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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 408-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE DEFENCE COMMITTEE
Tuesday 27 March 2007 DR SHIRIN AKINER, THE HONOURABLE GILBERT GREENALL and MS NORINE MACDONALD QC
MR ROBERT FOX, MR RORY STEWART and DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS Evidence heard in Public Questions 103 - 203
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Defence Committee on Tuesday 27 March 2007 Members present Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair Mr David Borrow Mr David Crausby Linda Gilroy Mr Dai Havard Mr Adam Holloway Mr Bernard Jenkin Mr Kevan Jones Robert Key ________________ Memoranda submitted by Gilbert Greenall, The Senlis Council
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Shirin Akiner, Lecturer in Central Asian Studies, School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), The Honourable Gilbert Greenall, and Ms Norine MacDonald QC, President, Senlis Council, gave evidence. Q103 Chairman: Good morning to you all. This is the second evidence session of our second inquiry into Afghanistan and we are looking at the work of the United Kingdom in Afghanistan. Last week we had the Secretary of State and this week we have two groups of independent and extremely well-informed commentators. Good morning to all three of you as witnesses. I wonder if you would like to introduce yourselves, and if I may start with you, Shirin Akiner, I gather you have lost your voice, which is always a handicap when you are appearing in front of a select committee, but thank you very much for coming back to talk to us. Dr Akiner: Thank you. My name is Shirin Akiner, I am from the School of Oriental & African Studies and I lecture on Central Asian affairs. I am also an associate fellow at Chatham House, and I have been working on the region for a very, very long time indeed and seen many ups and downs and changes. Q104 Chairman: Thank you very much. Norine MacDonald, would you like to tell us about yourself and about your experience. Ms MacDonald: My name is Norine MacDonald, I am the President and field researcher for the Senlis Council and Senlis Afghanistan. The Senlis Council is a policy group looking at counter-narcotics, security and communications. I am based between Kandahar and Lashkar Gah doing field research on the issues affecting the insurgency in counter-narcotics. Q105 Chairman: Thank you. Gilbert Greenall. Dr Greenall: I have been involved in humanitarian emergencies since 1979; ex-military, I had a four years short service commission in the Household Cavalry, I am a medical doctor and since the first Gulf War I was deployed with 3 Commando Brigade in Northern Iraq and have worked on a number of military operations as an adviser to brigade and divisional commanders over the last 15 years. Q106 Chairman: What is your experience of working within the Government of the United Kingdom? Mr Greenall: I worked as consultant adviser to the Overseas Development Agency (ODA) and then since DFID was formed since 1997 I have worked as a consultant adviser to DFID and, more recently, at the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit. Q107 Robert Key: Could I ask you each, in your view is the United Kingdom making a positive contribution to Afghanistan? Ms MacDonald: The UK military is fighting in the most difficult circumstances with remarkable success. Our research has shown, however, that the development and aid efforts of the UK and the counter-narcotics policy supported by the UK are in fact not only failing but contributing to the rise in the Taliban insurgency in the South. We have just finished a survey of 17,000 Afghan men in Helmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces and we have asked them whether they support the Taliban. In Helmand and Kandahar provinces 26 per cent of the men were willing to openly state that they support the Taliban and when we asked them whether they believed that the Karzai Government and NATO will win the war or the Taliban will win the war, 50 per cent of them stated that they believe the Taliban will now win the war. Or research results have shown that clearly we are in a crisis situation and emergency measures must be taken to ensure the success of the UK and NATO effort in Afghanistan. Q108 Robert Key: What measures might those be? Ms MacDonald: I have brought a list of them, if I am permitted to make a handout. Q109 Chairman: Yes, that is helpful; by all means. Ms MacDonald: I apologise that we are a research group and a policy group so we tend to do this type of thing. I will pass it around. What we are recommending is an emergency action plan that looks at five separate areas, first in the area of research. I spend a great deal of time counselling villagers in Helmand province. There are people displaced by the fighting and poppy eradication that are literally starving. The men are willing to sit in the food aid line-ups for hours at a time; these are easy recruits for the Taliban, so both from a humanitarian and a counter-insurgency point of view there must be immediate aid. There has been no food aid in Helmand Province since March 2006. On counter-narcotics policy we are recommending an immediate end to the eradication campaigns which turn the locals against us, fuel the insurgency and are ineffective, and the implementation of pilot projects for poppy for medicine, which I can speak about more if the Committee is interested. We are calling for Jirgas with the local population, a joint committee between Afghanistan and Pakistan to address those urgent issues chaired by General David Richards and, finally, broad-based NATO commitments. The entire NATO structure and response in Afghanistan must be rebalanced. The UK is doing its part and the other countries are not. If I can have the Chairman's permission I would also like to hand out those survey results that I referred to, it is just a two-page document. Chairman: That too would be very helpful; thank you. Q110 Robert Key: Could I then ask you, Shirin, if you would give us your view about whether the United Kingdom is making a positive contribution? Dr Akiner: The United Kingdom is treading water; they can cope just about with the security tasks they have been set, but if you are talking about any further vision as to how the country should be developed, that is entirely lacking. One of the major problems is that we have indulged in obfuscation. We have used a term "reconstruction": we are not talking about reconstruction. If you look at all the data on Afghanistan going back over the years, we are talking about construction from a very low base. Looking at the United Nations Human Development Index, Afghanistan is today but was, going back 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, on a level with countries such as Burkina Faso, so when we talk about development if you want to raise the level of development in Afghanistan it has to be clearly understood that this is a vast undertaking. Think of a country like Burkina Faso; what level are you hoping to raise Afghanistan to? That is the first question. The second question, which I do not think has been taken into consideration enough, is how is Afghanistan ever to become self-sustaining? It has very few natural resources, the few minerals it has are difficult to exploit and transport costs of course are extremely high. Leaving aside the opium, it seems to me that it has only one advantage, and that advantage is deliberately being ignored and, I would even say, undermined. The advantage is that it could be a transit country for the region, for roads, railways and pipelines, but because the Western-led coalition quite firmly and explicitly has stated it does not want the involvement of the neighbours, what we have in Afghanistan is in effect an enclave completely cut off from the neighbouring countries. The level of trade between, let us say, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan is absolutely minute; between Afghanistan and the other neighbouring countries, absolutely minute, so apart from Pakistan there is virtually no regional involvement. This may be sustainable in the short term if you are prepared to call in aid to Afghanistan, but in the longer term, with the growth of China and China's relationship with the other major powers in the region, that is to say Russia, Iran and eventually India, either Afghanistan has to be keyed into the structural developments that are taking place or it is doomed to be avoided, and what we see now if we look at all the road and rail networks that are being planned, they are being planned for Afghanistan and not being planned to link in to the other states. In the long term, therefore, the policy is entirely unsustainable; in the short term of course individual units, individual people from the UK are doing a great job, but this is not looking ahead to the future. Q111 Robert Key: Thank you, Dr Akiner. Gilbert Greenall, is the UK making a positive contribution? Dr Greenall: The original plan back in 2001 when the Taliban were harbouring al-Qaeda, it was a direct threat to the United Kingdom and it was completely correct to deal with that direct threat. Since that time there have been a number of secondary objectives and those secondary objectives now are undermining the operation in Helmand province. With counter-narcotics, for example, I cannot think of anything more designed to actually create conflict and get us embroiled in great complexities of central Asian politics than trying to deal with counter-narcotics. The nation building, pushing a stronger central government - initially the idea came across the Atlantic that failed states were a danger to a harbouring of international terrorists, therefore a strong central state was a barrier to them - I cannot think of anything in Afghanistan which is more likely, than a strong central state, to actually create conflict and not actually reduce it. The actual resourcing of this, if you look at the billion or so that the press report for the war, versus £180 million for the civil effort in Afghanistan, there is complete disparity of effort and also the effort now is being spread in so many different areas and not in just this one defeat of the Taliban. Q112 Robert Key: Is this because of a lack of strategic focus or could you identify one or two serious obstacles that are preventing progress? Dr Greenall: It is a loss of strategic focus. Dr Akiner: I would agree entirely with that, but I think that comes from the refusal to face reality and to pretend that the task is something that it is not, that it is a short term task that can be accomplished and that therefore there will be an exit point in the foreseeable future. That is not the case and therefore there is a failure of analysis here. Q113 Robert Key: Norine, do you have a view on that? Ms MacDonald: Part of it actually is a lack of internal capacity. As I mentioned, the military is really doing their very best in difficult circumstances, but there is a failure on the aid and development side. The Department for International Development has turned out to be the Department for International Development except in war zones and that really is a failure of the military and a lack of commitment to the military success there. There has been a lack of willingness to discuss that capacity issue, whether or not this Government wants DFID to be DFID only in places that are not war zones or to be also present as part of a counter-insurgency effort that is an internal strategic and capacity issue that has not been brought into the debate. I understand their response to why they are not present there, but it is not acceptable when you are asking your military to go in. That has to be clearly addressed and I would agree with the comments previously made about the counter-narcotic strategy, that it is at cross-purposes with the military aims. Dr Greenall: This business of the funding too, there is a complete disparity between the enormous effort on the military side and part of the campaign plan being dependent upon DFID to deliver and that capacity not actually being there. Chairman: We will come on to the relationship between the military and DFID in a few minutes time. Bernard Jenkin. Q114 Mr Jenkin: Very briefly, Dr Greenall, you say in paragraph 2.3 of your paper "There was no post conflict recovery plan in December 2001." That was not what we were told in Parliament. Dr Greenall: I was in Kabul at that time and it was very difficult to implement any projects because they all had to be multilateral, and the problem was that the UN were only just bringing in a skeleton staff themselves - this was right at the end of the war - and they did not have the capacity to actually implement their own programmes, and with us trying to say can we create programmes which they are going to be involved in, there just was not the capacity at the time to do it. It was a very complicated process of trying to get projects up and running and there was definitely a pause of quite a few weeks before those actions started to happen. Q115 Mr Crausby: Can I ask Dr Akiner about Afghanistan's immediate neighbours because I know she has a view on that. Should Afghanistan's immediate neighbours be more involved in shaping its future? Dr Akiner: The immediate neighbours, immediately after Operation Enduring Freedom was launched and then even more so after NATO-ISAF began operations in Afghanistan they had tremendous optimism and they wanted to be engaged in all these developments, all the more so as many of them had actually worked on construction projects in Afghanistan during the 1980s. I remember one journalist, Anthony Lloyd, commenting on the Soviet presence in Afghanistan as being barbaric; absolutely not at all. The Central Asians were involved in very serious, major construction projects, so they had assumed that when there was peace when NATO and ISAF were established in Afghanistan, they would be able to contribute to the recovery of Afghanistan but also that trade and cross-border links of all sorts would pick up. That is not happening; quite the contrary, they have been specifically excluded, and I have been present on many occasions when that point has been made. The result is that the benefits that Afghanistan could have had through integrating into the region it is not having, and the longer this situation continues, patterns are formed and the more difficult it is to change the situation. I have called it - as a metaphor I talked about Afghanistan being like a zoo or return to natural habitat, because what we have in Afghanistan today is like a zoo where Afghanistan is entirely nurtured and protected by outside forces. Eventually there must come a time when it is reintegrated and I see no move to even realising that that will have to happen or should happen if Afghanistan is going to have any kind of peaceful prospects for the future. Q116 Mr Crausby: What about India and Pakistan and what is the relevance of the tension between India and Pakistan and the impact that that has on Afghanistan? Dr Akiner: Pakistan of course is present and represents both a positive contribution and also a source of threat. India is striving now to make its presence felt and it is also making its presence felt in the bordering Central Asian states - for example, it has just constructed an air base in Tajikistan; it is slightly uncertain what the status of that is but India is certainly becoming very active in the region, but it has to balance that with its very close relationship with China, its relationship with Russia and a relationship with Iran as well as, of course, further considerations about Pakistan. India can do some things, therefore, but it is also constrained by its border foreign policy. There is one other point I wanted to pick up on which follows on from something that you said. We have confused terms, and again it is a question of analysis. We talk about "nation building" when we do not mean nation building, we mean state building, creating institutions. It is important to make the distinction because nation building, as we have in Britain, an effort to create a sense of Britishness, in Afghanistan if there is no sense of Afghan nationhood it will not hold together, and that is what we have at present; the sense of being Afghans together is evaporating, which brings us back to Pakistan and the ever-present threat of Pashtunism because if the Pashtuns decide that actually it is in their best interests to create their own state without all the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, we will see the disintegration of Afghanistan. That is a very real possibility and one which Pakistan may in fact be encouraging. Q117 Mr Crausby: India has refurbished an airbase in Tajikistan, can you tell us what is the relevance of that and what influence will that give India? Dr Akiner: It gives them a presence very close to Afghanistan; it certainly makes Pakistan very nervous, but that base is actually shared with the Russians at present. The Chinese are also nervous as to what India is doing, so the balance between those states is extremely complicated and changing constantly. China is making major investments in Tajikistan, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, throughout the region in a word; it is not making those investments in Afghanistan because while the Western-led alliance is there it regards it as a waste of money. Whereas the most important arterial link is the garland highway, which then links into