Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)
RT HON
LORD MALLOCH-BROWN
AND ADAM
THOMSON
14 MAY 2009
Q200 Andrew Mackinlay: We need
some sort of carrot to increase our constituents' enthusiasm,
and I think that they would like to see some material advance
in tackling corruption. How can they measure success in that?
What is being done to ensure that our assistance is contingent
upon the Afghan Government demonstrably being able to deliver
a war against corruption?
Lord Malloch-Brown: One thing
that we have been pressing on President Karzai, and indeed on
others who are choosing to run for President in the elections,
is the need for this not to be a personality and tribal-based
coalition campaign but to be very much about manifestos and commitments.
We have argued to President Karzai that corruption will be a decisive
issue for people, and that it will be unacceptable for the people
of Afghanistan to see leaders who condone or turn a blind eye
to corruption.
Through DFID, we have worked hard both to make
sure that our own aid money is not wasted and that we are building
the kinds of institutions of governance—the checks and balances
and controls over corruption—that start to clean this up.
But one has to be honest—this is one of the real Achilles
heels of the Kabul Government. Particularly at the regional level,
there are governors appointed by Kabul who have a horrible reputation
regarding corruption. We hope that this election campaign will
be an opportunity for ordinary Afghans to air their grievance
about that and demand of whomever they elect as President that
they clean up their act.
Q201 Andrew Mackinlay: Outside
of Kabul, surely the reality is that traditional forms of justice
prevail. Is that acceptable to us?
Lord Malloch-Brown: What exactly
do you mean?
Andrew Mackinlay: Well, not a court system
or a prosecution system as we know it but tribal punishments—I
don't know the correct phrase, and I don't want to use emotive
terms—that are probably not up to United Kingdom norms.
Lord Malloch-Brown: I am sorry—I
just wanted to make sure that you were not suggesting that it
was somehow just arbitrary justice. You are absolutely right:
there are so-called shuras—local justice systems—and
we are working to strengthen them. We think that that—justice
that reaches out across the country—is a better model than
trying to get some sort of court system that is highly expensive
to operate, has huge gaps in the laws it would operate from and
never really manages to provide timely justice beyond Kabul. Our
own reporting suggests that, in terms of winning hearts and minds
in insurgent areas, one thing that scores well for the Taliban
versus Kabul is the rough and ready justice that the Taliban provide.
They come into town, somebody accuses somebody else of stealing
farm animals or taking land, and the Taliban are not coy about
it—without reference to even an informal justice system
they mete out punishment. In the rather lawless areas that is
often welcomed, I am told. Informal justice systems, which are
fair and deliver justice quickly, are a critical building block
for successful political counter-insurgency.
Q202 Andrew Mackinlay: On governance,
the way that I understand it is that there are clearly some provinces
in Afghanistan where, while it is not up to our norms of governance,
there is some governance and probably has been for a long time.
Putting aside Kabul, where perhaps the writ of the Government
runs, we are in Helmand, and the truth is that there is no governance
in Helmand, is there? There might be a shibboleth of some Government
official—a provincial or a district governor or a prefet—but
the reality is that he is ensconced, almost imprisoned, in a Seventh
Cavalry-type fort where, notionally, his standard flies, but outside
of that little jurisdiction, his writ does not run. There is no
governance, is there? That is the painful truth that my constituents
and I have to face. There is no real governance in Helmand. We
have been there a long time and that is the naked truth, isn't
it?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Well, the
truth that I would not disguise from your constituents is that
we are in the middle of this, not at the end. We still have a
long way to go in Helmand. You have Governor Mangal, who we think
is an honest and able man, who, in some of the metrics of his
performance, such as poppy field eradication and other issues,
is making real progress. Therefore, Helmand is better governed
now than it was a year ago.
There are local councils in the districts. I
visited one of the district councils and I am sure that you did
when you were there. It is not an easy life: one of the district
councillors I met was killed shortly thereafter going to her home
area. It is a dangerous business, and as a consequence too much
development assistance to our taste still has to be delivered
through provincial reconstruction teams because it is not safe
enough to allow ordinary Afghan council workers to go out and
deliver development projects in the way that we would like. However,
compare Helmand to much of the rest of the country and you see
that it is an extreme. In many parts of Afghanistan the process
is much further advanced.
