Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2009
MR DANIEL
KORSKI, MR
HOWARD MOLLETT
AND MR
STEPHEN GREY
Q280 Chairman:
I am not suggesting that they were in any sense lying to us. What
I was suggesting was that the Comprehensive Approach is more in
words than in reality. Is that right?
Mr Grey: Absolutely, and the impression
you get from very senior people within the military is that they
are confronted with other departments who have no genuine belief
in the value of this conflict; there is a sense in which they
are not sure there is a real will to win in other departments.
You get a sense in the diplomatic service, for example, that the
military have pushed ahead of the political will that exists in
this country. So that adds up to a dysfunction between those departments
which, despite great efforts by a number of people to pull together,
has not been resolved.
Q281 Mrs Moon:
Do you think we have learnt anything? Has anything improved? Are
we making any progress at all?
Mr Grey: Yes, I believe so. You
have heard people describe efforts to pull things together. I
think the Stabilisation Unit and the Afghan Taskforce are examples
of attempts by people to pull together what is being done, but
the measure is not those organisational efforts but the actual
effect I heard earlier talk about on the farmers on the ground.
You cannot say that the strategy is right until you actually see
those positive benefits. You can talk about this as a long-term
effect, a long-term campaign, but I think as General Petraeus
said in Iraq, unless you are winning in the short-term, there
is no long-term, and unless at every point in every military and
political operation you deliver a positive benefit to the Afghan
people in that tiny hamlet, you are contributing to an overall
worsening of the situation rather than an overall improvement.
I do think there are places in central Helmand where things are
working much, much better and certainly outside of Helmand in
the wider Afghanistan, which I do not know too much about, people
point to a great many successes, but the struggle is to work out
how to do things where security is not present at all, and that
is where I do not think anyone has found a correct solution how
to deliver the Comprehensive Approach, if you like, when the mortars
are still landing.
Q282 Mrs Moon:
I would like the other two gentlemen to comment on the same question,
and I would like to then come back to Mr Grey with another question,
if I may. Mr Mollett.
Mr Mollett: We at Care International
have also made a written submission. I have got it in front of
me. We put in there that the comprehensive approach seems to reflect
some of the lessons identified, if not perhaps yet lessons learned,
emerging from Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of how operations
on the ground have been ineffective, partly, in the experience
of both countries, reflecting the extent to which they have been
driven by short-termist strategies centered around some questionable
orthodoxies and ideas around using aid in a short-term way to
win hearts and minds through emphasis on the military side, and
then with the lack of clarity over the relationship between the
military piece and politics in the context of what aid can realistically
achieve and on what basis aid can be sustainable, whether you
are talking about longer-term work on livelihoods, or education
on the development side, or in terms of meeting basic needs and
savings lives on the humanitarian front as well. Reflecting on
the experience in Afghanistan, when the British military first
deployed into Helmand there was (and Stephen referred to that)
this rather unseemly spectacle, that once the British military
had been deployed and they had been apparently requested by the
Afghan Government to go out into the more remote rural areas,
there were public announcements calling, "Where are the UN?
Where are the NGOs? Where is DFID?", to come in almost perhaps
with a band wagon in the Wild West and do big impact projects
in the areas where the troops had been deployed and not really
understanding, at least from the perspective of aid agencies,
or agencies like my own, that we can only work in conflict affected
contexts like Afghanistan on the basis of community acceptance
and being understood as distinct from, and not aligned with, one
of the parties fighting in the conflict. That is no disrespect
to the military in what they are doing in their operation; it
is about understanding the basis on which we can operate without
our staff's lives being put at risk, and, indeed, not only our
staff, but the actual communities that we are trying to work with
as well. What we have seen since then, but also prior to that,
in some of the discourse around the Comprehensive Approach, when
you hear the discussions around the mechanics if you like, and
the policy at the international level, there is increasing recognition
of some of those issues and the need for agencies like Care to
work on the basis of independence from any of the belligerence
involved in the war and on a neutral and impartial basis. For
instance, someone above my pay grade was recently in a meeting
in a forum at which the Deputy Secretary General of NATO was present
and said something to the effect of, "NATO is now aware that
we need to engage with aid agencies on a sort of co-ordination
with, not co-ordination of, basis for it to work", and I
think that is progress, if you compare it to, say, the earlier
period in Afghanistan and the previous experience in Iraq as well,
but I think it is still a little bit unclear whether the mechanics
and understanding of some of the realities for aid agencies working
on the ground is really translated down into the practice on the
ground or is understood in a consistent way across different parts
of government departments or across some of the international
institutions that are involved in contexts like Afghanistan and
in the Comprehensive Approach. For some it does seem a genuinely
new way of working, for others it is a new label for the same
old way of working and framing civil, military relations basically
as a way to instrumentalise aid to deliver on a short-term tactical
objective.
