EUC Report: EU Afghan Police Mission

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That the Grand Committee do consider the report of the European Union Committee, The EU’s Afghan Police Mission (8th Report, HL Paper 87).

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this very important report, which concerns lessons that have been learnt and lessons that need to be learnt by civil missions of the European Union, including EUPOL in Afghanistan. It is an appropriate day for us to discuss the report, given today’s announcement by the United States of significant withdrawals of its troops from Afghanistan. That marks the start of the winding down of the involvement of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which no doubt will continue for many years. In fact EUPOL was set up only in 2007, some six years after the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States, NATO and the allies at that time following the Twin Towers incident in 2001, the American involvement in the chasing of al-Qaeda and the consequent defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. So the mission was indeed very late in trying to set up its task and put a civil infrastructure into that country.

Throughout our deliberations we understood how difficult conditions were on the ground in Afghanistan. Setting up a civilian police force in that part of the world is not the same as doing it somewhere even like the western Balkans, let alone a European member state. The conditions are utterly different; at the time we still had extreme violence there, the writ of government did not extend across the whole of Afghanistan and there were many other issues that noble Lords will be well aware of. EUPOL’s mission was quite simple in concept, although maybe complicated in delivery; it was to try to produce what we would understand as a civilian police force in Afghanistan, one to which Afghan citizens could report crimes that would then be investigated and prosecuted—something that we in Europe would expect and find quite normal. Indeed, there was such a tradition back in Afghan history in the 20th century, but not since the number of wars that have afflicted that country.

That is a difficult task, but it is only one of a number of objectives of the Afghan national police force itself. It is perhaps important to recognise that the vast majority of the ANP deals primarily with security. Many of the 96,000 members of the ANP are involved in simple guarding as part of the security structure—they are more like a gendarmerie or a paramilitary than what we would understand as civilian police—and there is a local auxiliary element that we felt was probably strongly influenced by local barons and strongmen rather than by the rule of law. There is a whole mix within what we are trying to achieve.

The fundamental fact was that to produce a social infrastructure that would work and create stability for Afghanistan into the longer-term future, a civilian policing force that had the confidence of the citizens of Afghanistan and eventually had a writ across the whole country would be essential for stability in that nation and for Afghanistan to be a successful state in the future.

The issues and challenges that we came across generally for the Afghan national police force were quite astounding, and the barriers and difficulties were very great. There is the fundamental matter of literacy. There were short training programmes—I will come on to these later—that did not address literacy particularly effectively. We had figures quoted to us of something like 70 per cent of recruits to the ANP being unable to read or write. That might be quite sufficient for guarding; it might even be sufficient, though less likely so, for a number of paramilitary activities. However, collecting evidence, talking to victims of crime and taking an evidence-based system through to prosecution are clearly impossible if those officers are unable to read and write.

One of the other problem areas is the attrition of the ANP. We are assured that this has improved, but we were told with great authority that at one point the fallout rate of recruits was some 70 per cent. This level of wasted investment has a number of effects. It shows that morale is low and it means that you never reach the target that you need to in order for the police force to be effective to the degree that it is meant to be. Indeed, the police force stood at 96,000 when we did this report; it was expected to be somewhere around 110,000, but was unable to meet that.

The other, even more serious area is that of mortality, which is, sadly, one of the reasons for that attrition rate. It is probably not realised that the levels of mortality in the national police force are significantly higher than in the Afghan armed forces. Understandably, that acts as another reason why Afghan citizens are not necessarily keen to join the ANP or remain within it. We also found that because pay was distributed down a supply chain to those ANP officers who were out in the provinces, with 10 per cent or whatever being taken at various levels, staff themselves were often not paid.

An area that was also of great concern was that of numbers. I will come back to the question of numbers in specific issues around the EUPOL mission. On the requirement by NATO and Europe to reach sufficient numbers for the police force, though, we felt strongly that there was too much of a production-line numbers-driven objective that meant that the quality was not high enough. Although the numbers were there, that meant that the quality of their work was not high and that the police force could not fulfil the functions that it was meant to.

Not surprisingly, the other area was corruption. While corruption eats at all societies, it is particularly corrosive when it comes to police forces and becomes impossible when it comes to the EUPOL mission that is attempting to join up policing with successful trials and convictions through the prosecution service. Even if you manage to bring a proper case through the police system, it is of no use whatever if the prosecuting authorities are subject to corruption that results in the case never reaching court—or, if it reaches court after all, you cannot be sure that the judgment will be made in line with justice or law as citizens understand that.

If that were not enough, we came across specific issues about EUPOL itself. The first was one that we had some disagreement with the Government about— the liaison between EUPOL, the European Union and NATO. NATO was clearly the major force within Afghanistan. Even in the area of police and armed forces training, in fact, it had some 5,000 people in comparison with EUPOL’s 300. It was not that we found little co-operation between NATO and the EU but, because this is not a Berlin Plus operation, co-operation was not formal and did not always work the way it should. There were instances where that was prejudicial to the safety of EUPOL staff and officers. We heard that from Brussels, we felt that it was true and there was strong evidence behind it. We still feel that that needs to be pursued, not just in Afghanistan but in other operations as well. We know all the reasons why that is difficult because of the Turkey/Cyprus situation but, when we have people on the front line, it is of the greatest importance that we make that work.

