Examination of Witnesses (Questions 228-275)
Q228 Chair: Let us begin. We are
a minute early, but that is a good thing. May I welcome you to
the Committee's inquiry into operations in Afghanistan? When the
Committee of the last Parliament was in Afghanistan in January
we met both of you there, and we are most grateful to you both
for the help you gave us. In spite of having met you before, it
would be helpful if you would kindly introduce yourselves, and
tell us what you now do and what you were doing then.
General Sir Nick Parker: I am
Nick Parker. I was the Deputy Commander of ISAF based in Kabul,
and I also had the role of the National Contingent Commander.
I am now the Commander-in-Chief, Land Forces in Andover.
Brigadier Levey: I was the Combined
Training Advisory Group Commander, dealing with army training
in Afghanistan under the NATO training mission there. I am now
the Director of the Royal Armoured Corps.
Q229 Chair: What would you say
have been the key issues in Afghanistan over the last couple of
years?
General Sir Nick Parker: My experience
of Afghanistan directly started about late October last year,
so my sense probably covers the two years that you are talking
about. The McChrystal review brought three fundamental changes:
first, to the resourcing of the operation, which I will come back
to; secondly, to the culture of the operation; and thirdly, to
the structure—the way the operation was conducted. Those
were the three principal military strategic changes that the McChrystal
injection made. I am not criticising those who went before him;
I am saying that this was a process of evolution that suffered
a bit of a revolution when he came in and conducted a formal process
of analysis.
On the culture, having population-centric operations
was essentially changing the emphasis. We were conducting counter-insurgency
before then, but McChrystal focused people on the people that
we were there to protect, emphasising the fact that if you poison
them, you are never going to be able to win the security fight.
He injected emphasis into that through the tactical directive
that he issued in about August last year, and also through the
process of partnering, which is a very big change. He realised
that we had to partner ourselves with Afghans both to behave more
in an Afghan way and to understand the culture that we were operating
in.
On the system, he introduced the NATO Training
Mission in Afghanistan, the joint detention operation 435 and,
importantly, the ISAF Joint Command. He broke the theatre-strategic
and operational levels apart to give greater clarity to the command
and control that was necessary. That was manifested in a much
more directive command. He told people what to do and where they
were to do it. He elected to undermine the insurgency in the South.
His predecessors had only ever been able to co-ordinate and ask.
That was absolutely nailed by the introduction of additional forces—the
30,000 that President Obama announced on 1 December last year
and the additional NATO troops. If you add the 20,000 American
Forces who had previously been allocated to Afghanistan, that
gave General McChrystal the opportunity and the ability to operate
in a more aggressive and forceful way in those areas where he
wished to do so. That was when he started to undermine the insurgency
in the South.
Q230 Chair: Brigadier Levey—from
your point of view?
Brigadier Levey: By definition,
my prism is far narrower than the General's. I can only cover
the Afghan National Army training piece. The bit that I personally
saw was the significant uplift in resource, of both men and money,
to enable the growth of the Afghan National Army at pace. That
was the biggest significant change from when I started in December
'09, when it really picked up, until I left Afghanistan—the
biggest single change.
Q231 Chair: The issue that came
up when we were watching the training of troops in Kabul was that
more money and time spent on training in Kabul would pay dividends
once they got to Helmand. Was that resolved by the British sending
more people to do training?
Brigadier Levey: In fact, all
the other NATO countries sent a lot more people to do training.
I had roughly 340 people when I started, and there are now some
1,400 trainers. The numbers increased exponentially, not only
from NATO countries, but across the board. That made a significant
difference to the quality of what we were able to do. That enabled
us to put in place quantifiable, measurable tests to see that
the quality of the training was improving. We knew that we were
increasing the quantity significantly. The Afghan National Army
has grown by 58% this year from November to November. That is
a big growth, but it is the quality that has really improved with
the advent of the NATO Training Mission, where the emphasis changed
from just quantity to improving the quality. Those trainers and
the money that went with it allowed us to improve the quality.
I can give you lots of stats, if you want them, on how it improved.
Q232 Sandra Osborne: With regard
to the situation in Helmand, what are the particular challenges
that the Coalition faces there?
General Sir Nick Parker: That
is probably one for me, isn't it? I speak very deliberately from
the theatre-strategic perspective. It is terribly important for
us to understand that Helmand is a part of a greater operation
and that we risk, if we only look at what is happening in Helmand,
possibly misrepresenting where the military security pressures
are across the whole of the campaign. I absolutely understand
that for UK Forces, the risks and the threats in Helmand are of
prime importance. Our job was to look at this across the whole
theatre. As an aside, just because we can win a battle in Helmand,
it does not mean that ISAF success is guaranteed. We must ensure
that we guarantee ISAF success from a security perspective.
There are three big challenges in Helmand that
I recognised when I arrived. First, we needed to make sure that
the density of force was appropriate, to the people that we were
trying to secure. There was need to continue the process of increasing
force density. The second thing is that, as part of the McChrystal
plan to get people to partner effectively with the Afghans, we
began, before it was being talked about, the process of transition,
because ultimately it is an Afghan solution. We had to start getting
our Forces closely alongside the Afghans, building confidence
and using them effectively. Thirdly, we had to connect people
to give them better situational awareness. That is a rather military
term, but we have to understand the environment that we are operating
in, and Afghanistan is a very difficult country to operate in
as a Westerner. We needed to continue to improve that so that
our military judgments were based, as far as possible, on accurate
assessments of what was going on around us.
Q233 Sandra Osborne: Has the security
situation improved since the increase in troop numbers?