Andrew Mackinlay: Yes, but we wouldn't
have the presence if it weren't for Helmand.
Lord Malloch-Brown: That's right.
Q203 Andrew Mackinlay: I acknowledge
that there are some provinces or districts that are different.
I think that there are 13 districts in Helmand. How many of those
13 this afternoon are in the reasonable control—I have to
use "reasonable" because I have to leave it to your
judgment—of central Government? Where does their writ run
in those 13? I don't simply mean that there is a fort, an office
and a few people behind guns. Of those 13, how many can the Government
reasonably move around in?
Lord Malloch-Brown: About half
of them.
Adam Thomson: Yes, I would say
about half of them, but each district is different, and in some
of the half where there is Afghan Government governance, it is
still quite insecure. But if we compare Helmand 2006 with Helmand
2009, there is considerably more governance in considerably more
district centres than was the case three years ago.
Q204 Andrew Mackinlay: Last autumn
we were in the United Nations and we had before us the lovely
gentleman who was the Afghan ambassador to the UN. We asked him
the same question, and I remember him saying that a couple of
weeks earlier there were about five districts. We all gasped.
He then said, "As at yesterday"—we thought that
he was about to say that the figure had lifted to seven—"there
were two." That was rather the wrong direction. You looked
a bit anxious when I asked you the question, and you said, "About
half," but that isn't good enough, is it? We need to see
that we are increasing and gaining qualitatively in governance,
where the writ runs. I put that to you.
I have a final question. This is an article
5 operation; surely it has wider implications. NATO has failed
in it because implicit in article 5 is that everyone steps up
to the plate. We did in relation to Helmand. I have said that
I don't think there is any mandate, because it was a statement
of fact that we were going in, but it has never been put to the
House of Commons. It was reported to it, but it never mandated
or endorsed it. Article 5 has failed. It is actually a serious
failure for NATO. It was implicit that others would come in—we
might make the biggest contribution, but it was all going to be
one big heave. It hasn't happened, has it?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I looked anxious
about the "half" because it's not clear what the measure
is. It goes to your serious point that we have to have metrics
and benchmarks of progress. We are trying to develop those. I
really want to be clear that, while there have been setbacks in
Helmand—the loss of Lashkar Gah was the most infamous, if
you like, but it was then recovered; no, Musa Qala, sorry, it
was recovered and local government is now operating—the
point is that the trend line is clear. We are prevailing, but
as I said at the beginning of the answer, we are at the halfway
point or whatever the right thing is. I am not trying to disguise
the fact that we still have a hell of a hill to climb, but I use
the comparison with the rest of Afghanistan for a reason. Yes,
if you look at Helmand, it seems bleak, but if you look at Helmand
as the worst province in the country and take a countrywide look
at this, it is a lot less bleak. We are winning. That is the bottom
line.
Q205 Andrew Mackinlay: Article
5?
Lord Malloch-Brown: On the article
5 point, it is a huge challenge to NATO because, essentially,
it is out of theatre for NATO. The real issue is that NATO's tightness
and article 5 shared commitments came from the concept of an organisation
whose purpose was self-defence in the European theatre. The threats
have now become global, as we were saying at the beginning, and
unfortunately NATO's sense of solidarity is not yet an expression
of that. It is absolutely the case that NATO needs to think hard
about its mission. Its member countries need to think hard about
their commitments to it. If there are to be more of these kinds
of actions around the world, the US is very properly—if
NATO is going be the vehicle for them—going to expect that
others properly step up to the mark.
Andrew Mackinlay: And us.
Lord Malloch-Brown: And us.
Chairman: Now we are going to shift to
human rights issues. Sir John Stanley.
Q206 Sir John Stanley: Minister,
I may have misconstrued your earlier comments, but I found your
previous reference to standing up for the rights of women and
girls in Afghanistan somewhat feeble and defeatist. I hope that
you acknowledge that over a large part of Afghanistan, including
way beyond the areas where the Taliban are still in control, the
treatment of women and girls, which is measured perfectly reasonably
from our point of view by the standards of the UN declaration
of human rights, is frankly appalling. We have seen reports only
this week of another gas attack on girls going to a school outside
Kabul.
