Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2009
GENERAL JOHN
MCCOLL,
MR MARTIN
HOWARD, MR
NICK WILLIAMS
AND MR
ROBERT COOPER
Q240 Chairman:
Mr Cooper, could you give a brief answer?
Mr Cooper: Yes. I just wanted
to say that we have specific directives on 1325 and 1820 in the
European Union. I think there may be a couple of exceptions, but
each of our missions has a human rights and/or gender adviser.
In some cases I find that I get continual pleas from the heads
of the mission: can they have more women in the mission. For example,
we were running the border crossing; we were monitoring the border
crossing at Rafah, between Gaza and Egypt. It was essential that
we had some women officers there as well to handle the women who
were crossing. There are many cases in the Congo where we are
dealing with sexual violence, in which we need more women than
we have at the moment, and they are vital in what you try to do.
Q241 Mrs Moon:
Can I very quickly ask General McColl in terms of this political
role with President Karzai, how conscious was President Karzai
of the importance of the political dimension of the UN resolution?
General McColl: I am not sure
I am able to give you a particularly clear answer to that. He
is very aware of the political sensitivities of his international
coalition partners, and I think it is fair to say does his best,
in my experience. I am well out of date now, but my experience
is he does his best to accommodate that. I think that is the best
answer I can give.
Q242 Mrs Moon:
In terms of the international organisations and government working
with NGOs, is that working? Is that a successful partnership?
Is there a common language and a common understanding when you
add in the NGOs?
Mr Howard: I will start from NATO
headquarters point of view. I think it is getting better, I would
say. Certainly in my time in NATO we have had a number of engagements
with NGOs on very specific issues, for example to do with civilian
casualties in Afghanistan. I think we are now broadening that
into a much more systematic relationship with NGOs to talk about
the overall plan or the overall sense of progress inside Afghanistan,
but I know that actually on the ground in Afghanistan there is
pretty regular contact with commanders and NGOs, well recognising
that some NGOs will always have difficulties about working with
the military, for their own reasons will always be very keen on
the concept of humanitarian space and, therefore, the need to
keep a certain amount at arms' length. Personally, I think there
is quite a long way for us to go in this area, but we are making
progress, particularly on the ground.
Mr Cooper: Chairman, if I might
add just one word, I think for us the place where we do this best
at the moment is in Kosovo, where we have had quite a long preparation
time. We have created a kind of forum of NGOs and consulted them,
and we work in partnership with the main NGOs on the ground in
Kosovo, and that works very well. It is more difficult when something
happens rather quickly and you find you move in quickly and a
whole lot of other people move in quickly. It takes time to sort
it out.
Richard Younger-Ross: How difficult do
you find working with the NGOs? Some of the NGOs say they do not
wish to engage, they wish to keep you very clear and very separate,
and some others like ActionAid are very critical of the lack of
engagement.
Q243 Chairman:
Mr Williams, you are willing to answer this?
Mr Williams: I think it is precisely
as you say: some will want a closer relationship than others.
It is not a natural or easy relationship in general, but certainly,
as part of the Comprehensive Approach, the UN hosts a forum of
NGOs at which ISAF is present and in which some form of co-operation
is developed. One issue that has irritated NGOs has been the fact
that some ISAF nations have driven around in white vehicles, for
example, therefore confusing the status of ISAF with the status
of NGOs, but we came to a very amicable solution to that where
ISAF has issued instructions for the repainting of its vehicles.
So there are mechanisms and fora for working things out. Just
by chance, before this session started I met in the foyer Erica
Gaston, who works for one NGO[1]
who did a very good study on civilian casualties which I recommend
that you read. We had a very close relationship. He had criticisms
of ISAF and has lobbied very effectively in terms of ideas on
how to reduce civilian casualties. So I would not say there was
a huge gap between NGOs, but their purposes and modus operandi
are slightly different. They need a certain space and distance
from ISAF in order to function, in order to be recognised for
their specificity. Sometimes on the ISAF side there is a sense
of obligation towards the NGOs. If they get in trouble it will
be ISAF, often, that may be required to help them out. I think
the relationship is balanced, as long as everyone understands
what the relationship is. I think the biggest problem the NGOs
have is that the military turn-over in ISAF is so huge that, as
they develop relationships with particular points of contact,
then that point of contact goes and the continuity goes and the
ability to build up a fruitful, stable, more co-operative relationship
is hampered, not by ideological reasons often, but just by practical
reasons of change-over in ISAF staff. NGOs tend to be much more
present for a greater period and often have more experience than
some of the ISAF officers that they are dealing with.
