Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2009
GENERAL JOHN
MCCOLL,
MR MARTIN
HOWARD, MR
NICK WILLIAMS
AND MR
ROBERT COOPER
Q220 Mr Jenkin:
Supposing we did have this ideal relationship, is it not rather
frustrating in NATO that you are essentially a military alliance
but the EU has a far wider range of policy instruments at its
disposal, and so the EU constantly steals roles from NATO which
really should be NATO roles because you are in charge of military
operation? You are in charge of driving forward the security.
You should be in charge of the post-conflict reconstruction and
it is where the post-conflict reconstruction gets divorced from
the security tasks that we make such slow progress in Afghanistan.
Mr Howard: Can I pick that up?
This whole inquiry is about the Comprehensive Approach, and the
Comprehensive Approach means that you need to bring together military
activity, non-military activity, development and reconstruction,
and I would say, actually, a crucial part of that is governance
as well: we need to develop governance. With the best will in
the world, NATO can only physically do part of that. That is not
to say we cannot act in a more co-ordinating role, but the fact
is that, if we are going to make a success of the campaign in
Afghanistan, things need to happen in those areas—the governance
role, the development role—which NATO cannot do directly.
NATO can encourage and support and help, but others have to do
that.
Q221 Mr Jenkin:
So NATO cannot do the Comprehensive Approach.
Mr Howard: NATO, I think, can
be part of the Comprehensive Approach but a comprehensive approach
would involve, for example, building up courts, building up law
and order systems, a proper development programme. NATO is not
in that business. We do not have those particular facilities.
Q222 Mr Holloway:
I am quite surprised you are bigging up the Comprehensive Approach
here. If we think Ed Butler is being generous by giving them one
and a half, what score, General McColl, do you think he would
give an Afghan farmer living near to the Helmand river (after
all he is our target audience, is he not) in terms of increased
security, development and political progress since, say, 2006?
General McColl: Are you asking
me the question?
Q223 Mr Holloway:
Either of you.
Mr Howard: We have actually done
some opinion-polling—I do not have them in front of me—in
Afghanistan, or nations have done that, which actually shows a
rather complex picture of where people have felt the situation
getting better and where people have felt the situation getting
worse, and in some parts of Afghanistan the perception of security—
Q224 Mr Holloway:
I am talking about the south and the east.
Mr Howard: Yes, that is true,
but you would have to look at the country as a whole.
Q225 Mr Holloway:
Of course. I am starting with the south and the east. What score
would they give?
Mr Howard: I think there is a
real issue there and there is certainly a view that security has
got worse. I do not know what score they would give to the Comprehensive
Approach. I am not sure that is a question you could put to an
Afghan farmer.
Q226 Mr Holloway:
What do they feel about it in terms of security, development,
political progress? Would they be negative?
Mr Howard: I think they would
be negative on two counts: first, on security—because the
security situation has got worse—and the second crucial
point where it has got worse is on governance. I think that this
is a very important point, that the average Afghan does not feel
that his government from Kabul, from a district, is delivering.
Chairman: We are just about to come on
to that.
Q227 Mr Crausby:
Can I aim my question directly at Nick Williams. Drawing on your
current experience in Afghanistan, how well developed is the Comprehensive
Approach on the ground?
Mr Williams: I wanted to pick
up on the scoring point because of a rather difficult and in a
way misplaced question. The point about the Comprehensive Approach
is that no organisation does it on its own. Essentially the Comprehensive
Approach means that on the ground all elements recognise that
they are working towards a common purpose; in effect, are ready
to be co-ordinated and are ready to adjust their institutional
positions, not their mandates but their positions, in order to
achieve a co-ordinated effect. Certainly in the past year I have
seen some progress in the Comprehensive Approach, particularly
in the strengthening of the UN's co-ordinating role, and also
in response to preparation for the elections, for example. Once
you get an issue which is almost transcendent in its importance,
then you find that the institutions, working to their particular
specificities, find their roles in terms of the common endeavour.
So I personally would not be negative in terms of the Comprehensive
Approach overall, but, as to marking institutions or countries,
I think that is a very difficult issue. Could I very briefly say
that in my personal experience (and a lot of people have had the
same sort of experience as I have had) the Comprehensive Approach
is more advanced in terms of its understanding by the actors involved
in terms of the intent to apply a comprehensive approach than
I saw in Iraq or in the Balkans the first time I was there in
the 1990s, and in a way it is a debate about an issue over which
there is no debate: everyone agrees there is no alternative to
the Comprehensive Approach. The issues, I think, tend to be on
the margins of the mandates of the institutions themselves and
whether you can achieve better co-ordination and co-operation
between them. I think that is happening, there is more to do,
but it is not a 1.5 out of ten type issue.
