Crises in Afghanistan and beyond: What is Britain’s role?

Lyse Doucet

Good afternoon. Welcome to this rather special Chatham House event. Thank you to so many of you who have joined us here in person and the many others who are joining us online. My name is Lyse Doucet. I work for the BBC and I think I can speak for all of us, is that all of you who’ve taken the time to come here today, those of you who are joining us online do so because we all share a growing concern about what is happening in Afghanistan. And happening not just in Afghanistan, but in all too many places around the world where we see all too many humanitarian crises, which are very much as we will hear today, very much tied up with political crises as well. The title of today’s meeting is, Crisis in Afghanistan and Beyond. What is Britain’s Role?

When it comes to Afghanistan, crisis seems like almost like too small a word, too normal a word. We talk about crises every day. It doesn’t see to encapsulate the unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan, a place where the UN says 90% of people, 90%, struggle to find something to eat. It means, and for something that would matter to this audience, University Professors are selling their books to buy food. Teachers are shining shoes on the street. Journalists are selling fruit and vegetables and the ten million who are already on the brink of starvation when Ashraf Ghani was in power, now find themselves, and you’ve seen the articles, selling their kidneys and selling their children.

Our guest today, often as you know, speaks out on Afghanistan and many other crises and he most recently – he more very recently said six months ago, it’s almost to the day, six months ago when the Taliban swept into power and the last of NATO forces left Afghanistan, Afghanistan was a poor country, very poor, and now Afghanistan is starving in the year 2022. What can we do about it, and of course not just Afghanistan? Here’s a man with some of the answers and who asks some of the questions that we all ask today.

David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. Welcome, David.

David Miliband

Thank you.

Lyse Doucet

And David was just telling us that his very first speech as Foreign Secretary was here in Chatham House, so he feels he’s come home.

David Miliband

Happy days.

Lyse Doucet

Thank you very much.

David Miliband

The only way to get a Valentine’s Day date with Lyse was to say we were discussing the crisis in Afghanistan.

Lyse Doucet

I would hope that the presence of both of us here means that there might not be a war in Ukraine because we’re here, ‘cause happy Valentine’s Day, David.

David Miliband

To you too.

Lyse Doucet

There’s nothing wrong with – and to all of us, I think in the world in which we live, which sometimes – which is harsh, brutish and short, is that what it used to be called, spreading a bit of love is not a bad thing, not a bad thing to say. Before we speak to David about the IRC and about its nearly 3,000 staff on the ground in Afghanistan, an organisation headquartered in New York, but works in now some 41 countries, I just want to give some housekeeping rules, and sadly in our COVID times, there’s a lot more rules, even though a lot of the rules are being removed, we still have rules.

This event is on the record and it’s being recorded, and if you want to impress people that you’re at this event, why don’t you tweet about it? And it’s #CH capital for Chatham House obviously, CHE Events. Those of you who are joining us online, you’ll see on your computer the – we’re using the Q&A function, so the ‘raising the hand’ function and the ‘chat’ function are disabled. If you’d like to ask a question here, and please do ask questions, we want this to be very interactive, do raise your hand and if the microphone comes to you, remain seated, although we all prefer to stand up for the purposes of our COVID rules you’ll remain seated, and then you can – when you ask your question, take off your mask, show us a smile. I have to say, I have to make an apology, I find it hard to recognise people with masks on. So if one of my best friends is in the audience and I don’t call you by name, it’s because I don’t always recognise people with masks on.

And for those of you who are asking questions on the computer if, in the remote possibility that you would like me to ask your question instead of you, do say it, but do ask your own question. We’ll open up the mic for you.

David Miliband, very good to see you. I always tease David that I always steal his quotes, the way he describes things. And he says, “Lyse, take all my quotes,” but I do give him credit when I use his. So for all of us, not just for the fine words, but also because the words matter and they convey, how would you describe the crisis in Afghanistan?

David Miliband

Well, I would describe it as a catastrophe of choice. A catastrophe because of the 38/40 million people who live there, all but two or 3% don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And nine million people, according to the UN in December, are at the International Phase Classification Level 4 of food insecurity, which means that they’re one step short of famine level, which is level 5, including a million kids. 22 million people are dependent on the World Food Programme to be fed. So, it’s a catastrophe. It’s a catastrophe of choice because this immediate crisis has a very proximate cause, and the proximate cause is the end of economic relationships between predominantly Western countries, but in fact, the whole international financial sector, IMF, World Bank and the country of Afghanistan.

The freezing of those relationships, the end of the payment of public sector salaries has made this a catastrophe of choice, not just a ‘natural catastrophe’. And in August, President Biden, Prime Minister Johnson, all said that military withdrawal will not be followed by political, humanitarian and economic withdrawal, but in fact, it has. And that’s where you end up in a situation on what – today is Monday – so a week ago, and before I went to testify at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I had a meeting with some of our staff.

We have 3,000 staff in ten provinces across Afghanistan. We’ve hired 1,000 more people in the last three months. 44% of our staff are women, at all levels of the organisation, including an Acting Country Director who’s been to visit Taliban Ministers to talk to them. Those – that staff meeting left a very indelible imprint on me, because they repeated the stories that you’ve told about people selling organs, selling children. They talked about Nurses who we were supporting in health centres and where the water system didn’t work, or there wasn’t fuel to keep the health centre going. They talked as well about a meeting of female staff where the question was posed, “How many of us are suffering from gender based violence in our homes or in our families’ homes?” and a lot of hands went up. And so, they begged me to say to the Senate last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, “Whatever you think of the Taliban, whatever they have to answer for, don’t let American Senators think that they’re standing up for our rights by the economic policies that they are pursuing,” because the price is being paid by clients of the IRC, by staff members of the IRC who can’t, after all, cash their salary cheques in a bank. We have to go through the local money broking systems and they said, “Please, take the message that we are paying the price, not the governing authorities.” And that’s what led me to say last week, Afghanistan Afghans have paid a very high price of war, so have Americans, so have Brits, in both ways, now the Afghans are paying the price of peace and that is something that is indefensible.

