Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Bruce of Bennachie and Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford

Thursday 17th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

The indulgence of the House has allowed the Committee to bring two reports for debate, and we are grateful for that. Indeed, under the new procedure we had the advantage of briefly presenting the report on Afghanistan in the main Chamber, which enabled us to have a good, topical exchange. Therefore, I do not wish to detain the Committee by repeating too much of what was said; instead, I want to focus on points of difference and points of commonality between the Committee and the Government.

Obviously, the most contentious thing we said in our report was that the Department for International Development’s unique mandate in Afghanistan of promoting a viable state, which it was given by the National Security Committee, was—I think this is the best way to express it—unrealistically ambitious. I have read the Government’s response, and I did not expect them necessarily to accept what we said, but we thought it was important to raise the issue. Of course we, too, would like Afghanistan to be a viable state. After all the trouble that the people of Afghanistan have been through, they deserve a viable state, and anything the UK Government can do to contribute to that is right, proper and responsible, so I hope we have agreement on that.

Our concern, however, was that there was an over-extended idea of what DFID, specifically, was capable of achieving. That took us away from the fact that DFID is good at promoting development, in the sense of better governance, which is a contribution towards a viable state; encouraging livelihoods; delivering education and health; and generally improving quality of life. In a situation that will be very uncertain and unpredictable post-2014, we felt it would perhaps be better to make that DFID’s priority. In any case, the Government have mandated DFID to do that, and I quite understand that it will say, “That is our responsibility. That is what we want to do, and we will say how.” However, I hope the Minister will understand that our comments were meant in the spirit not only of saying, “Let’s get hold of what’s possible,” but of establishing what the real priorities should be, given what DFID can realistically do, rather than getting ourselves too hung up on aspirations that require many more players—indeed, the entire international community and all the players in Afghanistan—to deliver.

That said, the Committee decided it was important to revisit the situation in Afghanistan to look beyond the date when the engagement of combat troops comes to an end at the end of 2014. The Committee had visited Afghanistan five years before; the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) was on that visit, and I obviously went on both visits. The visit this time took place between 17 and 21 June 2012. We recorded that we were inhibited by the security situation from getting as deeply into development projects as we would have liked. Nevertheless, we had a useful visit, and we had the opportunity to engage with a number of important players.

Once we had analysed the situation, we felt there was a second significant comment to make. It was impressed on us time and again that the almost defining dilemma in Afghanistan—indeed, the way we could articulate the progress that had been, and continued to be, made there—was the status of women. A lot of the information presented to us—it consisted not just of statements; it was backed up by facts and figures—said that Afghanistan is, without qualification, the worst place in the world to be a woman.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

The IDC’s excellent report makes a number of really important statements on this issue. In particular, it states that

“the treatment of women…post-2014 will be the litmus test”

for success. There has been a lot of progress in the past 10 years, but 87% of Afghan women still face some form of violence. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that one solution would be for the next operational plan to include women’s rights, and particularly dealing with violence against women, as a thematic priority?

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, the Committee does think that. To be honest, we would like the Government to take a much more explicit position on that. In reply to us, they said that, based on the Tokyo agreement and other measures, they believed enough was in place to protect the achievements so far and the rights of women post-2014. I have to say that that view was not widely shared by the women we met, which was not very many, but the ones we did meet were very vocal. Although we understand the Government’s reasoning, when we tried to look at programmes specifically aimed at the rights and needs of women, we found that those programmes really did not exist. The response to that is, “Well, that’s mainstreaming.” However, the issue of women in Afghanistan is such that mainstreaming simply is not, and cannot be, enough. That is precisely why we used the expression “litmus test”.

Those are the two most contentious things we said, and I am quite certain the Committee will stand by them. No doubt, the Minister will stand by the Government’s response. Even if we disagree, however, I hope we can accommodate the fact that we are looking for the maximum engagement by the UK Government to ensure that the progress that has been made is, to the extent that we have the capacity to do this, continued beyond 2014. I also hope we recognise that monitoring the rights and progress of women is the best single way of identifying what is going on in Afghanistan. I put it as crudely as this: if the position of women in education and employment, and the moves to tackle violence against women, have moved in a positive direction by 2020, we can be sure that Afghanistan has moved in a positive direction; if the reverse is true, the reverse will be true for the whole of Afghanistan.

That does not mean there has not been a lot of progress or that we can make any serious predictions about where Afghanistan will be by 2014. The optimists say, “It’s a success. By 2014, we will have achieved a fully trained army, a fully functioning police force and a viable Government. We can withdraw. Afghanistan is secure as a functioning, viable and, to some extent, democratic state.” That is absolutely what we would like it to be, but I do not think anybody believes it will be like that. However, it seemed to us that the pessimists, who think Afghanistan will immediately collapse and be taken over by the Taliban, were unlikely to be right either. The picture seemed much more confused and unpredictable. We do not even know who the Government will be, who will be elected President or what the composition of the Parliament will be.