Q228 Mr Hancock:
If we all agree that it is working on the ground because, out
of necessity, it needs to but the failure is at the top with regards
to the co-operation between the EU and the understanding of their
responsibilities and NATO, where is the political lead going to
come from? We are a bit late in the day trying to catch up with
what is happening in reality. Where is the political lack of will
to make the Comprehensive Approach work? I understand that the
EU can only talk about the one operation that they are involved
in where they are actually sharing responsibility with others.
Why on earth is that the state of play?
Mr Howard: Let me say, I am not
sure it is complete failure at headquarters level.
Q229 Mr Hancock:
It must be, must it not, because otherwise we would have been
there by now?
Mr Howard: I think that there
are relationships, which, for example, are working much better—the
relationship between NATO and the UN is now working much better.
We have now a joint agreement with the UN, which would have seemed
impossible three or four years ago. There is a particular problem
with the European Union, which I think we have all now referred
to. How you solve it, Mr Hancock, as I said earlier, I think it
is very difficult for me on the NATO side and for Robert on the
EU side to solve it together. We could agree what we would need
to do, but the EU has its 27 Member States, NATO has its 28 allies
and they are the ones who have to decide.
Q230 Mr Hancock:
Who is driving it then, Mr Howard? Who politically is not willing
to take on that task? Is it the NATO members, or is it the EU
members, or is it a total lack of leadership politically?
Mr Howard: There are 21 common
members, of course, so there is straightaway a problem. I think
it is a very reasonable question. The Secretary General of NATO
is very, very firm about the need to improve NATO/EU relations,
and I have no doubt Mr Solana sees it the same way, but it needs
the Member States themselves, the allies, to make change now.
If you are asking me to pick out particular allies, I would find
it very hard.
Q231 Mr Hancock:
I am not asking you to pick out particular allies; I am asking
you to tell us where the problem is in those two organisations.
I listened to the Secretary General's farewell speech at the WU
a month ago and it was obvious he had no answer to the issue of
how he co-operated with the EU. Javier Solana is coming soon to
make possibly another farewell speech, and it will be interesting
to see what his comment is as to why he cannot make the relationship
with NATO work. Why is it that no-one can get to grips with it?
Mr Cooper: Would it help if I
were to say something? This is not an institutional problem; this
is a political problem. As far as the institutions go, we have
as close a co-operation as you could wish between NATO and the
European Union. We have worked out at a bureaucratic level the
detail of the agreements that we need to function together, but
they have not received political endorsement, and, as Martin and
General McColl have said, that is because of political problems
between one of the members of the European Union and one of the
members of NATO, and that is a problem which the institutions
are not able to solve. Within those constraints we work together.
I would say, I think that we work together much better now than
we did three or four years ago. On the staff level the co-operation
is extremely close, on the ground everybody does their best, though
we suffer from the lack of a formal agreement, but that is a political
problem which none those here is able to solve.
Chairman: Mr Cooper, I do not think you
can leave this hanging in the air. When you say "one of the
members of the European Union and one of the members of NATO",
I do think you have to say which they are.
Q232 Mr Hancock:
It must be Turkey and Greece, surely. Who would you say they are?
Mr Cooper: This is not a secret.
This is a question about Turkey and Cyprus, and there is a deep
political problem there, for well-known reasons.
Chairman: We will not expand on that.
Q233 Mr Hancock:
But that is where the problem is.
Mr Cooper: Yes.
Q234 Mr Hancock:
Can I ask possibly Mr Cooper and Mr Howard and then the General,
is the Comprehensive Approach a valid concept for all current,
and what you would foresee as future, operations? Is the Comprehensive
Approach applicable in all future operations and are there particular
circumstances where that approach is less appropriate?
Mr Howard: Personally (and this
is speaking from my experience of NATO and from before), I do
not think there is any purely military operational military campaign.
Everything, even going back decades, I think, has a military/civilian
aspect to it. It seems to me that some version of a comprehensive
approach is going to be needed almost whatever operation that
I can foresee is carried out. I suppose you could argue that a
single nation very specific special forces operation might not,
but anything that has got politics involved with it I think will
need it. Having said that, I think a comprehensive approach that
you apply in Afghanistan could look very different to the comprehensive
approach that you apply in Kosovo, which would look, in turn,
different to the comprehensive approach that we would apply to
the very narrow problem of counter-piracy, but the basic concept
that you need to bring both civil, military and other actors together,
I think, you are right, would be valid for current operations
and future operations.