Lyse Doucet

This is such a huge discussion. As you know, it’s been a huge discussion online, a huge discussion in the Senate and in the House of Congress where you were, is how do you avoid punishing the people, as you say, who’ve been punished time and again over the last 40 years? Do you recognise the Taliban form, that’s what they want? You recognise the Taliban? Or do you do what’s happening now, you just have meetings with them, it’s sort of recognition in all but name? And before you speak, let’s just have a show of hands. I’m sorry that we can’t – how many here in the audience think that whether we like it or not, we should recognise that Britain and other countries should recognise the Taliban? Put up your hands if you think the Taliban should be recognised, if only for the sake of the Afghan people? It sort of seems to be – and how many don’t think we should with governments? Some people are putting up their hand twice. It’s okay to be confused here. I don’t know, it’s about 50/50. So, what do you think, David?

David Miliband

So, look, you don’t need to recognise the Taliban to feed the people. That’s the essential…

Lyse Doucet

But do you think you should?

David Miliband

…point

Lyse Doucet

I know you’re not a political organisation.

David Miliband

No, I would do a two-step on this. Step one, stop the starvation and you stop the starvation essentially through four things. One: the World Bank pays the salaries of Nurses, Teachers, Water Engineers through the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund. Step two: the US and its allies need to clarify that the sanctions that exist, not just bilateral, US sanctions, but UN Security Council sanctions apply to 147 Taliban individuals, not to the state institutions over which they – that they stand at the top of. Thirdly, you have to bring capital and liquidity to the Afghan banking system because small businesses can’t import, they can’t pay their staff. 80% of people in Afghanistan don’t have a bank account, but the 20% that do, constitute about 80% of the informal economy and if you’re a small business person, you can’t pay your staff at the moment and that’s because there’s no assets underpinning the financial system.

There’s not assets underpinning the financial system ‘cause they’ve been frozen, just sort of slightly parenthetical, but I think important, if more of less of Afghanistan’s GDP was $20 billion before a year – before COVID hit, which is really when the World Bank figures are from, that’s only $500 per person, per year. But there were nine or $10 billion dollars of financial assets, which is actually quite a high percentage for the size of the economy, but those assets are frozen and that means that the banking system isn’t working, there’s no liquidity in the banking system. And the fourth element of it is that you have to stand up a Central Bank and a Finance Ministry Function.

Now all those four things can be done, without getting into the recognition issue. In fact, recognition on its own wouldn’t solve any of those four problems. Now – and those problems by the way are getting worse, to the extent that the UN has predicted that on current policy we’ll go from a $4 billion dollar appeal for humanitarian aid to a $10 billion appeal next year.

Lyse Doucet

Yeah, I know.

David Miliband

So, the problem’s getting multiply worse.

Now, stage two. If you can get through to May, you can then open up a longer discussion with a proper representation of all the regional, global, as well as local government about the future of the Afghan economy, which matters to the region and matters more generally and which is going to be subject to what’s bound to be a declining Western financial support. But that needs to be done over a phased period, in my argument, rather than through a guillotine overnight. Now, in that process, if the new authorities in Afghanistan want recognition, then there’s something to bargain about, but that doesn’t excuse a starvation policy, which is what we’ve got at the moment.

Lyse Doucet

Well, let’s discuss what happened on Friday, which has created a lot of controversy. The US President Biden announced that the US has taken control of the Central Bank assets, the reserve fund of the Da Afghanistan Bank, the Central Bank. He’s going to split $7 billion US between the victims of 9/11 who many of you know have had court cases against the Taliban because of their suffering after 9/11, and then there’ll be a humanitarian fund for Afghanistan and of course, humanitarian aid is different, as you’ve been speaking about, than economic. So, some people want to say, “Well, what a good solution, you’ll get to unfreeze the money, and half of it goes to the Afghan people,” but many Afghans are furious. You know, as one Barnett Rubin, well-known Writer on Afghanistan, as you know, put on social media, “The richest country in the world has taken money from the poorest country in the world and all in the name of justice.” So, there are arguments for and arguments against. I don’t know where you stand?

David Miliband

On Thursday, $7 billion was frozen. So, the fact that by Friday, $3.5 billion was frozen was a step, in my view, in the right direction because it opens up the possibility that at least half of that money, pending the court case that does, to some extent, tie the hands of the administration, can be used actually for a broad range of humanitarian – they’re calling them humanitarian.

Lyse Doucet

Do you think that the – actually, Biden, President Biden couldn’t have done it, it was too political? This gives him a way out to do it?

David Miliband

Well, to be fair, he can’t override a court case. So, we’ve been going through this, in some detail, over the last three or four months.

Lyse Doucet

That’s where you get the money. Some people, the Afghans have been putting on social media that no Afghans were the hijackers, the – Al-Qaeda was there, but they didn’t carry out the attacks, why should they pay?

David Miliband

But for all sorts of reasons, and I’m not saying this with any particular pointedness, it’s especially important that governments that have constitutions that put the rule of law at its heart, do obey the rule of law. And the rule of law does place the burdens on the administration to respect the court process that’s going on, and I think he’s done that, to be fair to him. But remember, there’s also two to $3 billion worth of assets in Europe and in the Gulf.

