Examination of Witnesses(Questions 182-199)
MR ROGER
RIDDELL, MR
PETER MARSDEN
AND MS
ELIZABETH WINTER
TUESDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2002
Chairman: We will put our questions generally
to you and you can work out how you want to allocate them. That
is a matter for you.
Hugh Bayley
182. I would like to follow up the questions
we had before on the split between post-war reconstruction and
humanitarian assistance. To understand the process, can I take
one of you back to where were we last year when we were being
told that there was a major food deficit and that food aid was
needed on a massive scale, and that this was in part due to the
conflict and in part due to the weather. What has the weather
been like in the last year? What is the food availability, independent
of aid, like now? What is the food shortage going to be over the
coming winter and will it lead to a crisis or will it be met through
humanitarian assistance?
(Mr Marsden) I have been asked to make a statement
on behalf of the group. Would you like me to make it now or at
the end?
Chairman
183. I am not a great fan of statements, and
I will tell you why. They just become propaganda, and otherwise
what happens in the Select Committee is that we have longer and
longer statements and the Secretary of State will read a whole
White Paper, given half a chance. We will ask questions. At the
end, if the three of you feel that we have missed out on crucial
areas, by all means read that into the record. I would hope that
our questions will reasonably cover the areas you want to cover.
If you can address your minds to Hugh's question, we will take
it from there.
(Mr Marsden) Going back to the situation this time
last year, we had drought for the best part of two or three years.
There were very serious concerns expressed by the aid community
about their inability to access areas before the winter. In the
event, because the onset of the winter was slow, it proved possible
to access most of the areas where there were concerns towards
the end of December/early January. Although WFP food security
assessment teams found that there were significant nutritional
deficits in many areas, the situation was not as bad as it might
have been. We then had good rains this spring, the result of which,
according to the FAO/WFP food assessment, was that the agricultural
production levels this year are not much worse than the pre-drought
figures of 1998. However, as a consequence of the drought, a huge
section of the population have got heavily into debt. People do
not only rely on wheat but they also rely heavily on livestock.
Livestock numbers have decreased very dramatically indeed, according
to a recent FAO report, as you will note in the BAAG review. The
humanitarian situation is not as bad as it was a year ago. However,
the World Food Programme has assessed that there are approximately
six million people who are vulnerable; four million of those are
thought to be in the rural areas, of which about half a million
are in areas which are difficult to access over the winter. A
lot of planning has been done to make sure that roads remain open
to those areas over the winter and that there is sufficient food
pre-prepared to meet those requirements. In spite of that, there
are some expectations that people will, nonetheless, make their
way to IDP camps, such as Maslakh to the west of Herat. There
are varying views from different NGOs about how likely that it
is but it is certainly part of the planning process that we have
to expect that. In terms of the future, the food deficit situation
in rain-fed areas is not as serious as we might have feared. However,
access to water is a major problem. We hear that many of the wells
that have been dug over the years by the Danish agency, DACAAR,
have run dry because of the low water table level. People are
having to travel quite long instances to collect water. They often
collect it from contaminated river sources, and that is serious
issue. The drought is continuing to affect some provinces in southern
Afghanistan, particularly provinces like Uruzgan. The water table
issue there is very serious indeed. Perhaps my colleague, Mr Roger
Riddell, could talk about his assessment of both the adequacy
of the provision this year and also the future.
184. Can I slip in one extra question before
you do so? We are concerned to know whether the balance between
humanitarian assistance and longer-term development is right,
which is why I asked about the nature of the humanitarian task,
which certainly seems to have deflected attention from longer-term
development; on the other hand, you cannot let people starve.
The question is: given the humanitarian needs which you have just
described, is enough money going in to help to address those needs
or not?