Mr Cooper: A comprehensive approach
is perhaps an ideal, and one tries to approach it as far as possible.
My own suspicion is that the only place at which a fully comprehensive
approach will be available is perhaps as it was applied by Britain
in Northern Ireland, where you have a single government in control,
because you are in political control in Northern Ireland. In other
places, inevitably, whatever you do is going to be done in co-operation.
In Afghanistan it has to be done, above all, in co-operation with
the Afghan Government, because that cannot be replaced by outsiders.
So, whatever happens, there are going to be some missing pieces
in the Comprehensive Approach, but one can do it better and do
it worse and there are things that you can do more comprehensively.
I think it was a different operation, but, for example, in counter-piracy
it is useful for the European Union to be able to work with the
literal governments on law and order issues so that they can take
pirates and put them on trial. In Georgia, as well as running
a monitoring operation in Georgia, we have a long-term relationship
with the Georgian Government in terms of aid and institutional
development. So there are a number of ways in which you can be
better at doing it without necessarily ever becoming fully comprehensive.
Q235 Mr Hancock:
Can we ask the General for his point of view?
General McColl: Yes, first of
all, I think the idea of a comprehensive approach is absolutely
essential. If you analyse the future threats that we might face,
they are largely bracketed around the concept of instability,
and the lines of operation that deliver you strategic success
in respect of instability problems are economics and governance;
the security operation simply holds the ring. It is, therefore,
essential that we have a comprehensive approach to these types
of problems. Talking to the issue of Afghanistan—I know
this has been laid out to you before, but I will do it again because
I think it is important, the complexity of that co-ordination
task—we have 40 nations in the alliance. Each of them has
three or more departments involved in this issue of the Comprehensive
Approach. We then have at least ten others who are critical players
in the country. We have international organisations—another
20—we then have NGOs, who run into their hundreds. Then
on top of that, of course, we have the Afghan National Government.
All of that needs corralling and the idea of having one single
hand that is going to control all of that is clearly wishful thinking.
Therefore, what we have to have is a concept which enables us
to co-ordinate our efforts in a coherent way, and the Comprehensive
Approach, as we have heard, is the language of common currency
in Afghanistan and in many of these theatres, because it is commonly
understood that we need to work together. So I think from that
perspective it is absolutely essential that we have a comprehensive
approach and that we spell it out. To go back to Mr Jenkin's point
about the way in which NATO is organised, that is NATO's perhaps
single Achilles heel, which is that it can be construed as being
a security organisation, a security organisation which is involved
tasks of stability for which it needs access to economics and
governance to deliver strategic success. So from NATO's perspective
it is absolutely essential that we have the plugs and sockets
to allow us to be involved in the Comprehensive Approach. Not
to deliver the comprehensive approach, but, as I have said, the
plugs and sockets to allow us to influence it.
Q236 Mrs Moon:
General McColl, you have painted a fantastic picture of the complexities
of the pulling together of the comprehensive approach and the
difficulties that we actually have in achieving successful communication
and collaboration. Can I get a picture for myself as to how well
this is actually playing on the ground with local nationals producing
successful outcomes? It is a little bit like Adam Holloway's question
about the farmer at the side of the river. Can you give us some
examples of how it has actually worked well?
General McColl: I can try. First
of all, to go back to the specific example of a farmer on the
river, I think that is the wrong snapshot to take. If I might
be so bold, I would go back to 2001/ 2002 when we arrived in Afghanistan,
because only then can you understand the progress that has been
made in that country and the way in which the Comprehensive Approach
has delivered. If I take politics for the first example, when
we first arrived there, there was nothing in the ministries—no
desks, no people, no middle-class—the politicians were people
who had been at war with each other for the last God knows how
many years; there was simply no governance at all. Since then
we have gone through a series of Jirgas and elections and there
is a proper sense of governance, of politics, although I absolutely
take the point that the governance at the lower level is extremely
corrupt and needs a great deal more work, but there has been political
development there. If you go on to the areas of health, education,
economic growth in terms of the percentage of growth annually
since we arrived in 2002, in all of these areas there has been
significant growth, and I think it needs to be taken within that
context. You can hone down on areas, and security in the south
of the country over recent times is certainly one, counter-narcotics
is another where progress has not been satisfactory, and, indeed,
just recently in the south there has been a significant increase
in the number of incidents, so it is a patchwork, but I think
if you are going to get a satisfactory picture of the work of
the Comprehensive Approach you need to take it over a significant
period of time to give yourself a coherent picture.