Mr Korski: I think the brutal
truth that the committee is gradually unearthing is the fact that
our institutions nationally, our alliances internationally are
ill-equipped to deal with these interconnected security challenges
in a comprehensive manner, whether they be stabilising areas such
as Helmand after an immediate combat operation or perhaps, more
broadly, engaging with aid, the diplomatic tools and military
tools in the run up to conflict. What we are gradually seeing
is how things are coming apart at the seams as government departments
try their best to cobble solutions together on the ground, frequently
under fire, with limited resources and insufficient training.
So I think in direct answer to your question, "Did we learn
and what have we learned?", first we have to acknowledge
that, in succession, we failed to learn from an initial operation
in Afghanistan to the operation in Iraq, we then failed to learn
what we learnt in Iraq back on to Afghanistan when the UK took
the lead in NATO's phase three deployment into the south and perhaps
at that stage we also struggled to transfer some of those lessons
back on to Iraq as the situation changed there following General
Petraeus' arrival. So there is a series of stages where we have
failed to learn, not because people are wilful, not because senior
officials want to disassemble, but, frankly, because the institutions
that we created 60 years ago to undertake national security assignments
are simply not structured for this task: they do not incentivise
people, we do not train them the right way, we do not resource
appropriately. So what we are trying to do is cover the gaps between
the institutions leading to all the problems that Stephen has
so eloquently described.
Q283 Mrs Moon:
Can I ask a very simple question. I just want a yes or no answer
from you. We were told that UNSCR 1325 was part of the Comprehensive
Approach that was being pushed forward throughout Afghanistan.
Would you agree?
Mr Grey: I am afraid I am ignorant
of what 1325 is.
Q284 Mrs Moon:
It is about the closer involvement of women in political decision-making,
peace-building and capacity-building.
Mr Grey: I think, at the sharp
end, in the most insecure areas it is the last thing on most decision-makers'
minds.
Mr Mollett: It is something that
at Care we are working with other agencies on developing some
field research in due course, which I would be happy to share
with you. Otherwise at the moment I could not really speak from
Care's experience, but I do know that, for instance, Womenkind
Worldwide, also Amnesty, are two NGOs that have done work in support
of women's rights and gender activists in Afghanistan, and it
would be worth contacting them.
Mr Korski: I think that it is
something talked about at Whitehall level and occasionally thought
about in the field, but I do not think, especially in places like
Helmand, it is considered a priority. The Swedes, on the other
hand, in northern parts of Afghanistan do take it very seriously.
At the risk of being incredibly unpopular, I would say talk about
the Comprehensive Approach at some stage also has to be a conversation,
I suggest, about what it is the West can achieve in various places
and how quickly we can achieve it. While everybody, I think, would
like to see the progressive realisation of liberal ideals, including
women's rights, achieved in places like Afghanistan, the incredibly
difficult context of an insurgency in southern Afghanistan, I
think most people conclude that this is not a priority.
Q285 Mrs Moon:
Fine if you are a man.
Mr Grey: Women want security too!
Mr Mollett: Just one other reflection
on that, drawing on some other work that we have been involved
in in other countries, which I have not been directly involved
in, which is why I will make it very brief, one of the issues
that has come out is some of the work around Resolution 1325 has
focused on women's roles at the higher levels in peace processes,
and so on, but what we have found in some of the countries where
there is on-going violence on the ground, actually one of the
real issues is the access that women have that are caught up in
violence and exposed to violence, particularly gender-related
violence, to actually safe interlocutors where they can turn for
referral just in terms of immediate medical needs, let alone any
other kinds of needs related to security, or justice, or following
up on that front. I understand that there has been some work done
on that, for example, in Afghanistan in terms of female policing
and so on, but it is very limited. So some of the discussions
on 1325 tend to focus very much at the higher level, whereas for
ordinary women in Afghanistan perhaps one of the first priorities
is actually just access to a safe place to turn whatever the issue
it is related to.
