Skip to main content

Afghanistan: National Army and Police

Volume 691: debated on Thursday 10 May 2007

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What contribution United Kingdom forces deployed to Afghanistan are making to assist the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police.

My Lords, UK forces deployed in Afghanistan provide six operational mentoring and liaison teams that train and mentor the Afghan national army. UK forces also provide officer and junior NCO training at the Kabul military training centre. As part of the wider ISAF mission, UK forces also play a limited supporting role in the development of the Afghan national police in Helmand province.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. This is an important issue because our exit strategy will depend on creating viable Afghan security forces. At the moment, allies have discretion over ANA training, with mixed results. Are there any plans to create a unified training regime with central recruiting, training and command? Can the Minister comment on the increasing evidence that a proportion of the police are openly assisting, rather than deterring, the drug trade?

My Lords, I am not aware of any initiative to provide a central recruiting facility for the ANA. Our assessment is that the progress of training the ANA is going well. We are now at a level of approximately 30,000 Afghan soldiers. The way in which the Afghan national army has been able to be deployed successfully alongside coalition forces and the bravery and effectiveness that it has shown give us real encouragement.

It is not the same in the case of the Afghan national police, as the noble Lord indicated. We are quite concerned about the levels of corruption and some of the activities that have been carried out by the police. However, that recognises the experience that we have had, for example, in Iraq. It is much more difficult to develop an effective police force in countries with the history that those countries have. The army serves the state and the police serve the law, and to develop the ethos within the country to enable such an ethos to be developed in the police is difficult and will take time.

My Lords, if there is a single golden rule about these kinds of operations it is that the international community must speak with a single voice and act with a single will. When it comes to civil administration and reconstruction, I fear that that is not the case. The international community’s actions on the civil reconstruction side are unco-ordinated, unsystematic, bilateral and deeply confusing to the Afghans. Does the Minister realise that we are putting one-25th of the number of troops and one-50th of the amount of aid per head of population into Afghanistan that we put into Bosnia and Kosovo? Maybe we can still succeed by putting fewer resources into Afghanistan than into any other successful peace stabilisation mission, but that “maybe” becomes never if the international community will not act with a single voice and a single will in civil reconstruction in Afghanistan, and that is the case at present. Why?

My Lords, the noble Lord, with his experience, is absolutely right in making the comparison to Kosovo with regards to the level of resources per head of population. Nevertheless, the contribution that this country is making, in terms of military support, through aid, and to governance and effectiveness—the way in which we are acting in a joined-up sense from this country’s point of view—provides a good model. However, this is a NATO mission; it is an opportunity for NATO to show that it can, as an international community, act in a joined-up way and the noble Lord is right to highlight the difficulties. The only answer to those difficulties is for us to continue to press coalition partners to provide the resources for the development of such forms of co-operation, to improve effectiveness. That is what is needed. It is a key test for NATO and the international community to show that it can do this.

My Lords, what percentage of Pashtun are involved in the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police? As I understand it, the Pashtun community is represented equally in parliament, but not equally in many of the important ministries in Afghanistan and it feels isolated. What role do the Northern Alliance warlords, such as General Dostum, play in the Afghan national army?

My Lords, I do not have the breakdown of the Pashtun community within the Afghan national army and the police. If we have those data, I will write to the noble Lord with them. Our experience over the past year is that there is a role for the local warlords in the development of auxiliaries as part of the Afghan national army, but it depends very much upon the approach and the level of support that the particular warlords have to the governance within Afghanistan and the direction in which the national Government are going. This is an area where we have to show some flexibility.

My Lords, what is being done to enable the ANA soldiers to send their pay home rather than having to take it home themselves and then experiencing difficulties in returning to their units?

My Lords, the noble Earl puts his finger on a key issue which affects the motivation of the Afghan national army. The difficulty is that for the soldiers to be paid they have to return to base. It is difficult for them to distribute their pay to their families. We have recognised this situation and are taking action to improve it. We need to be quite innovative in finding solutions for it. We do not have a good solution at the moment but we are well aware of the problem.

My Lords, the United States is reported to be spending $3.4 billion this year on training the police and army in Afghanistan and intends to increase that to $5.9 billion in the year beginning in September. What are the comparable United Kingdom figures and do we also intend to increase our spending in the coming year?

My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the precise breakdown. If we have those figures I will write to him. As he highlights, there has been a real increase in effort by the United States. The primary coalition responsibility for the development of the Afghan national police has been with Germany. It has been recognised that that needs to be supported by an acceleration of new approaches to the training of Afghan police more quickly. That has led to the United States putting extra resources into this area. We recognise the importance of the development—as the noble Lord, Lord Astor, said—of the police and the army in order to provide the governance that this country is going to need to allow us to hand over responsibility for security. In terms of the balance of resources, our focus is on supporting, training and developing the army, not the police. Whether we will change that focus is not something I am aware of at present.