the road system of Pakistan and goes down to Gwadar on the Indian ocean, Afghanistan is cut off from that, whereas the others are all linking into it because that takes them right down to a warm water port, which is important. The same thing with pipelines, they are being constructed not through Afghanistan, so the longer Afghanistan is kept out of these developments, a lot of which are being, as I say, funded by China and driven by China, the more difficult it will be to actually have any place, they will be this forgotten island - they are in the middle - that everyone goes around. Q118 Chairman: Should Iran have a role and, if so, what should it be? Dr Akiner: I remember General David Richards saying a few weeks ago - and I do not know if it was on the record or off the record - that the influence of Iran had in fact been benign, but obviously the Americans are very concerned about Iranian influence. For all the central nations Iran is the historic centre of the region, the cultural centre and the political centre, so even if they do not like what is happening in Iran today, and they have different views on that, they still look to Iran as setting some sort of gold standard, if you like, for the cultural development of the region. They really admire Iran enormously, and in Afghanistan Iran has always played quite a significant role, culturally especially, to some extent economically, not very much politically in the past. The fact of that too - Iran is being kept out now - it is of course working extremely energetically on the drug eradication and has done a very constructive job there, but overall its engagement is very patchy and the Central Asians again look to that. If Iran were to give a lead, they would certainly fall in behind, but at present that is not happening. Q119 Mr Havard: Dr Greenall says in his memo to us that, "There is a danger that international military operations in Afghanistan are already destabilising Pakistan. An unstable Pakistan is a much bigger threat than Afghanistan." The Senlis Council says there should be a presidential committee of the presidents of the two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan. What is all that telling us then, that we should just stop military operations in Afghanistan because it is dangerous? Dr Greenall: It is my comment so I must answer it. One needs to be cautious about how one does one's military operations so that one does not end up with a bigger problem than one has already got. That would be the extent of my comment on that and common sense would tell us that that must be a sensible thing to reflect on when we are engaged in Afghanistan. Q120 Mr Havard: What does that mean in practice? Dr Greenall: I have not been to Helmand and therefore I cannot answer the question. Q121 Chairman: What about this presidential committee? You need to have the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan on good relations with each other before they can form such a committee, do you not? Ms MacDonald: One very valuable resource that we do have in a situation full of negatives is General Richards. One of the parts, I understand, of the military structure is that he is obliged to leave Afghanistan. He is very knowledgeable, he has very positive relationships with the two presidents and he is very committed to the success of the British military and NATO there. All of our information on the ground suggests that he would be able to make a positive contribution to the very serious situation inside Pakistan and the continuing deterioration of the relationship between those two governments. We are just part of the puzzle that has to have some immediate solutions. I believe that one thing that the UK could do is show leadership on this issue of Pakistan, because they do have that valuable resource. He is respected, not only inside military circles but in development and aid and political circles. He is respected all across Afghanistan and he made an enormous impact there in a very short period of time. The reason that we are being so vocal about recommending this is that time goes on and his ability to make that contribution is deteriorating week by week as the local dynamics change. It is very important that that urgently be pursued, that he be put back into that milieu and then we use that positive resource. There is no doubt whatsoever that a lot of the trouble in southern Afghanistan is being organised across the Pakistani border and there is no doubt that Musharraf is limited in his ability to deal with that and needs positive support from the international community to actually deal with it, not in the fall but this week, next week, next month because the situation is literally deteriorating week by week. The situation inside Lashkar Gah is dramatically different this month than it was last month. Every Afghan who can leave has left, every Afghan who can send their family away has left. They believe the other side of the river is controlled by the Taliban; there is fighting and bombing every day; there is not a realistic picture of the crisis in Helmand in the international discussion and it is the British military who are sitting out there unsupported by the development and aid and the international community who are paying the first price here, so we are calling for immediate action on numerous fronts but that is because we are faced with a crisis. Another six months of this and there will be very few opportunities to resolve it. Q122 Mr Jones: Are not a lot of your solutions - and I will come on to the poppy thing in a minute - rather naïve in the sense that in an ideal world, yes, you would be able to do what you are suggesting with an NGO and DFID and others, but unless you have actually got the security in place what you are suggesting will not happen? Ms MacDonald: I have been there two years and I am going out every day into the villages and the camps, so I believe it is actually possible to go out and do that. Last summer when the starvation crisis got so extreme and we were in the camps and the villages doing our research they asked us for food, so we have been doing food aid there regularly, we have been running clinics regularly. Inside Lashkar Gah city, right beside the airport, there is a camp of over 1000 families, people who have gone to Lashkar Gah because of the bombing in Sanguin and the eradication. Inside the camp it would be very easy to recruit young men to fight for the Taliban. I understand perhaps only partially the political and financial effort it has taken to send another 1000 British troops to Helmand; it would be so easy to recruit another 1000 men to fight for the Taliban inside Lashkar Gah city. It is quite possible to go out and deliver food aid, I am doing it. Q123 Mr Holloway: Dr Akiner referred to the lack of a sense of nation in Afghanistan. Do we infer from that that attempts to impose a central government in places like Helmand province is doomed to failure? Dr Akiner: Yes, it is indeed. Just to pick up on what Norine was saying, in the central Asian states there is already a fair perception that NATO has failed and therefore they are turning back very strongly now to Russia for defence because they have to take action, they have to defend themselves. If there is not going to be peace and stability in Afghanistan then they have to defend themselves and try to contain Afghanistan, so they have all turned back to Russia both multilaterally and through bilateral relations. The same thing is happening with China because they do not believe that the West can deliver - the West as represented by NATO. The second point is that views on President Karzai are of course very mixed but in the country he actually does not have as much respect as he has abroad; he is not seen as a strong leader, he is not seen as a leader who understands his people. Musharraf is seen as a leader who understands his people, for better or for worse; whether you like the way he governs or not he understands the dynamics in his own society and up to now has survived in extremely difficult circumstances and probably will survive for the future. Karzai does not inspire confidence amongst his own people. More and more I hear unfavourable comparisons being made with President Najibullah who was someone who stayed to the end, who was loyal to his people again. People disagreed with him but they believed that he cared about them in a way that Karzai does not. The third point, we talk about people who are possible candidates for the Taliban, but what I think we are forgetting is this small but very important middle class constituency; they have now been alienated but they were the very ones, in fact the only ones, who actually cared about state building, who cared about running the country or any of these projects and who had, to some extent, the education and background to take part in all of this. They have been completely marginalised; if you look at the pay structures there is no place for them, so they have been pushed out by foreign advisers in their own country and therefore the situation is actually much graver than we imagine. When we talk about Afghans we tend to be thinking of the Taliban, for or against the Taliban, but we should be thinking of the people who provided the leaders for the Mujahideen, all of whom were middle class, educated, engineers and doctors and so on. We have forgotten all about them. Q124 Mr Holloway: Many of them are in London and the US. Dr Akiner: There is that too. Q125 Mr Holloway: Staying with this question of governance, Governor Waffa is reported to be very, very rarely in Lashkar Gah. How far do people think the writ of the Kabul government extends through Helmand province? Does it extend anywhere beyond Lashkar Gah during daylight? Ms MacDonald: I will tell you what is my personal experience and what is reported to me by my Afghan staff who are based in Lashkar Gah and travel through the provinces. The Taliban have absolute control, depending on the day, over three to six districts in Helmand Province where they control the roadblocks, where the military do not go without being engaged. In Lashkar Gah city there are Taliban watchers on every street corner, on my street corner. Most locals completely stay away from the governor's compound because it is being watched as a basis of attack. There are perhaps four compounds inside Lashkar Gah city that are clearly housing some international staff because of the immense protection --- Q126 Mr Holloway: Fortifications. Ms MacDonald: You have seen it, around it. Two of them have suffered suicide attacks. Very few Afghans are willing to be seen openly with westerners. Lashkar Gah, for those of you who have not been there, is actually a town and not a city. You can drive across it in ten minutes and on the far side is the Helmand River and bridge; my staff reported to me that two days ago the bridge was considered not passable by the Afghan National Army, that it is really an area where, if the Afghan National Army or the British military attempt to cross the bridge there would be a stand-off attack there. Psychologically they have gaining control about four months ago and all of our staff who tended to be clean-shaven are starting to grow their beards back, make sure that none of their phones have any international phone numbers in them, all sorts of indicators of psychological control. As I said, many people who can leave have left. What we are seeing on the ground is not what is reflected here or in other capitals; one of the reasons for that is because the staff of many Western governments who are present in Afghanistan feel a great deal of pressure to provide positive reports to their capitals; it is not just the UK, it happens in my country Canada as well. Because of that, the people who are making the strategic decisions in the capitals are making their decisions on incomplete or inaccurate information. This is not the fault of the staff, these are the people who are actually there trying to do the job and I have the greatest admiration for them because I understand the difficulties and the challenges of working in Afghanistan, but because of this political pressure to be showing that Afghanistan is the good war, the success story, in the current climate what you are not getting is complete reports of the amount of fighting and the difficulties that we are seeing, the political deterioration and problems with development aid and counter-narcotics policies, which makes you think that you can spend another few months reviewing it, discussing it and seeing what alternatives there are, waiting for development and aid to kick in. But we do not have another few months. One of the concerns that I have when I leave Lashkar Gah and go to one of the capitals is that it is like two different realities and when I talk to the troops on the ground - so when I am travelling about if I see the British military of course I stop and identify myself and what our intentions are, when we are going into those camps. Those young men are exhausted, they are shattered, they are facing fighting every day and they really feel that they have been abandoned by the rest of the international community and that the development and aid and counter-narcotics policies are undermining them there. One of the reasons I really welcome the opportunity to be here today is to say please consider the fact that the staff who are providing you with reports are feeling under constraints at some level to be providing you with, perhaps, a positive viewpoint that is not necessarily reflected in the reality that we see on the ground in places like Lashkar Gah city. Dr Greenall: If I can again pick up on Mr Holloway's question about the centre and the periphery. I was up in Mazar-e Sharif and mentioned something I could discuss when I got back to Kabul and the reaction was very extreme, that provincial matters were dealt with absolutely at a provincial level and that was where the government lay. This idea of strengthening the centre against the peripheries is probably not a terribly wise direction. Dr Akiner: Just on what Norine was saying about the young soldiers being exhausted, as a matter of fact I was in Brunssum giving a presentation to the senior staff there a few weeks ago and I found at all levels a tremendous frustration in NATO. As you know, they have operational command in Afghanistan and they are frustrated because there are no clear objectives, what are they meant to be doing? Are they meant to be acting as a mini United Nations or what? Are they meant to be holding particular areas? Are they meant to be road building? Are they meant to be school building? Are they meant to be involved in drug eradication? They have no sense of what they are meant to be achieving and at what point one will be able to say that has been achieved and a pat on the back, thank you, you have done it. It is absolutely open-ended and, again, coming back to reality I stress the need to look at demographic pressures. About half a million new citizens, new mouths, are added to the population every single year and that is the ones who survive; the birth rate is high but the death rate is high. Half a million are those who survive so you are not standing still, these people are growing up, they need to be found work, they need to be educated and so on and so forth, and if that does not happen you have people waiting to join not just the Taliban, but from Central Asia I hear the Northern Alliance is now regrouping. It is militarily not strong yet but politically definitely. All the states along the river - Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - all of whom have ethnic diasporas across the border, they all report that the Northern Alliance is extremely unhappy about the situation and is regrouping and looking for arms which they do not, so far as one knows, at present actually have. The situation therefore is actually deteriorating while we are hearing all these very upbeat reports about how things are going so well. Dr Greenall: Can I reinforce this business about demographic changes in Afghanistan? The population has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. When I was dealing with the problem of food deficit back in 2001 it remained at 375,000 tonnes; it is almost certain to be much higher. When we come to counter-narcotics, if you look at the poppy it grows with unreliable rainfall in places where you could not grow cereals. There is a very big problem link between food deficit, livelihood and this population growth. Mr Jones: All I would like to say is that is one opinion - and it is an opinion - because certainly the people I have spoken to on the ground when I have been there and people who have come back, the dedication of all personnel from the military has actually been very high and it is a bit insulting to actually give this picture that everything is terrible, the people are exhausted and there is no way forward. Having read your submissions I have to come back to the conclusion I always have about all think-tanks and that is that they live in a very perfect world and unfortunately what is happening in Afghanistan is not a perfect world. I would caution the fact that somehow it is all doom and gloom because I certainly do not think it is the twice I have been there speaking to people who are actually on the ground. Q127 Chairman: Do you want to answer that? Ms MacDonald: I have the greatest admiration as well for everyone who is there because I do understand what it takes to be there, especially the military. My concern is that all voices be