Foreign Affairs Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 86-II

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Monday 11 November 2013

Members present:

Richard Ottaway (Chair)

Mr John Baron

Ann Clwyd

Mark Hendrick

Sandra Osborne

Andrew Rosindell

Mr Frank Roy

Sir John Stanley

____________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Rt Hon Hugh Robertson MP, Minister of State, Samantha Job, Head of North Africa Department, Tim Morris, Head, Sahel Taskforce and Whitehall Sahel Co-ordinator, and Simon Shercliff, Head of Counter-Terrorism Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, gave evidence.

Q191 Chair: This is the fourth and final evidence session of the Committee’s inquiry into the UK’s response to extremism and political instability in North and West Africa. Mr Simmonds and Mr Robertson, as you know, this meeting was stood over from a couple of weeks ago. The Committee has been sitting here waiting since half-past 4 and we all left the Chamber to be here to meet you. We were expecting to start the evidence session 12 minutes ago. I understand, Mr Simmonds, you have to leave in 13 minutes’ time. Therefore, we have reached the conclusion it is probably best that you slip off now. We would like to recall you very soon, in the next couple of weeks. In view of the fact that this is now the second time this has happened, we would like to lean on your diary secretary, to find a slot some time in the next week or so-not the rest of this week, but the week after.

Mark Simmonds: If that is the Committee’s wish, Mr Ottaway, I am very happy to co-operate. I have to leave to catch a plane. I had understood that we would begin the session when the Foreign Secretary’s statement finished, so I apologise if there has been any confusion with the Committee.

Chair: There has clearly been confusion about this. We had assumed that you were going to leave the Chamber in time to be here.

Hugh Robertson: If we have caused any offence let me apologise unconditionally straight away, but, likewise, I got a similar message that you were happy to wait until the Foreign Secretary had sat down, so that members of the Committee could ask questions and take part in the debate. If that was wrong I am very sorry for that, but that was the message we got. I am sorry.

Chair: There has obviously been a crossed wire somewhere. Anyway, Mr Simmonds, as it is now 11 minutes until you have to leave, I suggest you go now. Mr Robertson, I understand you have to go at half-past 5 anyway.

Hugh Robertson: No; I think in the circumstances, Mr Chairman, the very least I can do at this point is to sit here until you wish to get rid of me.

Q192 Chair: Fine. If you don’t mind, Mr Simmonds, we will get you back as soon as possible.

Mr Robertson, can we start on a cheerier note and welcome you to the Committee for the first time and congratulate you on your appointment to the Foreign Office. We have always enjoyed a good relationship with Ministers so far, and we welcome you. As you know, we are talking about North and West Africa. The western Sahel’s problems seem to be deep rooted and large scale, but our diplomatic footprint in the region is rather light. What is the UK’s unique selling point in the region, and what do you think is the best contribution that we could make to the western Sahel?

Hugh Robertson: Mr Chairman, may I start by thanking you for your welcome, and by reiterating my apology? As a new Minister appearing in front of a Committee as august as this one, I can assure you that the very last thing you would wish to do is to be late for your first hearing, so my apologies for any misunderstanding that may have been caused. I also apologise in advance if, used to the brilliance of my predecessor, you find me leaning on my officials more than you are probably used to.

You said in your opening remarks that you had to defer this meeting for a couple of weeks. My hope had been to make my first visit to the region during that week, but I was unable to do so because of the vote on High Speed 2, so I am sitting here in front of you, not only as a new Minister, but as one who has not yet made a ministerial visit to the region. I have to be honest and say that with the exception of four days playing cricket in Morocco for the Lords and Commons some seven years ago, I have not visited the region myself either, despite having travelled extensively across the world during my time in the Army. So I hope that you will not mind, as I say, if I lean on my officials more than would be the case, or than I hope will be the case in subsequent hearings.

The United Kingdom has a range of important strategic issues in the area. First and foremost are our commercial interests, which are extensive across North and West Africa. I think we have a greater interest in the stability of the whole region, which sits on the doorstep of Europe and is one in which we have invested enormous hope and goodwill in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. We would want to encourage countries and Governments in the region to become more democratic, to make use of the opportunities provided by the Arab Spring and to move closer to a democratic system of government. I think there are many reasons why this country would want to engage in that part of the world.

Q193 Chair: Are you satisfied that you have enough people on the ground, particularly with the specialist knowledge? How do you balance the rotation policies with the need to have an institutional memory on what is going on down there?

Hugh Robertson: All I can tell you is that I have only been in the Foreign Office for a month, and I spent one week of that in the Middle East last week, but prior to that, I went through a process of being briefed, first on counter-terrorism, and then on the Middle East and North Africa. I have not detected any lack of institutional knowledge. Clearly, tours may or may not be shorter than was the case beforehand, but there is definitely a pool of diplomats who have a great and long-standing understanding of the area. At the risk of embarrassing those sitting on either side of me, coming into this new, I have been very impressed by the quality of the briefing I have received and the amount of institutional knowledge the Foreign Office possesses.

Q194 Chair: The Prime Minister said that he wants to avoid doubling up with France in North and West Africa, yet a lot of francophone countries are saying to us that they actually would not mind seeing more of the UK down there. How are you going to approach that?

Hugh Robertson: There is a balance. I see from the notes that we have embassies and high commissions in 14 countries in North and West Africa, which is a pretty fair start. As you correctly say, there are areas where France is arguably in the lead, but in those cases, the important thing is that we work very closely with the French, as we managed to do very successfully in Mali, and I have every confidence that that will give us the sort of result we need.

Q195 Mr Baron: Minister, welcome. The Committee is concerned about the extent to which the UK seems to be unsighted with regards to events, particularly in Libya and Mali. I think it fair to say that the collapse of the Gaddafi regime has had three consequences relevant to the inquiry: the arms proliferation, Tuareg militias going into Mali, and Libya’s increasing use as a jihadist base. To what extent did the FCO consider those as potential consequences of our intervention? If it did not, why not? What lessons can we learn going forward so that we do not repeat the failure?

Hugh Robertson: In terms of the intervention in Mali?

Mr Baron: No, Libya.

