Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
Mr Kees Klompenhouwer and Lieutenant-General David
Leakey
1 JULY 2008
Q320 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Or
the UN.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Or the UN
or coalitions. It is a national discretion. The UK are offenders.
Q321 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Are
they?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Good Lord,
yes.
Q322 Chairman: Use of helicopters
in Bosnia you sometimes cite. Non-UK personnel were apparently
not permitted to fly.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Yes. That
was to do with insurance and risks and things like that. (The
answer continued off the record)
Q323 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: The
interesting thing is that the UN suffered from this phenomenon
before anyone else because nobody else was on the piste at the
time. When NATO then started to act out of area they caught the
disease and now you have got the disease, but it is the same disease.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Yes.
Mr Klompenhouwer: All the caveats for
KFOR are now out of the way. They have worked for a long time
but they are now out of the way, so you can achieve something
if you keep on pushing.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: That is absolutely
true. When I was COM EUFOR, Yves de Kermabon was COM KFOR and
we used to get together and say, "Which Member State are
we going to beat up over which caveat?" and we would do a
concerted effort, particularly the Germans.
Lord Anderson of Swansea: I have one comment
and one question. General, there is vital interest in Chad, I
can understand why the French say so because if you read the French
newspapers it is all about Francophone Africa, that there is a
constituency for aid and development in the Netherlands, Ireland,
Finland and Sweden, there is not in Central Europe, so the terrain
is much more difficult. I can explain to my former constituents
about Afghanistan because they see drugs on the streets and terrorism,
but I would not be able to explain about Chad.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom: How about Sierra Leone?
Q324 Lord Anderson of Swansea: There
is the Commonwealth interest. At least one would have the start
of an argument, but I would not try to argue about Chad.
Mr Klompenhouwer: The Sudan maybe.
Q325 Chairman: Darfur.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: What is the
national interest in Darfur?
Q326 Chairman: Because of the things
they see on the television.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Is that a
national interest?
Q327 Lord Anderson of Swansea: There
is a group who would feel motivated by it, but Chad is relatively
marginal.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Can I just
come back to you a little bit. I agree that you can dress these
things up, the ethical interests and the humanitarian responsibility
we in the rich West have for Darfur and, therefore, Chad and so
on. That is fine until you try and force generate and then you
go to a minister and he says, "Yes, I have got it" and
the foreign minister here in Brussels gets it and he goes back
to the UK and speaks to the Chief of Defence and says, "Give
us a battalion or two" and the Chief of Defence says, "We
are fresh out of battalions", or "Fine, the battalions
are available, go to the Treasury and get more money out of the
contingency fund". I am sorry, but it is an entirely internal
domestic political problem about where the resources go: is it
to education, health, hospital, roads, or is it to extra operational
commitments abroad. This is the priority where the ESS has to
make this connection much stronger and get the ministers and heads
of state to sign up to that strength or ESDP is going to be a
paper tiger.
Q328 Lord Anderson of Swansea: But
ministers, planners, politicians, work within a certain context
and clearly the French context is much easier in terms of Francophone
Africa and there is an aid development context in Ireland, Sweden,
Finland even, which there is not in Central Europe.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Yes.
Q329 Chairman: The Poles have deployed
into Chad, have they not, relatively significantly?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Yes, a big
contingent.
Q330 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: I have
to say I think my constituents are different, what they wanted
was anything we did to be short, sharp and successful with minimum
casualties and bring the boys back. If you could achieve that
you would go anywhere.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: You have put
your finger on what Kees was hinting at before. We can go on doing
that sort of thing, Artemis, Congo, Chad for a year, EUPOL here
and so on, little sticking plasters, politically important symbols
and they do some good, they are sort of EU Médecins Sans
Frontie"res in the police domain or whatever it is. If that
is what we want to go on doing and that is the level of political
ambition, let us write that into the Security Strategy and say
that is what the level of ambition is, but we do have to think,
and it is a rather different point, what is the appetite for fixing
the problems. If we look back at the lessons now from what has
been happening in the international arena over the last 10 years—Iraq,
Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Darfur, Chad,
the Balkans—we have not fixed any of these problems. Even
the Balkans, which is on our back doorstep. 1995 was the Dayton
Peace Agreement and 13 years later we still have not fixed Bosnia.