heard, including that of the local Afghans. It is possible to say that given certain assignments that the international community has absolutely some things are better, but nevertheless our grave concern is that we are on the brink of losing control in southern Afghanistan in a way that will lead to a regional deterioration. I would hope I would be wrong, we would hope to be wrong, but every sign from our research indicates otherwise. The last public poll we had - ABC said support for the Taliban was three per cent; if 26 per cent state that they openly support the Taliban. I found that chilling when those results came in. Mr Jones: In your documentation - I will come to your naïve policy on drugs in a minute --- Chairman: Steady on, try to make your questions courteous, please. Q128 Mr Jones: I am sorry, but it is naïve. The point you make concerning the NGOs for example, I accept you need security in there to actually go in, but I have seen places in northern Afghanistan where NGOs will not work with the military full stop. In one case I saw a hospital where the local doctor of the PRT there, the military doctor and a nurse were wanting to go into the local hospital and help them and actually assist. That should be welcomed by the Afghan doctors but they were being told by the NGO that if they went in the NGOs would not co-operate with them. The NGOs cannot have it both ways, they cannot want security and also choose whether they actually want to do it. That to me was a stupid situation where a doctor and a nurse could actually have added value to that hospital but were being prevented because the NGOs wanted "to keep pure". Ms MacDonald: I can agree with you on that point. When the development and aid community first said that there is not sufficient security to go in there and therefore, for example, the military should not be involved in any type of aid or development, we disagree with that. If, as part of a counter-insurgency plan, the military is involved and seen to be involved in some sort of development and aid, that can only be a positive thing and if the development and aid community is refusing to go in they cannot criticise the military for doing that. I agree with you on that point. Q129 Mr Holloway: For the benefit of Mr Jones, is not the point you are making that British troops are being let down by the lack of security, the reconstruction weakness and the narcotics policy. Secondly, perhaps you could explain for his benefit actually what you guys are doing in Helmand province. You are not exactly sitting around in a library; I think that credibility is quite important to establish. Ms MacDonald: Perhaps that will explain our viewpoint, which I agree is just one viewpoint; I do not have a military viewpoint, I just observe the situation on the ground. What we do is our organisation is primarily Afghan - there are about 80 staff and about three who are not Afghan. We are conducting interviews and research in the villages and the camps in Lashkar Gah and the surrounding region, so I am out with my staff talking to the locals. Our research does, I agree, only reflect the local opinion, what people are telling us, it does not reflect what the people inside the military are saying, I can just tell you I believe they are finding very difficult circumstances. When we are saying this is a result of our research, that is the local viewpoint on the ground which is not a viewpoint from a geopolitical point of view, it is part of the puzzle, part of the matrix. Q130 Linda Gilroy: On your research, it is difficult enough to carry out opinion polling in this country and to have its quality respected. What sort of quality controls do you have on your research? Ms MacDonald: The opinion poll, as I said, was 17,000 Afghan men - to be clear, it was just men - it was conducted by men and they did it in 25-person clusters, so they would go to different locations and ask that set of questions, yes or no questions or no answer, to 25 men in one location and then they would move on to another location. Q131 Linda Gilroy: Is there anything of the equivalence of peer review of the quality of that opinion polling? Ms MacDonald: Statistically it is 99 per cent accurate for that population. In fact, the last poll that was done was 4,000 people. The reason we did 17,000 was because I wanted to avoid any question about the accuracy. Q132 Linda Gilroy: But quality is not just about numbers and ascertaining that you have got a relevant cohort of people to look at, it is also the quality of how the questions are asked. What quality control do you have on that? Ms MacDonald: We were reviewing them every day. There cannot be any error because statistically we went past the necessary numbers, so you would have seen a fluctuation if one of our interviewers was offside. We took the same methodology that had been used in the previous polls, used that and as I said we ratcheted up the numbers so that we did not have to say there is a two or three per cent error rate. We used more numbers than we had seen in the previous polls. Q133 Mr Jenkin: On the question of the relationship between civil and military assistance, would you not agree that unless the NATO forces and counter insurgency forces deliver tangible benefits, i.e. aid and reconstruction, they are not going to have the support of the population? It is one of the first principles of counter insurgency warfare. Dr Greenall: I would absolutely agree with that point. The normal period where you have a spike of euphoria with the civilian population is immediately post-conflict, and one of the big problems we have got is that we did not capitalise on those first three months back in 2001. That was the real moment to have done it. With the dam to the east of Kabul; four million people were dependent on that dam, which was in a parlous state and I remember that not being given the go-ahead as a major priority for the renovation at that time, but simple military assistance projects are absolutely part and parcel of counter insurgency warfare. Q134 Mr Jenkin: What is your assessment of the civil-military projects being delivered in Helmand and generally in Afghanistan at the moment? Dr Greenall: I will have to defer to my colleagues because one of the things I did advise was that I had not been down to Helmand. Q135 Mr Jenkin: Okay, not Helmand, but you were elsewhere in Afghanistan. Dr Greenall: I was elsewhere. They have been slow. Q136 Mr Jenkin: What are they actually building apart from roadblocks? Dr Greenall: Roads and telecoms have been very successful, but talking to the government department, for example on roads, very great progress on roads and I would say it is an outstanding success but there is no budget - because they have been done on bilaterals there is no budget for repairs so they would despair, the people in the road department, saying our budget for repairs has increased by $1 million a year and we do not have the money to do it, so the roads are coming apart as fast as we are building them. Dr Akiner: This comes back to local knowledge. The weather conditions are terrible and therefore the roads, buildings of any sort, have to be repaired with major repairs every single year after the winter, so unless there is an on-going budget for maintenance, these things just fall apart. I have seen it throughout the region, not just in Afghanistan. The second problem is that a lot of these infrastructure projects are white elephants, they are not tied in to any overall scheme of development. They look good and you can say to yourself that is fantastic, we have built this road, but if there is no traffic on it, if there is no way of sustaining it from within the community, if it is only foreign vehicles and the military who gap up and down it, that is not helping the Afghan economy. In fact, if you are talking about useful development, what you probably need in Afghanistan is actually very, very low key development catering to local needs because most of the people are still subsistence farmers, so you do not need these high tech developments which will not last for this very reason, that they need continual maintenance and care. If I could just turn back to the poppy eradication --- Q137 Mr Jenkin: I am going to come to that later if I may. Norine MacDonald, we read of schools and police stations being built and then occupied by the Taliban and then destroyed by the NATO forces; is that actually happening? Ms MacDonald: Yes. For example, the road between Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, which was completed this last summer, on my last drive on there I counted ten police stations and I would be happy to provide the Committee with photos of each of those police stations which are now burned-out wrecks surrounded by sandbags, with two very frightened Afghan National Army members in them. It would be very easy for anybody to make a co-ordinated attempt on all ten of those police checkpoints between Lashkar Gah and Kandahar and last summer, during the bombing of Kandahar, when I was travelling back and forth the road was not opened yet to travel through the desert. The situation is as you state, the actual positive impacts on the local population are really not visible. I have seen a large amount of money dedicated by the government to aid and development and, sadly, on the ground it is so minimal as to be non-existent, and the psychological impact on the local population is not only a non-positive it is starting to be quite negative. Dr Akiner: That is true, it is detached. Q138 Mr Jenkin: The problem appears to be that the efforts of DFID and other NGOs are completely disconnected from the military effort and so there is no co-ordination between the two. Is that a fair description? Ms MacDonald: I would say their effort is non-existent on the ground; what efforts there are will not have an effect for three to five years and they are not only disconnected from the military they are not supportive, which is even worse. Q139 Mr Jenkin: That goes for DFID as well as for the NGOs. Ms MacDonald: "As well as the NGOs" - there are in fact no NGOs present in Lashkar Gah. Q140 Mr Jenkin: You are talking about DFID being completely unsupportive of the military. Ms MacDonald: From the viewpoint of Lashkar Gah and Helmand province, yes. Q141 Mr Jenkin: Should not the military actually be given the resources that are currently being given to DFID so that they can actually apply them? The Royal Engineers - the Secretary of State told us that the Royal Engineers are actually delivering aid projects but they are not being given the resources to do them. Ms MacDonald: If no one else is going to do it they should be allowed to do it. It is not their job, it is not what they are trained for, but functionally if DFID refuses to do it you have to do it or else everything that we have committed to Afghanistan is going to go down the drain. Q142 Mr Jenkin: Exactly. Dr Greenall: The timeframe is a very important part of this. The realistic timeframe post- conflict, over the years experience would tell us ten years to settle down, another ten years for real economic life to return. That is the sort of timescale that we should be looking at, and the idea that in three or four years you can make huge improvements - you can make some very strategic improvements and do very important things that change the lives of a lot of people, but generally across these areas you need a generation to make a difference and our idea of time is completely out of kilter with reality. Dr Akiner: There is an important point here. We are talking about these projects being connected or not connected to the military, but my point is that they are not connected to the population either, and that is perhaps much more serious because if the population do not see that these things are going to benefit them, then there is no positive effects, they are something that the foreigners do for themselves. Mr Jenkin: I fully understand that point, but if the military are not able to deliver those benefits they are not going to get the support of the population and the Taliban are going to get the support instead because they at least want to maintain people's livelihoods in maintaining the poppy production. Q143 Linda Gilroy: What budget do you operate on and what are you doing with it, and if you were put in charge of the redevelopment issues tomorrow in Helmand province what would you do with that much bigger budget that is different from what is not being done at the moment? Other than the poppy crops, I do not want to get on to that yet, we will be coming to them. Ms MacDonald: In aid, for example, I do not have an exact figure but I am guessing we have probably spent a quarter million on food aid and clinics since last summer. I agree with the previous speakers that you have to have the medium-term and the long-term plan, but you need an immediate aid surge in there to deal with really critical food issues. Q144 Linda Gilroy: How would you go about delivering that if you were advising the Government? Ms MacDonald: I am sure people with PhDs in development would be horrified to hear it but we put food on a truck and go out there and line them up and hand it out, so it is not that difficult to do and, as I said, we are doing that on a regular basis. There are 6,500 families in Mokhtar Camp, there are 1,500 families in what we call a semi-camp in Lashkar Gah, so in fact the actual expense is not the issue when you look at the amount of money that is being spent on the overall effort. If you took even ten per cent on what you are spending on the military effort and put that into direct aid, food aid, to actually deal with the problem that they have of feeding their families - over 80 per cent of them when we ask them worry about feeding their families and we certainly see that every day. I cannot over-emphasise the psychological effect of that in that community, so that is a very simple quick fix solution. Q145 Mr Jenkin: On that very point what you are saying is that the Armed Forces that are meant to be protecting the population are not in a position to think, and they are starving alongside our Armed Forces. Is that the case? Ms MacDonald: They are starving; I have seen dozens of starving children on the malnutrition and baby ward in the Lashkar Gah Hospital and I have seen starving elderly people. They are starving. Q146 Mr Jenkin: And NATO forces are not in a position to deliver anything to deal with that. Ms MacDonald: No, they are not. In March 2006 all food aid was stopped into Lashkar Gah province, in March 2006, and there actually is an established internal displaced persons camp less than half an hour from the PRT. Maybe one of the things that would be useful, if I could just formally offer this, is any of you who happen to be in Lashkar Gah city, if you would like to come out with us to the camps. Part of this conversation is based on what is the reality there, so I would just like to invite you to come out with us and see for yourselves what the situation is in the camps, speak yourself to the locals and form your own opinions about the situation, because part of the problem with the policy development and the policy debate is an argument on the facts. I am presenting you with a set of facts based on my experience; you are getting other sets of facts so I would like to invite you all to come with me, go to the camps, speak to the people directly and form your own opinions. Q147 Mr Havard: Let us just unpack this a bit because you are very, very critical in your memo about DFID in particular. You have said their "lack of effectiveness in delivering essential food aid [which is the point you have just been making] and effective development has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis and fuelled ... disillusionment." This is the point about British soldiers being let down that my colleague Adam Holloway was talking about, and in some sense there seems to be an almost deliberate set of actions here, deliberately going about and creating that sort of tone. I do not think that is quite what we are trying to say, but we need to be very clear that what we have been told by our military is that this disconnect between DFID and the military is partly because of the overall commitment they have got about drugs eradication, but they have involved the NGOs and they have involved DFID in the military planning and their activities as part of the ISAF operation, so there should be no surprises between the military and DFID about aims and objectives and what they are doing on the ground but, you are right, there does seem to be almost like an X-file here, there is some sort of conspiracy of silence about this humanitarian crisis and people starving in the streets of Lashkar Gah. I have not heard this before so I am not quite sure what I am being told now. On the one hand we have our development people embedded in with our military in terms of the planning and you are now telling me that not only are they failing but the circumstances on the ground are not as reported. That is what I have taken from what you have said and I have to square that with what I am being told by other people. Ms MacDonald: The one comment I would have on that - that is an accurate conclusion - I do not think there is any lack of good intentions. I believe that within the current structure DFID the staff and the governance of DFID are operating as best they can, and the people I meet ---- Q148 Mr Havard: But there is a difference in policy. Maybe you are not trying to be emotive here and I