Hugh Robertson: That is something on which I may be able to throw some light, not least because I was due to go there a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think anyone would pretend anything other than that the situation in Libya is a cause for concern at the moment. Clearly, there were very specific reasons for the UK’s intervention, not least to prevent a massacre that was about to happen. I don’t think any of us would have rested particularly easily if we hadn’t stepped in to prevent that.

Clearly, trying to re-form and regroup a state that was basically based on a series of tribal allegiances, with one particularly dominant leader at the top of it, is going to be a process that will present some complications. The way in which we are approaching it-this was due to be at the core of my visit a couple of weeks ago-is to do two things. The first is to get a proper political process on track, to strengthen the Government and the institutions of Government, and to ensure that the country again becomes properly governable, while at the same time trying to do all we can-you will appreciate the importance of this, given your military background-to stabilise the security situation, because that will give ongoing confidence to many of those political developments.

Q196 Mr Baron: May I move us briefly on to Mali, Minister? Again, perhaps, if one was being uncharitable, it is an example of where we appeared to be somewhat unsighted of the speed of developments, if not the developments themselves. To what extent was the situation in Mali foreseeable? More importantly, what can we do to try to make sure going forward that we do not repeat the error-if the FCO is willing to admit that an error was made?

Hugh Robertson: Shall I provide you with a little bit of context, and then hand over to Tim, who is the country expert? Mali is not one of mine, even in my beginner status. We see time and again, looking across the totality of my brief, that you can be very aware of many of the terrorist threats-much of the problem in Mali was caused by terrorists and by al-Qaeda elements-but the moment at which they become critical is quite a difficult moment to judge. Again, that is something you would understand as well as I do. Often, there isn’t a day in a month and a year when suddenly something moves from being a vague threat to being an extant threat, and a look at the history of the past 10 years would prove that. It can be difficult to characterise it in precisely those terms. I might hand over to Tim at that point.

Tim Morris: Thank you, Minister. May I say a quick word about a subject that you and the Committee may wish to return to with Mr Simmonds? It is certainly true that the international community was surprised by the speed of the collapse in Mali in 2012-the coup d'état. There had been a great level of belief in the President of Mali. This was not a country in which the UK was particularly involved at the time for historical reasons. In the months leading up to the military action in January, which came from the terrorist uprising, there had been a prediction that something was going quite badly wrong, including in that Government. That was the reason for the appointment by the Prime Minister of his special representative and the reason for the international community coming together, including in New York in the Security Council before the end of 2012.

The actual uprising was in January 2013. It was a surprise, because there wasn’t the expectation that the terrorists would show themselves in the way they did. The situation escalated quickly, it was not predicted by the international community early enough and, in retrospect, some misjudgments were made by the international community about the viability of Mali. That was not really a process in which the UK was involved. We had just opened up an embassy in 2010.

Q197 Mr Baron: I take your point, but can I just bring us back to something the Minister said? One fully accepts that you cannot decide or predict today when a crisis becomes a crisis. Having said that, you can reduce the chances of being surprised. A common thread between Libya and Mali is that we seem to have been completely unsighted. Algeria’s Prime Minister Sellal said that the toppling of Gaddafi made insurgency and terrorism 50 times worse in the region.

Can I suggest to you-coming back to something the Chairman led off with-that there seems to a blind spot on many of these areas? Why is that the case? Are we talking here about a lack of resources, or within the resources envelope is there something more we can do? For example, we have heard about rotation between posts: you build up an element of expertise; you are then sent on to another desk, and you lose quite a bit of expertise in a region. Is that something the FCO should be looking at again in light of what has happened recently-and that is before we even get on to talking about soft power initiatives and cutting back the BBC Arabic Service at a time when the whole Arab Spring was blowing up? But focus just on the FCO, if you will. What can we do better that we are not doing at the moment, given the enormous lessons from Libya and Mali? I am afraid the answer, "We cannot predict an exact day when a crisis becomes a crisis" is not good enough.

Hugh Robertson: Well, I’m sorry if you don’t think it is, but Mali is a country in which we have not traditionally had huge oversight. I think you see that across the counter-terrorism brief, actually; one of the challenges with the new breed of terrorism that we have seen for the past decade is trying to get real oversight of exactly what is happening. This is very difficult stuff to read and they’re getting-I’m not sure that this Committee is the place to go into all the mechanisms that we use to read that; but it is very clear, if the Committee is able to get a briefing from the people who do this, that this is an increasingly difficult science. Mobile telephones-they’re getting wise to security on mobile telephones and all the other ways of communicating, so it is not easy to do that.

As the nature of the threat we face and the challenges we face changes, can we do more? Yes, we can. I think the Prime Minister’s initiative in earmarking this part of the world as one that needs extra attention is a recognition of that. So I suspect that the actual answer is somewhere between what you’re suggesting and probably what I tried to at the beginning.

Q198 Mr Baron: Very briefly, though, one accepts the Prime Minister’s initiative, but let us just talk about the FCO for a second. Is there anything more the FCO can do when it comes to postings, rotation, time spent in the region and building up expertise, including language expertise? I know the language school is opening, but I’m talking about this particular area-because whichever way we want to paint it, we were unsighted and consequences are flowing from that. What more can the FCO do, rather than there just being a promise that the Prime Minister will give this area a higher priority?

Hugh Robertson: There are a number of things we can do. I am sure that if Mr Simmonds were here, he would tell you that we opened an embassy in Mali in about 2010, so we are beginning to pick this up. Also, as you correctly mentioned, we are very sighted of the need to get more linguists properly trained. There is a process. We have 38 French and Arabic speakers across North and West Africa, and we have a further 19 staff currently enrolled in French classes and another 18 in Arabic classes. So there is a recognition that, as the threat changes, the skill set we need to meet that threat has therefore changed as well, and that work is being undertaken.

Q199 Sir John Stanley: As your near constituency neighbour, Minister, may I personally welcome you to your important new responsibilities?

Minister, I did not feel that you really addressed the central thrust of John Baron’s question, which was: has the Foreign Office actually learned anything from the intervention in Libya in particular? Would you agree there is a considerable parallel between the situation the Foreign Office faced in Libya and the situation it faced under the previous Government in Kosovo? In both, there was an imperative humanitarian need to intervene to prevent substantial bloodshed, and my own view is that we were right to respond to that imperative. But was it not wholly foreseeable in both instances that that military intervention would create a power vacuum and, unless international steps were taken to stabilise the country in question, something like near-anarchy would result, as indeed has happened in Libya?