The Prime Minister was in Afghanistan at exactly
the same time as us, although we did not actually see him as our
paths did not cross. The specific point that I want to put to
you relates to the fact that he rightly made very strong representations
to President Karzai about his signing of the Shi'a family law,
which has, in my view, been perfectly reasonably described by
the media here as legalised rape within marriage. The issue is
of huge concern to those very brave women in Afghanistan who are
fighting for women's rights.
It was widely reported in the Afghan press,
and more widely, while we were there that the Prime Minister obtained
a concession from President Karzai, under which he said that he
would amend the Shi'a family law, which he has now signed. Are
the British Government going to ensure that the commitment made
to our Prime Minister will be adhered to, or will it simply turn
out to be an empty promise? If it turns out to be an empty promise,
Members from all political parties on both sides of the House
will have to deal with constituents who are concerned about our
position in Afghanistan, and who cannot understand why servicemen
should lose their lives for a Government who are prepared to institutionalise
and legalise rape. Our constituents simply cannot understand why
we should be in that position, and I have every sympathy for that
point of view.
Lord Malloch-Brown: The Prime
Minister made in Afghanistan the same argument that you have just
made, which is that it is absolutely unreasonable to expect British
lives to be put at risk to defend a Government who would treat
their country's women in that way, and that while we accept that
different systems will address issues of rights in different ways,
don't expect us to put our lives on the line for a regime that
would do that. The Prime Minister, in what he said publicly and
in what he said in private to President Karzai, was absolutely
explicit and adamant—as were President Obama and Hillary
Clinton—that it was unacceptable to expect us to play a
role there under such conditions. Therefore, on 27 April, President
Karzai announced that the law would be changed to bring it in
line with the constitution, which guarantees equal rights for
women, and with the international treaties to which Afghanistan
is a party. We are going to follow that very closely. For us,
it is not a small matter to be brushed under the carpet—it
is absolutely fundamental. While we, as I say, recognise the right
of Afghans to write their own laws, there are some issues that
are so fundamental that they go to the heart of why we are there.
I want to pick up your earlier point on women,
who have had a hugely improved dispensation and deal since 2002.
I have mentioned the fact that there are now huge numbers of girls
in school who were not there before. You mentioned the fact that
some of them were attacked when they tried to go to school, which
shows the limits of what outsiders can do: we can fight for the
provision of schools and press the Government to treat girls fairly
and give them the same rights as others, but what we cannot do
is change a country's culture overnight and police the behaviour
of individual Afghan families and communities towards their women
and daughters. We can press for that change in attitude, but I
do not consider it supine, weak or apologetic to acknowledge that
we do not have the ability to go family by family across Afghanistan
and teach Afghan men to treat their women properly. That revolution
in attitudes has got to come from Afghans themselves.
Q207 Sir John Stanley: I certainly
accept that there have been some significant improvements since
2001, but it has to be clear on the record that we were starting,
as far as women and girls were concerned, from a zero base—an
absolutely zero base, from a regime that was committed to ensuring
that women were brought up illiterate and that their role in life
was to be treated as chattels. I hope that the British Government
will look not only at what has been done since that zero baseline,
but also at what more needs to be done and at the numbers of Afghan
girls who are still not going to school in Afghanistan.
We had two interesting and contrasting meetings
in the Afghan Parliament. One was with the Foreign Affairs Committee,
where there was just one woman, and all the rest were men—I
say that with a degree of contriteness, as the women members of
this Committee no doubt have some other pressing engagements,
so I am sorry but we are all men here today, Minister. That was
followed by a meeting, very happily, with the recently formed
all-party Afghan-British parliamentary group in the Afghan Parliament.
You will be interested to know, Minister, that at that meeting,
which followed immediately afterwards, there was just one man
and all the rest were women. At that point I do not think that
they had had an opportunity to go to our embassy in Kabul, but
I hope—indeed, I am sure—that, given the strong representation
of women in the new Afghan-British friendship group in the Afghan
Parliament, our ambassador and his staff will make every possible
effort to see that they are warmly welcomed and very strongly
supported by the British embassy in Kabul.
Lord Malloch-Brown: Thank you,
Sir John. I shall pass that back to our ambassador, because I
think that it is something that we should build on. I hope that
one reason that there was that gender balance may well be that
there is a recognition of the programmes that DFID, in particular,
runs for women's rights in Afghanistan and that the women in Parliament
see us as a friend of that agenda. I hope that that had something
to do with why there were so many women in that group.
