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Foreign Policy

My Lords, my thanks, too, go to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for leading this important debate. I shall address a particular foreign policy challenge, that of Afghanistan, a country with which I have been associated for almost 30 years. During the past eight years, billions of dollars have been poured into Afghanistan along with many thousands of foreign soldiers and hundreds of aid agencies. Incalculable numbers of visits by politicians and dignitaries from all over the world have taken place and yet, despite all this, there has been a slow but inexorable decline in security, in the rule of law and in the overall reduction of poverty. Records show that while registration of girls in grade 1 is about 40 per cent, it falls to 1 per cent by grade 12, and this largely due to lack of security and Taliban action. The culture of violence and impunity prevails, exercised not only by the Taliban but by the private militias of erstwhile warlords, many of whom are suspected of war crimes and who continue to occupy key ministerial posts and use their positions to consolidate their holds on society and now on the drug industry. While a small coterie has become immensely rich, real poverty affects some 75 per cent of the population. Afghanistan is now defined as a narco-mafia state, with the drug networks linked to terrorism. The Taliban, it is said, has provided more resources from the diaspora than has the international community. There are of course some good news stories: under the national solidarity programme, villages were each given some US$20,000 under strict conditions and now number approximately 22,000 widely spread throughout the country. Participants report that this was the first time that they felt like citizens, because they were trusted sufficiently to make their own decisions. Approximately 80 per cent of Afghans have access to primary health care, albeit rudimentary; transport infrastructure has improved; nearly 2 million refugees have returned; and there is growing private sector investment in telecommunications, construction and small industries. For example, the Logar copper reserves have attracted investments of $2.8 billion, elections have been held, a National Assembly inaugurated and a further election will be held this year. These gains, welcome as they are, are not enough. So what went wrong? The list is long but some key errors can be identified. Not enough money was allocated directly to the Government at their most vulnerable early stages. For example, in 2001, Afghanistan had approximately 240,000 civil servants who had somehow managed to keep the country going through years of civil war and yet donors chose to give more than $2 billion to their own agencies. As a result, the UN and NGOs set up organisations parallel to the Afghan Government who received only $20 million to fund their entire budget for the first year. This was a key error and resulted in humiliation, dysfunctional ministries and a vast discrepancy in salaries, which, in turn, drew competent civil servants out of government service to become highly paid drivers and translators. Meanwhile, the Government were hard put to find salaries for doctors, teachers and the police. Once the full impact of this policy became clear, there was a volte face whereby all money went henceforth to the Government, but unconditionally and with a total lack of accountability. Another serious gap lay in the failure to implement much of the Bonn agreement. For example, it had been agreed that provincial governors would be appointed through the Civil Service Commission. This is not happening, nor has it ever, which allows, in turn, for patronage and allegiances to take the place of proper government procedure. Donors felt that support for police training was outside their mandates and, again, donors’ adherence to millennium development goals meant that there was almost no investment in secondary and tertiary education, which has seriously depleted Afghanistan's skills base. The international community is no less culpable for the current state of Afghanistan. The confusion of priorities is astonishing to witness. Primary tasks were seen as eliminating the threat of terrorism, or the threat of drugs, or to accommodate, rather than confront, local criminal networks. By now Helmand is considered to be British, Uruzgan is Australian, Kandahar is Canadian and so on. The aid agencies planned and implemented thousands of small projects, often resulting in haphazard coverage; three wells in one community and none in another, for example. The projects largely ignored the civil service and the need to capacity build at the most local levels. The lack of coherence and co-ordination has led to fragmentation, corruption and the infiltration of the Taliban. Among all the priorities that the different foreign actors took upon themselves, two basic, clear and urgent necessities—namely, state building and security—were largely ignored. These type of early errors fly in the face of all that we know about the reconstruction of post-conflict societies. Do we really have to keep learning that institution building and national security are the top priorities on day one? What can be done? What can be rescued from this jumble of conflicting efforts? First and foremost, no country can be stable unless it has a functioning state that performs key functions for its citizens. Researchers in this field say that this necessarily invokes at least four factors: a leadership and management team with a commitment to good governance based on the rule of law; relentless focus on national accountability systems; the development of a vibrant civil society; and, finally, the development of small and medium-sized firms that will give citizens a stake in the future of their country. Sadly, none of these factors operates in Afghanistan at the moment. A clear and consensual plan of action would enable political coherence, a united front against both the drugs industry and the Taliban, and, ultimately, against criminal networks. A unitary security force with a strategic plan, rather than the present parallel structures with differing pay and regulations, would help to prevent fragmentation and penetration of the armed forces by drug networks. Collective accountability could ensure that revenue is directed towards government and not to warlords and commanders. The evidence suggests that what is on the books is a great deal less that what is collected. Military assistance might focus on protecting villages rather than searching out insurgents—which, in effect, is the cause of most military and civilian fatalities—and on the police, together with involvement in a massive programme of public works in co-operation with Afghan construction companies. There are still opportunities to achieve these targets in Afghanistan if the international community is prepared to act collectively and toughly and provide sufficient resources for Afghanistan to work towards its own future. The UK is in a strong position, in that it is a major donor, with a leadership position within the World Bank. DfID has done excellent work in some areas on institution building. Given these strengths, perhaps the UK can go further in promoting an agreed national plan for Afghanistan together with the means to implement it.