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Afghanistan Conference and Yemen Meeting

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made earlier today by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in the other place on the Afghanistan conference that took place on 28 January, and the Yemen meeting the previous day. "It is a grim but important feature of all discussion on Afghanistan to remember the loss of life, coalition and Afghan, in the last eight years. As I saw for myself again two weeks ago in Kandahar, Lashkar Gah and Kabul, British troops are showing fortitude beyond measure, and their families support beyond compare, that deserves the recognition of the whole nation. The stakes are high, not just for those serving in Afghanistan, but for all the Afghan people, for the south Asian region, for the credibility of the NATO alliance and, ultimately, for our national security. As I explained when I spoke in this House on 14 January, 2010 will be a decisive year for Afghanistan. With a new Government, a refreshed counterinsurgency strategy and a commitment to increase international troops by 60,000, the Afghans and their allies now have the chance to reverse the momentum of the insurgency, if the military and civilian effort is directed towards a durable political settlement in Afghanistan. That was the impetus behind the decision taken by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to convene the London conference. Our aim was to mobilise international resources, military and civilian, behind a clear political strategy to help deliver the ambitious agenda that President Karzai set out at his inauguration last November. Our goals are threefold: to win over the active support of more of the Afghan population; to split the insurgency; and to encourage Afghanistan’s neighbours to become part of the solution. Following my consultations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Washington, Istanbul and Brussels, representatives from over 70 countries and international organisations travelled to London to attend the conference. The communiqué, which was agreed among all conference participants, provides the detail of what was agreed. With respect to security, the focus was on the Afghan national security forces. The growth and development of the indigenous security forces is intended to give the Afghan population the confidence to resist Taliban bribery and intimidation. Afghanistan now has almost 200,000 soldiers and police, who are already assuming greater responsibility in military operations. But the London conference agreed new, more ambitious targets to increase the Afghan national security forces by over 50 per cent by October 2011 by training 70,000 additional members of the Afghan National Army and 38,000 more police. The conference also marked the beginning of the transition process, agreeing the necessary conditions under which we can begin, district by district and province by province, the process for transferring responsibility for security from international to Afghan forces. The intention is for some provinces to transition by late 2010 or early 2011, on the road to meeting President Karzai’s target that within three years Afghans should have taken the lead and be conducting the majority of operations in insecure areas. With additional troops, Afghan and international, the insurgency will come under increasing military pressure. President Karzai is launching a peace and reintegration programme for those who can be persuaded to switch sides. The rest will face growing military danger. It is essential that all the ethnic groups of Afghanistan are given a route back into Afghan society, as long as they respect the Afghan constitution and break links with al-Qaeda. We support all efforts towards this goal. The peace and reintegration trust fund, announced last Thursday, is the vehicle through which the international community will provide financial assistance. Already $140 million has been pledged for the first year. Governance and development were the second priority for the London conference. Local and provincial government in Afghanistan is chronically weak. Less than a quarter of Afghanistan’s 364 governors have electricity and some receive only $6 a month in expenses. That is why the conference agreed to provide additional support to train over the next two years 12,000 sub-national civil servants in core administrative functions. If the Afghan Government are to win the support of more of the population, they need to govern in their interests, so the commitments they made at the conference to take steps to end the culture of impunity are important. They have promised to strengthen the independent High Office of Oversight to investigate and sanction corrupt officials, to bring their laws in line with the UN Convention Against Corruption, and to invite a group of Afghan and international experts to develop benchmarks for progress and report regularly against those benchmarks. Their first visit will take place within the next three months. These promises must now be translated into rapid action. The international community again pledged its support on Thursday, and for the first time it said that, once key conditions are met, it will increase the proportion of development assistance channelled through the Government, and will support the Government to meet those conditions. Development assistance is important in its own right but it will also help to draw people away from the insurgency and the drugs trade. That is the significance of Thursday’s announcement that Afghanistan will receive up to $1.6 billion extra in debt relief from major creditors and that there will be a new IMF programme from June 2010. The legal