Mr Korski: Very briefly, in the
previous session you talked about the extent to which these issues
are taken into consideration as the international community helps
the recruitment of the police and the military. When I was in
Afghanistan most recently and had a chance to discuss with some
of the Americans working on the development of the Army. I was
quite surprised at how much effort was put into some of these
issues at the very lowest level, but not so much at the higher
level when it came to the question of how to recruit the Afghan
Army. So there clearly is a series of discontinuities talked about
in Whitehall and perhaps in the northern parts of Afghanistan,
but not necessarily when it comes to the development of the Army
or the Police.
Q286 Mr Crausby:
Not everybody is convinced that the Comprehensive Approach is
the solution in all circumstances. The blurring of the lines between
military and the delivery of humanitarian aid is seen, certainly
by some in the eyes of the local population, as negative. Are
there situations where you would say the Comprehensive Approach
is inadequate, and can you tell us how you see the difficulties
that are involved within the Comprehensive Approach in different
circumstances?
Mr Korski: To my mind, I think
we have to make a very clear distinction between what is humanitarian
assistance—aid that we give for people in dire need and
for humanitarian reasons—and what we do for developmental
reasons. One is absolutely an area that needs to be cordoned off
from political, military and diplomatic engagement, and I think
there is now a multi-year history of developing the rules between
the military and NGOs, and I am sure that Howard can talk about
more, but we should definitely respect that. At the same time,
as General Rupert Smith said in his book, development is inherently
political, and I think we have to acknowledge, in places like
Afghanistan, where we are facing an insurgency, the dispersal
of assistance that is not humanitarian is going to be seen as
developmental. But that, of course, creates huge problems, and
perhaps one of the interesting ones is what is happening now in
Pakistan, where two and a half million people have been internally
displaced as a result of military activity. It is absolutely clear
that a number of charities like Lashkar-e-Taiba are developing
assistance programmes using funds and also having nefarious relationships
with various terrorist organisations. How to get in there and
develop assistance and give it but ensure it does not go to the
wrong place is an incredibly difficult question, but I think the
important thing to hold on to is to say there is a lot of blurring
between humanitarian assistance and development, and I would say
what we are talking about when we talk about the Comprehensive
Approach in places like Afghanistan, in places like Iraq, is development,
and that, to my mind, should be governed by a number of principles
but definitely be part of a cross-governmental approach that involves
other instruments.
Mr Grey: I would argue that where
a civilian worker cannot but get somewhere with the assistance
of the military, then the best person to deliver whatever effect
that is, for example development, should be wearing uniform as
well, should be militarised: because if not that development worker
will be tainted, will be regarded as military and will hamper
the work they try and do elsewhere. I think you have seen increased,
for example, militarisation of DFID where it now considers investment
in security as part of its poverty reduction strategy and where
they are seen to be working alongside soldiers constantly. It
undermines the work of people doing development when the military
are not present. They are regarded as part of the military. As
soon as you say that the well that you dig is part of the strategic
effort, then the well becomes a target and the well digger becomes
a target and it is a very dangerous course of events. It is far
better in the most insecure areas, if it is too dangerous, not
to send a civilian forward. The military need to have the people
that can do this side of the work. It is very interesting looking
at what the Soviets did. We always talk about them sowing mines
everywhere, but they also did experiments in the ink-spot theory
and the Comprehensive Approach and all these things. They were
actually far more successful at the ink-spots in that that they
maintained security in the major towns and ignored the countryside
in many places. There was a story from one worker in a Helmand
PRT described as going to spend time with an Afghan official who
said, "You know, it is great what you do", I am paraphrasing,
obviously, "but why can you not be a bit more like the Russians?
Because you sit here for one hour a day before you are whisked
away by your security. The Russians used to stay with us day after
day and mentor us in a comprehensive way." We have a different
attitude to risk than the Russians did, and that is right, but
we have to change our policies to reflect the reality of that.
