Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 265)
TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2009
GENERAL JOHN
MCCOLL,
MR MARTIN
HOWARD, MR
NICK WILLIAMS
AND MR
ROBERT COOPER
Q260 Mr Holloway:
I am sorry, in areas where there is peace, that is just development;
you do not really need a comprehensive approach. The Comprehensive
Approach is about winning the military struggle and the battle
for the people. What are the benefits that you are in the process
of describing within the Pashtun Belt since 2002?
Mr Cooper: I think I would rather
pass the question to Nick Williams, who has lived there.
Q261 Mr Holloway:
But you were describing how things had got better, so tell us
how they have got better in the Pashtun Belt?
Mr Cooper: As I say, a specific
question about the Pashtun Belt I have difficulty in answering,
because I know the global statistics but what is clear is there
are more schools, more hospitals, more roads, so to say that nothing
has been done—
Mr Holloway: It is about the Comprehensive
Approach where there is conflict.
Q262 Chairman:
Mr Williams, do you want to answer that question on the Pashtun
Belt?
Mr Williams: It depends where
in the Pashtun Belt, because not all parts of the Pashtun Belt
are equally insecure, but it is true that the sense of insecurity
felt by the population in the Pashtun Belt has increased. Nevertheless,
you can point, in the major conurbations, to the same sorts of
improvement in mind, health and education that you see elsewhere,
but they are in a very restricted protected space. One of the
existential effects of our presence is actually to give reassurance,
and it is not what you can call welfare benefit or social benefit,
that the Afghans will not be abandoned and the Pashtuns will not
be abandoned, and, despite all the losses we have taken and the
increase in the insurgency and the fact that we are sticking it
out, that is an element of stability, even within the insurgency.
Chairman: I understand that you have
to go in five minutes, so we have got to wrap up with Madeleine
Moon.
Mrs Moon: Very briefly from each of you,
if you would, you have outlined the difficulties and some of the
successes that the Comprehensive Approach has brought. Where do
we go? What do we need to do to make it more effective? What is
the next step on this road?
Chairman: Who would like to start? General
McColl, you have been too quiet for too long.
Q263 Mr Jenkin:
Can General McColl draw on his experience in Kabul and, as adviser
to President Karzai, just tell us what you think NATO really needs
in order to deliver a comprehensive approach?
General McColl: I will try and
keep it simple. Firstly, in the new strategic concept we need
clarity on an agreement from all allies of what they mean by the
Comprehensive Approach. At the moment people are consenting and
then evading. For example, there are allies who will be quite
happy to agree to the Comprehensive Approach and then become obscurant
as we move down the road, mainly because of the competition with
the EU, I have to say. The second issue: we need to resolve this
block in our ability to communicate with what is, I think, our
principal partner in terms of delivering, and that is the EU,
and that is to apply some of the intellectual and political energy
that is devoted to building castles in the air about NATO and
EU co-operation to solving the problem which is stopping it happening.
That is it in two bullets. I could give you a lot more, but I
leave it there.
Q264 Chairman:
That is extremely helpful and very also very nicely brief. Mr
Howard.
Mr Howard: I will it keep it brief
as well. You were talking, I think, about Afghanistan specifically,
I believe. It seems to me we need to do two things. Firstly, we
need really to boost the international effort to build a clean
accountable government in Afghanistan at both the national and
provincial level. Easily said, hard to do, but that has got to
be the priority. The second thing we need to do over the next
12 to 24 months is to find a way in which we can genuinely start
to transition security responsibility away from ISAF to the Afghans.
Mr Cooper: Might I go a little
bit wider? I said earlier, and I think I want to repeat it, that
the Comprehensive Approach needs comprehensive resources, and
we are not organised for that at this moment. The second thing
I would like to say is that, at the heart of whatever you do,
there has to be a political strategy, that is to say a strategy,
in this case, with the Afghan Government, or with whoever, but
because General McColl has underlined the problems between the
EU and NATO I wanted to mention one forgotten EU/NATO operation
which has been so successful that everyone has forgotten it, which
is what was done in Skopje in the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia jointly by Javier Solana and George Robertson. NATO
resources were deployed, rather small resources because we were
preventing a conflict. The EU has been involved since then in
aid programmes and all kinds of things. You do not hear about
it because it was a success, and that was comprehensive but, at
the heart of it, it had a political deal between the two communities
in Macedonia.
Q265 Chairman:
Thank you. Mr Williams finally.
Mr Williams: Very briefly, I think
it should be understood that, insofar there are obstacles within
existing resources to applying the Comprehensive Approach, it
is really still due to the weakness of UNAMA and its inability
still, despite the quality and the increase in its staff, to play
a leading co-ordinating role, which means that you spend a lot
of time on the bureaucratics of the Comprehensive Approach rather
than the effect. My main point would be strengthening the UN even
further so that it has an ability to help governance and help
develop governance in a more effective way than is happening.
ISAF cannot do that. We can do our bit, but the UN has to be strengthened
in order that it can do its bit better.
Chairman: Thank you. I know you have
to be away at 11.50; it is now 11.49. I should be wrong to say
anything other than this has been a fascinating first part of
this morning. We are most grateful to all of you for having given
so freely of your evidence. Thank you very much indeed.
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