(Mr Marsden) There are a number of issues there. First
of all, we should note that the Afghan agricultural economy cannot
support the population. The economy relies very heavily on people
being able to travel to Iran and Pakistan to seek work. The opium
harvest has also been a major safety valve for people at the lower
end as seasonal labourers, and more recently we have seen IDP
camps set up as an additional safety valve in response to the
growing pressures on refugees in Iran and Pakistan, return. I
think the general consensus is that Afghanistan will survive or
fall depending on how much the private sector develops. The Afghan
Government has been shouting very loudly for major reconstruction
money to come in, particularly for roads, and NGOs have echoed
that call. It is very positive that there are major programmes
already under way to repair major roads, so we have the US, Saudi
Arabia and Japan already working on the road between Kabul and
Herat. Japan and the Asian Development Bank are working on the
road between Kandahar and the border at Spin Boldak. We have the
EC funding the road from Kabul to the Pakistan border via Jalalabad;
the World Bank are about to work on the road between Kabul over
the Salang Pass to Doshi; and Iran is working on the road from
Islam Qala to Herat. A lot of work has been done there. We also
see that a lot of work has been done on the communications front,
particularly through China. There is not a great deal happening
on the energy front. That is another major area that the Afghan
Government is concerned about. I have made the key points.
(Mr Riddell) On your question about sufficient humanitarian
aid versus long-term development, I think that it is important
to see the two as part of a whole. Afghanistan is one of the very
poorest countries of the world and however good a particular harvest,
there will always be upwards of three million people who will
remain vulnerable in the best years. We have had overall a much
better years, and so the number of people who are likely to be
dependent on external assistance is lower. Additionally, we have
seen, particularly the last few months, an increase in food resources
and a much better assessment this year, particularly in the west
and in Japan, of what the needs are. We have this initiative led
by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development for its
Winterisation Programme. We are in a good position to know where
the short-term needs are but also the deployment of food into
strategic areas to pick up and address local shortfalls. In terms
of overall food aid, it is a very different situation than it
was last year. One particular adverse and worrying factor is in
relation to the significant amounts of free food which has come
into the country, which has led to a radical drop in the price
of food, which has adversely affected those farmers—and
it has been a fairly good year—who have brought food to
the market. Just to give one figure, the local price of wheat
has fallen from about 20 new Afghans to about four new Afghans,
about 30 cents a kg, and so that is 7 cents a kg over the last
few months.
185. So there is no incentive to grow food?
(Mr Riddell) I would not say there is no incentive
but the incentives are far less than they were and of course you
have got the problem with opium. You can reap 20 to 40 times as
much from that.
186. If I can stop you for a moment with one
question, do you think it is important to plan and take forward
the humanitarian response and the longer term development together,
so they complement each other? It has been suggested by some of
our earlier witnesses earlier today that it might make sense to
have two separate pledging processes: one around the humanitarian
brief and one on reconstruction and long-term development, to
avoid money being deflected in terms of humanitarian aid. You
seem to be taking a different view. You seem to be saying the
two of them are together, and so you might as well budget for
land fund and fund-raising resources.
(Mr Riddell) If I could finish my answer, it is certainly
my view that insufficient focus has been laid on the long-term
and that is as true for bilateral as multilateral agencies. If
I could give an example from where we are working in the west
Herat region and operating a multimillion European Union project
for upwards of 100,000 people, these amounts are given to us in
a one or two year framework. Components of the development project
which we are funding include forestry projects, which obviously
have a ten to fifteen year framework. What I think we need is
increasing recognition by all donors that the problems of Afghanistan
are going to take years and years to resolve and therefore the
international community, both through its aid with and through
giving facilities for private sector development, needs to be
here fore the long term. I think what we are seeing is too great
an emphasis, although an understandable emphasis, on the short
term and we need now, and your committee needs, to say loudly
that Britain and the European Union need to be there for the long
haul to pledge for the long term and to develop the capacity both
of the Afghans and more widely to ensure that long-term development
is a priority and remains so for many years to come.
Alistair Burt
187. Can I take your view on the issue of the
process of delivering the money and ask your view on the issues
relating to the Transition Administration and its ability to deal
with the distribution of resources and whether or not channelling
more funds through the ARTF would be an answer. What is your general
view of the effectiveness of these processes?
(Mr Marsden) Perhaps I could ask Elizabeth Winter
to come in here as she has just come back from Kabul and she is
very much up to speed on the various discussion going on between
the aid-giving community and the Government?
(Ms Winter) The answer is that the proportion going
though the ARTF should increase. That is second best as far as
the Afghan Government is concerned. They want the money to go
through them directly, but they realise that is probably unrealistic
in the majority of cases, and so their second best option is for
the money to go through the ARTF. Currently the percentage is
very small, as we heard, 14 per cent or something, which is very
little. There are attempts to take control of policy and aid disbursement
so it is equitably disbursed. Their view is that they need to
have control over the finance. In addition, to show that the Afghan
Government actually brings added value, it needs to go through
the central authorities rather than elsewhere.