Rather than saying, "Oh, civilians, they should have the
same security rules as us", we need to say the reality is
that they do have different rules and what are we going to do
about it?
Mr Mollett: On this issue of what
is development in a situation like Afghanistan, particularly in
the southern part of the country, the most violent conflict-affected
part of the country, I think that throws out some really important
and challenging issues that need to be rigorously looked through
and then understood in terms of what is aid in the context of
Helmand? I do not recall now whether it was you, Daniel, or one
of your colleagues from your organisation, but there was an event
at RUSI about a year ago where someone said, "We need a concept
of opposed development", and the very term itself froze up
the kind of paradoxical nature of what is being discussed there,
because what is a school in the middle of a war zone that is immediately
a target for an insurgency? What is a well? There are certain
dilemmas there, or certain things, or there is an incompatibility
between the context and then the aspiration of doing a developmental
project in the middle of a war zone. Development is framed by
governance and, in the context of completely contested governance,
what kind of legitimacy or sustainability will that project have?
Interestingly, at the end of 2007 into early 2008 we participated
in a research project with other NGOs in Afghanistan where the
research team was an Iranian woman and five Afghan researchers
who had access across Helmand and Kandahar, indeed, the research
team had also worked with British military and others on research
for the UK Government and others but had access outside of the
PRTs, met with Afghan interlocutors, community representatives.
The research particularly focused in Uruzgan and Paktia, and,
apart from the issues around the extent to which the military
involvement in aid was blurring the lines with humanitarian work,
they also threw up very challenging issues for the military zone,
or the interests from the military side in terms of getting involved
in development, and there are three or four sets of issues. One
is around the impact of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams and
the heavy military footprint in these provinces, their consequences
for Afghan governance at that level, and the extent to which local
leaders became perceived as disempowered or puppets for the foreign
integrators of a military presence. Another really worrying issue
from our side was the extent of inappropriate interactions between
the military forces on the ground or these integrated civil, military
operations, the PRTs and some NGOs that were desperate for money
and perhaps fell into the category of what some Afghans called
"briefcase NGOs", or "Come N'GOs" that have
been set up post 2001 to make a lot of money, these sort of entrepreneurial
things not really having links to the communities or interested
in work that is about sustainable development or humanitarian
relief. Military funding to those NGOs, or co-operation with those
NGOs was eroding the safe space for other NGOs to operate in those
same areas, and so there was a blurring, if you like, between
some of the, shall we say, less professional principled NGO's
work funded to deliver on short-term, quick impact project type
objectives and the work of other NGOs that had been in Afghanistan
for a long time and were working on a different basis. There were
lots of concerns around the lack of transparency or accountability
around projects that were implemented through those kinds of relations,
all of which suggested that often the extent to which some of
these projects were being funded or directly implemented by international
forces in Uruzgan or Paktia were not actually really meeting their
own hearts and minds objectives, were ineffective even in their
own terms, because they were not based on a sound understanding
of the context and the local political dynamics within the community
where they were implementing these projects, let alone the negatives
with knock-on consequences for the NGOs that have been working
that area for a long time. My understanding is that the British
military also conducted an evaluation of its QIPs Programme (Quick
Impact Projects Programme) in Helmand just over a year ago, I
think, and although that is classified, and I have not read the
evaluation, but there were presentations drawing on the evaluation
in various fora which suggested some remarkably similar findings
around how doing development projects in an area that has not
been secured in any sustainable way in Helmand or Kandahar just
does not make sense because they become targets. The gap, to return
to Mr Jenkin's question earlier, between the military and the
development side is about the politics and the grievances or the
different political factors that are driving the violence; it
is not about some other form of opposed development.
Mr Grey: I was going to say, there
are ways of tailoring development projects so that they can be
both doable in terms of advancing security and development, for
example, road building. Roads are much more difficult to completely
destroy than a new clinic, for example. They both enhance security
and they boost the economy, allowing people, for example, to take
legitimate crops to market as well as allowing a much more efficient
security deployment.
Mr Mollett: Can I come back on
the road building issue, because that is one issue that was raised
by our research. I understand your point about access to markets
and livelihoods, and so on, but our research did find, at least
in Uruzgan and Paktia, some evidence that the local contractors
and international contractors that were hired by the international
military and Afghan Government to construct these roads often
had rather direct linkages with militias that were involved in
some of the violence in the area as well, and so the extent to
which some of this road building was feeding into a war economy
and security, or insecurity, along these routes being manipulated
by the very organisations involved in constructing the roads,
I think, is a serious issue that merits further research and careful
understanding.
