Examination of Witnesses (Questions 39
- 59)
THURSDAY 23 MARCH 2006
MR JIM
DRUMMOND, MR
PHIL EVANS,
MR STEPHEN
PATTISON, MAJOR
GENERAL ANDREW
STEWART AND
MR MATT
BAUGH
Q39 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed for coming in to give evidence to us
on this report we are doing on conflict and development. Mr Drummond,
could you perhaps introduce yourself and your colleagues so we
know where you are all coming from?
Mr Drummond: Thank you very much
for inviting us here. My name is Jim Drummond; I am the Director
for the United Nations, Conflict and Humanitarian Division in
DFID. On my immediate left is Stephen Pattison, who is the Director
of International Security in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Further left is Major General Stewart, who is the Assistant Chief
of Defence Staff responsible for policy in the MoD. On my right
Phil Evans from DFID, who is the Head of the Africa Conflict and
Humanitarian Unit, so from Africa Division in DFID, will take
most of your questions on Africa issues. On my far right, Matt
Baugh, who is the Acting Head of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Unit.
Q40 Chairman:
Thank you for that. You will be aware that the Committee is part
way through this report. Some members of the Committee have already
visited Sierra Leone and Uganda and we are also planning a visit
in May to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course we are interested
in conflict situations wherever they occur, not just where we
have been, but, not surprisingly, where we have been does tend
to feature in our minds somewhat. Perhaps just to be specific
to kick the thing off, those of us who went to Uganda were first
of all very conscious of the fact that when the Government announced
it was reducing budget support, it was entirely related to its
concerns about the way the Ugandan Government was treating the
opposition and their conduct prior to the elections and not related
to the conflict in the north. We felt this was a point of concern:
the ability of the Ugandan Government to act as though the conflict
in the north were somehow isolated from them was something that
we felt should have been highlighted. Why was that conflict in
the north not really referred to in the context of reducing budget
support, even though the money that it saved was going specifically
to support the humanitarian effort in the north?
Mr Drummond: I shall ask Phil
to say something about this in a minute because Africa is his
patch. By way of introduction, I should say that we face quite
difficult decisions about budget support. We principally provide
budget support for countries where we are confident that they
have poverty reduction strategies in place that will lead to quite
rapid progress against the millennium development goals. The history
of Uganda over the last few years has been that there has been
quite a rapid reduction in poverty. The position that we have
taken on northern Uganda is that the leadership of the LRAhas
been very difficult to do business with, indeed some of them are
now charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and therefore
our duty is to help to bring them to justice rather than to mediate
with them. Our approach has been to provide humanitarian assistance,
as you note, to the people in the north and our approach has been
to try to encourage the participants or the people who have suffered
from the LRA to re-integrate into their communities. There is
a number of local level activities which do that. Ministers face
a difficult decision when they are balancing up the conflict argument
against the policy arguments in this. Where they have come down
on Uganda is, as you described, that they have taken action because
of abuses, as they saw it, in the electoral system and because
of human rights issues and not because of the conflict.
Q41 Chairman:
It does imply that you are treating conflict and governance as
though they were two separate issues. Is that the way you see
them?
Mr Drummond: No, that is not the
way we see them and we are doing quite a lot of work to try to
make our development programmes more conflict-sensitive through
the use of strategic conflict analysis. They are not separate
issues, but when you get a specific instance, you have to make
a decision as to whether you think that withdrawing some budget
support will actually make an impact on the situation on the ground.
May I just ask Phil, who is much more expert on Uganda than I
am, to see whether he wants to offer more comment?
Mr Evans: It is a very difficult
judgment to make as to how you use conditions associated with
different aid instruments to affect outcomes on the ground. The
judgment in Uganda is that withdrawing budget support would not
necessarily take us forward with respect to resolving the conflicts
in the north, in part because the situation up there is not directly
or exclusively a consequence of government action, whereas the
kinds of things we saw in the lead-up and during the election
there clearly were and involved the use of public funds to which
we were making a contribution. The decision to divert some of
those resources at that time was because we saw a direct relationship
between those two things. By diverting those resources to the
north, that reinforced the signal that we were very concerned
about what was going on up there, what had been going on there
for a very long time, so it did act as a double signal to government
that that remained a problem. The cost to other poor people in
Uganda would be greater than the benefits in moving forward the
resolution of the conflict up there had we withdrawn earlier and
for longer, which is what the implication would be of doing that.