General Sir Nick Parker: Yes,
it has, but we want to be really careful about the messages that
we send. I consider myself as having been guilty of being over-confident,
or appearing to be over-confident, in February last year. Before
Operation Moshtarak started, I deliberately said that it was going
to go well. I was using the language of 60, 90 and 120 days for
bringing in things such as governance in a box. With the benefit
of hindsight, that raised expectations to an unreasonable level.
I rationalised that by saying that I was doing it because our
men and women were about to go into a very dangerous operation
and we needed to be confident in their ability to do that. I think
that the wider public message that we sent raised expectations
of progress above what was achievable.
Today, we have demonstrated in some really difficult
parts of the South, both in Helmand and Kandahar, that we can
deliver consistent security and that we can do it with our Afghan
partners. That is beginning to send a powerful message to the
insurgents, who are beginning to make a balance of judgment that
says we—ISAF and the Afghans—are going to be around
for a credible length of time, and their allegiance should start
to change to us.
Q234 Sandra Osborne: You have
laid great store by the need to bring the Afghan people on board.
Do the people in Helmand trust the Coalition Forces?
General Sir Nick Parker: I think
it has been and will always be qualified. They trust us by our
actions, but they would wish to have their own armed forces providing
security for them, like any country. Ultimately, they see us as
a bridging force that should be able to transfer to their own
people. But I don't think they mistrust our motives.
Q235 Sandra Osborne: How much
has governance improved in Helmand Provinces?
General Sir Nick Parker: It has
been slower than we would have wished. I am not sure whether Governor
Mangal has spoken to you in any other forum. He has significantly
increased the levels of governance inside Helmand over the last
four to five months—12 governors out of 14 districts. Those
sorts of statistics are bandied about. If you dive down into the
detail, the district governors in Nad-e-Ali and Sangin are both
building confidence, but it is a work in progress. Stepping back
to what I said before, it is the governance of Kabul and governance
at the provincial level and the district level that need to continue
to develop. All three levels are challenging. My work was mostly
in Kabul, working with President Karzai's immediate advisers.
Q236 John Glen: We have a memorandum
from the MoD that sets out the 47 countries represented in the
Coalition—from the three personnel from Austria to 78,000
from the US. I would imagine there are considerable strains in
trying to run a coalition. Could you tell us about how that works
and what the issues are in making that coalition work when you
have such a large number of participants from different countries?
General Sir Nick Parker: It is
important to recognise that in military terms the US is effectively
the lead nation. Therefore, automatically, there is a deferral
to them, because they bring the greatest amount to the operation.
Having said that, because the military culture is pretty consistent
across all those nations, people fit into that well. Provided
they believe that they are reasonably represented, there is no
great challenge in the military sense in managing the Coalition.
However, it is something that one has to work on all the time.
Working on behalf of both General McChrystal
and General Petraeus, I have found that getting nations to reflect
their grand strategic policy inside the theatre-strategic decision-making
process was quite difficult. I would hold fortnightly meetings—I
chose to—with the senior national representative of the
eight principal nations, and it was sometimes difficult to get
a dialogue going with them over things where we needed to understand
what their capitals were thinking in order to be able to shape
the military theatre decision making. It works much better than
it might appear, because there is a lead nation. There are eight
principal nations that we need to corral, but that is hard work
and we need to do it better. I do not want this to sound at all
derogatory, but they tend to come along because they respect the
way the thing is organised.
Q237 Mr Brazier: Let us move on
from the change that the McChrystal strategy has made. Brigadier
Levey, do you feel that the fall in the level of civilian casualties
is helping recruiting for the Afghan National Security Forces?
Brigadier Levey: Are you asking
for a personal opinion?
Mr Brazier: Yes.
Brigadier Levey: To be honest,
I don't know, but I do know that recruiting has remained pretty
constant throughout. Ever since I was there and they ramped up
the recruiting numbers, we have essentially been able to feed
the training machine sufficiently to exceed the targets of the
number of soldiers we needed to train. By October we had to be
at 134 and I think we were at 138, so we are ahead of schedule.
The recruiting has been consistently sufficient to meet the requirement—in
fact, above.
Q238 Mr Brazier: That is obviously
welcome news. Do you think that we will be able to make more progress
with getting Pashtuns from the South into the army and police?
Brigadier Levey: I know that there
is a big push to get more Pashtuns from the South into the army.
Pashtuns are in the army in roughly the right sort of numbers,
but not from the South, as you know. Post-Eid, which has just
happened around now, there is a big drive going on right now to
do more recruiting in the South. I think—this is a personal
opinion based on professional knowledge—that with what has
been going on in the South, where the secure zones have increased,
it is likely to be more successful than it has been in the past.
General Sir Nick Parker: I have
two final remarks. First, it will be incredibly important to the
credibility of the ANSF in the South to get more recruits from
the South. They realise that, and this additional effort will
help. There is an initiative called the Afghan Local Police Initiative,
which we must be very careful about not over-emphasising, but
it essentially creates a much better-disciplined locally recruited
security force. It is working reasonably well, and I know that
General Petraeus believes that it should be spread further. That
would offer us an opportunity to get people out of the community
into a bridging role—it shouldn't be permanent—to
provide security inside communities.
Q239 Mr Brazier: That is an interesting
point. The Chair said that he feels that one of the questions
has not yet been fully answered. How much difference do you think
the McChrystal approach of courageous restraint has made? The
impression obviously is that it has been very positive. Do you
feel that it has made a real difference?