Does the Foreign Office accept that, if we are going to make military interventions to address an imperative short-term humanitarian need, it is essential that we recognise that that may almost certainly involve a long-term commitment? That is the case in Kosovo, where NATO is still deployed, where there is a substantial EU effort and where we have achieved, over a substantial period of years, considerable and impressive long-term political stability. Does the Foreign Office feel that that is a lesson to be learned, or do you feel there are any lessons to be learned at all from what has happened in Libya?

Hugh Robertson: Thank you for your kind words of welcome. In the many years we have known each other, I don’t think I have ever been a quarter of an hour late for anything I have done with you.

Do I feel that the Foreign Office doesn’t have anything to learn? No, I absolutely do not feel that. I worked in Sarajevo, Bosnia for the Foreign Office for a couple of years in the mid-1990s, and I know from my time there that every time the Foreign Office is involved in operations of any sort there is a very considerable "lessons learned" process, which will undoubtedly be the case in Libya. I clearly wasn’t a Foreign Office Minister when those decisions were taken, but I would be absolutely amazed if they were not taken with a very hard-headed appreciation of the fact that it was an imperfect situation.

I suspect that people knew there was a very considerable danger of intervening in the way that we did, not least because, as you correctly said, it is a lesson we have learned on many previous occasions. I think everyone would have realised that, if we intervened in the way we did, there was a danger of this happening. You do what you can to mitigate it, but ultimately you have to decide whether the humanitarian and security situations at the time are more pressing than the longer-term risk that you very correctly identify. As always-and you will know this from your long ministerial career-it is a balance of judgment.

Q200 Ann Clwyd: I find it extraordinary that the international community allowed itself to be bamboozled in that way. I think the writing was clearly on the wall, and £128 million in aid is a lot of money. I wonder whether lessons were learned. I have heard many times in this Committee that lessons have been learned, but I wonder whether they have been. Are we reviewing our approach to other countries that might be in the same category as Mali, such as Ethiopia and Rwanda? I would have thought that, as a result of lessons being learned, we might be looking very closely at those two countries.

Tim Morris: I would draw a distinction between Mali and other instances. That was an area where terrorists were implanted, which is something we had known about for several years. As we mentioned a moment ago, the speed of the Government’s decay-the international community believed the Government had a strong hold on power-was a surprise. That process was monitored very closely by large embassies of partner countries that, in a sense, did not spot it. That was not us, because we were not there at the time, but it is a very interesting and very special case.

It is perhaps difficult to draw an exact parallel with what has happened in Mali, which is something we need to study closely. We are trying to analyse exactly what happened and why the terrorists were able to prosper, to implant themselves and to join criminal and other elements to perpetrate armed aggression. There are links between that and the experiences of other countries, but there is something very special about that. For some months we have tried to work with the international community and partners to think how we can build real stability in that part of the world-not just individual interventions, but working against some of the drivers of instability. That will be a project for a number of years, but there are considerable lessons to learn from it, and very special ones.

Simon Shercliff: Our interest in Mali was very much sparked by the growth of AQIM and the terrorist problem in Mali. While it was growing dramatically from 2009 up until last year, it was not directed at us as such, but it was still a big phenomenon; it was growing very quickly. As the earlier conversation pointed out, we did not have a large footprint in the country-there wasn’t an awful lot of UK interest inside Mali itself-so our work, which is now being moved forward quicker by the Prime Minister’s G8 agenda, was very much to try to join up with other countries that did have greater footprints in the region, such as France in Mali and other countries throughout this bit of North-West Africa, so that we could share our interests and share the burden of doing something about it. In terms of the Mali question you raised, at the time, what was really bothering us about North-West Africa actually wasn’t directed at us.

Q201 Ann Clwyd: DFID has told us that it has two Sahel-based staff in the area. Given the amount of aid that is being disbursed, that is a very small number of staff, I would have thought, to supervise the use of that aid.

Tim Morris: This is for DFID to say, but it is not a bilateral programme; the investments being made are going through multilateral agencies. The figure of two has been an increase from zero very recently, but you are right: it is looking at how it can best monitor the disbursement of that aid, which is itself a part of a huge commitment. The European Commission has announced €5 billion in the proposed EDF 11, coming down the track, for the Sahel countries, so there are some very substantial resources going into the region. But you are absolutely right with those figures.

Q202 Chair: Minister, I’m just going to interrupt with an admin point. You said that you could go on beyond half-past 5. So that you can plan your diary and colleagues here can plan theirs as well, are you happy to stay here until 6?

Hugh Robertson: Yes. I think that’s the least I can do in the circumstances.

Q203 Chair: Thank you. We will draw stumps at 6 and see where we have got to.

Continuing on the DFID point, we have had evidence that one of the root causes of the problems is unsustainable population growth in the region. There are now, in the Sahel, hundreds of millions of young men and women living in an economic wasteland with no economic prospects whatever. Whereas DFID takes this seriously, there doesn’t seem to be much sign that the Foreign Office has addressed this point. Has the Sahel Task Force assessed the impact of population growth?

Tim Morris: It is a huge factor. Let me try to describe the way we are trying to process that, because we do not, in the Foreign Office, have a programme about coping with demography. What we are trying to look forward to or to analyse in the future is the scale of the potential problem and how the very fact of demographic change is going to put further pressure on migration and illegal migration-how it itself risks being a source of instability in the region. It is an immensely serious factor among a number of factors. It links, of course, into the economic development agenda and the huge task there is in the region to provide economic futures for the people of the region. Put simply, we very much have it on our minds and see it as a contributory factor to the risks developing in the region.

Q204 Chair: You mention Government policy. You will, of course, recall that last year the Prime Minister addressed a summit on population growth. It is very much Government policy at the moment. You also mentioned the migratory patterns. There is now fairly strong evidence that these people are beginning to walk-they are walking across the Sahara desert, coming into the North African countries, and the boat that sank off Lampedusa is arguably just the tip of the iceberg. Do you consider this is a risk, which you should pay greater consideration to?

Hugh Robertson: It is a risk that is going to warrant greater consideration. There is an EU taskforce, at the moment, on the Mediterranean, that has just been formed up. It is due to report to the Home Affairs Council in early December, around the 5th or the 6th, and will then form a set of actions, we hope, for the presidency thereafter. So absolutely it is very much an emerging issue, and one that we take seriously.