Lyse Doucet

There’s some in Britain as well.

David Miliband

There’s some in the UK. But also…

Lyse Doucet

What should the other countries do?

David Miliband

I think that, if you’re not subject to a court case, you should release the assets. There’s no question about it because without a functioning banking system, the economy can’t work. It’s literally frozen and it’s driven into informal channels. And you can’t – it’s simply indefensible to make the Nurse in Herat or the small business person in Mazar-i-Sharif pay the price of the quarrel that Western governments have with – and actually, not just Western governments, the Chinese and the Russians don’t want to recognise the Taliban either. So it’s not just them. So, I’m in a – look, I’ve got to be severely practical because I’m running a humanitarian organisation that has 3,000 staff now who we need to pay and who have got families who, at the moment, can’t be supported. And I think it’s really – the world’s got enough problems, as we’re going to discuss, without creating new ones. Goodness knows, Afghanistan had its problems before August, but they’ve been now magnified manyfold.

Lyse Doucet

Given the enormity of this crisis in Afghanistan, in a moment we’re going to move away from Afghanistan, the enormity of the crisis, how politically sensitive it is when you have so many of the Taliban leaders under financial sanctions, linked to terrorism, which I think is impossible for Joe Biden to lift, it would just be too controversial. It’s hard to see a way forward, in the sense of getting – as you’ve been talking, getting the economy going. Who’s going to want to invest in Afghanistan?

David Miliband

And I actually think – I honestly think if you compare this to Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia, never mind Ukraine, which we’ll come on to, it’s actually pretty straightforward. This is not very complicated. No-one’s saying – what I’m saying is, stop a starvation crisis, and this is the way to stop the starvation crisis. It’s not actually a very complicated set of policy issues and frankly, the politics of this point to me in a clear direction of taking action rather than avoiding action. The politics of this are: one, we spent 20 years there, so we bear some of the scars, but we also bear some of the responsibility and we certainly have reputational equities in this. Secondly, the blood and treasure that’s been spent there has, ‘armed’ is not quite the right word, has empowered one, two generations of Afghans, including Afghan women, who are saying, “Don’t abandon us now.” Thirdly, the problems that start in Afghanistan don’t end in Afghanistan.

Pakistan, Iran, refugees who go there, there was as leader in The Times which said, “Well, the refugees will go to Iran and Pakistan,” they’re not going to stop there. There’s a migration aspect to Europe’s – thinking about this. Europe doesn’t need this problem on it – in South Asia, as well.

Lyse Doucet

‘Cause it could turn into a refugee problem.

David Miliband

So I think actually, the politics of this are about the World Bank spending money that’s demarcated as an Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, assets that belong to the Central Bank being used to underpin the banking system, sanctions that are on individuals being applied to those individuals, not to the rest of the state machine. Now – and, plus, if you don’t do it, you’re going to end up having more and more humanitarian aid being asked for. So, I think that the policy terms and the politics actually point towards taking action. You don’t need to be especially creative about this.

Lyse Doucet

But there is the issue hovering over it, that it’s recognition by stealth. That you’ve – even though the money is going to bypass the Taliban, it’s going to go to UN or other institutions, it’s going to go to your organisation, there is the political question of this leadership. Some Afghans are not willing to accept it. Others describe it as the de facto authority. I’m actually going to bring in a question here, because it leads into, how do you deal with this Taliban, ‘cause you’ve said, “You don’t have to recognise them”? Taliban went to Norway, they met the Western envoys, they met civil society groups, then they went to Switzerland and Amirah Conrey says, “I’ve a question,” that she heard – that you heard last week and, “I don’t want to think of this fact, but to think about Taliban officially welcomed by authorities in Switzerland. So the Norwegians made sure that they also met Afghan groups, including women and human rights defenders, the Swiss just had meetings with the Taliban and we understand a delegation will be coming to London.”

David Miliband

So, look…

Lyse Doucet

Is that a good – is that the best way forward?

David Miliband

Just one point. There’s recognition, and there’s recognition of reality, right? The recognition of reality is, they won the war, we lost the war.

Lyse Doucet

But some say, you should put conditions. While they’re detaining women…

David Miliband

Okay, hang on.

Lyse Doucet

…while they’re detaining British Nationals, why reward them with these visits?

David Miliband

Hang on. Hang on. So, point one: there’s reality, and there’s recognition of – there’s recognition of reality and there’s diplomatic recognition. So, let’s just be clear that we’re living in the real world, in addressing this. Point two: my understanding of the Norway meeting, I don’t know about the Switzerland meeting, the Norway meeting is, it was an opportunity for Afghan civil society that had no dialogue with the government to get into dialogue with the government, and that seems to me to be right, and as I said, no-one – no country, Russia, China, etc., there isn’t a move for recognition. If that’s something that new authorities want, then that’s a point of leverage. And what was the question from…?

Lyse Doucet

Well, what do you think of the Taliban officially welcomed…

David Miliband

Oh, I see, yeah.

Lyse Doucet

…by authorities? So it’s – if you…

David Miliband

But look, the American Government are recognising it.

Lyse Doucet

If social media is a measure, it’s a small measure, it’s been very controversial, with Afghans saying, especially Afghan women, “Why are they going in luxury jets to Switzerland where they’re detaining women protestors?”

