you
perceive as the main destabilising influences in Afghanistan?
We are aware of the power group the warlords. We are aware that
they are being currently supported by the Americans, possibly
in their war against terrorism, but with that kind of support
externally and with the power that they hold regionally, do you
feel that they can be disarmed and that there is a prospect for
an Afghan military presence of its own and a democratic police
force?
(Mr Phillips) The security threat at the moment is
different in different parts of the country. One hears quite a
lot of different accounts of it and it is quite difficult to get
an objective, nationwide picture. In Kabul itself I think the
picture at the moment is pretty good: I mean, the curfew has just
been lifted. In the rest of the country I think there are threats
from . . . to try to list them. There obviously has been from
time to time fighting between faction leaders. I think, when one
talks to people who were looking forward a year ago, it is still
happening but it is not as bad as many feared. On the whole I
think the situation has improved. There is still a residual threat
from Taliban and al-Qaeda elements out there, especially in the
south-east against coalition forces, and then there is a general
law and order problem because you do not yet have an operating
local force and local police out there in the regions. But I think
on the whole, looking at the country nationally but from some
still problem areas, the situation is improving. In terms of:
Do I think there is a realistic prospect of the Afghan national
army and the police developing? I think, yes, we are encouraged
by the deliberations that are going on in the Defence Commission
at the moment on the shape of an Afghan national army 70,000 strong.
Those talks do seem to be doing better than some exercises have
done in the past, so that is good news. The Germans are also fairly
vigorously getting in with the police force element of the security
sector. They have now set up a police training academy and the
Americans I think are helping with a four-month course for existing
police officers while the Germans are taking the lead on new police
officers. So a lot of things are happening. It is going to take
some time before one sees the full benefits of that around the
country and that is why people are also looking at these new ideas
for security in the regions.
55. Just looking at the issue of the warlords,
which I do not think you have quite clearly responded to, I presume
you are aware of the recent Human Rights Watch documentation on
human rights abuses by warlords. I think Ismail Khan was one who
particularly documented human rights abuses in the Herat region,
but he is just one, and clearly there are issues about Afghani
warlords. Do you feel that warlords should be further incorporated
into the Transitional Administration? On our visit to Afghanistan
we were told about one warlord who was actively participating
in the Transitional Administration but there were difficulties
because other warlords are quite happy to sit on their power bases,
where they are taxing the local people and increasing their own
fortunes. What is in it for them, to join a national government
and actually have to give up their authority and to respect human
rights and to return those revenues? Can you answer my question
about warlords? Do you think it is possible that they can be incorporated?
(Mr Phillips) You have raised a number of issues there.
On the human rights front we are obviously aware of the reports,
talking to the Afghan Government about them and we are encouraged
by some of the things we are hearing from the Government. We can
talk about individual cases if you like. Do I think that the regional
leaders, the warlords, the factional leaders can play a part in
the Transitional Administration? Of course you then get on to
what is a warlord. For instance, many people talk of Fahim Kahn
as the leader of the Tajiks or one of the leaders of the Tajik
community. He is now the Minister of Defence. He is playing, as
we understand it, a full and productive role in the talks going
on in the Defence Commission on the formation of a new Afghan
national army. And in that Defence Commission you have also either
the regional leaders themselves or their representatives. So,
as we hear and as we hope, they are playing a creative role in
the design of the new Afghan national army. Of course the demobilisation
element is going to be critical and demobilisation is being looked
at as part of the planning of the Afghan national army and we
are very keen to play a role in helping there. We have come up
with, I think, £0.5 million from our Conflict Prevention
Pool for a project which should help to identify ways in which
DDR can happen. On the revenues front, I think that Finance Minister
Ghani has been going round the regions trying to encourage some
of the regional leaders to give more of their revenue to the centre.
As we understand it, from what he has told us, he has had some
success but I think not as much as he wanted. But that effort
is ongoing.
56. Could I ask you once again, do you feel
that the fact that some of these warlords are being funded by
the Americans is helpful or a hindrance to getting warlords to
be part of the transitional government and contributing to the
general pot?
(Mr Phillips) In the earlier days, there was a priority
war fighting agenda to deal with the al-Qaeda and Taliban and
one understands why there was a close relationship between the
coalition forces and some of the leaders in the regions. As we
understand it, that relationship is changing as the security situation
changes.
(Mr Austin) This issue of regional power brokers,
regional governors and their role in governing Afghanistan ultimately
is a question for the Afghan authorities, but I think we want
to signal from our official perspective (as I am sure you have
from the Committee's) the importance of the political process
that needs to happen between now and July 2004 to enable there
to be national elections. A lot of that process will be defining
what kind of state does Afghanistan want itself to be, what does
that mean for relationships on finance and on divisions of authority
between the federal government and regional governments.
Ann Clwyd: Do I understand you to say
that there is no definite agreement to expand the ISAF, either
the force itself or some equivalent NATO force or some UN peacekeeping
force or anything of the kind? Because it seems to me that we
have been talking about this for such a long time and there does
not seem to be any progress, there just seems to be an idea that
is floating around somewhere. Some people have said the Germans
will be bringing in extra troops. That is not going to happen
but what is going to happen? Everybody told us that the expansion
of ISAF or the equivalent was an absolute necessity to ensure
stability in Afghanistan.
Chairman
57. You will not have seen, but the Order Paper
in the House says that an Early Day Motion, which is headed by
Joan Ruddock, has actually been signed by 71 colleagues of all
sides of the House—and 71 signatures, given that we have
only just had the Queen's Speech, is a lot. It says, "This
House believes that security is a pre-requisite to the reconstruction
of Afghanistan; notes the recent comments of the UN Secretary
General that `the most serious challenge facing Afghanistan and
the Afghans today remains the lack of security'; supports the
view of the Afghan Transitional Authority and the UN Special Representative
Brahimi that the expansion of ISAF is the best way to improve
security across Afghanistan." I think, to your comment that
it is not part of the UN mandate, we have seen that people want
it and it is always possible to go back to the UN to change it.
There is a considerable body of opinion in the House that ISAF
should expand beyond Kabul. Really, reinforcing Ann's point earlier,
the feeling that very clearly we have understood from Afghanistan
is that if that did not happen there was the danger that President
Karzai would simply just become the Mayor of Kabul.
(Mr Phillips) I agree entirely—the phrasing
there: "This House believes that security is a pre-requisite
to the reconstruction of Afghanistan . . ." I think all of
us see that. There is no agreement on ISAF expansion or on exactly
what shape this might take. As I have said, at the moment what
people are looking at is ways to expand the ISAF effect into the
regions. The idea that is currently being looked at and which
we hope will be accepted is based on small deployments of multi-disciplinary
teams out into the regions. We hope this is going to be a runner.
There are a lot of questions being asked about it at the moment.
It would not be part of ISAF.
Ann Clwyd
58. Where would those come from?
(Mr Phillips) They would have to come from contributing
nations and they would be civilian/military teams—there
would also be civilians involved. But you are talking about changing
the security environment in which they might be deployed. If,
for instance, the Americans moved from what is called phase 3,
the war-fighting phase of the coalition, to phase 4, reconstruction
and stabilisation in at least some parts of the country, then
you are talking about a different security environment from the
one you have now in which people can operate in the regions. In
that sort of environment different approaches become possible.
59. What about the idea that NATO might provide
additional troops? That certainly has been circulating in the
press during the last week.
(Mr Phillips) There are no current plans for a NATO
operation in Afghanistan.
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