General Sir Nick Parker: Yes,
I think it has. Courageous restraint is a difficult label; we
want to be very cautious of it. I think we went through a bit
of a wave. We over-corrected in order to bring people back from
what was on occasion a very aggressive approach, where the risk
balance between protection and offensive action was a little out
of kilter. McChrystal recognised that, and brought it back into
line.
We then experienced subordinates who were over-correcting,
and who were losing their initiative in order to protect the population.
There was a very clear sense, which I am sure you will have seen
over the summer, when General Petraeus took over, that the American
trooper needed to have more freedom to act so that he was not
as vulnerable as I think it was felt in the American chain of
command that he had become. General Petraeus reissued the tactical
directive with exactly the same basic principles, but with greater
emphasis that the chain of command was not to add to the conditions,
and that we were not to be concerned to take action if the lives
of our troops were at risk. The principle was right. It took us
a bit too far and was over-corrected, but it is now operating
in exactly the right way.
Chair: I'm glad you answered that, because
that is not a narrative that we have heard before in so helpful
a way. I am grateful to you.
Q240 Ms Stuart: I have come to
Defence new. All my previous visits to Afghanistan have been with
the Foreign Affairs Committee. Last week, this Committee went
to Permanent Joint Headquarters. I am trying to understand how
the chain of command works. It seemed to me that there was a duplication
in it, but it may just be me coming to this new. I wonder what
your perception is.
General Sir Nick Parker: I think—
Chair: Brigadier Levey is very much enjoying
the fact that you have to answer this.
General Sir Nick Parker: Can I
defer to you, Brigadier Levey? Two contextual aspects before I
answer the question. First, Coalition Operations are extremely
complicated. There are 47 different nations, and in this case,
a NATO chain of command, and therefore each one is different.
Secondly, I think our approach is developing all the time. So
every operation is different, and it morphs as it goes along,
so there is a lot of change.
My professional opinion is that we do not yet
understand the theatre-strategic level clearly enough in the British
Armed Forces. There needs to be a greater understanding of the
importance of the decision making that takes place, in this case
in Kabul. The linkages between Kabul and the grand strategic or
military strategic decision making in London need to be clearer
and better understood. I believe that that was a reflection of
why I was sent out as the National Contingent Commander, although
I don't believe I was given sufficient resource to do the job
as actively as I needed to. There is a need for greater understanding
of the critical nature of pulling levers in Kabul because you
can pull as many levers as you like in Helmand, but it won't make
any difference to the way that the campaign is being run by the
big command level. That is very important.
But I was not in a position to deploy, sustain
and recover a very complicated British Force. There is no way
that that could have been done effectively in Kabul. In my current
job, where I am generating the land element of this force, I need
to feed it through an organisation that can consolidate it, can
ensure that what is being done is correct, and then deploy it
and sustain it effectively. I firmly believe that there is a role
for the Permanent Joint Headquarters to deploy, sustain and recover,
and it needs to understand what's going on, but I think we should
look carefully at its true pure command relationship because it
cannot influence decisions that are made inside the Coalition
in Kabul.
Q241 Bob Stewart: General, hello.
Did you have difficulty in establishing yourself as the National
Contingent Commander? And when you used the word "London,"
did you actually mean PJHQ?
General Sir Nick Parker: No. I
had the normal challenge that you would have whenever you introduce
a new element into any chain of command. So I had to educate
myself, and those around me and up the chain of command where
I felt that I could add real value. I had to demonstrate a bit
of success in order to build confidence, and I quite understand
that. By "London," I meant the Ministry of Defence.
Bob Stewart: Not PJHQ?
General Sir Nick Parker: No.
Q242 Mr Havard: You talked about
the training. Our experience and understanding of it is that,
as far as the training of the ANA is concerned—the army
component—you are teaching them the physical and conceptual
components of military activity, but how do you train soldiers
in the ground? One of the questions we want to ask you is about
the moral component of an army and what the aspects of trying
to deal with that in training the Afghan Army have been and how
you are dealing with that.
General Sir Nick Parker: Can I
start at the top level and then get Simon to answer the question
properly?
Mr Havard: Sure.
General Sir Nick Parker: The general
loyalty of the Afghan National Security Forces is something that
we need to help. We need to nurture it. The relationships that
the Minister of Defence and the Minister of the Interior have
with President Karzai and with that close-in group of people,
the Cabinet, are something that we must not undermine. In my
job, I was very conscious that one needed to sustain the confidence
of the President and the Cabinet in his armed forces so that they
felt that they were doing what was right for the country. We need
to continue to do more to that so that the Security Forces have
the confidence of the higher level of Government.
Q243 Mr Havard: That presumably
includes the issues about the laws of armed conflict, the Geneva
Convention, the rules of engagement and the ways of doing, as
well.
Brigadier Levey: On the training
side, the Afghans certainly have already incorporated into their
training all of that element that you have just referred to.
They have a thing called RCA—Religious and Cultural Affairs—which
is a sort of combination, in our terms, of a padre and welfare
officer and a few other bits and pieces put together. That branch
school is already up and running in Kabul and training the people
who then go out to the battalions and live with them. That is
part of it.
At the same time, all those soldiers going through
their basic training and who come back for their courses with
their officers, NCOs or not, get all the other bits that make
up the moral components. They get taught the laws of armed conflict.
They get taught in basic training about looking after civilians.
All that element is covered in various parts of their training,
just as we do in our army. So, it is covered.
Q244 Mr Havard: We hear reports about
absenteeism rates, the fact that people cannot work unsupervised
and the low numbers, so the quality question comes in. But this
is meant to be a people's army, looking after the people as opposed
to something else; that is why we are asking the question. What
is happening with that? We seem also to be training a lot of people
who are then disappearing, and you are on a treadmill. Is that
what is happening?