accept that, that is fine, let us set that aside for a minute. What you are saying is their response should be direct humanitarian aid: trucks full of food, dropping it in the streets, feeding people. Ms MacDonald: Yes. Q149 Mr Havard: That is completely different to the strategy that has been adopted which would create a dependency problem that we have seen elsewhere, so you are asking the British military and DFID to change the political direction in terms of its strategy of helping the Afghan police. Ms MacDonald: Yes, it is absolutely necessary and it has to be done immediately. Q150 Chairman: Shirin Akiner, you look as though you want to say something else. Dr Akiner: Actually on the drug eradication, but I think we are coming to that later. Chairman: We will come to that later. Kevan Jones. Q151 Mr Jones: Can I pick up on one point. It is important to recognise that we are talking about one part of Afghanistan here and I actually accept the issue about some of the large projects like the US highway to nowhere and things like that. I am sorry, I do not accept that there is a disconnect occasionally, although there might be in certain parts, but I have actually been to schools in Kabul where the public are buying into this, they are actually very grateful for these clinics and other things, but I have to say we have been delivering a lot of things by quick impact projects by the British military on the ground and I think there is an issue - I have said this certainly in Iraq as well - where there is a new doctrine that has to be put in place and it is actually about the military delivering a development project rather than actually waiting for, I have to say, many hopeless NGOs to come in afterwards. Would you agree with me that it is not all doom and gloom everywhere in Afghanistan because there are certain projects which certainly are welcomed by the local people and have been supported by local people? Dr Akiner: There are some projects that are good and certainly there are several projects that are good in intention. The sustainability is the issue here and that is very much in doubt. Secondly, you have been to show places, you are not picking and choosing where you will go or when you show people what is happening, but for you, by the very nature of your sorts of visits, you will be shown success stories. I hear from the military on the ground themselves that some of the schools they build are empty shells, nothing happens there, and if you think of providing education in an environment such as that, it is not just building a school you have to make provisions for bussing the children in - very often they will come from quite far away - and that has to go on on a regular basis. There has to be provision of not just textbooks but also all the writing materials, paper and so on and so forth. There has to be teacher training, there has to be monitoring, there has to be a long term strategy there. None of that is happening. Chairman: We have got to move on, I am afraid, because we are running considerably behind now. Q152 Mr Jenkin: Very briefly, Dr Greenall, you have worked extensively at the interface between DFID and the Ministry of Defence and we are told that it is all joined-up government. Can you give us an honest assessment of what the conversation is between the MoD and DFID, both here at Westminster and also on the ground? Dr Greenall: There are two points really and one is on quick impact projects. There used to be, going back prior to 1997, very user-friendly for the Ministry of Defence, one-page applications, they were £20,000, there were delegated powers to an adviser with the military commander, but that has now all been honed down. There were 14 pages the last time I looked at one and the restriction was down to £5,000 so it is a much more complicated procedure. It used to go through military imprest accounts and was a very, very easy process. That is one point and the other is actually having people on the ground. Over the last few years there has been much more reluctance because of duties of care and that sort of thing to actually have civilians on the ground in conflict areas. We could take a view on that, but my own personal view is that to actually get this to work you need to have senior people on the ground, right up in Helmand province, and in volume. Q153 Mr Jenkin: And if they are not NGOs they have to be soldiers. Dr Greenall: If civilians are not allowed to go there for whatever reason on government business then it has to be done by soldiers. Q154 Linda Gilroy: On the poppy crop, last week the Secretary of State told the Committee that the UK Government supported President Karzai's decision not to adopt ground-spraying tactics. Norine, in your evidence you say that there is a correlation between poppy eradication and the rise in insurgency and you also report that "optimising the authority of military forces to engage in forceful counter-narcotics activities [and you then quote the commander of NATO forces] to 'push it to the edge' jeopardises both the safety of the troops and the stabilisation mission." Where and when have poppy eradication schemes been targeted in Helmand province particularly? Ms MacDonald: They started a month ago, they are underway as we speak and there is violence associated with almost every eradication attempt on a regular basis. They are led by an American private military company called Dynocorps with the Afghan National Army. I saw the eradication teams coming on the road; the first night they arrived in Lashkar Gah there was a stand-off attack on their compound. It is a regular occurrence. We are all committed to the end of heroin trafficking from Afghanistan; however, as was stated, there is no viable alternative livelihood and the UN policy is that there should be no forced poppy crop eradication unless there is an alternative livelihood. I have visited villages the day after there has been eradication and because they equate the Dynocorps men with the foreign military, when I say "Who was here?" they say "The foreigners were here." "Which foreigners?" They do not know the difference so, sadly, if the British military goes into a district after an eradication they are on the receiving end of the anger and the violence that that creates in the local community, so it is fundamentally impossible for counter-insurgency tactics to be undertaking eradication and the response that that brings in the community and at the same time trying to win the hearts and minds campaign. That is an unfortunate reality. Q155 Linda Gilroy: Some commentators have said that those eradication incidents that you have described are actually the Taliban being clever about that. Do you have sufficient evidence to know whether that could be true or not? Ms MacDonald: Yes, that has been reported and they are very clever in the hearts and minds strategies. Also, unfortunately, the poppy crop eradication is happening with the poorest farmers who are unable to pay the bribes, so that is another way for them to go in there and provide the support to show that they are the ones that are caring and concerned about the livelihoods of the locals. Their propaganda machine is very sophisticated, they are from there, they speak the language, they know how to build support there and it is something that we do not have the same background and instant history in, and that is why I believe that they are prevailing in the hearts and minds campaign. Q156 Linda Gilroy: We take it from that you are not opposed to eradication of poppy if there could be an alternative livelihood programme. Ms MacDonald: Absolutely. Q157 Linda Gilroy: Have you seen in your time there any alternative livelihood programmes apart from the illicit poppy crop that you recommend? Have you seen any other successful alternative livelihood programmes at all? Ms MacDonald: They are not successful yet and they cannot be because you need an irrigation system, and the beginnings of an irrigation programme has been funded by USA aid, but that will take three to five years. That is a very good CDG that is running that - I have forgotten the acronym. Dr Greenall: Central Asia Development Group. Ms MacDonald: That is a fantastic programme and it should be supported, it is absolutely necessary. When we talk about poppy licences for medicine we are not saying it should happen, we are saying it should be tested because there are a lot of outstanding questions, so I want to be very clear about that. It is successful in the United States, Turkey and in India, it should be looked at in Afghanistan because it will send a positive message, it will support the Karzai government and it should be tested. We are not taking the position that it should be implemented. Linda Gilroy: You must understand the concerns that people have; this is such a fragile society with so little in the way of security that if you look at that proposal, warts and all and not just as the ideal, it could actually just feed into making Afghanistan a narco-economy and it would be very difficult without security --- Mr Jenkin: That is what it is. Q158 Linda Gilroy: I said feed into making it a narco-economy, I accept that it already is there, but it would not solve the problem it would just continue the problem. What part of your proposal actually tackles that and gets it in the right direction of travel? Ms MacDonald: These are legitimate concerns, which is why I said we are not taking the position that it should be implemented, we are saying it should be tested - and I have another handout. What we would like to try - and I want to be very specific - is we would like to run in the next planting season these test projects in Helmand province. We are prepared to do that with a proper set of monitors etc. What we have found in a lot of the research we have done - and I believe a lot of you have already seen our feasibility study, and if you have not seen it we will happily give you copies of that - and the follow-up is there are two things that Afghanistan has: one is an opium crop and the second is very strong local control at the village level. When you go into the villages it is not chaos, it is a very controlled environment and what we would like to try and test is what we call a village-based model so that the licence would actually be given to the local community and if anybody breaches the licence it means that the local community loses their licence. It would be predicated on them delivering - you can figure out exactly how much they should deliver for each village and they have to deliver an accurate amount or they lose their licence. It would be used to produce codeine tablets and then you are not transporting around the province the raw opium. There is a series of devices that we would like to test to see whether we can answer what we think are legitimate concerns. The thing about trying is that you would be sending a positive message to local people that we are with them trying to find solutions. Any village that gets a licence would also have to be committed to diversifying, we do not think there should be a mono crop. There is a series of conditions that you could put in place; all of this would actually give them one reason to support the Karzai government and we think it is very important to give them reasons at this moment to support the Karzai government and the presence of the international community but, as I said, we are not saying it should happen, we are saying it should be tested and see what the results are and whether those legitimate concerns that you have expressed can be dealt with in some innovative models. Q159 Linda Gilroy: Has that in fact been attempted in any other part of Afghanistan, the use of the local Jirgas? Ms MacDonald: No, it has not. We would start to do it in Helmand and in Kandahar and Angahar. As I said, we want to try and find the proper vehicle to do that that would give the proper political assurances and make sure that all the relevant agencies were involved in the process and monitoring it. Dr Akiner: Everyone speaks as though in Afghanistan there has always been illegal cultivation of the poppy crop; in fact, until the mid 1980s if we look to the Afghan experience they grew poppies for opium under strict UN control and the system worked, for the reasons that you have pointed out: that there was local control as well as central government control. The system broke down in the second half of the 1980s as the Mujahideen began to embark on an operation, arms for opium - rather similar and possibly with the same people involved as arms for drugs in Nicaragua. The genie is out of the bottle and all the solutions that are being suggested are certainly worth testing, but if you are looking at the bigger picture what will happen for sure is that the poppy plantations will simply move across the border to Tajikistan, to Pakistan, to Sinjan (?) so the problem as such will not go away. You might be able to solve it in Afghanistan using all sorts of levers and pressure points, but the problem is much bigger. What we are also seeing now throughout the region of course is local addiction and a rise in the popularity of synthetic drugs. This is where the surrounding states - Iran, Russia and China - are particularly concerned because it directly affects them. In any strategy for controlling and hopefully eradicating, as far as that is conceivable, illegal cultivation of poppies, they need to be involved because they are the ones who are also suffering directly. We often talk as though it is simply a problem for us, but it is not. Q160 Mr Holloway: Norine referred to the Central Asia Development Group which has a huge agricultural development programme in Helmand with extraordinary local Afghan infrastructures. I do not know if you know, but that is no longer being funded so they are sitting around the compound doing nothing. Is there not a point that there is actually some Afghan infrastructure for development and there are actually structures in the villages and you do not actually need the Royal Engineers or the UN who may or may not come next year. Is that not something that we are missing out, that the Afghans do have some capacity themselves? Ms MacDonald: We do not have what we would call a Western style rule of law, infrastructure and governance in there and we do not necessarily immediately see the governance that is there because we are not used to it. For example, the reason we only survey men is because the social controls and the social structure make it impossible for us to hire women and survey women; it is really strong and you cannot break through that and it governs their behaviour. There are some complicated relationships around sharing water and the use of community facilities, but it all does exist. As I said, the village is a highly controlled structure and we want to experiment and see whether it is possible to take that force and use that to support the Karzai government and address these issues. It is a combination of our approach, the international community's approach, and what already exists and we need to find some innovative synergies there and experiment with that. Q161 Mr Havard: This business about eradicating poppy, we were told by our side of this, the British military, that we are not engaging in eradication policies and what you describe are American contractors, is that correct? Ms MacDonald: That is correct, but I do believe your Government is financing them. Q162 Mr Havard: We will ask about that separately, but let us just take this point. You say you want a special trade framework that is making the growing of these poppies and production facilities in the village to turn them into codeine and what have you,, so you add the value up a point, which is what I understand is happening with the illicit drugs now. That is the major change between the last twice I have been, that the production is actually happening in the village and they do not just export the raw product. They have twigged onto that, you want to do that but you talk about a special framework and you talk about it becoming a taxable activity, but it becomes part of the legal economy as opposed to the illegal economy. Of course, you also talk about using the "proven local control systems" and you talk about the "renowned tradition of strong local control systems and economic profits remaining in the villages." I remember having a discussion with some of General Dostrum's boys about giving up their guns; there are certainly strong local control systems in various parts of Afghanistan but I am just wondering whether you are making the process of growing something that will leak out illegally more efficiently than it currently is because you do not have the criminal justice system and other parts of the mechanisms of the state in order to enforce and practically police what you describe as a jolly good idea. Ms MacDonald: And I understand those concerns. For example, if all of us lived in a village together and we were all farmers we would know, because we have all been living there for generations, I would know exactly how many dirubs (?) you had and how many dirubs he had and I would know exactly how many kilograms of opium he can produce and you can produce. Our village licence would calculate based on our dirubs the total amount that we would have to deliver. If he does not deliver you lose your licence; if you do not diversify, he loses his licence. We have to test that. As I said, we are not saying it should happen in Afghanistan, we are just saying we are spending millions of dollars on a counter-narcotics strategy that is counterproductive - cultivation was up 60 per cent last year. The Americans did this successfully in Turkey and India and we should give it a try, so what we are asking for is to run pilot projects with a balanced, politically diverse group of observers and see what the answers are to these questions. I cannot give you any assurance on these points unless we have been allowed to test them. Q163 Mr Havard: I know you cannot. I am well aware of that. Dr Greenall: The wise course is to leave those counter-narcotics alone. Whatever you do you will end up with the law of unintended consequence; it is highly complicated and it involves the whole of Afghan society. It draws you into very complicated internal politics and even if you were successful it would only migrate across the Oxus. I am welcoming the option to try and do something legitimate because of the point I made about the rainfall and the unreliability of cereal crops in Afghanistan, but it must be incentive-driven. If it is incentive-driven and the market favours it, it will happen. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed to all three of you. You have been extremely, if I may say so, courageous, not in going to Helmand but in coming here. Thank you for your most valuable evidence and we will be able to think very long and hard about what you have told us. I will now declare a three-minute break before the next part of the session. The Committee adjourned for a short time. Memorandum submitted by Dr Michael Williams Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Robert Fox, Freelance Journalist, Mr Rory Stewart, Author and Chief Executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, Kabul and Dr Michael Williams, Head, Transatlantic Programme, RUSI, gave evidence. Q164 Chairman: I should give you too a warm welcome to our evidence session. I wonder if you could possibly introduce yourselves and say what your experience is of Afghanistan and of what we are doing there. Can we start with you, Robert Fox? Mr Fox: My name is Robert Fox; I have been a journalist for 40 years, I am also a part-time historian and I am now involved with ARAG at the Defence Academy where I have been involved with Afghanistan. I am not experienced as the gentleman on my left, but I first went there in 1989 to see the Russians withdraw and spent a lot of time there then, then I had quite a long break. I have been back four or five times since 2001 and I lately went on General Sir Michael Jackson's last visit as CGS in the summer and I spent a fortnight there at the end of January and beginning of February which was very instructive. I must add that do a lot of work with the British formations going out there, including divisional headquarters and, lately, the 12 Mechanised Brigade. It is on the media perception, just how journalists might or might not perceive the narrative that will unfold and that they will participate in. Q165 Chairman: Were you there at the dam? Mr Fox: I spent four days up on the Kajaki Dam and I would, if I am allowed later on, Chairman, like to talk about some specifics. I should explain to you that I have had an extended experience of being embedded with British forces, notably in the entire Falklands campaign in 1991 and I have also travelled in Iraq. I have been in Iraq rather more frequently than I have been in Afghanistan and I have lately started taking up Afghanistan. Mr Stewart: I was briefly in the Army and then I joined the Foreign Office. I served in Indonesia, then in Yugoslavia, then in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. I spent 21 months walking on foot from Turkey to Bangladesh, I wrote a book about Afghanistan and a book about Iraq. I now live in Kabul where I have lived for the last 18 months running something called the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. We are involved in restoring part of the historic commercial centre of Kabul and we train Afghan craftsmen and try to find markets for Afghan goods. Dr Williams: My name is Michael Williams and I run the transatlantic security programme at the Royal United Services Institute. Since 2005 RUSI has been engaged in research and writing on operations on the cusp of warfare and conflict and on finding ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. This year my research has focused on civil and military relations in Afghanistan supported by the government of Canada and NATO, a strategic concept in modelling and trying to apart what has happened so far and where the crisis is headed. Q166 Chairman: Thank you very much. Can I start with the mission and can I ask you first, Dr Williams, are you clear on what the UK ISAF mission in Afghanistan is? Dr Williams: Yes and no. The stated mission is to support the government in Kabul and extending governance throughout Afghanistan by maintaining security. NATO has adopted, and in turn the UK Government, a very broad conception of security which means that it can do everything or nothing essentially. By assuming everything NATO has put itself into a corner I think in terms that instead of being one part of the solution, it is being seen by the public, by the Afghan Government and by the majority of people looking at the scenario as responsible for the entire situation whereas really it should be a component. UNAMA is not doing very much, the international community is not doing very much co-ordination; we need much more co-ordination and cross-communication in terms of international approaches to Afghanistan. NATO should not be doing all the work by itself. Q167 Chairman: Would you like to add anything to that, Rory Stewart? Mr Stewart: We are in a very dangerous stage. The initial strategy of course in Afghanistan was for a light footprint in 2001, 2002 and 2003. That was a considered approach led by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special representative. He believed that deploying too many troops on the ground would both undermine the capacity of the Afghan government and spark an insurgency. Since then we have begun to increasingly expand our ambitions and the range of activities we are involved in, including of course the deployment of more troops and we are now in a situation in which we are simultaneously trying to pursue quite different objectives that stretch from counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, state building, development, democratisation. Very few of these issues are logically connected and each one of them could be pursued on its own. I believe that the deployment to Helmand is a dangerous distraction from the core activities of the Afghan Government and that we are wasting resources and valuable policy time on a mission which I cannot see succeeding. Mr Fox: The expression was used in the earlier session about the mission losing focus, and in practical terms I think it has because, as my colleagues have described, there is a great divergence of view because it is undoubted that the main point of effort for the British is in Helmand province and it is counter-narcotics. I doubt if many of the other NATO allies would see it in those terms. The US still, from my encounters with US commanders and diplomats, see it as part of the global war on terror and enduring freedom. The question that has arisen in the minds of NATO allies is whether this is in fact strategic ground, whether it is a discretionary or vital operation. I work a great deal with the Italian press, I have just been to Germany, and they certainly do not see it as urgent as we do. It is becoming very atomised, the view of the mission. The NATO spokesman, I should add, Mark Laherty, about a year ago said that the main effort must be to sustain NATO, NATO's credibility is on the line. This does not play either with the majority of the allies or with the majority of the media, I must say, the way that the media message has gone through. Q168 Chairman: Given what you understand of the mission, do you believe its objectives are achievable? Mr Fox: Given the resources and the issues that run throughout both parts of this discussion of sustainability, I would have to be unequivocal and say no. Q169 Chairman: Would you agree with that, Rory Stewart? Mr Stewart: I would also say no and I would say it would be very dangerous to believe that simply bringing in more troops or more equipment was going to make any difference to that. We fundamentally neither have the understanding, the will, the resources nor the consent of the local population to try and pursue this kind of policy in Helmand. Simply bringing in more troops will make the situation worse. Dr Williams: In Helmand I very much agree with my fellow presenters here. Kevan Jones made the point quite rightly that there are areas of success in certain parts of Afghanistan which should not be overlooked; however our current objectives and the resources to put to those objectives, support within our own populations for the campaign, I find it very doubtful in some cases that it could be successful. Q170 Mr Holloway: Mr Stewart, in the New York Times and elsewhere you say that you think this is deemed to failure whatever you do in a sense because this is a very traditional, Islamic and xenophobic society. Can you expand on that? Mr Stewart: I do not believe the mission in Afghanistan as a whole is doomed to failure, I believe there is a lot of opportunity for us in Afghanistan but we are wasting our resources on Utopian ideas. We have set the bar much too high and I am very worried about what currently seems to be happening. People seem to be talking in a highly moralistic language and when I say "Can we defeat the Taliban?" politicians reply "We have to defeat the Taliban." When I raise the problems in southern Afghanistan people respond, "Surely you are not saying that we ought to sit back and do nothing". The answer is of course we can do a great deal. Primarily we can defend ourselves against the terrorist threat from Afghanistan, we can do considerably more projects which prevent the population from becoming disillusioned. I am not talking here really about traditional development projects, I am talking about heavy infrastructure projects, projects which deliver to Afghan demands which are essentially for jobs and infrastructure. Thirdly, we can do serious, sustained development projects of a traditional kind in the country, but acknowledging our limits is both an empowering thing - it is something that allows us to focus on what we can actually achieve - but it is also something that should make us cautious about trying to pursue a radical policy of, for example, elimination of narcotics, attempts to suddenly change gender relations, attempts to destabilise the political structures in southern Afghanistan when we have no credible alternative. As the members of the Committee are aware we have now been through three governors in a year in Helmand. This represents a real failure on the part of the international community - because it is largely the international community that is putting the pressure on Karzai - to understand what would be required from the governor of Helmand. We have gone from Sher Mohammed Akhunzada who was portrayed as a drug-dealing warlord to Engineer Daoud who was an English-speaking NGO friendly technocrat from Kabul and we are now back to an extremely eccentric and peculiar governor who appears to have the merits of neither of his predecessors. I believe, therefore, that we need to acknowledge that communities in Southern Afghanistan are considerably more conservative, anti-foreign, than we acknowledge, that there is genuine local support for the Taliban, that we have tended in talking about hearts and minds not really to focus on hearts and minds so much as on bellies, by which I mean we tend to think like Marxists and assume that people's primary motivations are economic. Of course, the military, of anybody, should understand that it is quite possible for money to have non-economic motivations and in the case of many communities in southern Afghanistan those are religious, ideological and it is quite easy in Quetta at the moment to recruit by saying "come and fight the English". Therefore, I would say we perhaps need to acknowledge that Southern Afghanistan may remain for the foreseeable future fragile, traumatised and not fully under governmental control, that we need a much more decentralised governmental system, that Karzai's approach to the southern areas perhaps needs to be closer to the approach that Pakistan takes to the federated tribal areas, which is to say he needs to rely more on local surers at a village level, not just at provincial level and on the use of political agents, and that we need to invest in areas where they are generally welcomed. It is a disgrace currently that in Kabul the garbage is seven feet deep in the city, 200 yards from the presidential palace. This is a massive national political symbol that we have the resources to improve, win consent and support from the Afghanistan people, instead of wasting our time trying to pursue development projects in areas where security does not allow us to do development and where the population often do not wish us to be present. Q171 Mr Jenkin: Let us just be absolutely clear. There is a reason for us to have a footprint in Afghanistan. Do each of you regard that as essential for our national security in order that we prevent al-Qaeda coming back, or is this something we could walk away from and not worry about, apart from the humanitarian crisis? Strategically do we actually need to be there? Dr Williams: I think it cannot be doubted to say that we must be in Afghanistan for national security reasons. Leaving Afghanistan and walking away we would have the same situation in Iraq which, unfortunately, is not of our own making, it cannot be done. I do not think that we should abandon Afghanistan. We made promises to Afghanistan going in there that we would deliver on certain things which we have not done and to walk away would be negligence. From an internal security perspective, the heroin problem that you have on the corner of the street in Brixton is intricately linked to the situation in Afghanistan as well and I am not at all endorsing a complete counter-narcotics programme at the moment, I agree completely with what has been said by my fellow panellists here. To look at Afghanistan as something that NATO can walk away from and the UK can walk away from is to ignore lessons from history. Q172 Chairman: Do you think we are having any sense of a positive impact, UK and ISAF forces, in Afghanistan in any direction? Mr Fox: I would like to answer the previous question. Q173 Chairman: By all means. Mr Fox: I think it is very important because it is all very well for military experts and think-tanks, as we have heard, to say that it is absolutely vital, that we need to stay there for X and Y reasons, but I think this is where in the public domain, and I deal with the information pool that goes out there and I know what my editor, publishers and readers are interested in, as we got in the BBC polls in Iraq we are getting a very similar thing from Afghanistan: were you to use some of these terms, is this strategic ground? It is an open question. It is very difficult to get it across now because actually not too many people talk about al-Qaeda being there and, good God, if things go really wrong if you are a farmer in Panshway then al-Qaeda will come back. The Panshway farmer is talking about the equivalence in his mind and in the mind of his family between the violence coming from the skies from NATO and the violence coming from the guns of the extortionists, the mafia entrepreneurs of Taliban. I think it is going to be very, very difficult as this goes on that we do not see terribly great success this will move from a very difficult situation in the public perception - this is the real danger - into the too difficult box made famous by Henry Kissinger when you have the in-tray, the out-tray and the too difficult tray and it could end there and it is not absolutely vital. I think that the drugs argument is not necessarily being won. Do you fight the battle of heroin or whatever on the streets of Marseilles, Milan, particularly London and Brixton, by tackling it upstream? It is a very, very open question. I think that this is going to be one of the big questions as to whether Afghanistan is strategic ground, particularly if you are talking, as American and British military commanders, about a commitment of 20 years. I think this is going to be very difficult. To follow your question, I do not think there is a quick victory in this one. General Richards has talked about Operation Medusa thwarting the attack on Kandahar last year in September as a tactical defeat for the Taliban. The Taliban, both socially and demographically, have infinite resources compared with the NATO presence and I think we are in a cycle now. I do not mean to nudge the agenda of the Committee but we really must say what the violence is about. What do we mean by the insurgency? What do we mean by the Taliban? I have read the transcript of General Houghton talking to you and I was rather concerned that he seemed to be implying that it is one unified enemy with several points of command; it just does not work like that, even in my limited experience and my experience of talking to Afghanis in Helmand. Mr Stewart: Just briefly on this, this definitely is not my area of expertise but it might be worth conceptually distinguishing more clearly between counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism. It