Mr Korski: Since I am coming in
for a lot of stick for having used the word "opposed development",
I think the point here is that we need to look at the way in which
to disperse and use a series of instruments, taking due cognisance
of the complex political context that we are operating in. That
is what I intended with the words "opposed development"—no
different from what General David Petraeus, I think, talked about
when he talked about counter-insurgency. It is true, though, that
we should not think that this is the development as we have always
done it, and the really important thing to acknowledge is that
a place like Afghanistan is no longer one country. Some of you
have travelled extensively, and we face vastly different situations
in the north, in the centre and in the south, and some areas are
perfectly right for a developmental approach absent a comprehensive
one and others require a different take on development.
Chairman: As I understood it, you were
not coming under stick. What you were doing was reporting somebody
else's phrase, was my understanding.
Q287 Mr Holloway:
Howard, can you think of any examples where the Comprehensive
Approach has had any tangible effect on local Afghans in conflict
areas?
Mr Mollett: Some of my reflections
are based on on-going direct working relations with colleagues
in a country office but do mostly draw from research that is happening
now about well over a year ago. That is a caveat. Things may have
changed since then. The point I wanted to make was in that research
one thing that came out was that, for all the discussion of civilianisation
and stabilisation and an enhanced civilian lead at the policy
level, at the time we did the research in Uruzgan and Paktia that
had yet to translate into any discernible changes on the ground
for Afghan interlocutors that we spoke to, and that fed into that
research.
Q288 Chairman:
So the answer is essentially, no.
Mr Mollett: To be fair, I think
it is probably quite early to come to any kind of definitive judgment,
and I think it would be very easy from an international level,
reflecting now, for instance, on other reform methods within international
institutions in the humanitarian sphere where if they have not
solved all the issues within a year some commentators are very
quick to say, "Right, rip that up. We need something completely
different and radically different." I do not know whether
there is perhaps a parallel here, but I think the evidence is
certainly mixed and there is no clear evidence that it has resulted
in changes that have addressed us. All of the issues or concerns
from a humanitarian perspective from a couple of years back may.
Q289 Mr Holloway:
USAID are aware that it can operate very easily itself in Helmand.
It uses the services of a private company, Central Asian Development
Group. How do you feel about aid agencies using private companies
to get locals to do the work for them when they cannot do it themselves?
Mr Mollett: I referred just now
to some of the findings around road construction in Afghanistan.
That is one example of where, if international forces commission
international private security companies or private sector agencies
involved in stabilisation related reconstruction work, you will
then typically work in partnership with local contractors. There
are all kinds of issues around where are these companies coming
from, what is their background in militias, how it relates into
the war economy, the extent to which they work on the basis of
armed deterrents essentially and, perhaps, buying access into
areas where they work: the contrast between that and the basis
on which, for instance, we work as Care, which is on the basis
of community acceptance and the trust and good relations with
communities where we work, whether it is on the basis of negotiating
humanitarian access or longer-term development work, whereas sustainability,
participation, all of those, if you like, might sound like jargon
terms, just like any sector has jargon terms, but these relate
to our principles and our values and the basis on which we work.
It is a very different basis to that of some of the private sector
contractors and private security companies that are operating
in Afghanistan, and the unsustainability of their projects, their
contribution to the war economy, has been well documented by other
NGOs such as, I believe, Transparency International. There was
a study about a year ago looking at private sector involvement
in reconstruction in Afghanistan.
Q290 Mr Holloway:
Finally in this section, directly to you. Do you feel that the
international community and the aid agencies spend a long time
deciding what local people in particular areas need, and do you
think there is an argument for getting local communities, in the
case of Afghanistan village elders, more involved in saying what
they want and, therefore, they would be a bit more likely to protect
it when they got it?