Q208 Chairman: We went to a girls'
school in Kabul, which the British Council has been giving significant
support to. That was an extremely valuable experience for all
of us. Of course, none of those girls would have been in education
at all in 2003.
May I probe you a little further on the Shi'a
family law process? We were given contradictory impressions by
different people that we spoke to as to what would happen, and
whether there would be a need for an amendment to go through the
Afghan Parliament or whether some other process would be involved.
Some people suggested that it was all part of the electioneering
and President Karzai had done this deliberately to bolster his
base, and that once the election was out of the way the law would
carry on through the process. Although he said that he might put
it on hold or "review" it, there was no explicit commitment
to amend it.
Can you clarify what process you or the British
Government think will now be pursued within the Afghan political
system? Might it be through the Parliament, which could resist
it, because the Shi'a members might say to the Sunni ones, "It's
nothing to do with you; this is to do with our religious codes"?
Or will there be some other mechanism to ensure that the 300 or
more clauses of the Shi'a code are adopted without the two or
three that have caused these particular problems?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Chairman,
I don't think I can clarify it. What you heard was an accurate
reflection of what we are hearing. The embassy is still pursuing
what the next steps are likely to be. What President Karzai said
was that he had sent it to the Ministry of Justice for review.
My interpretation of the electoral politics, though, is different
from yours. It might be that there was less electoral advantage
to President Karzai after the elections in allowing the Bill to
have been brought forward, and he may be more amenable to tackling
amendments to it after the election.
Q209 Chairman: We were told that
the President had referred it back initially and then it had come
back again. He asked, "Is it okay?" and was told, "Yes,
it's fine." He then signed it and then realised what was
in it. We were also told that the Ministry of Justice and the
President had worked it out and it would be fine and that there
was no problem. They had already worked out what needed to be
done. Two weeks on from when we were told these things, have you
any idea whether that is true?
Adam Thomson: No, I haven't—I'm
sorry.
Q210 Chairman: Perhaps you can
send us a note,[4]
because when we do our report we will obviously focus to some
extent on what this actually means. Our report is likely to be
out before the Afghan elections.
Lord Malloch-Brown: I happened
to be with the American special envoy Richard Holbrooke when this
thing broke. The speed with which he was able to get Hillary Clinton
out of bed at about five in the morning to call President Karzai
shows that there was no doubt about the American position and
the speed with which President Obama jumped in on it means that
one thing I can confidently tell you is that we are not alone
on this. The most significant external voice—the Americans—are
at least as outraged as we are by it and are determined to make
it clear that for them, who are making even more of a commitment
and losing a lot of lives, this is every bit as unacceptable as
it is for us.
Q211 Mr. Illsley: Before I come
on to a question about international co-operation, I want to come
back to the point that Sir John has been making about public perceptions
of human rights abuses in Afghanistan and how they affect this
country's views on what we are doing out there. A few moments
ago you said that we can help the police force and the Afghanistan
people in relation to their attitude to girls and women. I accept
that and I agree with that. But there has to be some move towards
them and presumably it has to start at the top.
Only a few months ago, a father murdered his
daughter because she had struck up an acquaintance with a British
or an American soldier. It was only a passing acquaintance. He
murdered her in public and the Afghan Government simply said that
they couldn't intervene—that there couldn't be any prosecution
because it was an honour killing and accepted in their country.
There has to be some sort of pressure on the Afghan Government.
I don't think this was in a tribal area. It was around Kabul.
There has to be recognition somewhere along the line that this
is wrong and should stop. I don't know whether you recall that
incident.
Lord Malloch-Brown: I don't recall
the specific incident. We will look into that.
Q212 Mr. Illsley: My question
on international co-operation relates to the UN mission in Afghanistan
and its efforts to channel funding into reconstruction and development.