is quite clear when you talk to General McNeill, the new US commander who has replaced General Richards, that he is thinking of counter-insurgency. He does not believe that his fight against the Taliban is part of the key fight against al-Qaeda or that US national interests are directly concerned with the counter-insurgency campaign. The counter-insurgency campaign is really about pursuing forces opposed to the Afghan Government. Very few of those people who we are killing have any intention of launching attacks against United States soil or UK soil. It is quite plausible that we could continue to pursue a good counter-terrorism strategy of the kind that we pursued in 2002-03 through intelligence operations and Special Forces operations, I do not think it requires trying to dominate every inch of ground with NATO troops and taking on these Taliban associated groups. Q174 Chairman: Do you think the actions that we have been taking in Helmand have been a distraction? Mr Stewart: Absolutely. Q175 Chairman: Do you think it was a mistake to have the counter-clockwise move around Afghanistan? Mr Stewart: I think it was an error to spread out too much. I think the 200 US troops sitting in a base in Lashkar Gah, who have been mocked a great deal, was probably a better approach than putting 5,500 British troops into the Province. The objectives that we set ourselves were clearly unachievable. A very disturbing aspect of this is that a year and a half ago, two years ago, when we were sitting around debating whether or not to deploy to Helmand it seemed to me that the majority of my colleagues in the Foreign Office and the military believed it was a bad idea but somehow this policy proceeded and a lot of the things that were predicted happened. The notions that were being sold that somehow within our deployment we would be able to allow NGOs to operate freely, get drugs under control, improve governance in the Province, none of these have been achieved. It seems to me that at the same time there are many areas of Afghanistan that are crying out for our assistance and genuinely would welcome us and invite us in. I cannot quite understand why we think this is a sensible policy. Mr Fox: I do agree. It is 20/20 hindsight, I would agree with that. To make Helmand the centre of gravity of British operations in military terminology has been a mistake. I would like to just add to that. There was a great problem with the concept of operations. I recall very well the 3 Para Battle Group had been in for about six weeks when I visited with General Sir Mike Jackson and we were briefed by Colonel Stewart Tootal, the Battle Group Commander, and by Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander BRITFOR, and what it was predicated on was capacity building right across the piece of local Afghan forces. I think this is a fundamental weakness and it was one of the most worrying aspects that emerged during my most recent visit, and it is the fragility of Afghan forces. Let me put it like this: I did an interview with General Wardak, the Minister of War, who claimed that there is a usable force of 45,000 soldiers in the Afghan army. I hope it is not an indiscretion but I had a long conversation with somebody I know extremely well, Major General James Bucknall, the Chief of Staff of the arc and Chief of Staff, therefore, to General Richards' command. He said how fragile it was, that at best by the end of this year you are going to have 15,000 usable Afghan troops and only in particular regions. James Bucknall had experience of training the Iraqi army and I think that this is illustrative. The problem with training the Iraqi army at points was that you had broken it before you made it. We are in danger of doing the same in Afghanistan. This brings me back to the concept of operations in Helmand, particularly in the northern reaches of the Helmand river system, in Musa Qala, Sangin, now very well known in the headlines. That was predicated on the idea that you would build a platoon house, you would build out and you would get out within weeks or months and hand over to Afghan national forces. This is simply not obtainable. The word I heard right across the piece from multinational trainers of the Afghan army in the base outside Kabul, where they are doing terrific work, 18 hour days and you name it, they are really working on training at all levels, one senior British officer used the word again, this is very "fragile". We are on an edge and I think perhaps far too much is being expected of local Afghan forces. I was quite convinced that the local Afghan forces around the Kajaki dam, for instance, their loyalty was utterly tradable and they would go over within weeks if they were under severe pressure from the Taliban. Dr Williams: Taking the larger strategic context of the situation, it is a decision now whether we leave the south to be an area where it is abandoned, no law and order essentially, no governance, leave it be and just work on the north. I have been to areas in the north of Afghanistan that have been quite successful, they have got schools being built and communities are part of the project, they are integrated. The Germans have done fabulous work in that area which follows on from the British position in that area which was very, very good. However, the strategic rationale is do we leave an area of instability in the south unaddressed. I would pose that eventually at some point that would come to challenge progress in the north of the country. Whether you look at it in terms of the UN perspective or the US perspective initially of operations to go in a counter-clockwise motion, whether that was really smart, I am not sure. There is a 2005 RAND study by James Dobbins, who is probably one of the foremost experts, and I quote from that study. He says: "There appears to be an inverse correlation between the size of the stabilisation force and the level of risk. The higher the proportion of stabilising troops the lower the number of casualties suffered and inflicted, indeed most adequately manned post-conflict operations suffer no casualties whatsoever." It is interesting if you look at Kosovo, we had 50 times more troops per capita in Kosovo than they do in Afghanistan. I accept and we can talk about the very, very different strategic realities of both countries, but the difficulties we face in Southern Afghanistan are to a large extent the fact that we are not properly prepared for those operations, they have not been properly manned or not executed. General Richards did a fabulous job but he said that if the Taliban had not chosen to say, "We will defeat NATO here and now", he would have been out-manoeuvred, they could have gone round him in Kandahar and he could have done little about that. Again, that is an interview with General Richards. I am just giving my analysis of the situation. You have to take that into the context of can you leave the south without having repercussions on the north and if the problems are there in the south is that because it is an intractable situation or is it one that we have not adequately addressed and then, of course, following the discussion from this morning, are you dealing with the external dimension, which is can you follow it by military force. There is an external dimension that even military force in southern Afghanistan might not solve the problem. Chairman: I think we ought to record that Rory Stewart was showing disagreement with what you were saying. I also think we ought to move on because we are running a bit behind now. Q176 Mr Borrow: I just wanted to pick up on a point with Mr Stewart on the distinction between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency and link it back to the reason we are in Afghanistan in the first place, which is counter-terrorism. If the Taliban had given up al-Qaeda we would not have gone in. The key thing strategically is to ensure that a government or administration of some sort does not come to power in Afghanistan which could provide a haven for terrorist bases. Mr Stewart: Definitely. Q177 Mr Borrow: At the moment it is counter-insurgency but that is to ensure there is a stable administration of some type. Mr Stewart: I think we can certainly achieve your objective of ensuring that a government does not come to power that would provide safe haven for terrorist training camps. That does not require trying to put 20,000 troops on the ground to fight the Taliban in every village, and that is what we need to be clear on. The other thing is we need to get out of a world in which we are talking continually about what we ought to do rather than what we can do. The reality, of course, is yes there may well have been 50 times as many troops on the ground in Bosnia but that would mean 2.5 million troops on the ground in Afghanistan. It is simply inconceivable that we could have the number of troops required to pursue James Dobbins' notion of counter-insurgency. It is inconceivable that we could have the kind of relationship with Pakistan which would allow us to control the borders in the way that we would like. We need to accept these things as intractable realities and design a policy that addresses them rather than perpetually speculating that if only we had a little bit more of this, that or the other we would be okay. Q178 Mr Borrow: If I could move on now to the questions I was supposed to ask. The first one is to Mr Stewart. In your opinion, how would you say the UK presence is viewed by Afghanis and is there a difference between different ethnic groups within the country? Mr Stewart: Yes, I think broadly speaking you could make that claim. Essentially the Uzbek, Huzara, Tajik, Turkmen populations in the centre and north of the country are quite well disposed not just towards British troops but towards a foreign presence in general. The Huzara, for example, three million people in the centre of the country, have been the great winners from this intervention. They were killed in large numbers by the Taliban and they now have considerably more freedom and autonomy but the Pushtun groups in the south have tended to feel angry and disenfranchised and in some cases, because through the early 1980s we encouraged this great myth of Jihad and resistance to foreign oppression, it is quite easy for people to draw on that to frame their opposition to Britain or the United States. Dr Williams: I just wanted to support Rory in particularly your first question on this idea of what are the objectives. The ultimate objective is to prevent a hostile government from controlling the whole of the country. It may very well be that the operations in Afghanistan in the south are unsustainable and I do not quote the RAND study to say that we need to have that number of troops but perhaps this year we will not be able to do that essentially. To look at what we do in the rest of Afghanistan, being able to support the government and prevent the whole country from coming under Taliban control, might be a better strategy and the operation in the south might ultimately undermine the larger strategic objective. I completely agree with that assessment. Q179 Mr Borrow: In the previous block of questions Robert Fox talked about the fact that we are not talking simply about a battle with the Taliban as a single unified command structure. Do your colleagues want to elaborate on that? Mr Stewart: It is a very difficult subject because, of course, it has now become quite fashionable for the military to say, "Well, who are the Taliban anyway?" whereas nine months ago essentially it appeared that we had quite a clear definition of the Taliban, the Taliban were the people who we killed but not the people we negotiated with. Now we are realising, of course, that you can cut them up any number of ways. You can distinguish between extremely aggressive extreme groups of leaders based in Quetta with whom no negotiation is possible, you might be able to identify a middle group of people who remain loyal to the notion of the Afghan nation but espouse a lot of the conservative religious ideology of the Taliban, and finally a third perhaps floating group of young men who are excited by the notion of resistance to foreign occupation but do not have a serious ideological commitment and might be won over. These kinds of things become most interesting, though not as a broad division into three, but when you get down to the village level and try to work out in this particularly community who is in charge, is it a tribal elder, is it a particular group of old men who may have no connection to the tribal structures and how do they relate to those groups, that is the kind of work that one would hope eventually the Afghan Government would get involved in. It is fundamentally not military but political work. It would involve some kinds of negotiations. The Dutch in Uruzgan I commend very much to the Committee as a very good model. They would say it is not a Dutch model but an Afghan model but in essence they are very much trying to work with communities that invite them in, they are relying on a governor who was himself the Taliban deputy minister and is quite a conservative mullah. They appear to be able to slowly reach out but it is not the kind of strategy which is being pursued by NATO so far and I am slightly concerned it may not be the strategy that General McNeill is about to pursue in the next six months. Q180 Mr Borrow: Presumably the Dutch were doing it as part of the NATO force? Mr Stewart: One of the problems with NATO is that every single one of these countries seems to have a completely different view about what they are doing. They have different rules of engagement, they do not like to listen to the headquarters, they listen to their politicians at home, and this was very clear in Iraq and it is very clear again in Afghanistan. It must be very frustrating that the United States has 90 per cent of the troops, 90 per cent of the money and wants to take 99 per cent of the decisions. Dr Williams: The NATO model is essentially faulty in that the PRTs are being asked to do too much across the entire country. There is no standardised model for a PRT which in some ways allows it flexibility to cater for local needs but at the same time the locals do not know what to expect so there is no standard output, no standard composition. The military side of the PRT reports through the ISAF chain to NATO, the civilian side of the PRT reports back to national governments in their home capitals. The funding comes from home capitals, which thus means that PRTs answer to politicians sitting in Berlin, London and Washington and not to the commander on the ground, not to the President of Afghanistan, not to the regional or local leaders. I think it is important to remember that all politics is inherently local. One of the things that has been more effective in Afghanistan has been devolved efforts have been more successful when there is a heightened degree of autonomy with minimal reporting back to the overall commanders. We tend to try and put - this goes to the Taliban as well - things into Western models of conflict and Western paradigms and this is simply not the case in Afghanistan. If you talk about the Taliban or al-Qaeda as some enemy as you do the Soviet Union you entirely miss the point. I do not fault the military for doing this, it is a difficult situation to overcome, but it is one that we must work on. Again, the approach to reconstruction and conflict needs to adapt. We see a lack of accord between the PRT approach in one area and, for instance, the German role in the north when compared to even the Italians in Herat to the west. That is something that needs to be addressed and also bringing other actors to do the job where possible. I would say that you do not need to have a severe military presence and a German PRT in Mazar-e-Sharif when that could be done by NGOs, very much so. Mr Fox: I would like to add two footnotes to what I said. I am very worried about a one-size-fits-all approach to counter-insurgency. We love doctrine and now orthodox doctrine moves between British experiences in Malay and American experiences in Vietnam with sacred texts like McMaster's Dereliction of Duty and Eating Soup with a Knife by Nagl. These are almost looked on as holy texts. I agree with my colleagues, every situation that I have looked at, whether it is Kosovo and the mafia activities there behind the KLA and what I am looking at in Helmand, are absolutely sui generis. The second point that I would like to make about the insurgency is to add a very old expression into the debate but I know that the head of UNAMI uses it a hell of a lot. This is just what historians would call a pajakaran(?), a spontaneous explosion from below with very little political sense of direction or programme. The people are just really fed up, they are on their uppers, and if somebody says, "I have got the gun, fight", it is almost motiveless action at certain points. Certainly, for instance, the ground between the Kajaki dam and Musa Qala is full of people like that because, as one of the militia chiefs put it to me, "The only people with guns here, and they have the final argument, are the Taliban". Q181 Mr Jenkin: I am very interested to know more about the Dutch model referred to by Rory Stewart. This is something without creating a one-size-fits-all approach that seems to be about delegated command and letting commanders on the ground use their discretion in view of the resources they have got available to produce best effects rather than following a more