Nine years later we have not fixed Kosovo. Iraq is going to be
a long time. Afghanistan we are in for the long haul. Why have
we not fixed these? I am not sure that the European Security Strategy,
unless it becomes an enormously long document, is the place for
this. It comes back to the level of ambition and our understanding
of the comprehensive approach.
Q331 Lord Anderson of Swansea: History.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: It is history.
The only way we have brought order and stability to a country
is through the comprehensive approach.
Q332 Chairman: This is really the
question I want to come on to in terms of how far the Security
Strategy ought not to be also considering how we do deal with
fragile states, fragile or failed, because in a sense this is
not just a question of ensuring security. If we think about Bosnia
it is also a question of governance and development. On the one
hand we say how wonderful it is that the EU has got this opportunity
for the comprehensive approach, it has got the holistic approach,
but the trouble is when one does come into this city things do
seem to operate in a series of stove pipes. Can the Security Strategy
help to ensure that one does create synergies and solutions to
what is probably going to be the risk of states imploding and
the instability that generates in the near future is likely to
be more of a problem than classical interstate conflicts?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: (The answer
began off the record) So far as ESDP and what the Europeans can
deliver in the unstable globe for the benefit of Europeans, I
am an absolute fan of what the Europeans can do. I was with NATO
in Bosnia and so on, so I know what NATO can do too, not in competition
but in complementarity. There are places where NATO cannot go,
will not be acceptable, are not acceptable, and the EU has a role
to play.
Q333 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Africa
is one of those places.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Africa and
the Middle East and perhaps the Caucasus. The critical thing is
what is the level of ambition: is it to fix fragile states or
just to put a sticking plaster on them? (The answer continued
off the record) When I came here I found exactly as you have described,
compartments of people doing their own thing, turf wars and egos,
exactly what you find in Whitehall, in fact, between the various
ministries and departments, and within the ministries. Do not
anybody criticise Brussels because it goes on in capitals just
as bad and it is just as bad. I have to tell you that here in
Brussels in the last 16 months it has changed out of all recognition.
The civ-mil cell is actually doing some civ-mil, the CPCC has
been set up and we have people working collaboratively. When I
went to Chad the Commission came with me. We have got joint missions
running now. These are small steps. (The answer continued off
the record)
Q334 Chairman: I would like to get
Mr Klompenhouwer to comment on some of this because what he has
been developing we would like to hear about because in a sense
your part of operations perhaps get rather less attention than
ESDP military missions.
Mr Klompenhouwer: It is less visible,
we do not have aircraft and tanks rolling through the landscape.
They did not come to us as units but as individuals, we have had
to form teams and do an operation which is mostly not very big,
so it is less visible. There is an upward slope, an upward line.
We are going from improvising as we go along to organising what
we are doing by the establishment of the CPCC which is able to
conduct operations and support operations in the field. We can
still improve on planning and there is work to do. We are able
to organise things better and organise operations which can have
more impact. The key to this is civ-civ co-operation, co-operation
between the civilian sides. Civ-mil is relatively unproblematic
in spite of the anti-magnetism that the General referred to. The
planning documents that we have use the same terminology, "OPLANs,
Con-Ops" and all these things, so there is a lot of methodology
which is similar. Civ-civ is quite an area and one challenge is
working with the Commission, which is very jealous of its prerogatives.