188. Two questions probably follow on: firstly,
in the meantime is ARTF effective and seen to be effective, whether
or not it is the preferred vehicle and so on? Does it do its job?
Secondly, for the Transitional Government to take more responsibility,
has it got the capacity to do so? I do not doubt it would wish
to do so. If not, do you see effective mechanisms being put in
place to give it that capacity to do the job?
(Ms Winter) In terms of the fund itself, I think it
is too early to know whether it is effective or not. There was
a lot of apprehension when it was announced: is it going to be
long-winded; is it going to be similar to trust funds elsewhere
where it has been really difficult to get the money disbursed?
Those are two things to know. There does seem to be a will to
disburse it faster than elsewhere in the world. In terms of capacity-building,
I think that the Government at the moment is very patchy. You
could probably characterise it by saying there is a modernist
trend and a traditional trend within the Government. There has
been a lot of discussion recently and it has brought those sides
closer together and the more traditional, less experienced people
in running programmes or running government departments are beginning
to realise that they need to know more about how to do it. Various
donors are putting technical assistance in. I think a review needs
to take place about the quality of this, the substance of it and
the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of it. There are
some ministries that are considering ordering such a review so
as actually to know what their needs are.
Hugh Bayley
189. To what extent are the Afghans themselves
in the driving seat for determining development priorities and
reconstruction priorities? You talk about a number of road projects.
The decisions seem to be taken by the big multilateral agencies.
Who is driving development forward locally?
(Ms Winter) I think they are much more in the driving
seat than they were, if you had asked this question in summer.
They have made valiant efforts to take control. They have made
valiant efforts to work in collaboration with the UN agencies
and with NGOs. You have heard already about one meeting that has
taken place between the Government and NGOs. They really are trying
hard to have policies that will be agreed to and adhered to by
humanitarian groups and the reconstruction community. The UN for
their part has had a very scratchy relationship with the Government
for some time. That got quite antagonistic. I think that is improving
as well as the whole thing shakes down and people get used to
the fact that here is now a legitimate authority and they are
going to have to work together. I think Nigel Fisher, who you
had evidence from last time, is at the forefront of this and is
doing his level best to see that they do collaborate.
190. Can I take you back? You used the word
"they" many times. Is that the Transitional Authority?
(Ms Winter) Yes.
191. What does the Transitional Authority actually
mean when you get out of Kabul?
(Ms Winter) I think at the moment it does not mean
as much as they would like it to mean. That is one of the difficulties.
They are planning to take control in the provinces and in the
regions as well by having small-scale, co-ordination units, if
you like; that is, the UN, the NGOs and the local authorities
together deciding on what local priorities are. Although it is
mainly in Kabul at the moment because they really do have to sort
out the priorities there first and how they are going to operate
together, the longer-term plans include these cells. There are
quite advanced plans on paper to do this. They will ask for assistance
in doing this as well.
192. We were talking earlier about the visit
which members of the Committee made to the Shomali Valley where
there is about one-third of the returnees we were told not having
their needs, their food and employment needs, met. Locally in
the Shomali Valley, who decides how to allocate resources, how
to seek to maximise the support that can be provided, and maximise
the number of people who can be supported?
(Ms Winter) Again, it is an issue for central government.
They feel that aid is not being equitably distributed and one
of the reasons they want to take the reins is to see that it is
equitably distributed in future. In the specific case of the Shomali
Valley, I will ask Peter to comment.
(Mr Marsden) As I understand it, the lead role for
the identification of relief requirements in the Shomali Valley
is now taken by the Minister for Rural Rehabilitation and Development,
who is Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar whom you heard from a few
weeks back. The co-ordination mechanisms are, as I said, improving.
For a long time the Afghan Assistance Coordination Authority within
the President's Office was bringing agencies together to plan
humanitarian programmes. Now Mohammad Hanif Atmar and his ministry
has taken that over much more. UNAMA still have a role, I think
there is some transition there in terms of who is orchestrating
what happens, but I think he has very much taken on the reins
now.
193. Could you tell us about the gender dimension
of development? People have talked about the need to ensure that
women's development needs are addressed through empowering women.