centrally directed agenda. Could you all comment on this, particularly if NATO cannot agree a single strategy for Musa Qala. Mr Fox: Can I just say it is not exclusively Dutch. Having a Dutch wife and many colleagues and friends in the Dutch media, one must explain the extreme reluctance with which the Dutch went into Uruzgan and what they have done about it. They have thought asymmetrically about it. It is not exclusively Dutch because James Bucknall and General David Richards were much impressed by the individual initiative of a single Italian Alpini colonel who did much the same in a very difficult valley quite close into Kabul where he organised the surers, made the elders see that it was in their interests to have an Italian military presence to slowly put back the bad guys, where they had schools burnt down and so on. Yes, there is devolved command, there is mission command, and various groups are trying to deal with the facts as they see them on the ground. The Dutch exclusively concentrate on a very, very light military footprint. Mr Stewart: I agree that there are other people attempting similar things but the real secret of the Dutch, which is quite difficult to replicate, is that it is very reliant on very good political and tribal affairs officers, particularly a man called Matheus Toot(?) who has been there for over a decade. The British are surprisingly poor at this. This is something we are supposed to be good at and really we are very, very bad at having anybody - I do not know where they would come from, whether they would come from DFID or the military or the Foreign Office - who is prepared to spend years sitting on the ground in Helmand mapping the political allegiances, mapping the tribal allegiances and really beginning to understand how power structures work at a local level. That then allows the Dutch to do a great deal through covert operations and a great deal through intelligence operations, intelligence agents, creating very sophisticated links with surers which actually helps them in their counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism because they can get these people to tell them where the bad guys are. They also require very flexible funding arrangements in order to pursue these kinds of relationships. I am honestly extremely disappointed, Britain ought to be good at doing this and I cannot quite understand why none of the institutions of government are really getting involved it. The final footnote would be that the Dutch would ultimately say that this should not be a Dutch approach, their aim is to make this an Afghan approach and really what Matheus Toot(?) is trying to do is to explore some of these connections, discuss with the Afghan Government new approaches, new constitutional approaches, and try to get Afghan political agents ultimately taking over the weight of these kinds of negotiations. We are never going to have the kind of knowledge, the kind of commitment to do it ourselves, all we can do is nudge things in this direction. Dr Williams: I completely agree. The sad fact of the NATO deployments is that the rotations are too quick. We do not have a basis of knowledge that we can deploy now but, as it is, when someone gets on the ground, let us take General Richards, for example, being a very high profile one, he is there for a set number of months and then he leaves and all of that expertise goes with him, all of the knowledge and relationships he has built up. It is the same thing at the local level. You cannot establish relationships with Afghans when a principal fact of their culture is to have very strong, close personal relationships? The same thing with other agencies, you can ask about working relationships with DFID, the military, the FCO or NGOs when everyone is changing over and NGOs are sources that generally have a much deeper knowledge base in terms of knowing the country because their people will have generally been in the country for decades. It is something that we need to work on. Q182 Robert Key: Could we look at operational matters now. Michael Williams, you have been very critical of the number of NATO forces in Afghanistan. A number of people have commented that Operation Medusa last summer was a tipping point, that we only just managed to make it happen, that we could have gone the other way and lost out, that we lost a lot of ground anyway and subsequently. Was that because there was no Theatre Reserve? Dr Williams: Certainly I think that Theatre Reserve would have made a large difference in General Richards' ability to combat the situation he found. Again, accepting all the criticism that perhaps what we are doing in Helmand is wrong, looking at this from the perspective of ongoing operations, if he had a Reserve he would have been able to perhaps render a much more decisive and tactical defeat of the Taliban. Talking about strategic defeat is unrealistic, you need to think in terms of accommodation at some point and ultimately this is something that will be resolved in discussion and negotiations. I refer to a situation such as Northern Ireland where you will resolve it not through weapons and arms but through on the ground talking. The fact of the matter is that if he had Reserve he would not have been pressed in the way he was last year. Q183 Robert Key: Robert Fox, what additional military assets does ISAF need now? Mr Fox: I would like to talk, if I could, from the British perspective. I think the lack of support helicopters is still alarming, particularly as in under one year we have gone up from one manoeuvre battle group to three manoeuvre battle groups. When you are trying to run that between seven and eight Chinook heavy transport helicopters it makes you extremely vulnerable. I know how difficult it is to train crews, to provide the equipment because it has to have the full defensive aid suite, but the lack of helicopter support is really risking a major tactical failure, particularly when commanders will say in confidence to journalists - whenever can you speak in confidence to a journalist - "I used to wake up and think this was the day that a Chinook would be shot down". When the Nimrod crashed, and it crashed for mechanical failure, I know, 14 people went down. I am very worried about sustainability. I am very worried, which I look at through my defence academy lens, about the problem of mental and physical sustainability of the piece of software that we call the human flesh of our soldiers. David Richards has highlighted this to you. When you have young soldiers, fit, highly motivated from elite units, and they are all pretty good, 40 days under sustained fire, which is longer in the line than most infantry battalions had on the Western Front, you are asking for trouble. You are grinding them down. We are looking at tremendous physical and mental ageing of our soldier population. I am not saying we are facing disaster with this but if this goes on at this rate for another 18 months we will really have to have pause for thought. The US forces in Iraq are facing exactly the same thing, by the way. Q184 Robert Key: Mr Fox, this Committee has constantly been told by senior military commanders and ministers that we do not need any more helicopters in Afghanistan. You have seen the evidence we have been given, they say that the military commanders on the ground are being provided with all the helicopters they need. Who are we to believe? Mr Fox: So have I been told that. On my visit with General Jackson I said, "Surely you need more support helicopters, you do not need such a heavy footprint as the Chinook", which has been a problem on tactical occasions, "Oh, no, it is just a question of helicopter hours". That is economy with the truth if ever there was one. Yes, you do need these helicopters. Why do I say it with such passion? It does lead me to reflect back on what happened 25 years ago. I fully recall telling H Jones on Sussex Mountain that the Atlantic Conveyor had been sunk and a hell of a lot of our helicopters, all but one of our heavy lift helicopters, went down and that delayed the approach to Port Stanley, which was obviously to be the culminating point, by ten days to a fortnight. Expand that several times. I think that the garrisons that we have at Kajaki dam, for example, and in Sangin are utterly dependent on helicopter support, particularly on ageing helicopters as they are now, a hell of a lot of wear and tear, and they must be worrying. I am sorry to their Lordships who dictate our policy, civil but particularly military, I am afraid it has got to a point where I do not believe them. Dr Williams: I have never met a military man who would deny having more access to equipment. Close air support was key last year in effecting a NATO defeat during Operation Medusa. Unless you have been to the country I do not think you understand how difficult it is to get from one area to another and have these quick reaction forces that do not have the air support but are called and by the time they get there the incident is long over and done with. The fact of the matter is what you put into the operation you will get in return and low levels of investment will equal a low output at the end. Mr Stewart: I, of course, am very worried at the idea of investing more in this operation because I think that had we tried to go in heavy with more troops and more equipment at the beginning of 2002 we would have turned Afghanistan into Iraq and provoked an insurgency. We are on exactly the wrong path by continuing to ratchet up troop numbers and equipment. That said, I am fully in support of a notion that if soldiers are going to be on the ground and given a job they might as well have the correct equipment to pursue it. I would much rather we focused on what on earth we are trying to do and how credible it is that we are ever going to win a strategic victory rather than gradually inching up, as of course inevitably if General Richards is given a mission, he is not going to say, "This mission is impossible", he is going to say, "Give me more troops, give me resources. Just another thousand, just another couple of thousand, we will get there". I am very keen to try to sound a note of caution to say it does not matter how many troops you have or how many helicopters you have if you have got no clear idea of what you are doing with them, and by bringing in more you are causing more problems because the fundamental issue on the ground is that many Afghans are beginning to perceive this as an occupation by foreign non-Muslim troops and this is causing anger and resentment in Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim world. Q185 Mr Havard: Specifically on the helicopters, we have asked a lot of questions about this because there is concern about it. What we were told by David Richards was he did not need any more British helicopters, what there is within NATO is a commitment to provide helicopters by the other members of the NATO Coalition and they are not delivering the helicopters. Do the Brits always substitute for other people not complying with the things that they have agreed to? That is where you get to, is it not? Mr Fox: I follow absolutely the direction of your question. I blush to say this to a three star/four star general but the boys on the ground really want Brit helicopters to turn up. Q186 Mr Havard: They do. Mr Fox: I am sorry. There are enough problems between the Army and the Air Force as to whether the Air Force will turn up on time; whether Italian Air Force --- Q187 Mr Havard: If you are speaking French it might be a problem! Mr Fox: Seriously, if it is the Italian Air Force it really is a problem. For the "teeth" units - this is where I disagree with my colleague there - as much as we can we must mitigate the possibility of tactical reverse, of a very serious tactical reverse, of which there is the potential at Sangin and on the Kajaki dam in particular. It cannot just be done by gunship and ageing heavy lift helicopters. That is what has to be done. I do agree with Mr Stewart in that we have to review our concept of operations and understand in this complex insurgency, and it is an insurgency, protest or revolt, what exactly we want to do and what we think we can achieve. Q188 Robert Key: How important to the future of NATO is the success of the ISAF mission in Afghanistan? Dr Williams: I think if NATO fails in Afghanistan then you have to question how relevant the Alliance is to operations in future global security. If it fails it will become a forum for discussion, which may be suitable, but I think what the United States is looking for, and many allies, is a tool to manage international security further into Asia in the first half of the 21st century, so if we cannot provide a situation in Afghanistan, whether it is just a pull back to contain the north and support the government that way or whether it is a complete victory throughout the south, some degree of success must be evident in order for the Alliance to sustain itself otherwise you have allies in the West who then feel in the west of Europe and North America that the Alliance has failed in terms of their ability to muster force and you will have allies in the east of the organisation who then think the Alliance is not credible in deterring threats such as Russia, which is still of great concern to those countries. Mr Fox: I agree, I think it is an open question and it is an exam question which they are failing at the moment, which comes back from NATO and other international gatherings that I have attended lately. I think it is the exam question that was set with the new strategic concept at the fiftieth anniversary summit in May 1999 in the middle of the Kosovo crisis: can NATO operate outside the North Atlantic Security Area? The answer is that if you take into consideration both at the operational level and the strategic level the folders and folders of caveats, and they are still there, that you get, the Germans say, "We are there for reconstruction, we are not there to fight the Taliban in the south", and it is going to be very, very difficult. My sense is that it is floundering but it has not yet sunk because there is no alternative in dealing with EU officials, dealing with ESDP, and their view of security and the EU, although they have mounted some dozen missions now, will find it very, very difficult to step up to the plate in large and difficult operations involving conflict. I include even the European nations' contribution to Lebanon, for example, in that. Q189 Chairman: Rory Stewart, you were disagreeing? Mr Stewart: I am by no means an expert on this but my instinct is that we are investing too much in these impossible objectives and saying the credibility of NATO or the credibility of the United States and Britain is all bound up in whether or not we are going to be able to achieve things that we obviously cannot achieve. If we can lower expectations, if we can set some realistic tasks, we should be able to get a situation in which NATO can emerge with some credit out of this and move on to do other things. So long as we continue trying to pitch for this impossible Utopian picture then I imagine that NATO will be damaged. Q190 Robert Key: Do you between you have some sort of feeling about how the United States perceives the performance of ISAF? Mr Fox: I think there is a problem here which was indicated by some of the commanders I have already mentioned, and I will not cite them because it would be invidious. They get the feeling in dealing with the new US command of ISAF in Kabul that the US sees itself as the US command and then NATO, as if the US is not part of NATO, and operationally this is a very, very big problem. You might have the European equivalent of a US Marine Corps Light, known as the UK Armed Forces, and it is coalitions of the willing. I do agree with you that from everything I hear, not hearsay but what people are saying to me, the Americans have a much more isolationist view of NATO. As one of the speakers in the previous session said, it is almost as if they have written it off as a tool of real utility when force is involved. On your point about setting goals too high, I do agree. Great contrast has been made with all sorts of commanders in the way we have approached Afghanistan with the performance particularly of General Sir Rupert Smith when he was the UNPROFOR commander in very difficult circumstances. You may recall in Bosnia in 1995 somebody said - actually it was General James Bucknall, who was his MA in Northern Ireland - his great gift was to promise low and deliver high. The feeling is that a bit too much of the obverse has been happening over Afghanistan. Q191 Chairman: Dr Williams, if you could be very brief. Dr Williams: I just want to say that I think the Americans still see a utility to NATO. At the political level I have met with colleagues who are on the NSC who advocated against NATO's involvement in Afghanistan and on a visit we did together were very impressed by what they saw in Afghanistan in the north. They were amazed also at the resilience of the troops, such as the Canadians, who had previously been mainly peacekeepers at fighting there. I do not think the US would back out at all. At the military level I think there is some reason for concern. The new commanders purportedly launched Operation Achilles without informing NATO Headquarters or any of the NATO ambassadors in Brussels. That is a concern and does not speak very much of the comprehensive approach reportedly, so there could be a disjuncture between the military thinking and the political