David Miliband

Sorry, I don’t know about the luxury jets, but the US Government has been, not capital ‘R’ recognising, but lower case ‘r’ recognising the authorities in its negotiations with them. So, let’s not blind ourselves to the balance of power that exists in the country and let’s take our lead from Afghans about what they need. They need to get over the starvation crisis and they need to then have some opportunity to forge their own future. But let’s avoid, above all, at all costs, the following. We’ve left militarily. We can’t micromanage the country from thousands of miles away. We can’t. We made our choice. But the economic framework, as imposed by the international financial institutions, really matters to people’s ability to stay alive. So, it doesn’t seem to me to fall foul of the principles that are being lead out, or the aspirations of the Afghans who have benefited over the last 20 years.

We worked there in the 90s, my organisation, we were there since the 80s, we talked to the Taliban then, we talked to the Taliban in the 90s, we talk to the Taliban now, at national and at local level. We’re not recognising them. It’s not in our gift to give diplomatic recognition. We’re recognising the reality of power. Because the reality of power around the world today is not just the fragmentation of state power, it’s also the extension of non-state power.

The International Committee on the Red Cross had a statistic last year. 60 to 80 million people in the world live under non-state actors, not under state actors. In the North West of Syria, there are 3.5 million people living in rebel-held territory and ditto in the North East of Syria. In North East Nigeria, there’s a million people living under Boko Haram, we can’t get to them. So, this reality of a – it’s not a multipolar world, it’s a sort of leaderless world, that is fragmenting in front of our eyes and I call that – sorry, I call this out as system failure.

States are failing, they’re failing in their duties to their own citizens. Diplomacy is failing. There are 55 civil wars going on at the moment, eight of them with more than 1,000 battlefield deaths, so qualifies severe, according to international standards. There’s legal failure in that the laws of war that were one of the products of the failings of the interwar period and came in after the Second World War, the laws of war were – it’s not wars without end, it’s just a lawless situation. And there’s operational failure by the humanitarian and development sector that can’t keep up with this, and we’ve got to recognise what that means, because it presents a very clear choice.

Either you abandon the multilateral system, and you work outside it, which I think has a lot of risks, but we – some of the places we work, we are working outside the system. There is no state system. Or you try and figure out how, in this geopolitically fragmented environment, can it be rebuilt, and that, I think, is the central – it’s the central challenge for this decade really. Is it an age in which there is growing impunity? I call this ‘age of impunity’, or does accountability make a comeback? And that I think – and I don’t want to pretend at all that it’s simple, my God, it’s difficult. But that’s the central thing, either by 2030 impunity has marched across borders, across lives and livelihoods or the checks and balances of accountability, what – John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a book in 1952 about countervailing power. He called it American Capitalism: The Case of Countervailing Power. We need to take that notion of countervailing power, which is essentially about checks and balances and about accountability and argue that whatever the political system in different countries around the world, there is an imperative of accountability, otherwise we’re living in a world of anarchy and that’s the danger. That’s the challenge I think.

Lyse Doucet

Yeah, you almost seem to be inching toward that concept, which we don’t hear as much about, which is the responsibility to protect that we have an obligation, a human obligation, to try to intervene when so many are in need.

David Miliband

Well, I just…

Lyse Doucet

You use this phrase ‘starvation crisis’. We’re talking about Afghanistan today. Last year we talked about Yemen, which was then the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. There’s a starvation crisis in Tigray. There’s a starvation crisis in parts of Iraq. There’s a starvation crisis in Lebanon where people don’t have enough food to eat. In place-after-place, and you’re using this new, rather than talk about state collapses, this system in – how does the world find enough resources, enough political will, enough for the bigger – enough, and we’re talking Valentines’ Day, a big enough heart? You know, David Beasley, the Head of the World Food Programme, is constantly begging people for money to feed people, and says he doesn’t have enough money even to feed people, never mind rebuilding societies, and stinks.

David Miliband

So, the good news is, there’s plenty of resources. There’s more resources to tackle the world’s problems than ever before.

Lyse Doucet

Is there?

David Miliband

Yes, there’s more…

Lyse Doucet

After the pandemic?

David Miliband

There’s more resource – look, the pandemic has cost us en trillion dollars, $20 trillion or something and the IMF has done the studies to show that if you spend, I think, half a – you know, it must be, I think, $5 billion on prevention worth $9 trillion of cost. So, at the moment, we’re spending resources through the failure of preventative action, but look, the world is getting richer faster than the problems are multiplying. But the maldistribution of resources means that there’s growing starvation in places that are acute need. But I think this is where you said so rightly at the beginning, Lyse, every humanitarian emergency is in fact, a political emergency.

That’s what the idea of system failure is intended to bring out. Now, that’s partly, to quote Anne Applebaum, “The bad guys are winning,” those who want to stand for impunity, not for democratic or even basic UN Charter norms are on the rise, but also, those who do stand for those values, are in retreat, including in our own country, but the US as well significantly. Consumed by their own problems, in some ways deglobalizing as a result of that. And so, I mean, to state more than obvious, it’s a politic – you said, “political will,” I think it’s bigger than that. It is a political emergency and the first step is, I think, to call it out. The second step is to see where are the assets that exist to take on that emergency and then thirdly, which is to the fore at the moment given what’s happening on the Ukraine border, is well, how do you catch up with the reality? And I think that that’s at least the way I’m trying to think about it, but to state the obvious, I’m not putting a – I’m not doing this as a Politician, I’m doing this as someone who’s running a humanitarian organisation, on the receiving end of the political failure.