We received some disturbing evidence. BBC correspondent David Loyn is quoted in our evidence as describing Afghanistan as a “rentier state”. In other words, an awful lot of the movers and shakers simply go where the money is and siphon it off for their own purposes. Not all of it is going that way, because clearly if it were, there would not be progress in the number of girls in school and children being vaccinated, or in the delivery of health services and the improvement of roads. It is completely wrong to think that nothing has been delivered. A lot has been delivered, and progress has been made. There are now 3 million girls in school, where there were none before; but there are probably another 3 million who are still not in school, so let us not lose sight of that. We have not cracked the whole problem.

Such things are variable across Afghanistan. One of our difficulties was that we could not go to places we should have liked to visit; but there is plenty of evidence to show that things are very difficult in some places and better in others. That has probably always been true of Afghanistan. It has always been a centripetal kind of state, with a lot of variability. One group in the Committee went to Helmand, and one group, which included me, went to Bamiyan. That is a tale of two completely different Afghanistans. Helmand, which is of course in the headlines as far as Britain is concerned, is where British troops are deployed, where we run the provincial reconstruction team, and where we have suffered substantial casualties.

I do not want to get engaged in the question of the military position in Afghanistan. It has been well expressed and documented, in Helmand in particular, but it is clear to the Committee that we cannot, post-2014 when the PRT is closed and the combat troops are withdrawn, leave the people of Helmand without any commitment from the UK to their future development. However, we must recognise, as the Department for International Development has done, that operating a district office, for example, is unlikely to be achievable in that scenario. Indeed, the decision has been taken that that will not happen, so the programme will have to be run out of Kabul. Therefore, in our view, we must have a different approach, involving partners who can, as our representatives, engage locally and win the trust, and the hearts and minds, of people on the ground. It cannot be done from Kabul; it must be done by people who are there, who probably will not be DFID personnel.

On the other hand, those of us who went to Bamiyan—unfortunately it was only for a day trip and we could not stay for a second day as had been intended, or get out and about as we had hoped—saw a completely different picture. It is worth recording that the PRT, which is being wound down, is led by the New Zealanders. We had a spectacular flight into Bamiyan, through the mountains and past the Buddhas on to the airfield by which the PRT is located and were quickly whisked from the plane to the PRT. The New Zealand commander said he would happily have walked into town with us, as he had done with a three-star American general in full uniform several weeks before. They were able to sit down in a coffee house, and all that happened on the walk to town, a mile there and back, was that the general was stopped every few yards by people insisting on having their photograph taken with him, shaking his hand and thanking him and the NATO forces for bringing what they saw as peace and opportunities for prosperity and development. The records show that in Bamiyan there has not been an explosion of any kind of ordnance in 10 years; so not all in Afghanistan is violence, conflict and insecurity. There is a variation, from one extreme to the other. It is important to note that, because it shows that there are opportunities.

The chancellor of the university in Bamiyan told us that the matriculation of young women students had gone up from under 10% to more than a third of students in three years. As he put it, fathers and young men appreciated the prospect of educated daughters and wives. That was positive and good.

Having gone to the contentious places, we concluded—and I think that the Government agree—that the programme must be flexible and fleet of foot, and will have to respond to rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances. We suggest that that approach is more likely to work. Indeed, if there is a plan B that recognises that, we will not be inhibited by sudden changes of direction; we shall have enough options.

Others want to speak, so I do not want to detain the House other than to say that we made a particular recommendation about our concern about the security forces, with which the Government did not wholly agree. Some colleagues had a briefing earlier in the week, which I could not attend, and they may say more if they catch your eye, Mr Walker. My understanding is that there are points of concern about the treatment of people in detention, which has deteriorated; about the variable functioning of the police; and, particularly, to return to the gender issue, about the shortage of women police—there are only 1,300—and the clear need for many more of them. In the post-2014 situation, trust between the people and the police will be a crucial part of security and space for development.

Will the Minister tell us something about the future of the community development councils? We did not have much chance to engage with them this time, but we got evidence about them, and have engaged with them in the past. Our view was that they are a good basis for grass-roots democracy and the building up of a more decentralised capacity. In that context we wanted more devolution of decision making to the provinces, because the nature of Afghanistan is that capacity is needed across the country. Kabul does not hold Afghanistan and if there is no capacity for administration and policy delivery outside Kabul the country cannot hold. We are concerned about the extent to which the UK Government, who have a policy in that area, will help to deliver it further.

The Committee has a positive wish that those who believe that the engagement in Afghanistan was a mistake should be proved wrong. Most of us do not believe we should not have been there. Indeed, there was plenty of evidence that an awful lot of people in Afghanistan are extremely grateful for the improvements in their circumstances since the NATO engagement, compared with the previous 20 years. The optimistic point is that an awful lot of people therefore have a stake in ensuring that those improvements should not be lost. It seems to the Committee that the role of the UK Government, in co-ordination with the international community, is to do all that they can to ensure that those gains will be maintained and, if possible, extended. In those circumstances the priority for DFID is to do what it does best—development—rather than nation building.