Brigadier Levey: I can talk to
you about the absentee rates. The absenteeism is caused by a number
of different factors, as in any army. One of the particular problems
in the training base is that the soldiers have such a compressed
time scale—going from basic training, through their specific
branch training and through their collective training—and
they do not get any leave during that. Therefore, if they want
to get their pay home, sometimes they take themselves off, pay
and come back. So we know that we get soldiers coming back eventually
who have not really deserted; they have just been absent to go
and pay their families.
That side of life is being looked at to try
to improve the way in which the soldiers are paid, but that is
only one element of it. There certainly was an element of soldiers
going absent if they were sent down south—that was definitely
the case. There was a higher proportion of soldiers going absent
from those battalions who were going to be sent down south. That
particular issue was resolved by making sure that we topped up
the battalions before they went.
In the army as a whole, they are seeing how
they can improve retention by having what you have probably heard
referred to as the red-amber-green cycle—where they do a
bit of training, have a bit of leave, and do a bit of operations—so
that they do not all get consumed in the fight all the time. That
has improved retention.
General Sir Nick Parker: I agree
with everything that Simon has said. The high-level point is that
we have grown—we have done "growth"; what we have
not done is "capacity". Are we doing sufficient to build
capacity inside that growth? Yes, we are starting to, but we are
doing it in phases. We have a lot of what they call attrition.
Now we are starting to build better offices, better schools, and
better cycles, so that people come off the front line. All those
things are being built and they will take time. You can build
the number to 137,000 in the year, but have you got the capabilities?
No, that is thin and we need to continue to build that.
Q245 Mr Havard: We have asked
this question about ethnic mix, distribution and so on. In the
end, the best of Kunduz is full and the best of Helmand is not
so full—we have seen all that. That is why we are asking
whether it is going to be a national army that is deployable across
the whole of the nation of Afghanistan, or whether it is a large
number of people, but not a sustainable quality group of people
who stick.
General Sir Nick Parker: It can
be done, but it requires time. You can grow quickly, but the capability
takes longer.
Brigadier Levey: The year ending
in October this year was all about building the infantry. That
was the deliberate plan. October to October next year is all about
the enablers—the logistics element and all the other bits
and pieces that make an army complete. That is why the literacy
programme has been expanded so dramatically, because there were
not enough literate soldiers.
All those things are contributing to building
the other element, and even when that is done, you will not be
there fully, because you will still need to keep the institutional
training base supported to ensure that future generations are
brought alongside.
Mr Havard: You have been reading some
of my questions; you have been looking over my shoulder.
Q246 Mr Donaldson: Gentlemen,
you will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that our Forces
who are training the Afghan National Army are billeted side by
side with them, whereas the Americans create some kind of a barrier
between the two—they sleep in different quarters, and so
on. I may be wrong about that. We had the recent incident when
the three soldiers were killed by a member of the Afghan National
Army, including Lieutenant Neal Turkington. I wonder about the
wisdom in all circumstances of our soldiers being billeted alongside
those of the Afghan National Army.
General Sir Nick Parker: The circumstances
that you are talking about are not in training; these are people
who are conducting operations together. This is the concept of
embedded partnering and at Patrol Base 3, where that incident
took place, they slept in separate tents in similar parts—they
were actually in slightly different compounds, but on the same
FOB, defended by the same security force.
The issue is: is the risk worth the benefit?
The risk is that in a large armed force you are almost certain
to have a few mavericks. If we are fighting an insurgency where
we are battling for people's minds and wills, you will inevitably
get some infiltration. Is our vetting sufficiently good? Are our
biometrics sufficiently good? Those are the sorts of things that
we have to continue to press on, to try to mitigate the risk of
a maverick.
But we must not forget the benefit, which is
huge. It is about operating alongside people—even if they're
Tajiks and they come from the North—who understand the place
so much better than we do and who have very good low-level tactical
fighting skills. When you partner our people alongside them, you
get real synergies with our technical capability, our weapons
systems and our training with good, natural soldiers who understand
the environment they're operating in.
The benefits that we've seen from this embedded
partnering are huge. So I have to say that the risk still exists,
but we should not just accept it; we should continue to try to
mitigate it. What we shouldn't do is stop and lose sight of the
benefits, which from a military perspective are very significant.
Chair: It was interesting that when we
were in Afghanistan in January, the British soldiers there told
us that their greatest protection was the Afghan soldiers they
were working alongside.
Q247 Mr Havard: You've dealt with
some of the stuff about partnering. Can I ask you a specific question
about where women sit in relation to the Afghan National Army
and about the women within it? How is that training done and how
is that process developing?
Brigadier Levey: In my time there,
we had the first ever female officers' course. It was not my idea;
it came from General Ameenullah Karim, who is the Afghan National
Army Training Commander. He got the idea from his wife, who said
to him, "This is a really good idea." He then proposed
it and drove it through. There was considerable opposition among
other Afghan army personnel.
The key thing about this particular idea is
to recognise that we are talking about Afghanistan, not Europe,
and it has to be done at their pace. If we had tried to impose
that on them, it would never have happened. The fact that the
General was personally so keen and drove the idea is what made
it succeed. They now have their first 29 female officers in the
Afghan National Army, and another course is about to run. It is
a small step, but it needs to be in keeping with their culture
to make it succeed.
Q248 Mr Havard: You said it is
at officer level?
Brigadier Levey: These are officers.
Q249 Mr Havard: What sort of level
is that?