Mr Mollett: I cannot speak for
all NGOs or aid agencies. Certainly within Care we have had some
really interesting experiences in working both with traditional
shuras and then establishing community development committees
or councils in Afghanistan, also partly as an implementing partner
of the National Solidarity Programme. In a way it goes back to
the point I was making in my previous response to your previous
question, which is on what basis is aid sustainable in Afghanistan
or, indeed, elsewhere and where I drew the contrast between private
sector contractors that may be hired to work to deliver a project
to meet a short-term objective set by the military or a political
actor at the international level, or agencies that are trying
to work with communities on the basis of the needs and the interests
that they articulate, and that is the basis on which we work.
We are also doing a review of our experience with the National
Solidarity Programme and some of these different approaches to
working with local governance structures, traditional governance
structures, and we would be happy to share the details of that
after this session.
Q291 Mr Hamilton:
Chairman, I am a bit puzzled. Howard talks about corruption within
the contractors, but it is a choice, is it not? It is a choice
between Western corruption and what happens within Afghanistan.
The point you made earlier on is really important, but that is
what they have to face, and that is what they have to deal with
and surely that is the way it goes. In Northern Ireland everybody
knew, in the 30 years work in Northern Ireland, whenever we entered
into contracts that were taking place the IRA, the UDA and everybody
else had their hands in it. There is talk about the progress being
made, but there is no alternative. You have to work with somebody
on the ground, and surely working on the ground is the right way
forward. The bit that puzzles me is you have got to win the peace
before you can begin to bring the developments and that into operation.
You have got to make the area secure before you can start to get
the other parts into operation. What we seem to be doing is going
round in a circle. The evidence the last time and the evidence
this time is we seem to have gone in a circle all the way round
and I am beginning to get worried that the progress is not going
to be there. Chairman, I say that in the background that we have
all these countries involved, all of which are facing a financial
crisis in their own right, and I have got a real worry that this
goes off the agenda at some point unless we get it right. If this
continues the way it seems to be going at the present time, what
seems to be happening from our point of view is people will turn
their back on it and say, "Okay, it is taking far too long
to resolve", and at the end of the day it starts to walk
away from you. That is the worry, surely.
Mr Grey: I am not as depressed
as you are.
Q292 Mr Hamilton:
I am just depressed.
Mr Grey: I think the foundation
of this is good intelligence, and finding out who you are dealing
with is all very well, but if you have not got any intelligence,
if you walk into a village with a suitcase of cash, you probably
hand the money to the drug lord. I would say the biggest source
of finance for the insurgency is actually NATO and its contracts,
not any money coming from Al Qaeda or the Gulf or something like
that, because we often deal with people who are corrupt. It does
not mean there are not good people out there. The Russians had
a very good idea. They educated thousands of people and brought
them back. We do not seem to be doing that. When you look at Basra,
for example, Basra went wrong not because there were not good
people there, they were all driven away, and we actually handed
power in the Police and the Government to the extreme Islamist
militias. That was a deliberate decision made. We thought we were
not going to be there long and we allowed them to take over the
apparatus of state there. That was not because it was inevitable,
not because there were not good people there: it was because of
really bad intelligence and really bad short-term decision-making.
One example which might be useful to you about total dysfunction
within the UK Government system, arguably the whole approach was
thrown back by the very way we went into Helmand in the first
place. What we did was we engineered in Kabul the removal of the
Governor of Helmand, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada (SMA, as he is called).
That was a UK Government operation. Whether it is right or wrong
I am not discussing. He was removed in December 2005. British
combat troops arrived in force in April 2006. In between a whole
revolt happened in Helmand. There is no other better example of
dysfunction between departments than the diplomatic service organising
a political change and the military organising its change four
or five months later. The new Governor, Governor Mohamed Daoud,
thought he had an army to back him up and he had nothing for four
or five months. Meanwhile the whole of the province went up in
flames.
Mr Korski: The history of what
went right and wrong in Helmand will be written and rewritten
a number of times. This story, I am sure, will be included, but
another important aspect is the fact that while, for the first
time, in 2005 a range of departments sat together and tried to
develop a comprehensive plan, and I think I would go so far as
to say probably the first time they ever did that, once they handed
that plan over to the teams that were meant to implement it, whether
that be General Brigadier Butler or the civilian team, everybody
went down into their stow pipes and carried on doing their work
as they saw fit rather than working to a joined-up plan. So part
of the answer to this difficult conundrum is sticking to this
kind of comprehensive cross-departmental approach from the beginning,
in the middle and to the end. It is not going to get around some
of the corruption issues—they are clear, they exist in all
the conflict zones—the real question we have to answer is
how do we operate in these areas where Care is not interested
in operating because it is simply too dangerous? Where there is
a political commitment to go somewhere, how do we go about it?