Q205 Chair: What is the policy likely to be? Is it to try to resist migration, or is it how to cope with migration-and do you work with the Home Office on this?

Hugh Robertson: We do, and I don’t yet know the answer to that question, because the policy is still undetermined.

Q206 Chair: It has not been decided yet.

Hugh Robertson: It has not yet been decided, no. It is due to come up at the joint Home Affairs Council on 5 and 6 December, and the presidency will report back to the European Council on 19 and 20 December.

Q207 Chair: Perhaps you could, as soon as possible after that, let us have a note in answer to the question of which way the policy is going.

Hugh Robertson: I will absolutely do that, and will undertake to do it more promptly than I made my appearance today.

Chair: I think you have apologised enough now.

Samantha Job: There are some aspects of the migration issue that we perhaps can comment on. One is that we are working with some of the countries in North Africa on economic opportunities for the growing population, to encourage regional co-operation economically. That is a big challenge in this part of the world. We want there to be social and economic opportunities for those populations, so that they do not move, but also so that they are not prone to being talked into a different route, shall we say, and a radicalisation-type agenda.

Specifically on Libya, which is the situation where Lampedusa came from, we are working through the EU-the Border Assistance Mission-and with the Libyans, bilaterally, to help them with some of the border challenges. The No. 2 in the EU Border Assistance Mission is a Brit and there are three other Brits in that team as well, so we are working with them bilaterally on their specific issues, as well as generally on border issues across the region.

Q208 Chair: I am pleased to hear that, but would you agree that the problem does not lie just in how to handle it in the port in Libya, in Tripoli? It is way back in the Sahel, the origin of the problem.

The diaspora, when it gets here: is there any sign that anyone has picked up that this is causing problems by their bringing their culture here into the UK?

Hugh Robertson: Are you asking about that in terms of security?

Q209 Chair: Yes, and from a CT point of view.

Hugh Robertson: I think it is fair to say at the moment that the bigger worry is what is happening in Syria. At this precise moment, there is no sense or intelligence to suggest that what is happening in West and North Africa is about to pose a direct security risk to this country; but it is fair to say that we remain extremely vigilant on it. That is not to say that if at some stage in the future this goes the wrong way, that might not be the case-but it isn’t currently.

Q210 Chair: I gather some of the migrants in the Lampedusa boat were from Somalia, which, if it hasn’t come across your radar, is going to do so pretty soon.

Simon Shercliff: There is a much greater and longer-running problem of the Somalian diaspora here in the UK, of course, as there has been with Afghanistan and Pakistan over the years. In terms of the problem that you have just highlighted, there is a reality that we deal with in those two parts of the world in particular. There is a sharp, urgent increase in problems, as the Minister referred to, with a Syrian-related diaspora, but as yet there has been no evidence that we have come across of individuals who are natives of the North-West African region turning themselves into a diaspora-related problem here in the UK.

Chair: Fair enough. Let us hope it stays that way.

Samantha Job: One of the things that we are talking about to the countries of North Africa bilaterally is the risk to them of their nationals being radicalised or going to Syria and then coming back. Again, they are not targeting the UK, but the Committee is looking at stability in the region, and that is something that we are very alive to as well.

Q211 Sandra Osborne: There are numerous terrorist groups in North and West Africa, and in your submission you say that they are not capable of posing a threat to or taking action against the UK at the moment. Can you expand on that? Is it that they are incapable or do they just not see the UK as a target?

Hugh Robertson: I will set the scene and then hand over to Simon Shercliff. There are a number of terrorist groups active in the region, and you will no doubt have seen lists of them in the course of this inquiry. As we said in answer to the previous question, our assessment at the moment is not that these are not serious and capable groups-clearly they are-but their activities are, at the moment, more likely to be confined to the area that you are investigating, rather than them looking to export terrorism to the United Kingdom, where the main threat at the moment comes from Syria. Simon may want to add to that.

Simon Shercliff: That is spot on. The way in which we word the CONTEST strategy talks about the direct threat to the UK and the threat to UK interests. What we have seen in North-West Africa is very much the latter-a real threat to UK interests that has manifested itself, for example, in the In Amenas attack and also unfortunately in a few cases of British citizens being kidnapped in that region once they are there. That is clear-UK interests are under threat while they are out there in the region. But, as the Minister said and with the same caveat as my last answer, so far we have not seen anything that gives rise to concern that that is being exported to direct attack here in this country.

Q212 Sandra Osborne: In relation to Mali, there seems to be some evidence that this has provided an opportunity for these groups to link up more often than they did in the past, and we know that Boko Haram, for example, was originally purely an internal group, but they have taken more of an interest internationally in terms of links with al-Qaeda. If there was evidence of that, would you change your assessment?

Hugh Robertson: Perhaps I might give that a bit of context. I remember when I was a young soldier in Northern Ireland in the mid to late ’80s, as part of the training, they used to take you into the whole creation of a terror network across Europe, and that was at a time when there were very definite links between many of the European terror groups-it was when Sir John Stanley was a Minister, I think.

The concept of a terror network in the way that you are talking about is, in itself, not new. The way that they do it clearly evolves as the years go by. Frankly, in a sense, it would be surprising if that were not happening. That might almost be as worrying as the fact that we know that it is.

These are quite fluid organisations. Some of them grow and the threat increases, and others recede. It is a process in constant flux and in any event people talk about al-Qaeda as a franchise operation at the best of times. It is absolutely inevitable both that the capabilities of these various groups will change and that their ability to co-operate and integrate with each other will change-at some times, they will be closer together and at others they will be further apart.

The critical thing is to come back to the message that we gave you a few moments ago-at this precise moment in time, we do not believe that that capability provides a threat to the UK mainland. That is not to say that in future it may not develop in that way: let us hope it doesn’t.

Simon Shercliff: As a rider to that, I should add that we frequently talk about the likes of al-Qaeda, the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram-they are familiar terms now. In 2009, they were not part of the lexicon here: then we talked a lot about al-Qaeda in the FATA in Pakistan and in the Arabian peninsula. This is an example of what the Minister was saying-it fluctuates a lot over quite short periods of time.