Is it happening? There seems to be a debate about the gender sensitivity
versus gender inequality. What is that about? Also more fundamentally,
how much of the millions of aid going in is controlled by women?
(Ms Winter) To take the last point first, probably
very little. In fact, it points to some hypocrisy in the West
when you look at the number of women running major agencies in
Afghanistan; there are not any and have not been any.
194. To deal with the other more technical question,
what should the donor community do if we are serious about empowering
women? Should we be saying certain blocks of aid should be controlled
only by committees with a majority of women on them?
(Ms Winter) It is a very difficult question. There
are lots of people working on it at the moment. There are working
groups in the UN, working groups in ACBAR, et cetera. The EC has
produced a very good report, and I have provided that to the Committee,
which sets out very clearly some of the technical matters, including
the terminology. I think it is probably important to have a look
at that. Taking gender mainstreaming, one of the terms used, this
is a strategy to ensure that aid and other programmes reflect
the policy of equal rights for men and women, and that is another
point; gender is not just about women, although usually we get
asked the question and we have to deal with that and that is problematic.
Gender equity is a fundamental human right. For example, UNIFEM
came in rather late in the day to work with the UN to work out
a policy and see what they can arrive at. You have had Nick Stockton's
report[28]
which says that a strategic general policy review is required
to have a look at what is going on at the moment, building on
what has already been done, but gender equality is in fact essential
for sustainable development. I think in terms of what we should
actually do, I have a nice quote from an Afghan woman[29]
that I spoke to before I gave a talk in Oxford last weekend. I
said, "What message would you give to people?" She said,
"Gender is the responsibility of every one and no-one",
which echoes I think what Sakandar Ali said earlier. "We
should not be in a rush. Instead we should be strategic about
it, concrete and give constructive support rather than creating
a destructive environment, which I feel has happened sometimes".
There are a lot of people rushing in with money saying, "Here
you are, women's programmes" and wanting to be able to say,
"We funded women's programmes, aren't we good? We have achieved
something". It is not as simple as that. Of course, it all
gets muddled up with what is traditional and what is acceptable
and so on. A lot of people who come in are also just staying in
Kabul, so they only get a Kabul-centric idea of what women's rights
mean and what women's rights could be. What she argued for very
much was a balance of programmes and that you have to address
the needs of the family, which then addresses the needs therefore
of men and women. She thinks that the development agenda is actually
very long and education is crucial in this issue but that all
people need to be educated. If they are educated, she said that
they will find their own way. This echoes Afghan women who have
said, "Stop going on about the burka. That is the least of
our problems. Give us peace and we will then fight for our rights".
So address the family issues rather than the feminist agenda,
build on what they have already achieved. She felt quite hopeful
in fact. I think we should take our cue from her. That is not
to say that we should not fund programmes addressing the needs
of women but maybe we should take a more nuanced approach to it.
195. My final question is this. I think you
give us a timely warning about the political correctness of funding
women's projects. On the other hand, I think you are absolute
right to say that one should not rule that out; that must be a
part of it although you are right to say it is not the whole solution.
More widely, you seem to be saying that there are lots of working
parties and reports and committees trying to grapple with this
and the outlook in society as a whole matters greatly. I sense
that unless you do something over the next five years, a great
amount of aid will go in and women will be marginalised in the
decision-making process. The question is: what can we do about
this? There must be a sort of gender audit of work that is going
on within DFID. How does that work? Is it working well? Is it
cutting off certain programmes of work and putting more money
into other programmes of work? Is that a good thing? Should multilateral
agencies have a similar approach? Who are these Afghan women?
We ought to get them in as advisers both in Kabul and more widely.
What can we actually do?
(Ms Winter) I think there are Afghan women being brought
in now. They are beginning to be part of decision-making process.
There are lots of working groups but they do not have much clout
and even people who are appointed as gender advisers are usually
women, often of fairly low status. Gender focal points do not
have much clout either. I think probably your word "audit"
is the way to go and to look at Nick Stockton's recommendations
and have a review leaning heavily on the EC report which comes
up with very useful guidelines, which are clear on some of the
points raised.
