House of Commons - International Development

Select Committee on International Development Fourth Report

1 Introduction

1. The previous International Development Committee last reported on Afghanistan in 2002-03.[1]In December 2005 we held a one-off evidence session to provide an update on developments there.[2]In July 2007 we decided that the situation in Afghanistan merited a full inquiry, including a visit. As the International Development Select Committee we naturally focus on development. We nevertheless recognise the interaction between development and security, including key regional security issues.

2. DFID has declared that it intends to undertake more work in fragile and insecure environments.[3] It acknowledges that "fragile states are the hardest countries in the world to help develop. Working with them is difficult and costly and carries significant risks."[4]DFID aims to develop appropriate ways of working in such states, to be more effective at doing so and to work more closely with other government departments. The purpose of this inquiry is to examine how DFID is meeting the challenge of delivering development assistance in the insecure environment which is Afghanistan.

3. We began our inquiry in October 2007. We received written evidence from 15 organisations and individuals. We held three oral evidence sessions in the UK taking evidence from government officials, non-governmental organisations, an independent consultant and the Secretary of State for International Development. During the course of the inquiry we also met with a group of visiting Afghan members of the National Assembly. We are grateful to all these organisations and individuals for their contribution to this inquiry.

4. We visited Afghanistan at the end of October 2007. Full details of our visit programme can be found as Annex A to this report. We spent three days in Kabul meeting DFID and FCO officials, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), non-governmental organisations, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative, female members of the National Assembly, Government Ministers and officials, other donors and academic commentators. We also visited some DFID-funded projects. We then split into two groups with one group flying north to Mazar-e-Sharif in Balkh province and the other south to Lashkar Gah in Helmand. In Mazar-e-Sharif we met the Provincial Governor, the Provincial Council, representatives of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) from Sweden and Finland and a USAID representative and visited a number of projects. In Helmand we stayed at the Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Lashkar Gah. We met the UK Commander of Task Force Helmand, UK troops, the Provincial Governor, members of the Provincial Council and representatives of line ministries in the province. We also visited a number of projects. Our final day was spent in Kabul. We visited Community Development Council projects and we met the President of Afghanistan, the Pakistan Ambassador, Ashraf Ghani—a former Finance Minister, and the National Youth Parliament.

5. Our visit was extremely informative and we are grateful to all those who took the time to meet us and share their views with us. We are also grateful to our hosts in DFID and the Foreign Office for facilitating the visit and to our close protection team for their diligence in ensuring our safety.

6. We had hoped to report our findings to the House at the end of 2007. However we noted the Prime Minister's comments in the debate on the Queen's Speech on 6 November that he intended to make a statement on Afghanistan, including on the Government's proposals for development there.[5] We therefore decided to wait for the statement so as to be able to take full account in this report of any change in Government policy. We resolved instead to write to the Secretary of State with some of our preliminary views in order that they might inform the Government's discussions. The text of the letter is reprinted as Annex B to this report.

The importance of being in Afghanistan

7. Afghanistan is an insecure country in a politically unstable region. In particular its immediate neighbours Pakistan and Iran are the focus of international attention. Increased insecurity in the region would have significant international implications and would make the task of bringing security and stability to Afghanistan an even more difficult one.

8. Afghanistan is also one of the poorest countries in the world and is off-track in progress towards all the Millennium Development Goals.[6]Over half the population live on less than US$1 a day.[7]The British and Irish Afghan Agencies Group (BAAG) reports that Afghanistan is ranked 173 out of 178 countries listed in the 2004 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index; life expectancy is 47 years; 600 children under five die every day and 25% of all children before their fifth birthday; and the maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world.[8]Turning around such stark statistics would normally take many years; in an insecure environment the challenge is even greater.

9. Amidst the ongoing insurgency and with poppy cultivation increasing in 2007, the newly-appointed British Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, expressed his belief that the UK's commitment to Afghanistan would last for decades.[9]The UK commitment in terms of development was cemented at the London Conference in January 2006 when the Government signed a ten-year Partnership Agreement with the Government of Afghanistan including a pledge to give £330 million in development assistance over the three year period 2006-09.[10] This is part of a total package of £500 million, which includes funding for counter-narcotics. It makes DFID's programme in Afghanistan its sixth largest in the world and the UK Afghanistan's second largest bilateral donor.

10. In his 2007 Mansion House speech the Prime Minister said, "In Afghanistan we will work with the international community to match our military and security effort with new support for political reform and for economic and social development."[11] We fully support the continuing commitment of the UK Government, in partnership with the Government and people of Afghanistan, to help to bring peace and security to Afghanistan and to promote political reform and reconstruction and development. We accept that the commitment, in terms of development assistance, is likely to last at least a generation. As one of the poorest countries in the world, with continuing humanitarian needs, Afghanistan should remain a major focus for DFID.

11. Since our visit, a number of developments have highlighted to us that the political situation in Afghanistan and the relationship between the Government of Afghanistan (GoA) and the international community could become increasingly fragile. The civilian and military international effort is entirely dependent on the goodwill of the Government and people of Afghanistan. Whilst the Government of Afghanistan is fully entitled to criticise the international effort, in relation to the UK contribution we are concerned that the tone and timing of the GoA's recent comments may risk undermining British public support for the UK's long-term commitment to Afghanistan.

Development gains since 2001

12. Afghanistan has suffered from years of foreign occupation and conflict. What is striking is that, since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and despite continued conflict in parts of the country, Afghanistan has begun to make progress in some key areas including health, education, governance and the economy. For example, in health it is now estimated that access to basic health care has increased from 9% to 82%.[12] We visited a hospital in Lashkar Gah with little modern equipment but we were told that the national immunisation programme carried on in government and insurgent controlled areas regardless of the security situation. DFID told us that immunisation against measles was saving 35,000 lives annually.[13] The under-five mortality rate has improved from one in four to one in five since 2004. The proportion of women receiving ante-natal care has increased from 5% to 30%.[14] Gains in the health sector have been achieved by an innovative funding process which sees the Ministry of Health sub-contracting service delivery to NGOs and other actors.