Q213 Sandra Osborne: Also there is an increase in mosques and madrassahs in this area, which are teaching radical forms of Islam. Do you have any idea where the money is coming from to fund these? Is it from individuals or certain Governments? Do you have concerns that some of the jihadist groups are being bankrolled by certain individuals or Governments?

Hugh Robertson: Let me start by saying that it is a very good question. One of the reasons why the initiative on kidnap for ransom was picked up by the Prime Minister as a key thing to come out of last year’s G8 was a perception that al-Qaeda had benefited from that particular strand to the tune of about £40 million. That is one form of funding, and that funding is not being used for aid and educational development in that part of the world; it is being used in particular to radicalise young men.

I suspect that lying behind your question is the recognition that there are regimes that, if they are not funding this directly, are funding it through proxies. Nobody should be in any doubt at all that many of these groups are relatively well financed by those sorts of activities and the proceeds of crime, as well as the other things that happen in a sparsely populated and largely lawless region.

Q214 Sandra Osborne: So what can the Government do about it?

Hugh Robertson: A very good start is what the Prime Minister did at the G8 summit, which was to try to get international agreement not to pay kidnap for ransom demands. I think we were all enormously encouraged that that was one of the outputs of Lough Erne. Both here and everywhere else, I urge everyone who signed up to that to keep to it. It is not in anyone’s interest to break the consortium.

Q215 Mr Baron: May I put the focus a little more on development aid and the battle for hearts and minds in the region? It feels as though there is a bit of a soft power battle going on here, and I am not sure that the West has the upper hand at the moment. What work is the FCO doing on tracking extremist groups in the region? We have had a DFID official say to us that that is now the responsibility, as far as they are concerned, of the FCO. What work is being done on the efficacy of the aid going in?

A pattern seems to be developing where a lot of these extremist groups are not just preaching, but providing services that the state is failing to provide, and that is a powerful incentive to listen to what they have to say. We can either try to close these centres down, whether they are mosques, madrassahs or whatever, or we have to be more clever and spend the money more wisely, competing and hitting hard where we see we can get value for money in getting our message across.

What work has the FCO done on that, and what work will it do to counteract this powerful combination of extremist teaching linked to the provision of services, which for many countries simply does not exist at ground level?

Simon Shercliff: The problem, of course, is not unique to North-West Africa and is fairly standard. We look at failed states, or safe havens, as part of the old lexicon-

Q216 Mr Baron: Sure. But our Report is on this region.

Simon Shercliff: Sure. Learning from previous experience, we have started to talk about our holistic effort in North-West Africa-this is across Government and not just the FCO-where all of our attention has, frankly, been piqued by terrorism and the kidnap problem, which the Minister outlined. The solution is definitely not a uniquely counter-terrorism solution set; it is the full range of soft power, as you put it, going right across the spectrum. It is absolutely paramount that we are joined up properly with DFID in looking at the development and economic side.

On the extremism side, we first need to understand the problem. As we have been talking about hitherto, it is not a part of the world in which we have great long deep roots. We, along with the French, the Americans and other allies, have put an awful lot of effort over the past few years into getting to grips with the nature of the problem, where the extremism is being preached and how the radicalisation is happening.

Then, once we are confident about what it is we are dealing with, it becomes a burden-sharing exercise: working out which country or which partner country in the region, or which western country ally, is best placed to do something about it. For us, we would be working quite closely in Nigeria, for example, with the Nigerian Government on a holistic governmental countering-violent-extremism strategy.

Q217 Mr Baron: When we visited AFRICOM in Stuttgart, as you would expect, the Americans gave us that line about getting to know the area and all the rest of it. They described it, quite graphically, as having to drain the swamp, shooting the crocodiles closest to the boat first. We all know what that means, but their comment was that while we all appreciate the problem in trying to drain the swamp, on the medium to long-term basis, to take away the support for these extremists at ground level-whether through relief of poverty or whatever-there does not seem to be much co-ordination between Governments or foreign Ministries.

Even within the FCO, there was talk that there was not a clear view. We vaguely know what the issue is, but no concrete steps are in place. That brings me back to my earlier question on the specific measures taking place within the FCO. There is very little evidence of that. Can you put our minds at rest?

Tim Morris: May I explain something of what we are doing at the moment? We would hope to keep your Committee in close touch with this as we move forward. We are trying to design an approach to North and West Africa, which we flagged up in the original papers which we gave to the Committee, that goes very much to the heart of what you and my colleague said: to address instability and insecurity, we need not just to take security measures, but to build.

The point about co-ordination is absolutely vital. What has happened so far in the Sahel has been a lack of co-ordination and the expenditure of vast sums of money with, to put it politely, fairly limited results. We absolutely agree with the objective you outlined. If people are building up alternative governance systems, what we need to do, as the international community, in support of the region-because we cannot impose that from outside-is build up governance and state institutions so that there is a functioning alternative in what is, after all, a region where Islam is very moderate; the introduction of this extremism is a completely alien concept. There needs to be a slow and well co-ordinated process of building up.

On what we are actually doing, there is a strategic approach across the Ministries here. Our taskforce co-ordinates Whitehall on this, particularly with DFID, the Security Committee, the MOD and the Home Office family. We are looking at three main pillars-there are always three main pillars, I know-of security and the particular interventions we can do under a security pillar, state-building and resilience. When you get to the resilience end of the spectrum, this is pure development: the question of reinforcing the region so that it can withstand future shocks, whether those are natural disasters or conflict disasters. But the state-building core is crucial.

The point about that is that we need to position ourselves where we are participating in the international debate and helping design the interventions. I think we feel that if we rush too quickly into solutions, we will be doing them on our own. There could be a quite limited number of fellow partners, as only a quite limited number of countries are active on this theme-North European countries, for example-where we can tie up and get some thinking and planning into that system and move forward.

There is one particular opportunity for this, which is the development of a UN integrated strategy for the Sahel. That has been announced by the UN Secretary-General, and the headlines and the main themes are set out. It is quite well co-ordinated with the World Bank and the European Union and, as you know, the UN Secretary-General has just been in the region. We see that as an opportunity to feed in thinking and analysis to try to get the rationale around those interventions right.