Q244 Richard Younger-Ross:
ActionAid have said in theirs that they do not believe the UK
Government is benefiting from the NGOs knowledge and understanding
of the Afghan people. Is that a fair criticism?
Mr Williams: I do not know what
they think about how the UK Government benefits, but certainly,
again, I find on the ground the relationships are reasonable.
All NGOs tend to be open, certainly the office for which I work
has a good relationship with all NGOs. We are in constant dialogue.
If there is any issue that they want to raise, we will raise it
with ISAF or with the respective organisation. The particular
position from which either NGOs, or nations start, or institutions
start from their capitals tends to get modified once you are in
theatre.
Q245 Richard Younger-Ross:
Are they an equal partner?
Mr Williams: In some places they
are not partners at all because of the security situation, and
certainly in the south the Canadians and the Dutch, as well as
the British, have made significant efforts to get more NGOs deployed
in order to be partners. There is no institutional resistance
to getting them as partners, but I think they themselves would
recognise, as would other institutions faced with an organisation
the size and the weight of ISAF, you cannot be an equal partner,
but what they need is a listening partner, and, as I say, the
problem about being a listening partner, a responsive partner,
is more about the turnover of personnel rather than the resistance
to listening to what NGOs have to say. That is my experience.
Q246 Mr Holloway:
What difference, if any, do you think there will be with the new
American strategy in terms of the Comprehensive Approach?
Mr Howard: The American strategy
actually is very much based on the principle of the comprehensive
approach. Its component parts, insofar as it relates to Afghanistan,
are actually very similar to the NATO strategy. Even down to the
language, they are actually very similar. I think the distinction
I would draw is not so much whether or not it is a comprehensive
approach but that it has a broader applicability to Afghanistan
and Pakistan, and in that sense it is different from the NATO
plan, because NATO has a mandate to operate inside Afghanistan
primarily, but it seems to me that the idea of a civilian surge
(which is a phrase that is often used by Washington), the idea
of working with the Afghan Government, the idea of bringing in
the regional dimensions of Pakistan, seems to be completely consistent
with the Comprehensive Approach.
Q247 Mr Jenkin:
Is it not legitimate that the military, particularly in places
like Helmand, should express frustration that they have, albeit
limited, access to very large amounts of military capability,
but they have very limited access to civilian capability which
they desperately need for the follow-on after they have taken
somewhere like Musa Qala? If we are going to deliver the comprehensive
approach, is not the traditional NGO approach, where there is
a strict demarcation between what is a military operation and
what are civilian operations, really completely unsuited to what
we are doing in Afghanistan?
Mr Howard: I would agree with
that, but I would say that in Helmand, having seen it develop
from 2006 to how it is now, that lesson has been learnt. Indeed,
the integrated civil/military cell which now operates in Helmand
is a very good example of the Comprehensive Approach working on
the ground.
Q248 Mr Jenkin:
I am sorry; may I pick you up on that? The amount of resource
available to the military commander and the PRT in Helmand is
miniscule for civilian effect compared to what it has access to
for military effect. One battle group commander regularly gives
a lecture where he actually says, "If only I could have taken
a suitcase full of cash entering a village instead of having to
take in Apache helicopters, and two companies, and armoured vehicles,
and mortars and light artillery, I could have then bargained with
the local villagers about what they really needed, rather than
having to fight the Taliban out of that village." Have we
not just missed the wood for the trees here? I wonder if General
McColl would answer, particularly in the light of his experience
as adviser to President Karzai.
General McColl: I think there
is a difference in the approach to the question of redevelopment,
particularly in terms of timeframe in the immediate aftermath
of a particularly difficult military action such as Musa Qala.
I think the balanced approach the UK has, where there is emphasis
on the civil need in delivery of development, is probably right,
except where the security circumstances are so difficult that
the civilian element have difficulty because of the differences
in duty of care and those aspects which govern their use when
they have the difficulty of getting people onto the ground, and
in those circumstances—and this is the primary difference
between ourselves and the American approach, as you are well aware—I
think there is an argument to say that we should review our delivery
mechanisms, give the designated commander more access to what
I would describe as immediate influence aid, which is not to be
confused with the long-term development requirement, which is
rather separate.
Q249 Mr Jenkin:
I understand that point, but I am saying two things. One is that
it is unbalanced how much we are devoting to the long-term when
we cannot get the short-term right; the long-term is going to
be otiose if we cannot get the short-term reconstruction right.