Q42 Chairman:
I can understand that thinking, but can I take it a little bit
further. We were somewhat concerned when we were visiting camps
that, for example, of 53 camps in northern Uganda, of which we
visited three, only three had a police presence, which is the
responsibility of the Ugandan Government. The police presence
that we met, and it is no criticism of the police officers, was
hopelessly under-resourced and it was wholly inadequate. In one
camp there was a health clinic, struggling with a whole variety
of different diseases within the camps, entirely and exclusively
resourced by outside foreign aid agencies yet both of these things
are provisions that, anywhere else in Uganda, would come out of
the central government's budget which we are supporting. That
really raised the issue, the suggestion that somehow there is
a difference between government in one part of the country and
in the other. Conflict is still the responsibility of the Ugandan
Government even if it is not entirely under their control.
Mr Evans: I am not sure how to
respond to that; the Committee is raising a very important point.
It is a fine judgment call and certainly something to consider
further as we go forward. There is nothing particularly unique
though about budget support as opposed to other forms of aid,
so the questions that the Committee are raising about this do
apply more widely to the totality of our aid support to Uganda
and our view is that budget support is not separate or special
as an instrument, although it does have different characteristics
to other forms of aid. In a sense the question would apply to
our total support to Uganda and how we balance the very acute
needs of those in the North with the wider needs of the population
at large and to recognise that the Government are making very
important progress in other parts of its own programming and use
of resources. Uganda has been in all other respects a success
story in terms of its capacity to reduce poverty and to create
opportunities for its population. It is one of these countries
which presents very considerable dilemmas to people working in
this business, but which is also pointing the way, in some respects,
to some significant successes. We have to tread a fine line in
engaging and supporting the positive processes and trying to assist
the Government and others to tackle the negative ones.
Q43 Hugh Bayley:
When we were in northern Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army was
portrayed to us as a kind of rag-bag force of people driven on
with some sort of millennial concepts, largely consisting of abducted
children. Yet in military terms it has been remarkably successful.
It has driven 1.7 million people from their homes, which is costing
the international community $200 million a year in humanitarian
assistance. Where did they learn their tactics? Why are they so
effective?
Mr Evans: I can have a stab at
that one. Elements of the LRA clearly have come in the past from
the Ugandan Armed Forces in perhaps the pre-Museveni days. It
is clear that, although at one level they do appear to be a rather
chaotic and shambling force, they do have a significant degree
of military capability and have proved to be much harder to deal
with at that level than one might have supposed. That does point
to them having, at least at their core, a significant degree of
capability. It is as much to do with the way in which those forces
are dispersed, the way they actually operate and the great difficulty
of tracking them down and dealing with them in a straight-on way.
I do not know whether General Stewart would have any comments
to make about that kind of warfare.
Major General Stewart: Purely
from a military point of view, the fact that they have been based
either in southern Sudan or in north-eastern DRC has made it difficult
for the Ugandan Armed Forces to do much about it, unless they
have received international approbation for returning back into
the DRC to do exactly what, trying to defeat the LRA, we would
wish them to do and they have had those difficulties. There is
also, without putting too fine a point on it, the capability of
the Ugandan Army and Armed Forces which is not extremely high.
Across the whole of Africa one has this difficulty with indigenous
forces which actually have to spend an inordinate amount of time
gaining the trust of their political masters and learning to work
to political direction and to work within international norms,
which they have not done before, which means that they are working
under a significant textual disadvantage. One only has to look
at what happened in Sierra Leone, for example, with the sheer
ferocity of the RUF[1],
and were Sierra Leone Armed Forces now to respond in that sort
of measure, how we would find it simply appalling and beyond the
law. In Uganda in areas which have been, because of where they
are, pretty lawless, particularly north-east DRC, it is very difficult
for the Ugandan forces.
Q44 Hugh Bayley:
May I put a further question to the General, because it has to
do with tactics? The Government of Uganda has gone to the International
Criminal Court and got these arrest warrants, which implies that
they believe that if they were to take out the top leaders, the
rest of the organisation would avail themselves of the amnesty.
We, the UK, are strong supporters of the ICC, so it is extremely
important to us that the first arrest warrants are executed, that
is to say that people are arrested. I say "arrested"
rather than "killed", which is probably Museveni's favourite
answer. Should not the Western community be talking to the Government
of Uganda about providing the technical assistance that they,
the Government of Uganda, need to execute the arrest warrants?
It was put to us that they find it difficult to do so because
they need satellite tracking technology and they need helicopters.
Is that your assessment of what is needed to take these people
in? If so, how can Western countries provide that technology or
is other support needed?
Major General Stewart: I should
say that the single most important thing that they need is intelligence.
They probably need to have human intelligence to know where those
leaders are. It is only then that they cue in any technical means
that we may provide for them. How could we help technically, or
the West help technically? To be honest, picking up individuals
is going to be extremely difficult in that sort of terrain. I
can think of no technical means, other than once you have eyes-on
contact being able actually to maintain those "eyes-on".
