Afghanistan

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for the very helpful detail contained in it. We on this side of the House want to express our sympathy and condolences to the families and friends of the members of the Armed Forces who have lost their lives in Afghanistan. We are very proud of their courage, determination and steadfastness, and our thoughts are with those who have suffered such a terrible loss as a member of a family at this time. We also welcome the Minister’s commitment to make a Statement when the investigation into Linda Norgrove’s death is complete. She was a very brave woman who was clearly held in very high esteem, and many people would wish to have further detail when the time is appropriate.

We welcome the detail on the military deployment and the assessment that insurgency has been checked in a number of areas in Afghanistan. However, the Minister will not be surprised to know that there are still concerns about the process of security transition in Afghanistan. The Statement makes clear what NATO’s strategy is—to protect the civilian population and build up the national security forces as rapidly as possible. We all want to see our troops home as soon as may be, but we want that withdrawal to be based on success of knowing that the sacrifices made have been made on a lasting basis. Is the Minister really confident that a satisfactory security transition will be achieved by 2015, as the Statement and the Deputy Prime Minister have said? That part of the Statement must be put into the context of other parts of the Statement that say that the situation is challenging—or “extremely challenging”, as I think it says—and that the number of security incidents, particularly those involving direct fire, has increased sharply in recent weeks. That has to be worrying.

The Statement mentioned that a number of United Kingdom troops are directly involved in the training and development of the Afghan national security forces. The Statement says that that number has increased by some 320 UK personnel. Can the Minister assure us that the cost of those additional 320 individuals is in addition to the £200 million announced as being additional expenditure over the next four years? If they are not additional expenditure, they would take up a huge slice of that £200 million. I cannot be precise but, at a rough estimate, it might be anything between £8 million and £10 million a year.

I turn to the question of the elections. We were told that the final declaration on the elections would be on 30 October. However, the individual provincial preliminary results are ready and available online. Does the Minister have any assessment from those preliminary results of what the eventual outcome is? They are available online but not in English—but I imagine that those clever people in the Foreign Office would have been able to do some calculations by now.

The Minister will also be aware that the Wall Street Journal has reported that we may expect many new faces among those elected. As he said, nearly a quarter of the results are invalid because of electoral fraud. I think that about 1.3 million ballot papers have already been discounted and some 2,500 polling stations have had their results disqualified in full—that is one in seven; a very high number. There are other really awful reports that in some areas voters have been forced into polling stations at gunpoint and that individuals inside the polling stations observing what is going on—the observers and the officers in charge of those stations—have been forced at gunpoint from the polling stations while ballot boxes have been interfered with and stuffed with false ballot papers. Does the Minister have any corroboration of that from our embassy staff, who are interested in this and have observers on the ground? We all know, of course, that this sort of corruption is endemic, and that there is an argument that at least some progress is being made if it is clear that ballot boxes that have been corrupted are being taken away. Therefore, this is not an entirely gloomy picture, but it is very worrying when the level of fraud appears to be so high.

The noble Lord mentioned the Electoral Complaints Commission and the Independent Election Commission. Will the results published on 30 October be the final results that have been checked for fraud, or will they be provisional results which have to be checked again? It would be helpful to know what the status of those results will be when they are published.

On other governance issues, we have all read in the newspapers recently the alarming reports about cash going from Iran directly to President Karzai. The president himself has said that a number of countries provide funding for him in a number of different ways. However, part of the Kabul statement and the Kabul settlement stipulated that there should be proper accounting of all money received into Afghanistan. It is important that such a process is transparent—we would all agree on that—and that the money is used for proper capacity building rather than buying influence. As I understand it, all the money received from the United Kingdom is paid into the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, which is administered by the World Bank. Are all international contributions made through the World Bank; and, if not, do we know the countries that are making contributions outside the World Bank in a way that perhaps needs to be questioned more closely?

I return to the issue of women in Afghanistan. We are all aware that President Karzai has signed the Shia Personal Status Law, which, as the noble Lord will be aware, severely curtails women’s rights in some truly abhorrent ways. This is not a matter we can just wave to one side; it fundamentally attacks the human rights of many women in Afghanistan. The Kabul conference communiqué included commitments on women’s rights, the mainstreaming of gender equality and ensuring human rights and the provision of civic education. What direct communication and contact have Her Majesty’s Government had with women’s groups working in Afghanistan? There is a fundamental weakness on this point on the Government’s part. Afghanistan is a country where there is gender segregation—not throughout but in many places. The 14 Ministers of the FCO, DfID and MoD include not a single female. These are countries where authority matters. It is important to have an authoritative figure who can talk about these issues directly to the Government and to women’s groups. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us something about what measures will be put in place in order to deal with those issues.

On 21 July the Minister told us of the £200 million extra funding that the Government had pledged at the Kabul conference, and I think that he confirmed at that time that it was indeed new funding. I am sure that he will be able to assure us on this point but, for the sake of complete clarity, can he confirm that the £200 million is not affected by the spending cuts? That would be helpful.

Can the Minister also give details—perhaps not now, but maybe later when he has had a chance to think about it—of the financial commitments made by other EU countries? We know how much the UK is putting in, but how much are our European Union neighbours putting into these funds, and how much is coming from our colleagues in the NATO countries and, indeed, the 40 or so countries that are reported to have participated at the Kabul conference?

The quarterly statement is enormously welcome, and I applaud the detail in it. I look forward to information being regularly received in this way. It will allow Parliament to plot progress and it is, if I may say so, an admirable example to some of the Minister’s colleagues of ministerial accountability to Parliament.