Perhaps a question for Mr Cooper. Given that NATO just does not
have this intermediate immediate post-conflict capability at scale
in the same way as the Americans do, is that not what the EU should
be facilitating Member States to provide to NATO rather than retreating
into the longer-term governance issues, which, as I say, are really
surplus to requirements at the immediate point at which we are
trying to provide security?
Mr Cooper: I think that you are
right, Mr Jenkin, that there is really a gap in our capabilities.
There is a very well-organised defence sector, there is a very
large and experienced development sector and there is a gap in
between those two.
Q250 Mr Jenkin:
So how do we fill it?
Mr Cooper: Part of the gap, which
we attempt to fill but not with enormous success, really consists
of police and justice. That is in a way the transition from a
situation where you have the military in control to the establishment
of civil government. The first things that you have to do to make
civil government work are to make justice work and to have police.
The resource that it is hardest to obtain for deployment overseas,
apart from helicopters, is almost certainly police. It is very
difficult on a large scale to run a comprehensive approach when
you do not have comprehensive resources, and that means that a
number of governments in the European Union, the British Government
included, are thinking about how they can make available more
readily deployable police and judges, and then you sometimes need
other kinds of officials, because it is no good training an army
unless you have a defence ministry as well, but actually police
and judicial officials are the key people you need.
Q251 Mr Jenkin:
So where should the political need come from? Should it come from
the NAC or should it come from PSC, or does it need to come from
Member States? Where is this lead going to come from?
Mr Howard: I think at the moment
it is more likely to come from allies than the states. In the
United Kingdom the establishment of the Stabilisation Unit is,
I think, an example of how that has been tried and made to work.
In NATO we have a very limited amount of money which is available.
Q252 Mr Jenkin:
If I may just interrupt you. You made quite a big admission there.
Here we have an extraordinary collection of political institutional
structures that span Europe and the Atlantic, and when it comes
to the crunch you are saying that the delivery of the Comprehensive
Approach actually relies on individual nation states. That is
quite an indictment of the institutional structures that we have
got.
Mr Williams: The resources belong
to the Member States.
Q253 Mr Jenkin:
Then why do we pretend this institutional structure can deliver
something when, in fact, really your best role is as facilitators
and encouragers of individual Member States to step up to the
piece? Is that not what we should be concentrating on instead
of this institution building, where so many Member States, effectively,
contract out responsibility for what happens to the international
institutions and then wash their hands of the consequences?
Mr Howard: Speaking for the Alliance,
the Alliance is an alliance of Member States, and that is where
the resources come from.
Mr Jenkin: But this is internationalism
not working, is it not?
Q254 Chairman:
Would you allow Mr Howard to answer.
Mr Howard: I think it is working,
but it is far from perfect. The fact is that NATO headquarters,
NATO command structure provides the framework to actually carry
out the mission in Afghanistan. The actual resources come from
Member States, and that has always been the case. Afghanistan
is not unique in that respect.
Mr Cooper: The European Union
position is almost exactly the same. It is certainly the same
as far as military and civilian resources in terms of police are
concerned. There is no European army. The armies are all national.
The European Union provides a method by which they can work together.
There are European resources when it comes to development through
the Commission, but otherwise the human resources are all nationally
owned and they are lent to the Alliance and the European Union
for particular operations, but I believe most Member States are
conscious of the gap in civilian resources.
Chairman: I am afraid we are falling
way behind because you are being all too interesting. We will
move on to PRTs.
Q255 Mr Crausby:
Can I ask Nick Williams how well the different PRTs work? With
42 nations contributing troops and 26 different PRTs, to what
extent do they all operate in the pursuit of international objectives
and what is the overall contribution to stability in Afghanistan?
Mr Williams: Again, this is a
work in progress that has seen some progress in the past year
in particular. The PRTs, when they originally deployed, basically
deployed with the idea that they were there to fill a gap in terms
of governance, support and development in the provinces, given
that the Afghan Government at that time was rather weak and its
reach to provinces was rather limited. Therefore, you had a process
of province ownership by the nations that actually were present
and a sense of PRT's responding, as they would, to the resources
and guidance being provided by their capitals rather than responding
to a comprehensive coherent agenda set by the Afghan government
with the assistance of the international community. I think what
has happened in the past year that has been significant is the
final putting to bed of the Afghan national development strategy,
which, although still rather broad, is nevertheless a strategy
which has been agreed by the Afghan Government and which is the
framework and the objectives within which they want to see development
taking place in their country; and that has allowed us, on the
NATO side, to revive something called the Executive Steering Committee,
which until January had not met for about 18 months previously,
which essentially brings together representatives of the PRT nations,
usually the embassies, and attempts to give them guidance as to
how to create coherence between them and share best practice.