We have dedicated staff in Brussels as much as in Afghanistan, but the mission itself was slow to get going because it went through a hugely bureaucratic procurement process for equipment. I think members of the committee all imagined what would have happened if during the Falklands crisis in 1982 we had put out for competitive tender operations with potential European purchasing rules and the threat of judicial review. Perhaps only now would we be sending our task force—I do not know. There was a similar situation there, which was partly resolved by the United States stepping in and providing this force with equipment so that it could start on time.

We also felt that EUPOL staff and decision-makers in Afghanistan were not given sufficient delegated authority for the very quick-changing circumstances on the ground; everything had to be referred back to Brussels. Political decisions had to be made at that level, a procedure that we understand for major decisions, but tactically that situation tied the hands of commanders on the ground and locally. Again, we understand that this has improved, but it should not happen again.

Although the EUPOL mission itself originally grew out of a German mission and was therefore meant to be a combined European force, we found to our amazement that other European bilateral and multilateral forces were still operating in police training in Afghanistan. We felt strongly that if Europe was to maintain its reputation for effectiveness on these missions, it should concentrate its work on one area—in this case, in EUPOL itself—and make that successful, rather than having a wide range of unsuccessful missions.

A major issue for EUPOL itself is that, although its intended number of 400 staff in Afghanistan was already minute for the size of the problem, it has never even managed to meet that number. The number out there on the whole has been around the 200s and more recently has moved towards 300. That means that for a major initiative and a civilian mission, the European Union has not even been able to deliver the resources that it said it would, despite the mission’s small size in comparison with NATO efforts. We believe that that severely damages the reputation of the EU and its mission.

Timescale is the other area of concern. We have a major challenge. The current mandate goes to 2013 but there is no chance that the mission will have fulfilled its objectives by that time, yet NATO will start to withdraw its military resources significantly in 2014-15. There is a major mismatch there, making it hard to take decisions.

I conclude this introduction to the debate by saying that we felt that there was a major reputational risk to the European Union through its failure to deliver this project, with all its difficulties, sufficiently on the ground and to meet its promises. There are some successes. The city policing initiative was successful, and there is a European initiative for a women’s police training centre in Bamyan that we believe is necessary and will be successful. We welcome the fact that non-EU states—New Zealand, Canada and Norway—have contributed to EUPOL. We were slightly concerned that the United Kingdom had offered only 14 staff when we looked at this, although we recognise that in the military area in Afghanistan the UK has more than played its role in comparison with other European countries in that area.

There are dedicated people in Afghanistan as part of the EUPOL operation. They literally put their lives on the line and work in a very difficult position. We feel that this mission was important because civil policing is the glue and the infrastructure for a successful Afghan state for the future. We are very disappointed in the way in which this operation has been delivered, and we feel that there is a great risk that it will not meet its objectives by 2013 and may be classed as a failure. We sincerely hope that this is not the case. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I genuinely thank all those who have contributed today. The debate has been quite clear about the challenges and issues facing the mission and Afghanistan more broadly. I thank the Committee Members and also the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich.

I want to comment on one thing that the noble Earl mentioned which touched a nerve to a degree. I refer to how much we try to impose western standards or means of working on those on other continents with different cultural backgrounds, although there are certain universal values. I know that that is not exactly what the noble Earl said but I specifically asked one of our witnesses whether Afghanistan had a tradition of policing before the civil war and the Russian invasion, and the answer was as follows:

“Yes, there were what are effectively today being called the civil order police, in the tradition of a gendarme. There was a tradition of having that. Again, mostly that began in the mid-20th century. So there was not a historical tradition of policing, but certainly people understood police; what they did and what their purpose was”.

I know that this is not what the noble Earl is saying but we are also capable of thinking that traditional societies such as that in Afghanistan do not understand things such as policing. However, they understand law, justice and all those concepts just as we do and as we demand for our stable and fair society.

I thank the Minister for his responses. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that the report’s lesson for the future is that if missions are going to be put into the field under the European defence and security policy—whether those missions are military or civilian—the policy needs to deliver what it says it is going to deliver. If it does not, it will lose the respect of the international community, and those missions will inevitably put people’s lives on the line without being able to be effective in what they are trying to do.

That leads on to the bigger question about Afghanistan. If the outstanding improvements are not made and this mission is not made to be effective, the committee would, I think, question strongly our right to put on the line the security of European citizens who are committed and volunteer for something that we are saying cannot necessarily succeed.

I thank very much the committee’s staff, Kathryn Colvin, Oliver Fox and Bina Sudra, for their work in delivering this report. I commend the report to the Committee.

Motion agreed.