Lyse Doucet

I mean, these are, you know, such big issues, but such urgent issues as well. I mean, if we’re going to focus on the, you know, the humanitarian – what was it that Guterres used to say? “There is no humanitarian solution to a humanitarian crisis. There’s only a political solution to a humanitarian crisis.” And this is a slightly different topic, but the idea that it’s very much also characteristic of our world that there are so many countries in the region who are now more active, which is a good thing in principle, but it has turned into a complicating factor because every neighbour has different interests and can often stand in the way of any kind of a solution. Witness Afghanistan, witness Yemen, Ukraine with, for slightly different reasons, different kind of…

David Miliband

Can I just say…?

Lyse Doucet

So, your political solution becomes even harder to achieve in the time in which we live, it seems.

David Miliband

So that – I think that is very interesting and I didn’t realise this at the time, but in – when I was Foreign Sec, I spent three year – the first visit I made to Afghanistan was – it coincided, as it happened, with the funeral of Zahir Shah, the last King of Afghanistan, and I was in Kabul and you saw this extraordinary gathering of the clans really, who were Afghans, but they were also – they also had their own identity from 40,000 valleys and villages. And I started making the argument that a political solution in Afghanistan had to be regional, as well as national, and I didn’t really understand fully the significance or the point you’re making. Ten/15 years on, time flies.

Here’s something that we – I brought out in this argument about system failure and I said that there were these four elements of system failure. What’s it being driven by? One of the major drivers is the internationalisation of civil conflict that you referred to. If you look at the data on this, the civil conflicts in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria, there are manyfold external state players. Five, ten, 15 different countries engaged militarily with different – of the players, even before you start talking about the non-state actors, and I think that that is something that we haven’t really caught up with. It’s about the – it’s about small and medium sized powers throwing military weight, hard power around inside civil conflicts. And the evidence is that those conflicts become harder to contain, harder to compromise, harder to sustain the rules of law and the rules of war, and I think that’s a big part of what – it’s an interesting contrast in a way with the Cold War.

Lyse Doucet

Yes, what do you fight for? Yes.

David Miliband

If you think back, the Cold War was much more – there was organised impunity, in various ways, in places. I don’t want to – there was no ‘golden ageism’, but it was almost organised, whereas this is disorganised.

Lyse Doucet

Very messy. Yes, and, you know, as many here would know, there’s a correlation between intensity of a conflict, the multiplicity of actors and the extent to use your phrase, ‘the starvation crisis’.

David Miliband

Well, and the number of refugees.

Lyse Doucet

And the security, yeah.

David Miliband

And all the other syndromes that are associated with it. This is – the origins of the International Rescue Committee are, Einstein established the IRC in New York in the 1930s to help refugees, and our first employee was in Marseille in 1939/40, he helped fake 2,000 passports for Marc Chagall and others to escape from Nazi occupied France. So, the refugee question, the fact that we’ve got 80 million refugees internally displaced, 35 million refugees and asylum seekers, 45 million internally displaced, that’s a symptom of the virulence of conflict. These are not economic migrants. These are ‘political refugees’ and displaced people.

Lyse Doucet

Let’s bring some of you into the conversation. Yes, this gentleman here. There’s, I think, a microphone coming to you. This gentleman here with his hand high up and then we’ll take one in the front, yeah.

William Patey

I’m William Patey. I’m Chairman of Turquoise Mountain Trust. We support 8,000 Afghans in Afghanistan, so I want to bring you back to Afghanistan. And you – without having to recognise the Taliban, what steps do we need to take now to get a banking system going, which I absolutely agree with you? And I’m conscious that just handing over three to $5 billion to a Central Bank in Afghanistan may be unpalatable for lots of people. I was there when the President’s brother and the Vice President’s brother robbed the Central Bank of $800 million, while we were there supervising it. So, the prospect of the Taliban managing to extract money from a central banking system, but we need it, so it’s a balance of risk. And in balancing that risk and making it more palatable, do you think there would be some scope and the Taliban might accept some form of international supervision, auditing of the banking system for a period while – in exchange for allaying some of the fears that were bound to rise in Congress and elsewhere? Because, you know, like your organisation, my organisation, is unable to, without using the Hawala system, which we’re doing, get enough money into Afghanistan to support the people who are producing goods that can be sold and as part of the economy?

Lyse Doucet

Yeah, it’s good, yeah.

William Patey

So, a very technical question, but…

David Miliband

No, it’s – and, you know, you know a lot about it, a very distinguished public service that you did, including in my time, so it’s very nice to see you, William. Look, there are independent governors of the Central Bank, including one who’s at the University of Maryland at the moment. So, secondly, those who are engaging with the technocrats, who do still exist in-country, are insistent that there is scope for that sort of auditing oversight and the rest of it.

Thirdly, the UN is creating a humanitarian exchange facility that’s being talked about in public, so that Afghanis that are under people’s beds can be exchanged for dollars, dollars can be used them to import ‘cause there’s an 80% import dependent economy and so, the function of currency exchange was one of the major things that the assets were used for. Three or $450 million worth of currency exchange around the country before August has been stopped.

Fourthly, the sanctions piece is important to this as well because if you – in the same way that if you owe – if you pay salaries, but people can’t cash them at the banks, then you’re not doing much good. If you’re not able to assure external partners of a banking system that they’re not going to get caught up in the sanctions regime, that’s also a source of wrong, so these things are interconnected. And you certainly wouldn’t – I mean, my macroeconomics isn’t great, but you wouldn’t want to throw $9 billion worth of assets at the Afghan economy overnight. You know, you’d have capital flight, you’ll have all sorts of other problems associated with it. So, it does need to be managed, but I am told, by those who’ve really worked through this, including some people who are in Kabul, that there is a recognition of the need for that money to be properly circumscribed in its uses and so, I feel it’s my job to say, “Let’s try.”