Is it true that using contractors is a less advantageous model?
Yes. Is there another model? Not necessarily in some of these
areas. So we are dealing with not the perfect scenario but what
we do in this incredibly imperfect set of circumstances.
Chairman: We are going to wrap up with
the final question that we asked earlier.
Q293 Mrs Moon:
The one thing we have not had from each of you gentlemen is where
you see the Comprehensive Approach being now on that scale of
one to ten. It would be helpful if you could give us your scale,
but also where do we go from here? Can it be improved and, if
so, how?
Mr Korski: I think there is a
realisation that we need to be comprehensive in the way that we
were not before. So points for effort and understanding the challenge.
As I articulated before, the way we structure our departments,
recruit our staff, plan for missions needs to fundamentally change.
People have realised the extent of the problem, made some changes,
but have not yet taken the full step forward, I believe.
Q294 Mrs Moon:
On that scale of one to ten where are we?
Mr Korski: Six.
Q295 Chairman:
You are a generous man.
Mr Mollett: Rather than answer
with a score card mark, I make one brief point. Back in 2001/2002
the international community, the UN, the donors, including our
Government, were very keen to push Afghanistan as this post-conflict
development context, and UNAMA was established as the integrated
mission with humanitarian co-ordination and leadership as a tiny
subcomponent of the aid department within the mission. Last year
already that was so flagrantly not the situation, the security
situation was so dire, the humanitarian access situation so dire,
just a complete lack of information on what the situation was
for the people affected by conflict in the southern part of the
country and elsewhere, that finally there was a buckling and there
was an agreement to establish a new OCHA office, a UN humanitarian
co-ordination office, in Afghanistan, recognising that you need
a strong, legitimate and credible humanitarian capacity in Afghanistan
which can then engage in dialogue or co-ordination with, whether
it is political or military, actors on the ground to enable an
effective response to the humanitarian situation. So I think there
has been some progress and, in terms of what needs to be done,
I think we need to build on that recognition; that appropriate
and effective co-ordination between the aid, peace and then the
political and the military intervention certainly in contexts
like Afghanistan does not require total integration or subordination
of aid to short-term political or military agendas but requires
proper resourcing and an ability to engage on an equal and a credible
footing and, therefore, enable relief operations to happen in
Afghanistan in an appropriate way.
Q296 Mrs Moon:
Mr Grey?
Mr Grey: The score that Brigadier
Butler gave was one, was it not?
Q297 Chairman:
It was different. He said it was one and a half for NATO, but
he was talking about NATO.
Mr Grey: If we said at the beginning
it was one and a half on the Comprehensive Approach, I would say
it is three now, so doubly as good but a long way off, or three
as of last year, last spring, when I was probably best informed.
Q298 Mrs Moon:
Are you talking about on the ground?
Mr Grey: Yes.
Q299 Mrs Moon:
Others have told us six on the ground, but you put it at three.
Mr Grey: I disagree, yes. As to
the solutions, obviously there are many, but the only thing I
would highlight is that at the moment the strategic commander
of all UK agencies is the Prime Minister, and there is no other
place where it comes together. I think that came out from your
briefing from the permanent secretaries. So there was no-one in
charge apart from the Prime Minister. I think the Prime Minister
of Britain has got other things on his mind, and that is the real
problem. So I think there needs to be someone, not quite a General
Templer of Malaya who had full civilian powers dealing with a
sovereign country, but there are so many agencies involved, so
many countries involved here that Britain's interests need to
be combined into one role, an ambassador that combines the role
of both military commander and civil commander.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Grey, you said you were not as depressed as we were, but the
reason we are depressed is what you have told us. The most discouraging
thing we heard was from you, and the most encouraging thing we
heard was also from you. Thank you all very much indeed for your
evidence. It has been a extremely helpful. It is a bit like a
dash of cold water on some of the evidence that we have heard
in previous evidence sessions, so we are most grateful.
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