thinking, but at the political level I do believe that there is strong support for NATO's presence there. Chairman: I am glad I gave you the opportunity to put that in, it was very interesting. Q192 Mr Borrow: Just touching on what would be perceived as failure, would I be right in assuming that were NATO to alter the strategic goals to take on board some of the issues that have been raised that would not necessarily be seen as failure, but what would be perceived as failure would be the failure of NATO members to deliver the troops and equipment in the way which had been agreed in line with the strategy of NATO? I am separating there is a perception now that if NATO allies do not come up with the troops, with the kit, for the existing mission that would be perceived as failure, but were the mission itself to change that would not be perceived as failure. Dr Williams: On the first point in terms of coming up with kit, the mission is so ill-defined it allows a large degree of flexibility, so the Germans, for instance, say their troops have no Tavis, they are providing the force needed to do the mission and they are doing that mission there, however we have other allies who say, "No, we need fighting forces in the south", so there is a degree of separation here. However, it is very difficult to quantify whether that has an effect or not. NATO survived in Kosovo under similar circumstances. I think that if NATO could take Rory's advice on board, and I am commenting within the strategic objective now, and were to redefine its mission, perhaps saying they are going to leave southern Afghanistan in a certain manner and concentrate on other parts of the country, it would not necessarily be a failure. The ultimate failure would be if NATO left Afghanistan in a state worse off than it found it in 2001, which is certainly a possibility, that would be complete and utter abject failure. Q193 Linda Gilroy: Rory, you were describing the advantage of lowering the expectation of the mission. Would you like to try and describe what a mission that had lower expectations would look like? Mr Stewart: I really see this as a task for politicians, and it is a very exciting task because we are at a tipping point. We are at a moment where the rhetoric remains very high but, in fact, at the ground level the politicians are beginning to panic because the population is disenchanted and angry and I am very worried that we are about to flip suddenly from total engagement to isolation, from troop increases to withdrawal. We need to seize this point, freeze it and keep our involvement by redefining what we are trying to do there in terms that people can understand. The first key of those objectives should be counter-terrorism. We should absolutely ensure that our policies there are going to protect the interests of UK/US citizens on home soil. Secondly, I think we should be focusing on trying to deliver projects which Afghans demand. Thirdly, I believe we should be focusing on real sustainable development projects. Those are multiform, there are so many opportunities. For example, we need to look at Afghanistan much less as a nation state and much more as part of a broader region. We need to think about the potential for overland trade. It is now stuck between a number of very rapidly growing economies, some with very rich natural resources, and we need to invest in the road infrastructure. We need to concentrate on Afghan products for export. Afghans are unbelievably energetic and entrepreneurial; they have an extraordinary number of goods which they could sell internationally if we supported them in the correct way. All of this means drawing back from a statement that says, "We are going to turn Afghanistan overnight into a liberal democracy", it probably means accepting that we are not in the next three years going to eliminate illegal narcotics growth or radically change the way that Afghan men treat their women. These are worthy objectives but they are not objectives for three years, it requires patience, humility, perhaps accepting that we are never going to create a democratic state in southern Afghanistan. Nevertheless, there is an enormous amount to be done. Elizabeth Winter, who is in the room, who knows much more about Afghanistan than I do, can confirm that there is so much opportunity and energy in Afghanistan if we got off our high horses, stopped talking about these extraordinary fantasies and actually worked at a grassroots level with Afghans. There is so much that could be done. There is so much more flexibility in Afghan society. We may not be as powerful as we pretend or as knowledgeable as we pretend but we are certainly more powerful and knowledgeable than we fear. There are many things that we can do. Q194 Mr Crausby: Last week when the Secretary of State gave evidence to the Committee he was asked to give up an update on the situation in Musa Qala and he described the situation as unclear. How do you see the situation in Musa Qala? Mr Fox: It is very difficult. When Musa Qala "fell" I was in Kandahar with two translators, one the AP correspondent who had stringers in Musa Qala, and the Marine Brigade Headquarters in the end were phoning us to find out what was going on. I would like to endorse Rory Stewart's point. We are frightened of going back to the era of Kipling and reinventing the role of the political officer, the figure who devotes his or her lifetime to the culture of this region, and we are sadly lacking in it. This is the answer to your point about Musa Qala, I do not think we really know, and this is the flaw in a lot of our military concepts. This is where network-centric cannot help you at all. It can see bits and pieces but it cannot see into the minds of the village elders of Musa Qala, and that is the problem. It goes backwards and forwards. Yes, you can knock off the heads of a few metaphorical tall poppies, as they did with the leadership, but talking to an Afghan militia commander protecting the dam who was from Musa Qala it seemed that the loyalties were utterly tradable there. Musa Qala is a focal point, it is an entrepôt for drugs, arms and also for local Afghan recruits, so it comes and goes. It will be disputed ground, I suspect, for much of the summer. Could I just answer Ms Gilroy's question. In terms of public perception here I do think that too much is being predicated on military failure and success. The world that we are really reaching for is there has got to be a hell of a lot of strategic patience because I would like to clarify to the Committee that I am not advocating cutting and running, far from it, but if the terms of reference can be shifted in public opinion that would be beneficial to all. Chairman: We have still got a lot of ground to cover. Q195 Linda Gilroy: I do not want to do my last question, I just want one short question to Robert on the point he raised which follows through from what Rory said. When we were in Denmark discussing the future of NATO last week, for the first time I came across the concept of managing security as something that might be appropriate for NATO. Would you think that was something which fits in with Rory Stewart's idea about lowering or perhaps making more real the expectations, that is more honest about what we are there to do and, rather than it being a war against terrorism, it would be much more explicable to people here as to why we are there as well as being more honest as to why we are there? Mr Fox: It has got to fit the Afghan physical and human landscape because the battle of abstract plans really does not work there. It is how to manage or grow some sense of stability. It is a very long generational game and it is at that level that the commitment will be difficult. Looking for a kinetic solution, as David Petraeus has said very explicitly in the Baghdad context, cannot deliver the answer you want, and nor can it in Lashkar Gar or Sangin. Q196 Mr Crausby: If I could take you back to Musa Qala. I do not know whether anybody else has any views on the situation there. There has been some disagreement about how the Americans felt about it. What do you feel was the American reaction to the Musa Qala agreement? Mr Fox: I was around at the time when it appeared to be coming apart. They were overtly two British commanders very hostile but - I hope this is not an indiscretion - I was at a briefing by General Richards about ten days ago in which he made a very interesting point that the American command of General McNeill has not reneged on the Musa Qala agreement. I would like to refer to my conversation with General James Bucknall when he said, "We are going to have to engage. We are going to have to talk. We are going to have to put up with a certain amount of failure, but to say that we will not talk, we will not come to local arrangements, you cannot turn the Helmand river valley into half a dozen little Alamos". Q197 Mr Havard: I have got a couple of questions down here which are largely redundant in a sense because they were about whether or not if the Taliban forces had concentrated themselves they would have had more effect in terms of beating us and whether we could defend ourselves in those circumstances and questions about whether we can get any decisive military victories, as it were, in that area, dominate the ground that way, this summer. I do not know what the assessment is of what the summer militarily is going to bring because the tactics are changing around, specifically in this northern Helmand area. We are not going to walk away this summer. Mr Fox: No. Q198 Mr Havard: We are not going to change this policy next week. Mr Fox: I think it is very worrying that we have concentrated areas of operation on several centres of gravity, indeed there is the Lashkar Gar lozenge where progress does seem to have been made with some reverse, as we have heard, but now the concentration on Highway 611 from Sangin, Sangin itself, which is the chokepoint, up to the dam, because the acid test of success is whether we can get the road open enough, so we are told, to get the new turbine and equipment up to the dam. I think that invites the kind of operation and activity that we saw with Op Medusa last year. It has to be noted that Op Medusa was a check, a very bloody one, for the Taliban but it needed Operation Falcon Summit for them to go into the area and drive a certain amount of Taliban out for the civil population to even contemplate returning to the area. Tens of thousands fled the area, as you know, of the Panshway river system. Q199 Mr Havard: Mr Stewart, you are shaking your head in relation to that. You would say change the direction totally, but one of the things we saw when we went there last time was your point about that whole area being less known to us than perhaps we would like when we send forces in and your point about 100 or so US forces have been in the area but what we did not have was intelligence from any of that. What we did not know was about the tribal warring forces in that anyway, the traditional fighting grounds and all the rest of it. Our intelligence is not there. I want to be clear. You seem to be suggesting, Mr Stewart, that militarily we ought to draw back the intensity of the materiel and the people there and set up something that perhaps, okay, may end up looking like Waziristan rather than anything else but at least you would have forces there which would then allow you to understand the people better and move forward in that way. That is the change in direction you would transform to, is it, so over time they would not pull back militarily? Mr Stewart: If we look at this dam project, the Helmand Valley Authority in the 1960s and 1970s had an incredibly difficult time dealing with tribal elders and by the mid-1980s that dam was generating enough for a single light bulb and was surrounded by incredible warring mujaheddin groups and opium growers. There is a good report which came out in 2001 which analysed that experience in the 1960s and 1970s. The lesson from that would seem to be that if you want to go in there and put hundreds of millions of dollars into repairing that dam and bringing in US engineers you need to do it with a very subtle and careful negotiator with the different village communities all the way up the valley. That is not what we have done. What we have done is largely ignore them, go straight in and we are trying to bring in these civilian engineers, we put glass walls around them and we will clear a field of fire around the dam and just try to bomb anybody who opposes it. This is a very, very peculiar approach to doing development. I cannot see any future in it. Q200 Mr Havard: But if we did it your way do you provide a platform for the Taliban who do not have any strategic capacity to gain strategic capacity and undo the good work that has been done elsewhere? Mr Stewart: My guess is that the real resource here in terms of the sustainable campaign against the Taliban is the Afghan people themselves. There is no serious counter-insurgency campaign in this country without Afghans buying into it. Q201 Linda Gilroy: I think we covered earlier on the questions we were going to ask about Provincial Reconstruction Teams and particularly Mr Williams' views on those and also the role of the military in delivering development. Perhaps one last catch-all question: where would development funding and effort be best directed? Dr Williams: One of the points I wanted to make about the rather critical PRTs is that they are useful in many regards and whether you maintain the current strategy or you change to Mr Stewart's strategy of the Waziristan approach of giving up in the south for the time being, I think we need to split security reconstruction and development into three different spectrums. You have a frontline where the military is working to provide security and doing very quick relief for aid projects, then you have PRTs which are concentrated in areas of conflict but where it is too dangerous for NGOs and you could start serious construction perhaps and development activities which would then be followed by a third band where NGOs are the principal actor. This frees up military resources to be used in areas where security is the paramount concern and allows you to access the experience of NGOs in development organisations in more peaceful areas where they can operate. It is a bit silly to have troops in an area where you do not need them aside from regular security patrols. That is something to take into account in terms of how funding is divided between military relief, as Mr Jenkin has pointed out, in long-term development aid and, of course, this all has to be wrapped in a framework from the beginning so that NGOs have input and they are not going to say, "What is your opinion" and then ignore it systematically, that advice is taken into account. Q202 Linda Gilroy: So there is nothing wrong with having different types of PRT as long as they are focused in the right way to do the right job? Dr Williams: I think that some standardisation would be good but, as Rory has pointed out, it depends on local circumstances. A more devolved authority tends to be the most successful. We do not want to have a difference between, let us say, the Germans and the Americans where one PRT is doing mainly shooting and killing and the other is doing only reconstruction. That is why I am saying you put them into a certain band of conflict where the definition of the ratio of military actors to civilian actors is about the same, but then what is the best approach for this global area. That is what you need to harness. Q203 Linda Gilroy: Does anybody else want to comment on the best use of development funding or, indeed, PRTs? Mr Stewart: I would say we want to distinguish very clearly between three quite different kinds of economic investment. There is the sort of money that you might want for military units, which is really money and projects used for counter-insurgency warfare. The second might be the kinds of projects which DFID would pursue and DFID, of course, is a very theological organisation, they are dedicated to an extremely sophisticated idea of sustainable development over the long-term. The third kind of projects, which we are not doing, are those which somebody like the Foreign Office should be controlling if DFID refuses to touch it, and those are symbolic political projects which have the name of the international community on them. I talked about garbage being seven feet deep in the centre of Kabul, we are currently trying to restore the historic commercial centre of the city and, done correctly, this could be a place that hundreds of thousands of Afghans would visit and in 50 years' time they could point to and say, "This is a gift from the international community to the Afghan nation". There are very few permanent symbols of our commitment. There is very little that Afghans can point to when they are asked what we have done for them. We do need to start directing money towards this third category. I am not saying give up on counter-insurgency, I am not saying give up on all the very worthy sustainable development projects which DFID is pursuing, but we must think more like politicians and less like bureaucrats if we are going to catch the imagination of the Afghan people. Chairman: It being 12.59, I would like to say to you three and to all of our witnesses this morning that this morning's evidence from the point of view of the Committee has been a real privilege to take. Thank you very much indeed for your well-informed and very careful evidence. |