Brigadier Levey: Well, it means
they can come in as second lieutenants and lieutenants. They will
not be used in a combat role; they will be used in administrative
roles.
Q250 Mr Havard: You were talking
about logistical support and other things beyond basic manoeuvre
warfare and teaching them about other components that make up
a whole military. You say it has only just started, but how is
that progressing? Is there a role and a function for women more
in that area of activity as opposed to perhaps the infantry, as
it were?
Brigadier Levey: Female numbers
are very small at the moment. The numbers going through could
not keep up with the vast numbers we are putting through the logistics
schools and all the other schools that are starting up. Those
are the ones that have got to make the effort this year—the
military police, the logistics, the engineers and all those bits
and pieces. They are growing exponentially just as the infantry
did the year before.
That is why all those schools were put in place:
to allow this growth to happen for this year. In addition, of
course, they are establishing logistics bases around the country.
They have established four in the last year. So the whole thing
is happening in parallel. The real mark of success will be at
the end of October next year, when we'll see if the growth has
happened, as it did this year, with all those schools filling
all those places. Based on what has happened currently, I see
no reason why they should not succeed.
Q251 Ms Stuart: Can we turn to
the Afghan National Police? Could you, Brigadier, just give us
a quick rundown on retention rates, literacy rates and problems
on retention in relation to drug dependency—those kinds
of figures? In your opening remarks, you said it was not just
the quantity but the quality that was improving. Can you just
give us a quick rundown of where we are?
Brigadier Levey: On the police
force?
Ms Stuart: Yes.
Brigadier Levey: I can only give
you a very superficial view because my job was with the Afghan
National Army, not the police.
General Sir Nick Parker: You've
got to be careful, Simon. If you want real fact—
Q252 Ms Stuart: I was very conscious
of the fact that the Afghans call their soldiers "warriors"
and their police "soldiers." When we talk about the
Afghan National Police Force, our nice distinction is that these
aren't community support officers. Which one of you can give us
an answer?
General Sir Nick Parker: We can
both give you a general answer, but I think we should offer you
some real, clear statistics in writing, if we may.
Chair: Real, clear statistics in writing
would be helpful, but do please answer to the extent that you
feel able to.
Brigadier Levey: The Afghan National
Police Force certainly had a problem with—I am talking about
from the time I started until the time I left—retention,
drugs and corruption—and recruitment, for that matter. All
those things were acknowledged. The police force, not the army,
became the main effort in my time there.
All the key effort in terms of intellectual
and physical resource started to be diverted into the police and
it had an impact, without a shadow of a doubt. Drug testing across
the board for everybody. They did biometrics of all the police.
That meant that they could then get rid of those who said they
were working and weren't, because they knew who, physically, was
at work.
Huge strides were made in the training of the
police. Of course, a large proportion of the police had never
been trained, so not only were they recruiting and training new
ones, they were also training those who were in the police already.
A huge amount of effort went into that and I know that the Brits,
down in Helmand, have had their own involvement in that, doing
a really good job training up the police forces.
It has not been a good news story throughout,
but huge strides have been made. As I was looking over the fence
at the police, I was quite surprised at how well they had caught
up, considering that they were starting at a much, much lower
base than the army. They were starting at a really low level.
They are not there yet, but they have done a good catch-up job.
The Afghan National Civil Order Police, which
is one particular part of the police, was very high-end and they
put a lot of effort into improving their retention. The commandos
is the other sort of model. The commandos had a 98% retention
rate—really good. They did the cycle of red-amber-green,
so they went on leave-training-operations. No matter what was
going on in Afghanistan, they did that. They started bringing
that in for the ANCOP, which then improved retention and you get
this virtuous circle happening, so the good lessons from the army
have been taken across to the police. That is, I am afraid, all
I can give you, but it is really only a broad-brush perspective.
Q253 Ms Stuart: Earlier, you mentioned
the methods of payment of the Afghan National Army. The police
occasionally did not get paid at all, never mind being paid and
then having to take it back to their families. Can you say something
on that? Also, do you know about the weapons going amiss after
they had been issued?
General Sir Nick Parker: The key
area for development has to be the police force, and it is the
most challenging one. It is going to take time. Even in an Afghan
sense, a more sophisticated security organisation that is community-based
is going to take us four or five years.
A lot of the early steps with the police have
been quite frustrating. There have been difficulties; two steps
forward, one step back has been the feeling. The Petraeus Afghan
Local Police Initiative is designed to produce a community-based
security organisation that will bridge between now and the time
when the ANP will become better trained and better led. Leadership
was one of the key things that we were trying to build up, so
that local leadership would be better.
In any organisation that is not terribly well
led and is being formed, you get—if I call it leakage that
may appear to belittle the loss of ammunition and the loss of
weapons—those sorts of things happening, and we were having
to tighten up on that. We are having to tighten up on the discipline
of the organisation, but it is an area that we watched very closely,
because it is the area where improvement will have a very significant
impact. The Afghan Local Police Initiative was designed to try
and catch up on some of the areas where we were losing.
Brigadier Levey: On the specific
issue of pay, the army and the police are paid in the same sort
of way. They are paid the same sort of wages. What the army does
is get paid by phone. You have probably heard of that system where
mobile phones are one of the ways to get paid. It should be improving,
particularly with what they did with the biometrics and the registering
of every single policemen, physically, to make sure that they
were all there.
On the weapons side, the army does not have
the same problems. They all have NATO weapons. Therefore, we know
how many weapons there were in the first place, because we issued
them and they are all checked very regularly.
On the police side, it is a bit more difficult.