It appears that the US Government tend to ignore the UN programmes
when providing funding and assistance for these programmes, whereas
the British Government tend to use the UN programmes as a vehicle
for putting investment into Afghanistan. Is there anything we
can do to persuade the US Government to come on board in relation
to the UN, so that there is a co-ordinated approach to this money
going into redevelopment and construction?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I think yes
is the answer. The last Administration was famously casual about
its relations with the UN and did not use it as it might have
done. Richard Holbrooke is very seized of this. The Americans
had always steered clear of the UN mission in some ways, although
they had been interested in getting Paddy Ashdown to head it at
one point because they wanted a more effective UN mission. They
felt that they did not have it and therefore worked round it.
Peter Galbraith, an American who is extremely close to the Administration,
has been brought in as deputy SRSG in the mission. The Americans
are supporting UNAMA'S big election undertaking. As UNAMA itself
has sorted out some of its own staffing issues which dogged it
last year and has moved to open regional offices, putting it closer
to the action outside Kabul, I think the US is gaining respect
for it and supporting it more. We obviously were and will go on
making the argument that if you want to give this whole thing
a multilateral character and legitimacy, an effective UN mission
which the US is seen to support is a key objective.
Adam Thomson: I might just add
that Ambassador Eikenberry's first act upon arrival in Kabul as
the new US ambassador was to join a meeting chaired by Kai Eide.
It was a deliberate step.
Q213 Chairman: Yes, we met Kai
Eide and were impressed by his efforts. But there is a deep level
of frustration within the UN—not just in its headquarters
but I suspect everywhere—about the fact that whatever the
UN does, it does not necessarily know what the US is doing. The
US has an estimated $1 billion. On top of that, there is what
the American military have in their so-called CERP—the commanders'
emergency response programmes—which they can spend at local
level, perhaps contradicting or duplicating what is being done
by international organisations. So it does seem a bit absurd.
Lord Malloch-Brown: There can
be improvements. The US has been, if you like, a great piece outside
the co-ordination efforts. On the other hand, truth be told, the
CERP programmes tend to be operating in insecure parts of the
country, where it is not as though there is a massive amount of
UN or other assistance to duplicate. I think we can definitely
improve on this but it is a little bit of a habit of UN people—co-ordination
is right up there as one of the most enjoyable activities.
Q214 Chairman: You are speaking
of your former role?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I am. Nothing
gives me greater pleasure than committee meetings, co-ordinating
this, that and the other, and there needs to be more of it. Equally
we should not fall into a trap. The flexibility of the CERP programme
is a rather good thing, we would say, and frankly, we wish we
sometimes had a bit more like that.
Q215 Chairman: Can I take you
to the presidential and provincial elections, which are due to
be held on 20 August? They are obviously not the parliamentary
elections—we have had very good engagement with parliamentarians.
There have been some worrying developments. It is not clear whether
you can say that the Afghan people will be presented with a real
choice in these elections. This week a large number of candidates
seem to have withdrawn, for whatever reason. It is also reported
that President Karzai has two vice-presidential candidates: one
is the current one whom we met—Mr. Khalili—and the
other one is the former Defence Minister who has a rather chequered
history. Is that not right? Is his name Fahim?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Fahim.
Q216 Chairman: Are we concerned
that we might end up having a rubber-stamp election where there
is no choice for the Afghan people?
Lord Malloch-Brown: There is a
risk and it would be a huge pity and a real setback were that
to occur. We are very clear that there needs to be a competitive
election which delivers a result that people believe in, and where
they believe that the campaign has allowed a real debate and airing
of the issues. Frankly, there is a bit of a sense of stifled democracy
in the country and of a leadership that has seemed out of touch,
locked up in Kabul and not connected with the needs of people.
For us, this election—not just who wins it but the very
process of candidates getting out there and debating and engaging—is
critical to the political renewal of the country. I mentioned
earlier the anxiety for clear manifestos, so that it is not like
18th-century British elections, which were all about interests,
alliances and money, but instead really is about ideas and coalitions
that cut across purely tribal alliances.
Although we are disappointed by the number of
candidates who have withdrawn, there are a number of formidable
candidates left. There are still a couple of alternative Pashtun
candidates, one of whom I know. He has been a senior Minister
and a senior official at the World Bank and is quite an able guy.
There are two other candidates who are much better known internationally:
Abdullah Abdullah, who was the very successful Foreign Minister
in the period immediately after 2001, and Ashraf Ghani, who did
all the economic reforms. Only time will tell whether those characters
will catch on and become national candidates and compelling figures,
but my impression is that there will be enough demand among Afghans
for a real contest. Even if a lot of candidates, ultimately, are
not declared after the pushing, shoving and manoeuvring before
nominations close, there are enough real names in the race that
we can still hope that there will be a proper race.