Helicopters do not have the ability to stay in position, they
run out of fuel, they are noisy, et cetera. Aerial surveillance,
probably from space, is not really a means of being able to follow
individuals. If I were to look back at Bosnia, the only way that
we were able to capture indicted war criminals there was through
human intelligence, from being able to put "eyes-on"
and maintain those "eyes-on" and to have an understanding
of work patterns and life patterns. We just do not have that.
Now whether the Ugandans would be able to gain that information,
I do not know. I would contend that, for example, in the hostage
rescue in Sierra Leone in which I was involved, in terms of commanding,
not in situ, the only way that that was achieved was through having
an insider in the camp itself. Without that, that rescue would
not have been possible regardless of how much technical capability
we would have been able to employ.
Q45 Hugh Bayley:
The way it was presented to us was that the LRA was not just a
rag-bag, but a group of criminals or extremists who were hated
by the people in Acholiland. Normally rebel armies or guerrilla
armies can only operate if they have some sympathy and support
from amongst the people. If the Government of Uganda are finding
it so difficult to get the human intelligence they need to pinpoint
where the key leaders are, does that suggest actually that there
is a fairly widespread Acholi sympathy for the LRA, which of course
goes back in history a long way, that is to say Acholi northern
versus southern and western Ugandan tensions?
Major General Stewart: Without
having been there, I cannot really answer that question. All I
would say is that there will be an equal and opposite fear of
the LRA and while they may need local support in order to be able
to live off the land, they may well be getting that local support
through fear and intimidation, rather than through gaining the
support and the friendship.
Q46 Hugh Bayley:
Is the British Government talking to the Government of Uganda
about military assistance of any kind, whether it is with satellite
technology or logistics or providing military advisers?
Major General Stewart: We have
the defence attaché and indeed we have discussed at a very
high level the whole question of the defence review in Uganda
from about three years ago and we have been closely engaged in
that with them to try to make sure that they spend their money
correctly. I would have to come back to you on whether there is
current discussion about technical assistance. I know that we
were discussing, you may remember, about six months ago or maybe
less, whether we could send an advisory team out there just to
see what they required and to put them in the right direction.
I cannot remember whether that team actually went out. If I may,
I shall give you a written answer on that[2].
Q47 Hugh Bayley:
Thank you. If I could move onto a wider question in relation to
the Conflict Prevention Pools, DFID has developed a Strategic
Conflict Assessment (SCA) tool. How does it work, that is to say
in relation to which conflicts, when do you decide to use that
tool and when went do you not and why? How does it work and should
it be a universalised tool?
Mr Drummond: Well its objective
is to get underneath the surface of the conflict, to understand
what the real issues are that require resolution. So it starts
by looking at the actors involved, what their interests are, how
the dynamics of the conflict are changing. It moves then into
thinking about what policy prescriptions there might be for dealing
with that. It has been done in about 20 different situations now;
sometimes just by DFID but better done with civil society, and
with other donors. In Sri Lanka it was undertaken with the World
Bank, the Government of the Netherlands, the Asia Foundation and
Sida, in Nepal it has been also prepared in association with civil
society. We are trying to encourage all of our country offices
to use this tool as they prepare country assistance plans. Obviously
in some countries a Strategic Conflict Assessment will be more
relevant than others, but at least they have to answer the question
now "Is this relevant to our context?" and if a SCA
is at all relevant, then to use it. So we are expecting these
to spread much more widely in usage within DFID.
Q48 Hugh Bayley:
What I am not clear is whether it is a DFID tool or whether it
is a tool which has joint ownership from the Foreign Office and
the MoD as well. I understand the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit
has developed a diagnostic kit for countries at risk of instability,
which sounds to me, without understanding the detail of either
instrument, a similar sort of instrument. Is it not important
that the Government adopts a single assessment framework and that
it is shared and trusted by each of the three government departments
which are here?
Mr Drummond: Colleagues on my
left can comment on whether it is trusted in the Departments.
The Strategic Conflict Assessment was developed largely in DFID
by DFID's conflict advisers, some of whom have military backgrounds.
It is being spread across government now so that it forms a basis
for some of the work that underpins the conflict pools. Matt Baugh
with his work in the PCRU is trying to adapt the tool so that
it can be used to assess stabilisation requirements and he could
tell you about that, if that were useful. It is something which,
as it were, is gathering strength. The CRI[3]
is less specifically conflict related and looking at a wider bunch
of countries which might be at risk of instability in the future,
looking at longer-term trends, competition over resources, climate
change and those sorts of issues. It has a wider frame than the
conflict assessment.