There are so many AK47s around, we don't know how many there are,
so it is a bit of a trickier problem. With the army, I knew in
my time that we lost one pistol and one rifle. The rifle was recovered
and the pistol took a little longer. We know exactly how many
NATO ones there are; it is the other ones that are trickier. The
police are now bringing in systems to do what the army does. The
problem is that there is such a proliferation of that particular
type of weapon that it is harder to control.
General Sir Nick Parker: Our hope
was that the Afghan local police would bring their own weapons,
so you would start to regularise or legitimise the AK that was
under the bed.
Q254 Ms Stuart: The Afghan National
Army recruits across Afghanistan and tries to create a national
force. The Afghan National Police attempts that, too, but it's
less successful, isn't it?
Brigadier Levey: No.
Ms Stuart: I thought that the aim was
that we move to a national police force—
Brigadier Levey: In different
sorts of police forces, you have one sort that is recruited locally—
Ms Stuart: Is that what the Americans
are funding? I am trying to understand.
Brigadier Levey: I am not sure
about the funding aspect. One sort is recruited locally and works
locally. Another sort is recruited nationally, so it depends which
police force it is and what role it is going to play. So there
are different types of police forces that do different things.
Some are local and some, which I refer to as being like the commandos,
go in to do a particular job.
General Sir Nick Parker: We can
send you the details. There are five pillars of the police force.
The criminal investigation—what I suppose we would call
the specialists—are nationally recruited. The uniformed
police are recruited by provinces, so they are locally recruited.
The ANCOP that Simon was talking about are recruited nationally,
too.
Q255 Ms Stuart: I have one final
question on prisons and on building a criminal justice system
and law enforcement. When Governor Mangal came to a briefing,
he gave us a good view as to where we are going to be, but I didn't
really get a sense of what we have at the moment. Could you update
us on how many secure places we have?
General Sir Nick Parker: I can't
give you the exact details. I would commend Task Force 435 to
you. It is the detention's taskforce and is run by an American
three-star. From a Helmand perspective, the NDS in Lashkar Gah
has a facility with, I think, about 100 beds. There is also a
prison in Lashkar Gah, which is different. It is not run by the
NDS, but by the prison service, and it has greater capacity, but
needs some serious development. That was being introduced.
Lindy Cameron and those sorts of people will
be able to talk about that. On the statistics for the Pul-e-Charkhi
prison for the new facility that the Americans are working at,
we would give you those things in detail.
Q256 Bob Stewart: I want to look
at what happened in 2006. We have heard from General Messenger,
who said he didn't have enough personnel to carry out the tasks
in Helmand in 2006. Would you like to comment on the lack of personnel
for the tasks allocated to us in 2006?
General Sir Nick Parker: I hope
you won't think I'm being rather wet.
Bob Stewart: I know what you are about
to say, actually.
General Sir Nick Parker: Because,
in this and my previous position, I had no direct military responsibility
for what was going on in 2006. I start from a real understanding
of what was occurring in 2009. All I can say is that my experience
has been of a very dynamic insurgency and, as I said earlier,
an insurgency where our understanding of the environment was extremely
challenging.
Q257 Bob Stewart: I will let you
off, because I think that you had to say that. What about the
number of troops that we have now? Do we have it about right?
General Sir Nick Parker: Yes.
From an ISAF perspective, the South has just about got it right,
but we mustn't be complacent. The effective growth of the ANSF
is critical to start to complement what we have. As far as the
British are concerned, exactly the same philosophy applies: we
must continue to grow an effective ANSF. I could not commend highly
enough the Afghan National Police training organisation in Helmand.
These are really important to continue to put as much high-quality
Afghans among our people as we can.
I feel very strongly about the need to apply
normal military judgments to the tactical operation. We must allow
our commanders, at the appropriate level, to be able to use reserves
in an effective and dynamic way. We must have sufficient force
and capability to be proactive and to stay in front of the insurgent.
At the moment, we have, but it is a dynamic insurgency, and we
must stay on the balls of our feet.
Q258 Bob Stewart: Withdrawing
from Sangin, was there an impact on morale in any way? What about
our relationships with the US Forces? Did our reputation suffer
a loss?
General Sir Nick Parker: I consider
the withdrawal from Musa Qala, Kajaki and Sangin as absolutely
essential ISAF military moves in order to concentrate forces properly
in the population centres of central Helmand where they were needed.
Again, you are going to think that I am being rather naive, but
the transfer in Sangin was no more than the Royal Welsh handing
over to the Royal Irish. This was a straightforward RIP where
a UK Force was being relieved by a US Force, because they had
the resource to do it, and we put 3 Para into central Helmand,
which was where it was necessary to be. It was a very straightforward
military move.
Q259 Bob Stewart: I understand
that, but I was really quite concerned that it was perceived,
in some quarters, that we were actually cutting and running a
little bit. I would like to hear your counter to that comment.
General Sir Nick Parker: It could
be seen like that if you view it from a very particular perspective.
It was absolutely the right military thing to do. If you talk
to somebody from 40 Commando, they don't feel that they were being
abandoned. The US Marines were in there for six weeks before the
RIP took place. It was a really carefully conducted handover.
Where I think we have a potentially subjective
issue is that the lives that were lost were British lives, and
the people who are there now are American, but, from my perspective,
we're all ISAF. This is a very challenging area, and both the
British and the American commitment to that particular part of
the country have been extraordinary. You will have seen the statistics
of the battalion that took over from us, and it is a very challenging
area. Now, 3 Para will be having a very challenging time in Nahri
Sarraj. So it is the label of Sangin, if you view it from a very
particular perspective, which, I have to say, us military men
must not do.