Chairman: We will watch this space.
Q217 Sir John Stanley: Minister,
I want to come back to counter-narcotics. It is a pretty close
call as to whether the British got a more poisoned chalice from
deciding to undertake the lead role in Helmand province or from
deciding to take the lead role in counter-narcotics. Counter-narcotics
is of course critically related to dealing with Taliban terrorism,
as UN figures suggest that narcotics fund the Taliban to the tune
of $100 million a year and enable them to buy in any number of
Taliban fighters from within Pakistan at the going rate of $10
to $20 a day. Why do the British Government, if they are still
in that position, want to cling on to that lead role on counter-narcotics?
I ask that because, although I cannot divulge details from the
conversations the Committee had in Kabul, which were entirely
private, we were told by a very senior and influential person
that that role was basically obsolete.
If you look at our fellow Europeans, you will
see that they have come to exactly the same conclusion on their
respective roles. The Germans decided that their lead responsibility
for Afghan police reform was a no-hope area for them and have
now passed that across to the EU. The Italians came to exactly
the same view on their lead role in reforming the criminal justice
system, which they have now passed to the UN. So why do the British
Government feel that they need to retain that lead responsibility
for an area in which we simply are not in a position to deliver,
where we get constant criticism and where the Afghan Government,
or possibly the US, might be willing to take on the lead responsibility?
It seems to me to be really very unfortunate that we continue
to have the nominal lead responsibility for a crucial area when
we simply are not able to deliver the goods.
Lord Malloch-Brown: The issue
of drugs is a bit different from police training and the German
lead issue that you mentioned. I think that this role originally
came when the G8 partners divvied up responsibilities, and certainly
the G8 partner thing has become a little redundant, in the sense
that it is not the formula for sharing out roles in Afghanistan.
There are other co-ordination mechanisms that remain more important.
Certainly, we feel that we are doing that more because someone
has to than because we are hugely enthusiastic about it, so if
others wanted to take it on credibly we would help them do it.
Our whole effort is about strengthening Afghan Government capacity
to do that, but the Afghan ministry in that area remains relatively
weak. We feel that it needs a strong external partner to help
it stand up against the rather contradictory demands on it from
elsewhere in the Afghan Government.
The second big player on this is the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, of which we are a big funder,
and again we encourage it to do as much as possible in Afghanistan.
The third player is the US. In the past we have
had rather different views to those of the US on some aspects
of counter-narcotics policy, particularly on the eradication issue.
We have wrestled this down, even under the last administration,
to a managed difference of emphasis. Now, under the current Administration
we are basically in the same place. We are the second biggest
contributor in this area, after the US which is the biggest, but
I suppose my answer to your question is that we are trying at
least to be a NATO country that meets our share of the responsibility
on this. We are the second biggest troop contributor. We feel
that we need to help the Americans by leading on different policy
issues where they wish us to. Yes, it is not a comfortable position
to be in. It is not great PR to be in charge of counter-narcotics,
but as I say, it is an important part of this.
My closing point is that, while it is not great
PR, it is not all a disaster. The winter survey from the UNODC,
which comes out in January, is a clear indication that this year
there will be more drug-free provinces and that cultivation in
Helmand is down. What we have always said in the case of drugs
is that it is probably a 10-year effort—that is what it
was in Thailand, and in Colombia, arguably, still is—so
there are no quick, easy wins. But we think our commitment in
this area is slowly paying off.
