Examination of Witnesses(Questions 200-208)
MR ROGER
RIDDELL, MR
PETER MARSDEN
AND MS
ELIZABETH WINTER
TUESDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2002
200. Do you know what happened in the Uruzgan
province in July 2002? Who were the coalition forces who used
excessive force?
(Mr Marsden) This was a situation where the US forces
on the ground picked up on perhaps false intelligence that there
were Al-Qaeda elements in a particular village and sent a message
to their air crews to bomb the area. It turned out that the firing
related to a wedding. Clearly, as you know, people fire into the
air at weddings. About 50 or 60 people were killed. There were
other incidents where US forces went into people's homes using
excessive force. They did not have due regard to the need to respect
women or respect elders and have created huge animosity as a result.
This happened in many areas—Kunar and Paktia—as well
as Uruzgan. I think that is referred to in many reports as being
a potentially destabilising element in the situation.
201. Is that continuing? We hear very little
of the continuing search which we know is going on but we have
very little information about that.
(Mr Marsden) What we are hearing is that the US is
becoming more aware of its reputation, its negative reputation,
as a result of this incident and one of the initiatives is to
reduce the search for Al-Qaeda and move much more into the establishment
of security through multi-disciplinary teams. Elizabeth can give
more detail on this if you request it.
John Battle
202. Could I follow through the remarks that
Roger made and can we think a bit more long term? Listening to
all the evidence this morning, I felt that we are dealing with
the immediate transition problems and yet one of the organisations
we have heard from has been in Afghanistan since 1961. I just
wonder if I could ask you about the longer term rebuilding of
the economy. What kind of sustainable economic future is there
for Afghanistan? Is there a vision? Will it be a rural, agricultural
economy or will it be an urban-driven economy? Roger made an interesting
remark about the price of wheat but I understand that the poppy
crop is now back at its highest level for many years because people
find it profitable to grow poppies for the opium and heroin trade
as there are no alternatives. Unless we address that as well,
we have just simply wound the clock back and we are back where
we were. What is the economic vision?
(Mr Marsden) When I was in Afghanistan, I was doing
a study of the refugee situation. I was looking for indications
that the urban economy might be picking up because I was obviously
aware of the constraints in the rural areas. I found no real evidence,
apart from in Kabul where clearly people are coming back and houses
are being rebuilt and there is a lot of economic activity. I think
one can see over the course of the last 20 years that there has
been a very significant urbanisation process. To the extent that
the private sector does build up as a result of road building
or whatever, I think we are going to be seeing more people looking
to urban economies than to rural economies for their survival.
A key factor here is that the population has ironically increased
over the course of the conflict because of better access to health
care, partly in Iran and Pakistan and partly in the villages and
cities of Afghanistan. I think we have to anticipate that there
is a need for greater economic capacity than existed 20 years
ago. If Iran and Pakistan are not willing to accept a significant
degree of economic migration, somehow the resources have to be
found to build up the private sector, and that is going to be
in urban areas. There is little sign of major inward investment
at the moment, apart from the normal Afghan entrepreneurship picking
up. On the opium side, we do not necessary have to conclude from
the very large opium production this year that this is a trend
that will continue. Certainly a lot of farmers who planted opium
in 1999 before the Taliban ban had done so in anticipation of
certain levels of income to repay debt. When farmers grow opium,
they borrow money from the traders. A lot of farmers have found
themselves significantly in debt because of the opium ban imposed
on the Taliban and have needed to grow this year to recover that.
My view is that because the opium harvest is highly labour-intensive
and therefore relies heavily on the availability of cheap labour,
if road building projects or whatever provide alternative sources
of livelihood, it will be more difficult for farmers to grow opium
next year. That is a key factor.
203. Is price not a factor?
(Mr Marsden) Price is also a significant factor.
204. What alternative crops would there be to
wean them off growing opium? If it is more profitable to grow
opium than wheat, how do you get them to grow wheat?
(Mr Marsden) I do not think it is realistic to look
at alternative crops as a way forward. The only way forward is
alternative livelihoods, perhaps through the urban economy.
Chairman
205. And cash-for-work type schemes?
(Mr Marsden) Cash-for-work schemes up to a point,
yes.
Hugh Bayley
206. Can I take you back to the question which
I asked Sakandar Ali and what you referred to about the returning
refugees and displaced people? Who is it who is returning? Are
these the more recently left people or people who have spent 20
years in Pakistan? What is the pressure in the host communities,
the neighbouring countries, for people to return to Afghanistan?
Does that come from the Government or from the local communities
? Is there antagonism from people within Afghanistan who have
never left when they see opportunities to rebuild and then suddenly
there is a much greater population pressure than they expected?
(Mr Marsden) I think we should first of all note that
a majority of those who have returned from Iran had left during
the Taliban period and that is statistically established. It is
also clear that the Pakistan government was seeking to empty the
urban areas of Afghan refugees, so a relatively high proportion
of those who have returned have come from urban areas. The Pakistan
government has been relatively successful in emptying the urban
areas. We know that there will be a screening programme next year
in the camps to try and rationalise the camp population. In terms
of the pressure, Iran was very disappointed by the repatriation
programme that it set up in 1992, the numbers who returned were
relatively small, and over the mid-1990s started a process of
increasing police harassment of quite an arbitrary nature so that
young people, whether or not they had documentation, would be
stopped by the police, the documentation torn up, sent to detention
centres and shipped across the border, some sent to fight on behalf
of the groups that Iran was supporting. That process continued.