economy, notably agriculture, needs substantial support. The progress in reducing drug production is also welcome in its own right. The third element is relations between the countries of the region. The situation in Afghanistan is destabilising south Asia. Crime, drugs, terrorism and migration spill across its borders. There is a growing awareness within the region that the status quo in Afghanistan benefits no one. Afghanistan’s neighbours also increasingly accept that no country within the region, let alone the international community, will allow Afghanistan to become a client state. In these twin changes—a recognition that a client state is out of reach for all, and that an unstable state is damaging for all—is the seed of our shared interest. This shared interest should be the basis for greater regional co-operation. Each neighbour needs to know that its restraint and co-operation will be reciprocated, so they need reassurances about each other’s behaviour and intentions. That is why last Tuesday I attended the regional summit in Istanbul to discuss how Afghanistan’s neighbours can support stability in Afghanistan and enhance regional co-operation. At the London conference, the Afghan Government requested that the relevant regional bodies develop a co-ordinated plan for Afghanistan’s regional engagement as soon as possible. The prize of regional co-operation is immense: Afghanistan’s neighbours cutting off the lines of funding, support and shelter that stretch across Afghanistan’s borders. This is why the regional element of a political strategy will be given greater emphasis over the coming year. Mr Speaker, this political strategy and the agreements reached on Thursday need to be pursued with drive and determination and without delay. The Afghan Government will host a further conference in Kabul later this spring. By then, President Karzai will need to have made real progress on security, governance and development. The international community, too, has an important role to play in ensuring effective implementation. That is why three new international appointments are being made—at the UN, in the EU and in NATO, where the NATO Secretary-General has created a new NATO senior civilian representative to strengthen co-ordination of development and governance work, and our ambassador in Kabul, Mark Sedwill, took up this role on Thursday—to create greater unity of civilian command. Afghanistan and Yemen are 2,000 miles apart; they have diverse histories and different cultures and are fighting different enemies. But there are common themes. In both cases the lack of development, weak governance and the absence of security provide a vacuum for extremists who threaten our shores. In both cases, these underlying, long-term causes must be addressed. The purpose of the London meeting on Yemen on 27 January, as agreed with President Saleh, was threefold: to forge international consensus about the challenges that the country faces; to build impetus behind the economic and political reform agenda; and to improve the international co-ordination of support for the Yemeni people and Government. The Government of Yemen were represented by Prime Minister Mujawar. The Foreign Ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and the key regional and international partner nations all participated, alongside representatives of the European Union, the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and other international institutions. The Prime Minister gave an honest appraisal of the challenges his country faces—"brutally honest", in the words of the US Secretary of State. The threat from al-Qaeda has put Yemen in the headlines, but it has long been the poorest country in the Arab world, with a growing population, fast dwindling oil and water reserves, an armed conflict in the north, and increasing instability in the south. First, all present committed to support the Government of Yemen in the fight against al-Qaeda. The meeting welcomed the recent UN sanctions committee decisions on designation and called on all states to enforce the terms of the designation under UN Security Council Resolution 1267. Secondly, the meeting agreed to engage in further helping Yemen to address its broader security challenges, including through increased international support for the Yemen coast-guard. Thirdly, Prime Minister Mujawar confirmed that his Government would continue to pursue their reform agenda and start discussion of the IMF programme. The director of the IMF made a compelling case for the way in which economic reform could be supported by the IMF. Fourthly, participants agreed concrete action to improve the disbursement of aid, and the GCC secretary-general called a meeting of Gulf and other international donors to share analysis on the barriers to effective aid disbursement and establish a joint dialogue with the Government of Yemen on their reform priorities. This meeting will take place on 27 and 28 February. Fifthly, the 25 countries and organisations represented also agreed to establish a Friends of Yemen group to help the Government implement their national reform agenda. Two working groups—on economy and governance, and justice and law enforcement—will report to the first Friends of Yemen meeting. Conferences and meetings can seem a long way from the daily dangers of IEDs in Lashkar Gah or the 40 per cent unemployed in Yemen, but neither problem will be resolved without coherent plans confidently advanced by sovereign Governments with huge support from the international community. As a result of last week’s efforts, there is a new confidence and clarity. The test is to turn these words into deeds. That is what we are now committed to doing". That concludes the Statement.