Q218 Sir John Stanley: I don't
think we should take too much comfort from the short-term change,
particularly in Helmand, of Afghan farmers planting wheat last
year, rather than poppy. It was explained to us very fully by
the embassy expert in Kabul that this was not actually due to
any pressure from ourselves in counter-narcotics, but owed much
more to a quite dramatic change—a deterioration—in
heroin prices and an escalation of wheat prices. He also made
the point that, year by year, it is quite possible to switch from
poppy to wheat on an annual basis. Obviously, we hope that the
downward trend is going to continue. Can I put just one more really
key policy point to you, Minister? There was a vitally important
agreement by NATO, as you know, last October to extend the NATO
remit on counter-narcotics. Previously the NATO role had been
simply to support the Afghan army with eradication of poppy in
the field. The change that was agreed, crucially last October,
was that NATO can now target the facilities and the facilitators—those
who engage in the processing of poppy, the creation of opium,
heroin distribution and so on. This is a proactive targeting arrangement
under which we have the real possibility of actually trying to
interdict the suppliers of processed poppy. The really disappointing
feature is that, though this was agreed by NATO last October,
only a handful of NATO countries—as you know, the usual
countries: us, the Americans and just one or two others—are
actually prepared to get their hands in the business and pull
this boat along with the expanded counter-narcotics role. Can
you tell us whether the British Government will do everything
it can to try to get across to other NATO member states, all of
whose troops face threats from the Taliban—threats can now
come in any part of Afghanistan—that they all have a duty
to cut off the crucial supply of cash coming to the Taliban from
counter-narcotics and they had really better get behind the expanded
NATO role in the counter-narcotics area?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Yes, I will
answer that, but on the issue of wheat prices versus heroin prices,
I completely agree with you and have got myself into trouble for
arguing provocatively that what we need for Afghanistan is a common
agricultural policy. But there is a serious point behind this.
We have to do something about prices at the farm gate to make
alternative crops attractive vis-a"-vis heroin. I want to
assure you that that is a priority that this new Administration
in Washington share. They are also pushing for more development
assistance for alternative sources of livelihood in the areas
that remain narcotics-heavy.
It is worth telling you that we have 37,000
projects under way in the areas of agriculture, education, health,
irrigation, power, etc. More than £211 million has been given
in small loans to more than 436,000 families to help farmers and
small business men develop these alternative livelihoods, and
we have repaired almost 10,000 km of rural roads, generating 14
million days of labour. Indeed, DFID has committed almost £500
million over the 2009-2012 period to the Afghan national development
strategy, of which a key priority is this alternative livelihoods
point. So, I think that we get that. We are trying to make a major
commitment to dealing with this because it is so critically a
pillar going forward.
If I may, I will just pick you up on the other
point about NATO. Clearly, supporting Afghan counter-narcotics
operations has now been added as a fifth ISAF strategic objective
in NATO's operational plan, and therefore all NATO troops are
expected to co-operate in this. While I take your point about
some of the countries that are there, let me just point out—I
am sure that you heard about this while you were there—that
in February there was Operation Diesel, which was carried out
by UK and Afghan troops and which destroyed four drug factories,
laboratory equipment and 1,295 kg of wet opium, and confiscated
a substantial amount of precursor chemicals. So we are doing it,
but you are probably right that we need to do more, and to push
the rest of ISAF to do more. But we have moved from a place where
ISAF was arguing that it should focus on the other military objectives
and leave this to a separate thing called counter-narcotics activity,
to its mainstreaming it into the military mission, precisely because
ISAF understands that it contributes to insecurity and is a source
of funding for the insurgency. It is there now, as a principal
military objective of ISAF's mission.
Q219 Mr. Horam: I wanted to ask you
about negotiating with the Taliban. As I am sure you are aware,
one aspect of the new American policy is an encouragement to the
Afghan Government to negotiate with elements of the Taliban. In
view of what happened in the nearby area in Pakistan, the Swat
valley, when the Pakistan Government tried to negotiate, not exactly
with the Taliban but with allies of the Taliban, is this a sensible
thing to do?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Well, there
is certainly negotiation and negotiation. What happened in the
Swat valley shows you the real risks of doing this the wrong way,
and this perhaps reinforces a point we were talking about earlier,
which is the difference between the Swat valley and Helmand. The
Pakistan Government negotiated from a position of weakness. They
negotiated when they did not have the upper hand militarily in
the valley, and so the agreement was perceived by the Taliban
as a confirmation of a rout, as a sort of white flag from the
Government. That, I think, validates what we are trying to do
in Helmand, which is to ensure that the Afghan Government enter
into any reconciliation negotiations with the upper hand militarily
so that they are able to do this from a position of strength,
and that their reconciliation strategy is not to hand over Helmand,
as the Pakistan Government appeared to hand over the Swat valley,
but to incorporate elements of soft Taliban support into the existing
political arrangements.
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