Lyse Doucet

We seem to have a little question corner here with three hands, and I know I’ve recognised one here, and one in the back. So why don’t we bring the microphone over here. Sadly, we never have enough time, but right here in the – sorry, this man’s already taken his mask off in preparation. Yes, yes.

John Wilson

John Wilson, a member of this Institute and various other ones. Now, Mr Miliband, you’re a very nice man and very kind, but I put it to you that there is an old saying, that “you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.” It can be said that the Afghan people have brought this upon themselves, inasmuch as they didn’t fight for their liberty. They were provided with billions of pounds worth of weapons and yet we hear they sold them to the Taliban. And so, it could be said that it would be better, instead of giving aid, humanitarian aid, to use the monies that we have to form an insurrection, so that we get rid of the Taliban immediate – as soon as possible, and then we can put in a reasonable government that can look after the population, including the women.

David Miliband

Well, I wouldn’t support that because the last 20 years have taught us that fermenting an insurrection in Afghanistan is not going to lead to any benefit. I take seriously your other points, but would point you to the fact that Afghan casualties of the Afghan forces have been legion, absolutely legion, and so the slur that the Afghans ‘didn’t fight’ is really not well-merited on the basis of the facts. And finally, I would say this to you. The Afghan people paid the price of the war and now they’re paying the price of the peace. They’re the victims of this, and the regional powers, the global powers have let them down in a very, very serious way. If you’re a mother who’s working for the International Rescue Committee in Kabul, you’ve had other people impose – trying to impose themselves upon you, but you’ve not been – had agency of your own, except in your own professional life, and so I would beg you to think not of what you can do for their nation. What my staff say to me is, “nation-building’s our job, but either you’re going to help us or hinder us.” And at the moment, you’re hindering us because we can’t even get through the next day ‘cause we can’t feed our families, and that is the proximate result of the policies that have been imposed over the last few months.

Lyse Doucet

Shall we take these two questions here, in the second row? Thank you for your…

David Miliband

I’m not that nice a person either, but that was a very nice way you said it.

Lyse Doucet

No, it’s okay, don’t. The background’s fine. Go ahead.

Hilde Rapp

Thank you. Hilde Rapp, Centre for International Peace Building. You talked about “nation building is my job,” as your staff will tell you.

David Miliband

They’re not my staff.

Hilde Rapp

And no, I’m quoting your staff member, and as you know, there was recently a meeting between OCHA and ODI and various other payers, looking at their new strategy at which one of the Afghan NGOs complained bitterly about the fact they are not properly consulted in the international process of a general humanitarian aid effort, but also, for me that raises another question, which I want to put to you, which is to do with Afghan and you mentioned the tribes. Afghan as a trading nation, where a lot of the revenue that they used to have, came from cross-border trade through Afghanistan, all of which of course they’ve lost. So, rather than kind of upping the humanitarian aid, if what you’re proposing to strengthen finance mechanisms that allow this trade to reopen, then it will be in the hands of the Afghan people to help themselves.

Lyse Doucet

Yes, let me just take this, yeah, and let’s have the question. Yeah, yeah, let’s keep that microphone there and we’ll just – yeah, okay. Good, good, okay.

Nicholas McLain

And Nicholas McLain. When Liz Truss was here the other day a lot of people raised the issue of, what is Britain’s role, as is the theme tonight, on refugees? And she repeated several times the good story about the 15,000 who were rescued six months ago and we were pressing her on how many more eligible Afghans were either still in Afghanistan on the run, hiding, or trying to get out, but not getting the paperwork, not getting the messages from the Home Office, the Foreign Office. And do you have any idea of what sort of numbers who are – people who should be Britain’s responsibility are still there or near Afghanistan and need to come here and what can we do about it?

David Miliband

Well, thank you very – look, I’ll take the second one and then the first one. Thank you very much for pressing the Foreign Secretary on that because there’s both an Afghan part of this and a more global element to it. The American situation, and I’ll say what I know about the British situation, the American situation is that, probably 80%, 75 to 80% of those who worked closely with the American Government over the last 20 years have not got out. Now, there’s a separate question. Are all of those going to be targeted? But there’s good reason to think that a lot of them have got reason to be fearful, but they have – they didn’t make it out and there’s no proper US presence on the ground to facilitate the registration of documentation, etc.

Lyse Doucet

That’s an extraordinary statistic. Who got out?

David Miliband

Extraordinary. There’s a desperate art – if you read George Packer’s piece in The Atlantic recently, he goes through this very well. The UK did well for the 15,000 and you can see 15,000 compared to 70,000 is a reasonable effort. No-one really knows how many are left. It’s a fair guess that there’s probably another 15,000 who’ve got one connection or another and that’s why it’s so disappointing that there’s been no follow-up to that 15,000. There was a commitment to have an Afghan Resettlement Package, now, and it’s not come. And that’s part of a wider syndrome, which is that refugee resettlement, which is the organised and planned transfer of the most vulnerable refugees from third countries like Pakistan or Jordan, in the case of Syrian refugees or Uganda, in the space of – in the case of South Sudanese refugees, has been really decimated in the last ten years.