Q260 Bob Stewart: I'll keep going,
because I will be corrected very quickly by the Chairman. Intelligence
in Helmand was nowhere near good enough in 2006. You probably
won't be able to answer the question as to why, but is it that
much better now in 2010?
General Sir Nick Parker: It is
hugely challenging. I think this is very close to the critical
capability that we need to continue to develop. Our situational
awareness and our understanding in a very strange cultural environment
with a very dynamic insurgency have got to be absolutely cutting
edge. I think we're learning all the time. I think we're a heck
of a sight better than we were when I got there—not me—but
the process is constantly evolving, and it must continue to do
so.
Bob Stewart: I am not going to ask the
last question.
Q261 Mr Havard: There is a question
about lessons learned here, and there are questions about 2006
and so on. We withdrew from Basra. We ended up putting more of
a component into Afghanistan. We are just wondering whether, having
taken troops out of Iraq earlier, perhaps, in order to train them
up, that caused us some risks in one theatre in order to invest
in another. Whether we invested enough because we didn't know
enough and didn't have enough to send is a question I think we
are struggling with. It is not a case of blaming an individual;
it is about learning from that process. Is that a fair assessment
of the general situation that we saw ourselves in from 2006 up
to 2009?
General Sir Nick Parker: I can't—I'm
pathetic.
Mr Havard: You can say no.
General Sir Nick Parker: My professional
observation is that we misunderstand the importance of hierarchy.
I am concerned that we may have allowed brigadiers to make decisions
that are beyond their capacity or capability. I feel very strongly
that, when we operate in a coalition environment, we must still
make sure that there is a hierarchy of wisdom within the UK commitment
that ensures that the right decisions are made. We did not have
such clarity at the two-star level in the chain of command during
our early days in Afghanistan. That would make me quite nervous
today. I think that it is very important that we support the perspective
that allows us to make really difficult military judgments about
capability and tasks.
Q262 Mr Havard: That is interesting.
Could I put a proposition to you that has been put to me? Essentially,
all we managed to do between 2006 and 2009 was maintain the situation.
We've learned lessons since then. In the South—I take the
point that it's an ISAF operation with the involvement of lots
of countries, and that it is the whole country, not just Helmand—it
is essentially no longer a NATO mission, it is a coalition of
the willing dominated by the United States of America, although
there are thousands of Danes, and so on. There is nothing necessarily
wrong with that, but there is a set of policy questions that come
from that, particularly for NATO, in terms of how we form the
various components. The Brits put their hand up and said, "We'll
go," but perhaps there's a better way of doing such things.
The reality of the situation is that it's only
America's volume and capacity that can do it. As far as NATO is
concerned, the proposition that has been put to me is that, in
situations such as this, there are limits to NATO, as has been
demonstrated by this activity, and it's important that defence
policy makers in the UK are aware of that. The egalitarian multinationalism
of the NATO axis attempted in the South doesn't work with such
risky military aspects of the overall command. What lessons are
there about who decides to deploy what and where have we learned
from that process?
General Sir Nick Parker: The lesson
is properly to empower the ISAF chain of command, and in this
case it is, as I said right at the beginning, effectively American
led, because they are the people who have the major physical stake
in it. I think that our interpretation of coalition, NATO, or
whatever type of operation it is, has to take account of those
who provide the largest amount of resource.
Q263 Mr Havard: We are going into
a risky area, and when you go into a risky bit, it's really a
coalition of the willing with the Americans, because it's not
really the rest of NATO.
General Sir Nick Parker: Well,
yes—
Mr Havard: The other bits are fine, because
there's less of a risk up there, and there's less fighting.
General Sir Nick Parker: They
may not be. Georgia, Denmark, Estonia, Canada—
Mr Havard: There are some others with
us, yes.
General Sir Nick Parker: And the
Dutch. There are significant numbers.
Q264 Mr Havard: We don't want
to diminish their contributions by any stretch of the imagination.
General Sir Nick Parker: But they
are relatively small stakeholders, and therefore one has to rely
on those ISAF mechanisms, which are designed to take account of
those national interests, and the German Chief of Staff and I
are involved with that. That comes back to my point about the
importance of investing in decision making at the theatre strategic
level. That is the interface between the national interests and
military decision making, which is where we must apply our influence.
Q265 Mr Havard: Those decisions
in 2006 weren't British decisions in isolation.
General Sir Nick Parker: I can't
answer that.
Q266 Mr Havard: Well, they weren't.
They were NATO's.
General Sir Nick Parker: I can't
answer that.
Chair: You were in Northern Ireland at
the time. We don't think you're pathetic.
Bob Stewart: From the answers we've heard,
not from you, but from others, we might imply that the chain of
command wasn't right in 2006.
Chair: I think we can now move on.
Q267 John Glen: Over the past
four years, concern has been expressed at various times and in
various degrees about the shortages facing UK Forces in terms
of the lack of helicopters, Close-Air Support and counter-IED
capability. How do you see the Armed Forces now in terms of having
sufficient quantities of what they need? Are there any gaps remaining?
General Sir Nick Parker: It is
a balance between capability, tactics and the plan. Those three
interrelate. If your tactics go wobbly you'll start to lose the
initiative; if you either don't have sufficient capability or
employ it incorrectly you'll start to lose the initiative; and
clearly, if the plan is wrong you'll start to lose the initiative.