We know that if we select just one subject to go in on-some aspect of state building-it may or may not be successful, but it will be operating on its own. There needs to be a careful and very serious process of harnessing the substantial funds that are going into the region, mainly through multilateral organisations, in some really powerful interventions.

Hugh Robertson: There is one final thing that will help in the understanding of that. I will be brief. Clearly, a lot of work goes on with our allies, the EU and the UN. I do not know whether you have come across the Global Counterterrorism Forum, which was created in September 2011 by the US. It has 31 different members, including all the G8. It exists precisely to tackle these issues. Encouragingly, the Sahel working group, which has been a part of this, is chaired by Canada and, crucially, Algeria. Quite a lot of this work is going on.

Q218 Mr Roy: Minister, in the drugs trade in West Africa, the street value of a tonne of cocaine exceeds the military budget of most West African countries, and it is estimated that 18 tonnes of cocaine reach that area. The FCO submission concedes that it has no idea about the actual routes used by the criminals, even though 18 tonnes is a pretty substantial weight of drugs.

The one thing we do know is that most of it comes in by sea, especially to Guinea Bissau. We heard from Nigeria that there was a great deal of worry that not enough was being done by the international community to stop the drugs landing in the first place. What would you say to those people who say that the international community is not doing enough. What can it do?

Tim Morris: May I try to answer that?

Q219 Chair: Mr Morris, may I ask you to keep your answer short?

Tim Morris: Part of the answer lies in better international co-operation. A lot of our efforts are in working with the UN and our European partners to strengthen the enforcement operations in that part of the world. There are still analytical gaps. Evidence exists about where some of the routes are, but it remains a considerable task. We have that as one of our main activities, which we are discussing with our Home Office colleagues.

Hugh Robertson: To give you a sense of the flavour behind this, when I had my initial briefing-I have only had one thus far on the Sahel region-one of the first things I was told was that this remains an area with multifarious trade routes going both East-West and West-West, North-South and South-North. You are absolutely right-it is an area of very considerable criminality, much of it driven by drugs. Guinea Bissau is not a state in a good state of repair, and there is a lot of work to be done on that. There is no doubt that that is funding terrorism, extremism and so on.

Samantha Job: Very quickly, one specific thing we have commissioned and are about to get the result on is a joint analysis of conflict and instability across the region, which is looking exactly at routes and how goods, people and arms are moved across the region. We want to get our analysis right as we put our policies in place.

Q220 Mr Roy: Minister, on hostage taking-you will not need a briefing on this one-you will know as a politician that the declaration at the G8 summit at Lough Erne earlier this year included a statement that said unequivocally that it rejected paying off ransoms to terrorists. Are you confident that all G8 members are adhering to that commitment? If you are not, what do you propose to do about it?

Hugh Robertson: The answer to your question is that all members of the G8 signed up to the declaration. We would, of course, expect that all our international partners would keep their obligations as signed up at a G8 summit. If you might be asking that question in reference to events in the last week or so, the French have indeed stated that they did not pay any ransom to seal the release of those hostages.

Q221 Mr Roy: You will bear Lough Erne in mind, Minister?

Hugh Robertson: I can absolutely give you that assurance. As you might have guessed from the 10 years that I spent in the Army, I really do not believe that paying hostage money to terrorists does anything other than encourage them to do it time and again. The money they receive is simply used to fund more terrorism and more extremism. If you are asking me whether I will be urging everyone to whom I speak to adhere to the agreements made at Lough Erne, the answer is that, absolutely, I will.

Q222 Chair: The Western Sahel is a region with a lot of unstable countries, but two countries that are stable are Algeria and Morocco, yet they do not talk to each other because of a disagreement about Western Sahara, which is a regional political grievance. Add to that the Tuareg in Mali and the current regional disputes in Nigeria, and there is a lot that can be done to stabilise the area, particularly the Western Sahara, by brokering resolutions to some of those disagreements.

Hugh Robertson: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. As I suspect you know better than me, Ambassador Ross is active in the region at the moment. He is in the process of trying to bring about the basis for a political agreement that will lead to a settlement on Western Sahara. We support his activities 100%, and we will be giving him every assistance that he needs.

Q223 Chair: I am encouraged by that answer. I hope there will be a similar drive on some of the other regional differences, even though they are outside your particular area of responsibility.

I do not know whether you saw reports of an interview with the Chief of the Defence Staff that was published in The Times on Monday last week. He spoke about a new role for the Army in training armies in various countries across the region. Was he flying a kite? Was he authorised? Is it a new policy? If it is a new policy, wouldn’t it be better made at the Dispatch Box by the Secretary of State for Defence, rather than in the columns of The Times?

Hugh Robertson: I have not read the article myself, but we have discussed it extensively in the office. I happen to know the new Chief of the Defence Staff. His remarks should be seen in the context of a number of things. First, the top end of the Ministry of Defence is quite exercised by what happens to the armed forces post-Afghanistan. There has clearly been a decade or so of deployment, and now they are coming home. There is always a worry that it is not good for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to sit around at home underemployed. Many of the best brains at the top of the Ministry of Defence are looking at how we might use the armed forces in the years ahead.

Secondly, the British armed forces have an unparalleled reputation for excellence in training. You only have to look at the reputation that our officer training colleges, the higher command and staff course and other things enjoy to realise the benefit that other countries can gain from all of that.

Thirdly, of course, the Chief of the Defence Staff is not flying a kite at all. We are already doing an enormous amount of that work. As you are very well aware, there are a number of Libyan soldiers, who will form part of the basis of the new Libyan armed forces, who we hope to train at Bassingbourn in the early part of next year. I have just come back from the Middle East, and it is clear that our security integration with countries such as Jordan and many others across the region, where we provide expertise for training and other things, is long-established and very deep.

If you are asking me whether, in the post-Afghanistan period when there will be more capacity in the armed services, I see us using them to provide the training expertise and, let’s face it, standards that we all associate with the British armed forces to better military and security capabilities in the region, assuming the conditions are right, the answer is that, absolutely, I do.

Q224 Chair: We are well aware of a small amount of help, but we are not aware of a large amount of help. Is it FCO policy to expand the effort there?

Hugh Robertson: I am going to do the trick of slightly rephrasing your question. Is it FCO policy that, where appropriate, we should use our armed forces to help build capacity in countries in North and West Africa? Yes, it is. Sierra Leone does not lie in my area of responsibility-it is part of Mr Simmonds’s brief-but that is a place in which we have done this successfully. We are in the process of doing it in Libya. Where the conditions are right I can see us doing more of it in the future. Does that answer your question?