There was a court judgment lately, the ECOWAS judgment, which
was heavy in its consequences. At the working level, as the General
said, we find a lot of good, willing people who realise that when,
due to internal differences, our missions do not work that reputational
damage affects all of us, including Member States but also the
Commission and the Council. We have a common interest in anticipating
this sort of misery by working together and developing work programmes,
setting out the problems we need to tackle together and is there
any system change that we need to introduce in terms of bureaucratic
management, financial controls, procurement rules, framework contracts,
et cetera, because they are important, while respecting the competences
of one another. That is the line I try to take, to say we have
a job to do and competence is not what our job is, our job is
to put missions in the field and make them work and make Europe
have an impact there.
Q335 Chairman: Force generation is
as much of a problem, in fact more of a problem, for you because
you have to recruit individuals as distinct from recruiting units.
Mr Klompenhouwer: That is right. There
are steps that can be taken in order to improve that process.
Police procedures have been set up, the call for contributions,
which are somewhat comparable to the force generation processes
on the military side, but the weak part is the organisation in
the Member States because a request comes in at the ministry of
foreign affairs and then they have to mobilise other ministries.
There is a need for a co-ordinated mechanism at the national level
and nowadays in most Member States this has been established.
Some Member States have taken another step and said they are developing
a national strategy, for instance Finland and Sweden have developed
a national strategy. They have said, "Contributing to civil
ESDP missions is in our national interests because we are medium-sized
countries who can leverage our influence through the EU, so let
us make a strategy so we can contribute quality people but have
a good relative position within those missions and have some influence".
They are big contributors to our missions and very systematic
and well-prepared. They are well able to respond to these calls
for contributions. We are promoting the Security Strategy as a
counterpart measure to what we are doing here in Brussels.
Q336 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Can
I ask a question or two. Is what you are saying that countries
like Finland and Sweden that are doing this are basically carrying
an establishment in terms of judges, civil servants, whatever
it is, above what they need to staff their own national posts
so that they have people available to serve overseas in the same
way that the military establishments of every country carry a
surplus—not in Britain's case at the moment, of course,
but in most normal circumstances—which is available? That
is normal in the military but it is not normal at all in the civilian
area. These countries are doing that, but a lot of other countries
are not doing it.
Mr Klompenhouwer: That is exactly right.
It is a surplus, but also preparing the people in terms of training
and all of that.
Q337 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Secondly,
do you draw any lessons from or have any serious co-operation
with the UN which, of course, has been active in this civilian
field for quite a lot of years now and very active since the beginning
of the 1990s, in some cases with great success, like El Salvador,
Liberia now or Mozambique? Do you have a potential to train, say,
the African Union on the civil side if it gets into more multifaceted
peace operations, peace building and so on?
Mr Klompenhouwer: I must say these are
potential areas of growth, I agree with you, and both of them
are very important. In the field we have been working with the
UN a lot. The EUPM mission in Bosnia was a follow-on from the
UN police mission. In Kosovo we are also following on from what
the UN is doing and we are getting there. In Congo there is a
big UN operation that is ongoing. Our police mission that we have
there has also co-ordinated with UN efforts, but it is ad hoc.
I take your point that there is merit in exploring more structural
forms of co-operation and learning lessons. This is definitely
on my agenda. I arrived here just six weeks ago and I have a long
agenda of things that need to be done, and this is one of them.
I had not dared consider this option simply for capacity reasons.
We have eight missions now, I have to focus on eight different
theatres varying from Afghanistan to Kosovo, Bosnia, Guinea-Bissau,
Congo. There is a hesitation to take on new commitments in the
organisational field, but you have a point that the African Union
could be something to look at but, there again, I would look at
the military and see what experience they have—
Q338 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: It
has a military dimension as well.
Mr Klompenhouwer: ---in working with
the African Union.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: They have less problem
of force generation for military personnel than they have in force
generation for civilians, which is virtually zero I should think.
Q339 Lord Anderson of Swansea: What
you said about Finland and Sweden in terms of the additional capacity,
the possibility of training, is that feasible as a model for other
countries? Presumably they have a register, a list of people who
may be available. Is there a training course? Is that something
one might look at?
Mr Klompenhouwer: I would hope so. It
is a question of surplus and training, which is also very important.
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