The innovation that we made was that, instead of being chaired
by ISAF and the NATO office, it would be chaired by, and is now
chaired by, a member of the Afghan Government, in this case Mr
Popal, who is the Head of the Independent Department of Local
Governance. PRTs have become politically sensitive over the past
two years, essentially because Mr Karzai, and not just Mr Karzai,
certain elements within the Afghan establishment felt that PRTs
were not responsive to Afghan development needs. By putting an
Afghan political lead to this process of guiding and giving some
sort of policy framework, we have actually made the PRTs more
transparent and what they are doing more transparent to the Afghan
Government. We have also provided a framework for the Afghan Government
to provide guidance and feel that they have some sort of control
and influence over what the PRTs are doing. So the PRTs are in
some sort of evolution, just as Afghanistan is in evolution. They
are now more conscious of the need (to come back to the theme
of this session) for a comprehensive approach and a less nationally
driven approach, and when I say "national" I mean a
NATO member driven approach. So, again, it is an example where,
slowly, the effect of the comprehensive approach is being felt,
and certainly my contacts with the Afghan Government suggest they
now feel more at ease and less critical of the PRTs basically
because we have made what they are doing much more transparent
to them.
Q256 Mr Crausby:
Just a quick question on funding. I think all of our witnesses
on 9 June pretty well said that some PRTs were starved of funding,
particularly in comparison to the Americans. Is that true and
what effect does that have on delivery.
Mr Williams: Starved of funding
suggests a rather cruel deliberate policy by Member States. Different
PRTs have different functions. Some PRTs do not actually do development,
they just oversee development initiated by their capitals, so
they may not have any money because that is not their purpose,
and certain PRTs which are not as well funded as the British,
or the American PRTs, or the Canadian PRTs certainly do have access
to Japanese funds. The Japanese Government has also, very generously,
said they are willing to spend their money through PRTs on certain
priority projects. From where I sit, the issue, again, is not
funding, it is really about, at this stage, now bringing the PRTs
into a relationship with the Afghan Government which the Afghan
Government feels comfortable with in terms of providing guidance
and visibility.
Q257 Mr Holloway:
I appreciate that a lot of the questions have been about institutions,
and so on, but we have spoken largely about the framework strategy,
Steering Committee, institutional relationships and it sounded
to me often in the session you were describing a self-licking
lollipop that exists and feeds for itself. Can you tell us what
is actually being done to improve the score that the ordinary
Afghan might give us?
Mr Howard: First of all, you have
to have a plan.
Q258 Mr Holloway:
But what is actually being done to improve the score, because
it is pretty poor?
Mr Howard: Let me speak primarily
from a NATO perspective, because that is who I represent. I think
that our main centre of gravity (and this is reflected in the
plan) is to build up Afghan capacity, particularly in the Afghan
National Security Forces and, if I might, I would like to pick
up the example that Nick quoted about the election, which has
a direct impact on ordinary Afghans. The fact is that security
for these elections coming up now primarily will be led by the
Afghan Police, supported by the Afghan Army, with ISAF as the
third responder. That is something which two or three years ago
would have been unthinkable. In that sense that improvement has
been made. There is still a long way to go, particularly on the
police front, but that progress is being made, so in that sense
there are, increasingly, competent Afghan security forces that
are able to provide an increasing proportion of the security the
Afghans crave. In the south and east is where it is most problematic,
and you have pointed out, Mr Holloway, where that was most difficult,
but even there you will see more and more Afghans being upfront.
I think the area that is weakest, in terms of building the confidence
of ordinary Afghans, is in the area of law and order, justice,
those systems which lie behind the Police and the Army. I think
there is a real problem there, and there needs to be a lot more
done. So it is a very mixed picture. I believe that the polling
that we have done indicates Afghans across the country, including
in the south and east, have quite a lot of confidence in both
the Army and even the Police but have much less confidence in
the political machinery which lies behind it.
Mr Cooper: I just wanted to recall
what General McColl was saying much earlier on. If you had looked
at Afghanistan in 2002 and 2009, there are many differences. There
is primary healthcare right across the country now, which did
not exist before; education is vastly improved, including education
for women.
Q259 Mr Holloway:
I am sorry, the Pashtun Belt where the insurgency is?
Mr Cooper: In the insurgency,
of course, there are major difficulties, but what has been delivered
for the Afghans is actually enormous improvements in some areas.
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