Q225 Chair: It does. I realise the question was not very refined. What I am pressing at is, what is the plan? You talk about FCO policy, and we talk about Government policy.

Hugh Robertson: Absolutely-fair enough. Sorry for causing any confusion. The FCO policy is to carry out our commitments in the countries to which we have given them, most notably Libya. Do we have plans to further expand it beyond that at this precise moment as I sit here being interviewed by you? No, we don’t. Do I foresee that that might happen at some stage in the future? Yes, I do.

Q226 Chair: Thank you. Perhaps we ought to write to the Secretary of State for Defence about that. Do you think that Operation Serval in Mali was a good example of how joint co-operation can quickly bring about a resolution to regional conflicts?

Hugh Robertson: Yes, I do. I am not an expert in the operation itself, because I have only had a month and Mali is not one of my countries. It was an operation that the French led because of their expertise and history in the area. Absolutely, the role we played in supporting them was the right thing to do.

Q227 Mark Hendrick: Could you give us a report on the EU training mission in Mali? Is 15 months long enough to turn the Malian army into an effective fighting force? Do you anticipate the French army having to stay longer than intended in Mali, and do you think the UK will be needed there again at any time in the future?

Tim Morris: This subject is being discussed at the moment, so I can’t definitively say. However, it is fair to say that we fully expect one further rotation. Our Ministers are insistent on the need for an exit strategy, because without one the training mission in Mali could stay there for a considerable period of time. The need will remain, and there is a discussion about how to transition the mission to something that is more involved in training and inspiring good training-training trainers-than the current format. But the presence of European troops on the ground has been seen as a successful stabilisation measure.

Q228 Mark Hendrick: It has been successful while they have been there on the ground, but the French are pulling out gradually and our presence was quite minimal. EUTM is working to instil respect for human rights in the Malian army. At the same time, the leaders of last year’s coup appear to have been rewarded, rather than punished, for their actions, which include alleged human rights abuses. Do you think that undermines the good work of the EU training mission, and if so, can anything be done about it?

Tim Morris: Could I take up your first point? The British contribution to the training mission has been very significant. Although there were only 37 troops, they made a disproportionate contribution, and on the civilian side there is an adviser on preventing sexual violence.

On the point about rewarding the coup leaders, we see it as being the other way round. The coup leaders are now firmly out of the picture. There have been free and fair democratic elections for the president, and there are further legislative elections, as you know, coming up in a few weeks’ time. We believe the process is moving in the right direction, but it is a very fragile state that will need a lot of help. I should also name-check the UN mission, MINUSMA.

Q229 Mark Hendrick: They have come in afterwards. Are you referring to the retribution in Bamako against some of those involved in the coup when you say it is the other way round?

Tim Morris: There has been considerable confusion within the political establishment in Mali in terms of turning against the coup leaders. That is undoubtedly the case. They are sidelining them, we hope.

Q230 Mark Hendrick: So would you say that the newly formed General Sanogo is now on the back foot?

Tim Morris: Yes.

Q231 Sir John Stanley: At the recent autumn plenary of the NATO parliamentary assembly, in the defence committee we had a presentation from the French three-star general who was in command in Mali. To me, the most striking feature of his presentation was the photographs that he showed as to what the French troops found in the areas where they had overrun, eventually, the militant insurgents. He showed their enormous arms dumps and enormous degree of military sophistication, logistical back-up and so on. I put it to you: is not one of the key lessons to be learned, by the British Government, the French Government, the American Government and others, that we are in danger of persistently underestimating not only the tenacity of these militant insurgents but their military capability and the sophistication of their military operation?

Hugh Robertson: The answer to that, Sir John, is yes. As an example, during the initial briefing I had on Libya, I think I was told that there were reckoned to be some 400 arms dumps around Libya, of which the Government has control of about 25%. Those are not small quantities of arms and munitions. You add to that the ability of insurgents, through kidnap for ransom and other things, to raise sums of money like £40 million, and in a market that is over-supplied where there is a lot of kit available you can absolutely see the dangers that you have graphically outlined.

I have to say-it gives me no particular pleasure to say this-that I would have been much more surprised if you had said the opposite, namely that the general had been surprised at how badly equipped they were. I would have expected, given the conditions that we know exist in that part of the world, for them to be very well equipped and very well resourced.

That is not a new problem; I remember when I was a soldier working with the Foreign Office in Bosnia in 1994, we were constantly surprised by both the quality of the weaponry and the sheer quantities of it that were flowing through very quickly. Once the Americans started illicitly supplying the Bosnian Muslims, you could very quickly see that the mujaheddin brigades based around Mostar got a lot of brand new equipment that, I dare say, did not stay in Bosnia or get destroyed at the end of that conflict.

Q232 Mr Roy: Minister, on new multilateral and regional relationships, your written submission refers to the FCO being in the process of formulating a new Government approach to North and West Africa that "transcends the standard bilateral approach". Can you outline for the Committee what you mean by that?

Tim Morris: What we are trying to express is that everything we will be trying to do in this region will be done with partners and it will be done through multilateral organisations. That is not just a reflection of resource and our own history; it is a reflection of the complexity of the problems, and the risks there are that if the international community goes in with different interventions, it will cause confusion and actual damage.

Q233 Mr Roy: I understand that, but who will be the key partners?

Tim Morris: To start with, the countries of the region and the regional organisations, which themselves are fractured and need a lot of support, ECOWAS, the Arab Maghreb Union, the United Nations and the big IFIs, particularly the World Bank, which needs to work closely together with the United Nations. In terms of outside allies of ours, we would certainly say that we were working closely with the French, the Americans and Canadians and a group of North European countries who have quite a deep historical involvement in the Sahel, and who have done projects-countries like Germany, the Danes and the Dutch, who have carried out projects for a number of years and who are quite familiar with the way the politics work.

Q234 Mr Roy: But you are confident that, even though those people have been there for many years, this will be a new approach.

Tim Morris: Yes, we have that discussion with them. That discussion is going on with them, and the United Nations strategy should be a rallying point for them.