Q49 Richard Burden:
I may be being a bit thick here, but I am still struggling a bit
to understand what it is. I understand that in different situations
you are looking at whether the tool, the assessment, will be adapted
for use in certain places, but I still do not have a picture of
what it actually is and how it works.
Mr Drummond: It is an analytical
tool which takes you through logical steps in trying to identify
possible sources of conflict and then looking at options for what
you might do about them.
Q50 Richard Burden:
Like what?
Mr Drummond: Well, if you wanted
to do it in Nepal for example, then you would want to try to understand
what underlay the support that the Maoists were getting in the
rural areas, what their grievances are with government, where
they might be getting support from, whether there are any bits
of people's aid programmes, for example, which might be biased
or otherwise towards the Government and not be helping in rural
areas. One of the signals it sent to us in Nepal was that we certainly
should not be providing budget support there, but because the
Government were able to deliver some health services and education
services in the rural areas, it made sense still to continue for
the moment with support for education and health through our aid
programme.
Q51 Richard Burden:
I understand those are the kinds of questions that commonsense
would say you would ask in Nepal. What I am struggling to understand
is that you have this tool that you apply to different situations.
What is that? Is it just saying that you ask the right questions
for every conflict situation or is it more than that?
Mr Drummond: It is a way of thinking
about conflict situations that takes you through a set of logical
steps to try to get you to what the root causes are of the conflict
and then working through to what you can then do about it.
Mr Evans: It is certainly not
rocket science. It is basically a set of key questions that we
increasingly recognise need to be asked in a broad range of contexts
in developing countries, if we are to support the establishment
and the kind of stability that is required to reduce poverty over
time. So we already asked a lot of questions about poverty and
what it consisted of and how it manifested itself and what is
being done about it and what needs to be done to reduce it. We
are asking a similar set of questions with respect to potentially
de-stabilising factors within any particular country. It is really
a toolkit and a conceptual framework which is applied country
by country according to the context in that place. It raises a
set of questions for us and other donors and for the Government
which perhaps would not be asked and therefore would diminish
the prospects of preventing conflict or managing it where it exists
from place to place. It is interesting in Africa that the toolkit
of conflict assessment has been drawn from in different forms
in different places and with different degrees of effect. It is
not an instrument which is applied: it is not a kind of black
box, data in and assessment out, but a way of looking at the conditions
within a country and the risks that those might pose and what
policy choices there might be to respond to them. We have done
some work with the World Bank, some work directly with governments,
some work with other donors, some work with NGOs, with differing
degrees of results and impact. It is something which we intend,
certainly in Africa, to "routinise" as part of our analytical
framework of understanding poverty and stability issues everywhere
that we work on the continent and it has become incorporated in
our guidance on the way we develop country assistance plans.
Chairman: The Committee is trying to
get into the minds of the Department really and how they approach
things and John Bercow has a follow-up question.
Q52 John Bercow:
I am a bit alarmed about the idea of "routinising" anything
to be frank. We have learned from previous evidence that the Strategic
Conflict Assessment tool, to use the title that reflects its full
glory, has not yet been applied comprehensively, but if it is
to be of any practical use whatsoever rather than simply to be
an exercise in abstract intellectual analysis and paper shifting,
presumably one can point to beneficial results of it, even if
it is in its formative stage. Perhaps you would be good enough
to identify for me just three?
Mr Drummond: Let me give you two.
I gave you the example of Nepal already, where it has changed
the way that DFID thought about how it should provide its assistance.
The same has been applied a couple of times in Sri Lanka too,
in helping to shape the global pool conflict prevention strategy
there. It has been done there with the World Bank and it has helped
to shape the way that the World Bank has directed its programmes
there. We are not saying it is rocket science; we are not trying
to overplay it. It is a way of thinking through this set of issues
in a way that perhaps has not been done before. What has tended
to happen before is that people have dealt with the symptoms of
conflict rather than trying to get at the root causes. There are
ways that donors can provide assistance which can either reduce
the risk of conflict or sometimes they can increase the risk of
conflict. For example, supporting privatisation programmes where
the benefits just go to the elite would, in some cases, perhaps
increase the risk of conflict rather than reduce it.
Q53 John Bercow:
It is just that I am quite concerned—I may be wrong but
I have a sort of hunch and perhaps other members of the Committee
are quite concerned—to try to synthesise and distil this
in terms which are intelligible to a largely cynical electorate
which is fairly hacked off with politics and rather bored by the
manner in which, and the language in which, it is conducted. Given
what you have just said, that it has been applied, as you put
it, a couple of times in Sri Lanka and has shaped the strategy
there, and on the assumption that for a moment you are addressing
an audience which knows absolutely nothing about it and you have
in two sentences to identify, not a strategy or an approach or
a continuing series of steps, but something very concrete and
practical that has resulted for the people of Sri Lanka as a consequence,
what would it be?