Q237 Mrs Moon:
Mr Williams, what is your view on that?
Mr Williams: I would like to go
back to the example I already gave, which is the elections, which
is not the only example, but it is an indication of how each of
the institutions are helping the Afghan Government deliver elections
by mentoring, training, providing funds and expertise according
to their own specificities. For example, ISAF is providing support
alongside EUPOL to the planning for the security of the elections.
That involves training and preparing both the Army and the Police.
ISAF does not have, nor does CSTC-A, which is the American-led
mentoring training organisation, in-depth civil police expertise.
EUPOL does, and so by working together and dividing up the task
into specific functions, we are approaching an election on August
20 which, for the first time, will be largely delivered by the
Afghan authorities themselves. I have just cited ISAF and EUPOL,
but the European Commission, working with UNDP and other organisations
as well as NGOs, are also playing their part in preparing either
observers, monitors, and so on. So I take that as a supreme example
of the Comprehensive Approach. In terms of going back to the emblematic
Afghan by the side of the river, I think one has to distinguish
between the mechanics of the Comprehensive Approach, and the international
community does spend a lot of time on the mechanics co-ordinating
and working together in order to create policies and strategies,
and the effects of the Comprehensive Approach, and certainly what
the man by the side of the river will notice is probably the UK,
or the Canadians, or the Americans delivering either security
or some sort of aid project but which, by now, should be coherent
and consistent with the Afghan national development strategy or
the Afghan national counter-narcotics strategy, and so on. Again,
I go back to my point. Comprehensive means that all the organisations
and players, including to some extent NGOs, are working towards
a common idea of what has to be achieved according to strategies
which, after a number of years, are now in place across a range
of development goals. So the man by the side of the river may
not notice whether NATO, or the EU, or the UN is delivering something,
but the overall effect should be that what is delivered should
increasingly be part of a consistent, coherent strategy which
has been developed by the Afghan Government with the support of
the various international actors.
Q238 Mrs Moon:
Mr Cooper, you were nodding. Would you agree with that?
Mr Cooper: Yes, indeed. Nigel,
being on the ground, in a way sees a bigger picture, because he
sees all of the different organisations involved. I am aware of
only one part of the picture, but I know that the European Union
aid programmes over the years have actually been building up an
Afghan NGO to do election monitoring. There will be European monitors
out there as well, but the bulk of the monitoring will actually
be done by Afghans, which is the best way to do it.
Q239 Mrs Moon:
We have got a picture that there is change in the development,
and we have to look at it over a period of time, that there is
mentoring, training and expertise being developed through the
Army, the Police and the political system, the development of
common ideas of what can be achieved and what has been achieved,
but no-one has mentioned women. It has all been about the man
at the side of the road. If you talk to the majority of women
in this country part of their buy-in to Afghanistan was their
very strong heart-felt feelings about how women were treated in
Afghanistan. How much of a part does UN Resolution 1325 play in
all of this training, this mentoring, expertise, the political
system? Is it part of the discussion?
Mr Howard: It is actually. I talked
to you earlier about the POL/MIL plan that we developed. We did
a revision of that in April of this year and we have a number
of items within that which are specifically about UNSCR 1325.
In addition to that, going beyond Afghan, the NATO military chain
of command have also tried to embed the concepts of UNSCR 1325
into their planning. I know that my military counterpart, the
Director of the International Military Staff, has been working
very hard on that. That is, again, rather bureaucratic, but it
is visible at the NATO headquarters level very clearly. On the
ground there are various statistics which are brought out about
the number of girls that are going to school in Afghanistan. I
know it is at a much lower level, but that, I think, is evidence
of progress, and the other thing I would draw attention to was
a very specific criticism made by the international community,
including at the NATO summit in Strasbourg, of President Karzai
when there was an attempt to introduce a new law, the pro-Shia
law, which you have probably heard about, and that has had impact,
because the President has said, "Hold fire. We will not do
that." So I am not suggesting that there is not much more
to do, but both the particular issue of UNSCR 1325 and the position
of women in Afghanistan and in zones of conflict more generally,
I think, are quite high on NATO's agenda.
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