Q235 Mr Roy: My last question is on border security. The Committee has been told that one of the most practical things that the United Kingdom or the EU could do to address the instability is to help poor Sahelian countries to manage their land borders through training for border guards, for example, or the provision of digital technology. Would you agree with that?

Simon Shercliff: Absolutely. This is a core problem. The size of the problem is immense, obviously. It is a huge region. There are huge desertified borders, often not actually demarcated in any sensible way, and, as we mentioned earlier, ancient trade routes, used either for licit or illicit reasons, criss-cross the whole region. The context is that this is not an easy problem to crack. That said, there are the things that you mentioned-building up the capacities of partner countries in the region to have the basics in border control systems, including digital controls, databases of people tracking back and forth, basic scanning equipment, and that sort of thing. We are involved with that bilaterally and also through the Global Counterterrorism Forum that the Minister mentioned.

Q236 Mr Roy: Specifically on border training and digital technology, for example, could that be provided within a development aid package? Is that how you see that being given-in a package?

Simon Shercliff: We are going to have to get back to you on that, if you don’t mind.

Mr Roy: That’s fine. I understand.

Hugh Robertson: From what I know-I am going to the recesses of my mind-quite a lot of the technology that you use to do this is quite complicated too. Therefore, I do not know off the top of my head whether we can export that technology, even before we get into the question of whether we do. Indeed, in terms of beam technology-people cutting a beam, and all the rest of the technology that is used to do this sort of work-I am not quite sure where that is. Rather than having a guess, I think the best thing is to find out and write to you.

Samantha Job: What we can say is that we are working bilaterally with the countries affected on border security, and encouraging them to work with each other. Tunisia and Algeria are co-operating, which is a new development and a welcome one. We have done a lot in Libya on border security and will continue to do so. We actually have an embedded border security adviser. We have aviation security projects in more than one of the countries in the region. We have a regional aviation security adviser, a regional conflicts adviser, and a regional CT adviser.

Q237 Mr Roy: But presumably the poorer countries cannot afford it. That is the bottom line.

Samantha Job: But some of it is technical and, as you say, some of it is equipment.

Chair: And then, of course, there is the arms export control aspect. Last question-Andrew Rosindell.

Andrew Rosindell: I apologise for my lateness in attending.

Hugh Robertson: There is no need to worry.

Q238 Andrew Rosindell: I would like to talk about the situation with the Nigerian military. We went to Abuja as part of our visit there in September and met General Bello, who told us about Boko Haram and the appalling atrocities that are taking place in that country. One of the things that we picked up was the disappointment from Nigeria, which is a Commonwealth country and one with which we have had many years of close connections, that we have not been able to assist them very much over this appalling issue. Will the Minister please explain to the Committee why we cannot do more? Whatever hurdles there may be, surely it is better that we should help Nigeria defeat these appalling people and the terrorism that is going on in that country than it is to be too hung up on every detail of human rights.

Simon Shercliff: Yes, you are absolutely right. Priority No. 1 here is to help the Nigerians defeat this raging insurgency that is going on inside their own borders, simply because we have a direct UK national security risk that we need to manage there. So that interest is very clear, but as the Foreign Secretary laid out in his speech of 14 February this year on countering terrorism overseas, what we cannot do, and cannot afford to do as one of the leading proponents of this, is to blindly go into these alliances with countries that are wilfully and openly transgressing international human rights norms. That is something that our democracy doesn’t stand for.

We cannot afford to be, for example, handing over intelligence on Nigerian terrorists for the Nigerians then to go and find the people and hang them up by their toenails. That would not wash in our system; we hold ourselves to higher standards than that. So we assist the Nigerians to go round the place and find the terrorists, because that is very much in our national interest, and at the same time-from the top level of political exhortation to the practical capacity building level-we continually exhort them to do their work while maintaining international standards of human rights. You can’t do one without the other.

Q239Andrew Rosindell: Could I ask the Minister this: does he think that the defeat of global terrorism, which has no respect whatsoever for any form of human rights, takes lesser priority than actually upholding every idealistic view of what human rights ought to be? We have talked about "hanging up by toenails", but when you’re defeating terrorism should we not understand that sometimes you have to take very firm action to fight these people to defeat them?

Hugh Robertson: Just to give a bit of context, you were looking at me slightly hopefully during the answer to the last question-

Q240

Andrew Rosindell: It is really a political question.

Hugh Robertson: Indeed, and I should probably explain that I am not the Minister for Nigeria. I do the North Africa bit and my colleague Mark Simmonds does-

Chair: Mark Simmonds is coming back.

Hugh Robertson: So, without sticking him right in the frame, you will have the opportunity to ask him that question when he comes back in front of you.

However, the question that you have just posed is a very fair one, and I answer it from the perspective-as much as anything-not of being a Foreign Office Minister at the moment but of having been a soldier who took part in counter-terrorism operations in the 10 years that I was in the Army. You are right-we are dealing, particularly these days, with a group of people who have an extraordinarily extreme ideology and who wish to destroy the sort of society that we value very much in this country. If we defeat them by applying the same tactics to them as they apply to everybody else, that very quickly makes the problem come back in some other form. So, by far the best way of dealing with them is, yes, to deal with them robustly, but to deal with them by using the rules and the norms that we accept in this country.

I think that we have seen time and time again that as soon as we lower our standards and resort to lesser standards in terms of defeating terrorism, it very quickly comes back to bite us. So, in just the same way that it is totally unacceptable for a young Marine to shoot a terrorist in Afghanistan, it is absolutely unacceptable for us to deploy tactics in defeating terrorists that we would not expect of ourselves.

Chair: Minister, thank you very much. We have covered all the ground we wanted that is to do with you, so we won’t be recalling you, as it were, you’ll be relieved to hear. I also thank your colleagues-Ms Job, Mr Shercliff and Mr Morris, thank you very much indeed.

Hugh Robertson: Mr Chairman, may I just finish-apart from thanking my colleagues, as you have done, and indeed you-by apologising, once again? I’m afraid that I did get a message as we sat down on the Bench that you had put this sitting back until after the statement was over. I meant absolutely no offence. I can assure you that, as a Minister appearing in front of you for the first time, the very last thing that I wanted to do was to turn up late and annoy you all before I had even started. So, once again, my apologies.

Chair: Stuff happens. Thank you very much for coming.