(Mr Riddell) It seems to me what is needed is work
at the centre within Kabul, within ministries, at the periphery
and at the central level. We have been working with local groups
for a number of years, one of which has a significant, although
still small project of development awareness in the education
sector, targeted at the gender issues. There are a number of people
working in relation to health and on income-generated projects
targeted at women. A lot has been going on. One must not have
a view that up until before the Taliban nothing was happening
and now things provide opportunities. There certainly are opportunities
but we need to build on experience with local organisations which
have been working on these issues for a number of years previously.
(Mr Marsden) May I make one final point on that, just
to note that although much progress has been made in relations
to women's education and employment, the political climate arising
from the Loya Jirga remains a highly conservative one. There are
significant threats, for example to efforts of families who send
their children to school, and many schools have been burnt down
and threatening letters sent and so on. History tells us that
we should be made aware of the risk of a backlash in Afghanistan
if the reform process moves too quickly.
Ann Clwyd
196. It is going to be a long time, is it not,
before women to become empowered? We all know the reality of that
because we have been fighting for it in this country for such
a long time. There is also a fear—and I agree with you about
the burka—and I raised it with women in the refugee camps
in Pakistan. They said, "That is not a problem for us. Don't
concern yourself about that. We want to get back home. We have
to keep saying that the progress of women must not be determined
by the number of women wearing burkas and not wearing burkas."
That point was clearly made to us. Also, there is a fear amongst
women that the Taliban may come back. That fear exists not only
outside Kabul but in Kabul itself. The whole feeling of insecurity
is something which affects every aspect of everyday life. You
probably agree with that.
(Ms Winter) That is true.
197. I want to get on to your very interesting
monthly report because you say that it is important that Afghanistan
has the resources it needs to build the infrastructure, tackle
humanitarian needs and address security and human rights concerns.
I want to talk about the human rights situation because we have
not talked very much about it. I did not know until I read this
that the UN Special Envoy for the UN Commission on Human Rights
visited mass graves in Afghanistan in October. She called for
an international inquiry into human rights abuses. That is something
some of us were calling for previously. She says that in northern
Afghanistan intimidation, fear and the rule of the gun prevails
rather than the rule of law. She said that one senior judge had
told her that the judiciary cannot deliver justice because people
enter their courts with guns. She visited Kabul and Kandahar,
Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif and she said the climate of impunity
exists which encourages those who hold power by the gun to continue
to kill people. I think this particular section is particular
worrying for us because she talks about recent killings, killings
of hundreds of Taliban prisoners last year in the north of Afghanistan
and of them being transported in containers and the excessive
use of force by coalition forces in villages in the Uruzgan Province
in July 2002, as recently as that. Then she goes on to say, and
this is what I found puzzling, that human rights abuses had decreased
dramatically, at the same time stressing that an atmosphere of
fear prevails, especially in areas outside Kabul. That does not
quite square.
(Mr Marsden) I think the situation is as she said;
the situation has got better but it is still very bad. The human
rights situation is far from good in the country. A climate of
impunity does continue to exist for as long as there is no national
army or national police force and for as long as those wielding
power at the local level have the freedom to do so without being
called to account. However, what we are seeing is a situation
in which the international community is helping a centralised
entity, the Afghan Transitional Authority, to built its capacity
to tackle these issues. I think you have heard from previous evidence
that the Human Rights Commission is seriously under-resourced
to do that job. Clearly, there are issues that need to be addressed.
I think the basic message is: progress has been made but there
is an awful long way to go and human rights concerns are a key
element in addressing the way forward .
198. Does this also concern the warlords and
the fact that so many have been armed by the Americans when they
were fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and also that some continue
to be armed by the Russians? Unless the process of disarmament
is somehow speeded up, this will be a continuing problem as far
as human rights are concerned?
(Mr Marsden) It is interesting that in the last couple
of weeks we have seen a disarmament process in the north involving
Atta Mohammed and Dostum's forces. It will be interesting to see
how effective that is, but history also tells us in Afghanistan
that if external entities put resources into local power builders,
that tends to further complicate the power arrangements. It is
of major concern to us that the US have resourced particular commanders
like Badsha Khan Zadran which led to months of conflict .
199. They are continuing to resource?
(Mr Marsden) We understand the US is now backing off.
They are aware of the criticisms and are putting fewer resources
into local power holders, if any. We are not sure what the current
situation is but they do seem to be aware of the criticism.
28 Strategic Coordination in Afghanistan, Nicholas
Stockton, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Back
29
Najia Zewari, a member of the UNIFEM staff. Back
|