Mr Drummond: It would be that
donors who provide support to Sri Lanka have changed the way that
they go about providing that support.
John Bercow: From what to what? Forgive
me Mr Drummond, I am not being obtuse for the sake of it, because
it is a Thursday afternoon and I am weary, because I am probably
no more weary than you are or any of the rest of us is. What I
am concerned about is that too many of these exchanges, if you
will forgive me saying so, and even if you will not, take place
in terms which may be intelligible to those who are articulating
them, but do not mean much to a wider audience. What does it mean
in practice? I would beg you to break out of the double-speak
in which so many of these conversations are conducted. It is meaningless
to talk about strategies. What I want to know, as somebody who
is not a specialist in Sri Lanka, but as a member of the Select
Committee interested, is what practical difference. You say it
has changed the way that donors operate. Fine, great, I am quite
happy to accept that, but how, in what way, to whose benefit?
Chairman: Has it prevented or stopped
conflict situations?
Q54 John Bercow:
That is what I am asking. It is not rocket science, it is a simple
enquiry.
Mr Drummond: It has reduced the
risk of conflict in Sri Lanka. As you know, conflict has been
stopped for a while in Sri Lanka. We do not know whether that
is going to be sustainable in the long term, but it has helped
to identify where flows of money were going that might have fuelled
conflict or not fuelled conflict.
Q55 John Bercow:
Is there any chance of having a written note on this?
Mr Drummond: Sure; we can write
you a note[4].
Q56 Chairman:
Does that mean, for example, you have diverted more money to the
Tamils or more money away from the Tamils?
Mr Drummond: Can we write to you
about it?
Chairman: Yes, please, putting it in
that context would be helpful.
Q57 Mr Singh:
I would like to look at the architecture the Government have established
to look at the issues surrounding conflict. If I am correct, we
have the global Conflict Prevention Pool, the Africa Conflict
Prevention Pool, the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit and, I
understand, a sub-committee in the Cabinet Office. How are these
bodies different? How do they coordinate with each other? How
do you ensure that they do not duplicate similar work? In the
review that was undertaken by DFID of the Conflict Prevention
Pools, there was some discussion of the creation of a single conflict
prevention unit. It was not recommended at that stage, but what
are your views maybe on the creation of a single conflict prevention
unit?
Mr Drummond: The pools have been
in existence for about five years now and they were evaluated
by Bradford University in 2004 and got a generally positive report
from that. The decision at the outset was to have two separate
pools. We have a spending review about to start. We are looking
at the question as to whether it is sensible to bring those pools
together in one and in the next year or so a decision will be
taken about that. The decision at the beginning was that these
were experimental, that we should try slightly different approaches,
different management ideas for the global pool than for Africa
so that we could compare across. That means that there are different
management arrangements for each and Phil and his unit are responsible
for the Africa one and the Foreign Office leads on the global
pool. We shall look at whether there should be one. Whether there
should be one unit that manages all of them, which sits rather
as the PCRU does between departments, is more questionable. Government
took a decision on the PCRU that it needed to have an operational
capacity and therefore was best to establish a unit that was unified
in order to do that. What we have taken on the pool side is more
of a coordination approach between departments and, compared with
where we were five years ago, there is much more common understanding
of conflict issues, Security Sector Reform for example, than there
was then. There are some very substantial gains in Africa and
Africa peace-keeping and you have seen in Sierra Leone some of
the programmes there. There is a body of evidence building which
suggests that these pools are effective.
Q58 Mr Singh:
The review does speak highly of the work of the pools. What I
am concerned about is the duplication between them and you really
have not mentioned that. It concerns me because I cannot see why
the Cabinet Office should establish a sub-committee on conflict
prevention and reconstruction unless there were some issues about
coordination. You have not mentioned those. What are the issues?
Mr Drummond: Both pools report
to a committee of ministers which comes together as a Cabinet
sub-committee.
Q59 Mr Singh:
That has just been established and has not yet met.
Mr Drummond: Previously there
were two Cabinet sub-committees, one for each pool. What has happened
now, which is good, is that they have been brought together so
that there is one Cabinet sub-committee of ministers which will
look at both pools and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit.
1 Revolutionary United Front. Back
2
Ev 117 Back
3
Countries at Risk of Instability programme. Back
4
Ev 118 Back
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