13. There are now over five million children enrolled in schools, one-third of them girls.[15] Written evidence from DFID confirms that this represents 37% of children between six and thirteen. Of the primary school-age population 29% of girls and 43% of boys are enrolled. In urban areas this rises to 51% of girls and 55% of boys.[16] Under the Taliban it was forbidden for girls to attend school making this is a significant milestone. It was pointed out to us that the insurgents often target girls on their way to and from school in order to force the closure of girls' schools. In areas of high insecurity such as Helmand many schools remain closed. Since 2001 nearly 2,000 schools have been built although there is still a desperate shortage of trained teachers.[17]

14. Afghanistan held Presidential elections in 2004 and parliamentary elections in 2005. In the latter there was a requirement for 25% of the seats to be female. In the event 28% of the seats were won by women.[18] There are also community and provincial forums in which women are represented.[19] The non-opium economy has grown fairly steadily with growth rates averaging 10% over the last three years.[20] While such growth rates are partly a reflection of the low economic base from which Afghanistan has emerged as well as high levels of aid dependence, they also reflect a significant increase in economic activity and a more open business environment.[21]

15. Although there is a long way to go, such progress is significant. Typically post-conflict countries slip back into conflict within five years and the gains made in the immediate aftermath of the conflict are lost in what Paul Collier has called "the conflict trap".[22]This has not happened in Afghanistan. Yet these development gains do not appear in many newspaper articles about the country which tend instead to focus on the insurgency in Helmand Province where the majority of British troops are stationed. It is important that the job of helping to bring security to Afghanistan, in which over 7,000 British troops are engaged, is given full support by the British public. We recognise the strong UK media interest in this involvement given that British troops are putting their lives on the line. While acknowledging that continuing insecurity threatens to set back progress, we are also conscious that the media focus on this has meant that achievements in political reform, economic growth and in the provision of basic services are not getting the attention they deserve. We recommend that DFID's media strategy for Afghanistan is strengthened to ensure that development achievements in Afghanistan are given the press coverage in the UK which they merit.

The gap between expectations and capability

16. We found that there is a large gap between the Afghan people's expectations about how long reconstruction will take and the capacity of the international community and the Government of Afghanistan to deliver this. In a recent survey by the Asia Foundation only 42% of respondents thought that the country was moving in the right direction and only 49% considered themselves better-off than under Taliban rule. Evidence from AfghanAid states that, "unmet reconstruction and development expectations on the part of Afghan rural populations are further destabilising the country."[23] Yet building a successful state, which can deliver a wide array of services, is a long process, often not without setbacks.[24] Increasingly, even amongst donors, there is an expectation that state capacity to deliver services can be achieved within a few years. This is unrealistic, especially where such capacity has never existed historically.

17. On our visit we were repeatedly asked what the UK was doing in Afghanistan in terms of reconstruction and development. In Helmand and Balkh some Provincial Council members were not aware of the fact that DFID channels 80% of its funding through Government of Afghanistan mechanisms. Similarly in Kabul we found amongst Community Development Council members a lack of awareness of how the UK is indirectly helping to fund the schools which these Councils were building. Most Afghans responding to the Asia Foundation survey were not aware of projects funded by the UK. They cited the USA, Japan and Germany as having provided most aid for projects in their district.[25] The reality is that the UK is the second largest bilateral donor.[26] Expectations need to be managed so that they accord more realistically with the capacity—both of the Government of Afghanistan and of the donor community—to deliver. Greater publicity of successes and of the nature and scope of DFID's work in Afghanistan would help in this regard. We recommend that DFID develop a new communications strategy in Afghanistan to ensure accurate information about the scale of its work is widely circulated.

The structure of the report

18. The structure of the report is as follows: Chapter 2 provides an outline of DFID's programme in Afghanistan and a discussion of the tools available to work in such insecure environments. Chapters 3 to 7 each focus on one of five areas we consider to be the main challenges and priorities for DFID and other donors. These are: donor coordination, security, governance and sub-national governance, counter-narcotics and rural livelihoods. Because of the UK's focus on Helmand, Chapter 8 looks specifically at the UK effort here and especially at the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Team which is a joint civil and military effort.

19. Throughout the report we have sought to identify the impact of development on the role and position of women in Afghan society. Whilst there have been many gains for women in Afghanistan since 2001 in terms of the constitution and public commitments to safeguarding women's legal and civil rights, there remain a number of serious challenges to women's human rights and position in society. The realisation of their politically acknowledged civil and political rights and social and economic status is not currently guaranteed.[27] We believe it is fundamental to the rebuilding of Afghanistan that international commitments made by the Government of Afghanistan and by donors on the rights of women are honoured and given greater priority.

1 International Development Committee, First Report of Session 2002-03, Afghanistan: the transition from humanitarian relief to reconstruction and development, HC 84. Back

2 International Development Committee, Session 2005-06, Reconstructing Afghanistan, HC 772 Back

3 DFID, Why we need to work more effectively in fragile states, January 2005. Back

4 DFID, ibid. p 5 Back

5 HC Deb, 6 November 2007, col 23-34 Back

6 Ev 50 [DFID] Back

7 Q 2 [Mr Drummond] Back

8 Ev 82 [BAAG] Back

9 BBC News 24, "UK in Afghanistan for decades," 20 June 2007, bbc.co.uk Back