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Afghanistan

My Lords, the noble Baroness has posed a series of extremely well informed and penetrating questions. The words that I seized on in her contribution were that I might have a chance to think about some of them, because instant replies might not be perfect. I will, though, attempt to answer in detail a number of the important points that she has made. I shall not take those points in order; instead, I shall deal straight away with what I believe to be the central consideration in the devolution of Afghanistan society—the position of women in it. Indeed, this applies to many of the broader political issues and struggles that the world faces today, particularly in central Asia and the Middle East. I agree with her that the position of women is central. Our officials are working closely with the Afghan authorities all the time about this matter. I have some figures here. Some 100 women were involved in the earlier peace jirga. During the election, 402 women stood as candidates, which is quite a lot; 68 seats were guaranteed for women, and one seat was won by a woman despite not being guaranteed. So, things are happening, but we have a long way to go. We are miles from seeing the proper civilised position of men and women in a modern society. We are just not there yet; a huge amount of work lies ahead. I agree with the noble Baroness that it is, above all, by the measure of that that one can decide whether there is success in seeing Afghanistan, which is a noble country that must be able to play a part in the civilised comity of nations, go forward in the right way. That issue is central. I return to corruption, the various issues about money flying around and recent comments about bags of gold and so on. The key requirement with that sort of issue is transparency and knowing, if money is to be transmitted in this rather primitive way, that it is at least going to good causes and not to evil and secret causes. Transparency should bring those things out. On the overall corruption situation, though, I cannot be all that cheerful. Tremendous pledges were made at the Kabul conference, to which I referred, about the need for reducing and eliminating corruption, but on the Afghan side, frankly, not much progress has yet been made. The so-called ““high office of oversight””, a sort of Afghan anticorruption commission, was set up, but in our view it needs to play a stronger co-ordinating role than it does. On our side, we helped to fund the major crimes task force, which was set up last November, a year ago, and that has had some success and has got some prosecutions and convictions. That is a sign of advance. Then there is the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee which has now been set up, but that, too, needs to get started and really get going. Until these things are operating really effectively, we cannot be at all complacent about the corruption situation. More generally, perhaps I should have begun by saying that I very strongly welcome the support from not only the noble Baroness, who is deeply experienced in these matter, but her party, for the general trend of what we are trying to do in Afghanistan. This proves that we are in this as a nation and determined to see these matters through. She asked whether I am confident about the timetable to ensure that there will be no combat troops by 2015. We are confident that things are going the right way, that progress is being made and that this is a realistic timetable. We think that that can be done. There may be training units left in Afghanistan after 2015, but we are absolutely convinced that it makes sense and is strategically correct that by 2015 there will be the withdrawal of all combat troops. We think that that schedule makes a great deal of sense and fits into the whole pattern of the gradual transfer of security and general administration to the Afghan people and the Afghan security and police forces. As to costs, I can confirm that the £200 million announced by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development is completely insulated from the cuts. The noble Baroness wanted that assurance and she can have it. Regarding, the cost of the 320 additional support personnel for training and so on, I believe that that cost is separate from the £200 million and will not eat into it. I give her the assurance now and hope that I will not have to eat my words. She is quite right to say that if we start deducting those sorts of salaries and costs, it would rapidly erode the commitment. So I am giving her the assurance that the cost is separate. She asked a number of questions about the election outcome and the results. I am not sure that I can be as helpful about those. We have been dealing with issues of fraud and we think that overall they do not invalidate the election—although I must confess that the figure of 1 million votes being fraudulent or irregular is formidable. However, we still think that the elections were held in challenging circumstances, although obviously, because of the invalidation of so many votes, the elections were not perfect. Despite all the logistical and security difficulties, it is right that the Afghans have exercised their right to have a say in the future of their country. Exactly how these results are going to come out, provisionally or finally, I cannot tell. So far as I know, no interpretation has been made by psephological wizards in the Foreign Office as to how it will all work out; therefore, I cannot be as helpful to her on that matter. I hope that I have covered all the points that she asked. Later on, I shall go over very carefully what she said and if there is any gap in my answers, I will certainly seek to fill it.