I mean, America was always the leader in letting in about half of the world’s resettled refugees. The numbers were never huge, but under Ronald Reagan, he actually admitted more refugees to America than any other President, which is interesting; about 100,000 a year. The historic average of 90,000 a year and the UK number at the moment is about – before the Afghan crisis, is something like six refugees per parliamentary constituency. So, it’s pitiful really. And I always say to people, no-one’s going to tell me that instead of – if it was not six, if it was 12 or 18 or 24, that somehow the people of South Shields were going to be overwhelmed by having 24 refugees arrive rather than six arrive. And obviously in a world where there are 35 million people who’ve crossed borders as refugees, 100,000, 200,000 is not a huge thing, but the act of solidarity, with the countries are hosting them, is important. Because the countries that are hosting refugees around the world are not rich countries. It’s poor countries. It’s Bangladesh, it’s Turkey, it’s Lebanon, it’s Ethiopia, etc., although Ethiopia has got its own issues now.

Lyse Doucet

Pakistan, yeah.

David Miliband

So, thank you for raising that, I hope that gives you something.

In respect of the first question, OCHA is the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, so it’s the centrepiece of the UN system, ODI, Overseas Development Institute. I mean, we have 99% of our staff are Afghans. The sense of engagement with local civil society is very strong, but the accountability in the humanitarian system is too often upwards to donors rather than down to the clients. Our big thing at the International Rescue Committee is, clients are at the centre, that’s why we run customer satisfaction surveys, that’s why we try and drive things, according to what’s the – what’s happening locally. And so, we need much more of that, and if you press that on Liz Truss, that’s great, she’s made an important commitment around gender-based violence, which we’re very keen to support, we’ve been doing a lot of work on this. We want to work with the UK Government. If, frankly, the number of speeches that have been made over the last ten years on tackling gender-based violence, if you measured the progress by the number of speeches, we’d have much less gender-based violence and so, if she wants to really turn those speeches into action, that’s great, and we’ll work with her on that.

Lyse Doucet

And then about trade opening up that a lot of the economies fired by…

David Miliband

Oh sorry, yeah. Well, that’s – you see, I hope someone – I hope I haven’t been – I hope jetlag hasn’t got the better of me, but I’ve been trying to say, in the last 45 minutes, I haven’t come here and said, I’m running a humanitarian organisation, I want loads more humanitarian aid. I’ve been saying, I’m running a humanitarian organisation, for God’s sake, unless you can get the economy functioning, we’re going – it’s like running up a downward escalator and the multiplier of a billion dollars in the banking system is going to be greater than the multiplier of paying the World Food Programme to import rice. And that’s just so important.

Lyse Doucet

Good, thank you. Just…

David Miliband

You must have seen the – you don’t want to be in a situation where the World Food Programme is feeding half the population.

Lyse Doucet

We’ve got a question from Ray. Ray, did you want to ask your question yourself and if so, I think we’re going to allow you to – see you on the screen? If not, no. So, Ray Harris has a question, which is, “Do you foresee, now we’re in the future, a power sharing arrangement where the Taliban and the Afghan citizens (with UN observers) and help from US/UK to help rebuild institutions in Afghanistan?” I mean, that’s almost saying, isn’t there going to be a day somewhere in the future where it’s, I hesitate to use the word ‘normal’, but that we’re back to the question of legitimacy, the Taliban are working with the people to serve their needs.

David Miliband

I mean, any answer that doesn’t recognise that there are other non-state actors in Afghanistan, Islamic State and others, anyone who doesn’t mention those factors isn’t speaking to the reality. I don’t know, is the answer to the question. The one thing that might make it happen is the following. There’s actually quite a high alignment of interest between the West, the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis, the Iranians. There’s quite a lot of alignment of interest about the security, the migration, the functioning of the Afghan system and state. That’s the only thing that gives me a bit of hope at the moment.

Lyse Doucet

There’s a question about, let me just see if Hugo has a question. Don’t know whether he wants to – I don’t know whether I’m doing this wrong or Hugo wants to ask the question live, is that correct? Yeah, go ahead, Hugo. Is he on the line? Okay. Just what you said, you touched on it with your cross-border trade, you sort of mentioned it. “Longer-term, how dependent is the lasting solution to Afghanistan in addressing,” what he said, “leadership and alignment in Pakistan?” I mean, “What happens with the neighbours, particularly Pakistan, if so, how?” Are these issues that you get into or…?

David Miliband

I mean, look, it’s absolutely fundamental, as I said earlier, a national political settlement will not be durable unless there’s also a regional political settlement. One of the great failings of the Trump administration in its negotiations was to exclude – I should’ve said this in respect to your question actually – it excluded the Afghan Government and Afghan civil society, but it also excluded the neighbours. It was a sort of double whammy really. So, fundamental, I would say.

Lyse Doucet

Question way in the back, the gentleman with the glasses and the bowtie. Thank you for wearing a bowtie to join us today.

Member

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, David. You’ve brought the word ‘war’, reality, so I just want to throw this back to you. I accept the war, so there’s a collateral damage and the collateral damage of not recognising Taliban is less than recognising them. And then you have countries like Iran that will be feeding from Afghanistan and they are running a nuclear programme and they’ve said they would [inaudible – 51:39] their nuclear weapons to countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, all the countries that you are dealing with. So, you are dealing with dysfunctional government because they are gangsters or terrorists. So, how do you make sure that actually, you are not helping these regimes and the bigger crisis which we have, which the nuclear proliferation of these countries?

David Miliband

Well, you’ll be relieved to hear I am not going to get into the joint comprehensive plan of action and the Iranian’s nuclear programme. But I’ll just come directly to the…

Lyse Doucet

About what are security concerns?

