EUC Report: EU Afghan Police Mission

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Radice

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle]

It really is. As the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, said, the report is frank, direct and relevant. It has real punch. My only regret is that it was published on 16 February and we are debating it on 22 June. If we want the hard work of the staff of our Select Committee and of its Members who have contributed to this discussion to be effective, somehow or other the usual channels in this House have to find a way of bringing these committee reports to debate in a more timely way.

Since the members of the committee drafted this report, there have been fundamental changes in the situation in Afghanistan and we have to look forward. I would like to address this question of the future and the future lessons as a whole from this Afghanistan experience.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, spoke extraordinarily well about the background to this mission and all the problems that it had encountered. My noble friend Lord Sewel talked again about the structural problems of corruption and lack of literacy and all those difficulties that lie in its way. My noble friend Lord Radice talked about the incompatibility between what is inevitably a long-term objective for this mission and others’ political timetables, which are often determined by electoral politics in the United States.

It is a very difficult situation and, since the committee published its report, we now know that the timetable for troop withdrawals has been firmed up. We also know that informal talks have started with elements of the Taliban and we have had that extraordinarily frank memoir from Sherard Cowper-Coles, a former ambassador, which I am looking forward to reading on my holidays.

[Lord Radice]

My noble friend should read it before his holidays. If he is really interested in gripping bedtime reading—no, I am not his agent—I suggest Cowper-Coles.

[Lord Liddle]

That is a very high recommendation and I will follow it. What will be the role of this mission in this new situation? Has this been considered by the Government and by the European Union? Is it envisaged that the mission might play some role in trying to integrate those elements of the Taliban that want to come into a relationship with the Kabul regime? Is it envisaged that this police mission could play a role there? What is being done about the fact that we have not achieved the 400 target on numbers? Are we still trying to achieve it or are we accepting that this mission will not achieve its original goals? What do we think its function is in the changed situation and how are we going to ensure the safety of our people, to the extent that we can ensure the safety of our people in what is going to be an increasingly fragile situation? For instance, one could well envisage in the years ahead a split among the insurgents; between those who want to do a deal and those who are rejectionists. This has happened in similar situations before.

It will be interesting to hear from the Government what kind of deliberations are now taking place, taking into account the lessons of this wonderful report and how these are being put in the context of the new situation facing us in Afghanistan. Whatever the outcome of this particular mission, there are general policy lessons for us in this and for the European Union.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, spoke about problems in the way that the mission had originally been set up. Page 31 of the report refers to problems of bureaucracy and procurement. This is a really sorry tale of high EU aspirations not being met in a timely and satisfactory manner.

I agree totally with my noble friend Lord Sewel that it is quite intolerable that bureaucratic disputes between NATO and the EU should put people on the ground at risk in a very difficult situation such as we have in Afghanistan. This fundamental point has to be resolved; Afghanistan, I am sure, is not the only failing state in which we will have to try to build up institutions in the coming years. I am a strong believer in the role of the EU in peacekeeping and peace enforcement in the Petersberg tasks. Those tasks are challenging, but just because we are western—perhaps I am distorting what the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, thinks—it does not mean that we cannot succeed in these environments. We will face similar problems in many other parts of the world and we must become more effective at tasks where a mix of civilian and military capabilities is needed. That is the basis of the little experience of these matters that I had when I was an adviser in No. 10 Downing Street. The Chiefs of Staff always used to say that the big problem in the places with which we were then dealing, such as Bosnia, was not the effectiveness of the military but the fact that we had not been able to marshal the necessary civilian resources in a timely way, because one could not expect troops to do these things on their own.

That means that we as a country have to look at how we better organise joint civilian and military capabilities and whether we support the idea—as I do—of a joint command centre for them. It is clear from the evidence of this report that there is great deficiency in the planning of these types of operations and their command and control arrangements. These need to be sorted.

I would be interested to know what view the Government take of these issues. I thought that they were rather muted on the big, long-term conclusions in their response to Recommendation 12 of the report. There was talk of working to progress relations between the EU and NATO at operational level, encouraging further information-sharing and increasing co-ordination on the ground. Of course, we want all those things, and anyone with any sense would, but are there wider, bigger lessons that the Government will draw from this excellent case study in the problems of civilian and military co-operation? Will the Government use this excellent report to formulate a new and bolder policy? We have here an excellent opportunity for British leadership in the European Union and NATO in future.