About two years ago the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, passed
legislation turning the screw, if you like, on Afghan refugees
by imposing fines on employers who engaged Afghan labour. We have
also seen over the last year, certainly since March, an increasing
number of schools being closed to Afghans. It is an odd situation
in Iran. Although we see Iran allowing a continued inward flow
of migrant labour, albeit clandestinely, and we also see a very
high rate of deportations happening every six months, the overall
trend is for Iran to push people back. What has been happening
this year, combined with the pressures on employers and the closing
of schools and people having to pay more for their health care,
is the radio and tv broadcasts have had a standard item each day
saying "Can we remind Afghans that now is the time to go
home, that the UN will provide you with free transport to your
home area and the UN will be there to assist you on your return"
but when people arrive in Herat and find that there is only a
contribution towards their transport costs clearly there is a
lot of upset. I saw this myself on many occasions. Clearly when
people return to the Shomali Valley and find that only some people
are getting assistance they are equally aggrieved. We have seen
a similar situation in Pakistan where really from the beginning
of 2001 onwards Pakistan decided that enough was enough and started
to harass people much more, particularly young people. That level
of harassment increased enormously once the repatriation programme
started last March, particularly in the urban areas. Whereas in
Iran there was a very concerted media campaign to encourage people
to return, which I should add fuelled local prejudice—there
is a high level of anti-Afghan prejudice in Iran—so that
Afghans became subject to an enormous amount of abuse, both verbal
and physical, that was another important factor in people deciding
to go back, in Pakistan one did not have that but what one did
have was people listening to the BBC and hearing that Tokyo was
leading to very high levels of reconstruction funding coming in,
so there was a high expectation that jobs would be there. The
study I was involved in was very clearly concluding that those
expectations had been unreasonably raised by Tokyo and this will
be a key factor in any further pledging conference, I think, that
one must be careful not to give people unrealistic expectations.
Another conclusion really is that there is a relationship between
how easy it is to survive and the decision to return. Those who
were struggling in Iran and Pakistan were more likely to be encouraged
by the prospect of jobs and by the media coverage in Iran encouraging
them to return. There are a lot of families that still remain
in Iran in spite of the media coverage. Although one and a half
million returned from Pakistan only 300,000 have gone back from
Iran. This is in large part because there is a much greater distance
to travel across Iran to Afghanistan than there is from Pakistan,
and in part because it is much easier to go back and forth across
the border on the Pakistan side. We estimate that perhaps one-third
of the 1.5 million from Pakistan have been recyclers: people have
crossed the border, taken the whole family, claimed the encashment
package, most of the family goes back to Pakistan and the man
stays to farm and then goes back in the autumn.
Chairman
207. Is there anything that has not been covered
that was in your statement, any points that you feel important
that have not yet been made?
(Mr Riddell) There is one point, just picking up on
what Ann was saying about insecurity and arms, etc. There is increasing
concern in the NGO community about the way that discussion is
taking place about military personnel taking on more of a humanitarian
role. That is worrying at a number of levels. How can we be sure
that the military are able to assess what the humanitarian needs
are when best practice suggests that this should be community
led rather than from the top? The other important worry is that
when particular troops who are perceived to be part of a faction
or a group take on the humanitarian role, that dramatically increases
the risk of other aid workers doing humanitarian work, even in
different parts of the country. We have been working in Afghanistan
on a whole succession of different circumstances with local groups
doing humanitarian and development work. We see this particular
discussion, and it has gone beyond discussion, as particularly
worrying to us.
208. As you have raised this issue, is there
not a tension on the one hand that a lot of witnesses are saying
that there is a need to extend ISAF's remit outside Kabul, and
clearly the troops are there as peacekeepers, they are recognised
as peacekeepers, but if you are going to extend ISAF's remit outside
Kabul then by definition you will have more troops on the ground
involved in peacekeeping, that is inescapable. That seems to be
one of those tensions that is going to have to be resolved, that
one cannot have both ISAF extending its remit outside Kabul unless
you do actually have more peacekeeping troops on the ground outside
Kabul.
(Mr Riddell) We are supportive of the ISAF mandate
expanding, there is a great need for that, because the overriding
concern is to have security in the whole country. The concern
is where military forces take on a humanitarian role and actively
promote that because that confuses, particularly in the minds
of the people, exactly what these people are doing and, as I have
indicated, raises questions about other humanitarian agencies
working outside the umbrella of particularly military forces,
the risk of compromise of the humanitarian imperative and initiative
is worrying.
(Mr Marsden) Can I just make a final point to say
that we were pleased to note in the evidence given by DFID to
the Committee on 19 November there is a recognition that Afghanistan
will need substantial international resources for at least the
next 10 years. However, we are concerned just at the stage when
long-term development assistance is needed about reports that
the EC, and perhaps the UK, will be reducing the amounts of money
available for Afghanistan next year.
Chairman: Thank you very much for your
help. Thank you.
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