My judgment when I left, speaking as the British National Contingent
Commander, was that we had those things broadly in balance. You
have to keep watching them all the time and there are two very
important things that I think we should recognise. First, we need
to ensure that we generate continuity so you don't have six-month
chunks of ideas. You must allow those ideas to flow so that you
can react to things in a considered way. Secondly, we have to
accept that the insurgent is very dynamic and therefore what looks
great today will have to be adjusted when he changes his tactic.
As a military man, I think we have force densities that allow
us real flexibility now. When you have insufficient force density
and your capability is stretched, your flexibility is reduced.
We are not in that position at the moment.
Q268 John Glen: To give us some
detail, could you comment on how well ISAF and UK Forces are dealing
with the IED threat at the moment?
General Sir Nick Parker: Yes.
The IED has clearly gained considerable interest because of the
numbers of casualties that have been caused by it. The effort
that has been put into it across all ISAF nations has been extraordinary
and considerable but we must not kid ourselves: what we call the
counter-IED fight is not against the IED, it is against the system
that it is operating in. If you can defeat the insurgency, if
you can eject the insurgent from the community, the IED goes away
with no technical assistance at all. So we need to continue to
improve our situational awareness; improve our intelligence; improve
our tactics; make sure that our soldiers remain really brave and
are prepared to do offensive operations and don't become defensive;
keep the proactive edge; and we need our technicians to keep watching
developments because as sure as night follows day, once we get
on top of one capability, it will morph into something else.
Q269 John Glen: Is your assessment
that we are on top of it at the moment? You have spoken in general
terms about the moving nature of the target and being appraised
of the need to have more resources pumped in. I am really keen
to get the explicit view from you now about how well that is going
and whether there are sufficient resources to deal with the nature
of the threat at the moment.
General Sir Nick Parker: I'm going
to give you an answer which I worry about because I think it will
give you the wrong impression. The statistics show that we are
on top of it and that it is getting better. I think that when
you get into that position you start to become complacent and
you start to think you are winning. So this conversation worries
me, partly because it is an open session and partly because I
think there are positives and there is a danger that they could
be misinterpreted. But if you look at the statistics and you look
at the trends, you're going to see something positive, but for
God's sake don't let that make us complacent.
Q270 John Glen: Last week we took
some evidence about bandwidth and communications infrastructure.
There seemed to be some different views about what the UK Armed
Forces had compared with the Americans. Do you think that the
UK Armed Forces have access to enough bandwidth to use their communications
systems in the best possible way? What is your view on that at
the moment?
General Sir Nick Parker: There
have been some remarkable advances. In 2009, when I came in, it
was poor. I think we have shown a capacity to increase our bandwidth,
thank goodness, which allows us to operate in a much more effective
way. Fusing information in order to stay on top of it is critical.
I believe that the culture of communication in my part of the
Armed Forces is wrong. We have to take a very different approach
to communication—the flat information environment—and
it is in that culture and that attitude, the willingness to use
the sorts of technology that are available to allow us to communicate
today, that we have to change the way we do our business.
Q271 John Glen: It is much improved,
but there is a long way to go.
General Sir Nick Parker: A long
way to go, and culture, not necessarily stuff, is critical.
Q272 Sandra Osborne: You have
referred to the loss of British lives, and that of course is one
of the major concerns of all our constituents. Many of them wonder
what the purpose is and what is actually being achieved. The Prime
Minister has said that we will withdraw by 2015, "make no
mistake about it." How confident are you that that can be
successfully done?
General Sir Nick Parker: I think
that is an entirely reasonable order to give to the military.
The resources and the plan are there. We will have to manage a
whole series of risks, and we should be planning to do so, but
we should stay on the balls of our feet to deal with the unexpected.
Q273 Sandra Osborne: But given
everything that you have said today about the difficulties of
training the army, particularly in relation to the police and
the whole scenario of the culture of the area, none of these things
are new. They have been going on since we first went into Afghanistan.
The culture is well known, for a start. How can you be so sure
that this will work?
General Sir Nick Parker: Because
I feel that with the plan that McChrystal brought in, that catalyst
for progress injected something into this campaign that is starting
to develop momentum and cautious optimism. It is entirely reasonable
for our political masters to turn round to the Coalition and say,
"Do it by 2015." I think that time frame is entirely
reasonable, even with those challenges that you talk about. I
am talking about out-of-combat operations, because that is what
I read in the instruction.
There is still a debate to be had about how
much we will need to be helping in the institutional capacity
of the Armed Forces to sustain this. Dealing with the Afghans
and making sure that they are content with what we are doing is
another serious area that we need to consider.
Q274 Sandra Osborne: When will
ISAF be able to withdraw?
General Sir Nick Parker: That
I can't answer. I am saying as a military man that it is entirely
reasonable to be told to plan to get out of combat operations
by 2014 or 2015. That is an entirely reasonable ask, and if we
cannot do so we should pull our finger out. The situation is very
dynamic, however, and we need to stay prepared to react. We need
to continue to plan for contingencies that are unforeseen now.
Q275 Sandra Osborne: But you have
talked a great deal about the need to keep the Afghan people on
board, and you have also said that things might look good today
but situations can change. How do you convince the Afghan people
that we are not just going to cut and run in 2015, no matter what
the circumstances?
General Sir Nick Parker: At our
level, by honest relationships, by trust and by showing them the
blood that we are spilling on their behalf. I work with all the
principal advisers and the Ministers in the Government. They understand
the degree of commitment at our level. I am not in a position
to answer the question of how much political commitment there
is from the Coalition nations.
Chair: General Parker and Brigadier Levey,
thank you both very much indeed. That was really worthwhile evidence,
and we are most grateful. We will now take evidence from General
Lamb, but not at the same time as you.
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