David Miliband

But I just come back to something very fundamental. Feeding the people so that they can have some role in forging their own future. That’s what we’re talking about. Now, you can say that’s a diminution of aspiration and idealism, but it’s the basics. It’s the absolute basics. And if you care about impunity and accountability, then you’ve got to accept that the most minimum aspect of that is not hobbling people, so they can’t feed their own families. I mean, I’m sorry to be so minimalist in my comment. Let me try and put it this way. One of the interesting things for me, when I became the Head of the International Rescue Committee, I said that I would be looking at problems on the cusp of foreign policy and humanitarian policy from the other end of the telescope that I had looked at it as Foreign Secretary.

As Foreign Secretary, you can see the big picture and the danger is that you miss the people. If you’re running an NGO, you can see the people, the danger is that you miss the big picture, and what I wanted to try and do was get the mix of the two. Now, let me try and do that in respect of this starvation and conflict issue.

In a way, it’s the tip of the iceberg. My point to you is, to link this starvation crisis as a result of a conflict crisis, to a wider set of issues and to do so by saying that what’s happening in the world’s warzones that we highlight in our emergency watchlist that I talk about as system failure, is the tip of the iceberg. And the issues of impunity, of balance of power, of neglect of the commons, of the public commons are acute in those conflict places, but they are present elsewhere too. And if you care about peaceful protest around the world, if you care about democracy around the world, if you care about women’s rights around the world, if you care about human rights around the world, the countries that are failing to observe the legal rights of people, of civilians caught up in conflict, the legal rights that are better adumbrated, better set out than any of the other rights, if you can’t protect those most basic rights, then there’s no way we’re going to be able to protect the other sets of political, civil, social rights that are aspirations.

By the way, when I speak to business audiences, I also say, the places where you can’t defend civilian rights and you can’t defend political, civil and social rights, you’re not going to be able to defend property rights either. So, there is a private sector angle to this, as well as a state-centred angle and a civil society angle. And my interest is always to try and take what’s going on in the conflict zones that we work in and yes, appeal to trying to ‘address them, solve them’, but also to draw a larger picture about global trends, ‘cause I think they’re not separate from what’s going on in the conflict zones. Those conflict zones are the most acute example of it.

Lyse Doucet

And sadly, Afghanistan really is a real challenge when it comes to this huge amount of, you know, potential starvation, but basic rights like allowing girls to go to school, not being respected, I mean, it’s a huge…

David Miliband

Yes, although we run schools and we’ve been told, carry on running the schools. So, you know, it’s a…

Lyse Doucet

Well, let’s see what happens with their promise…

David Miliband

And you should take a couple more people.

Lyse Doucet

Okay, so now we have quite a few and there was a question down here, let me just take two. So, one down here, and then the gentleman here was next. Yeah, so there’s – yeah, I’m sorry, we now have more hands than – I’m sorry, so yes, go ahead.

Suzanne Spears

Thanks. I’m Suzanne Spears. I’m a Public International Lawyer and a Partner at Allen & Overy. As an American, I was a bit indignant. I’m indignant in a number of ways, but I’m also indignant in hearing about the US reserving those assets for the court case involving 9/11. I’d offer a little bit of free public international law advice that technically, you shouldn’t freeze sovereign assets or attach them in that context of those assets or utilise for a purpose, such as humanitarian assistance and public purpose. But – and anyway, the other bit of outrage I have though, was also with respect to the recent announcement by the ICC Prosecutor, that he will focus on Taliban crimes only and not engage with possible war crimes by US forces and other external forces, and I didn’t know if you had any comment on that or if it’s too hot a potato?

Lyse Doucet

Give you a moment for you to think about this, and two really good questions, without rage. And this gentlemen here, with the glasses, yeah, right here. Yeah, with the red tie on.

Thomas Cole

Hi, Thomas Cole, Journalist, Chatham House member. The Munich Security Conference Report out today, it states that, “In light of the limited achievements of the US and its partners in Afghanistan, hard questions arise about the West’s ability to promote stability elsewhere in the world.” Do you agree, thinking particularly about Ukraine?

Lyse Doucet

Yes, okay, we’re going to keep this end, this lady here, this – right in the middle, with the lovely flowered mask on. There, it’s going to be a race together between you, between the microphones. Go ahead.

Madhavi Vadera

Hi, so I’m Madhavi Vadera. I’m the Chair of Migrant Help, which is one of the biggest refugee charities, so you can see where I’m going to go with my question. I want to say thank you very much for shining a light on Afghanistan, and specifically what’s happening with the refugee world. I want to zone in on a question on the resettlement scheme, if that’s okay. So, at the moment, there is a push within the UK Home Office, with whom we work quite closely, that there will be an indefinite Afghan Resettlement Scheme, but what they haven’t said is a minimum and a maximum.

The second part of that is, what happens to those refugees that arrive here, that haven’t come through the official Resettlement Scheme, what happens to them?

And the third question, and this is where perhaps Mr Miliband…

Lyse Doucet

That’s a lot of questions.

Madhavi Vadera

Well, it’s kind of connected with the refugee resettlement, is what about people in Afghanistan, do they know that there is a process by which they can apply and be considered as part of the Resettlement Scheme and can come through to the country? So, really, really important question.

Lyse Doucet

So, really, really important question. Yes, okay, let’s go to the Lawyer, this question first, who’s taking issue with you about the Central Bank, the freezing of the assets.

David Miliband

Well, no, she – I mean…

Lyse Doucet

She was making a comment.

David Miliband

I’m not sure she was disagreeing with me, but the…

Suzanne Spears

I was agreeing with you.

David Miliband

Sorry?

Suzanne Spears

I was agreeing with you on the last one.

David Miliband

That’s what I think she said, she was agreeing with me on that, but anyway.

Lyse Doucet

ICC.

David Miliband

Yeah, I want to answer on the ICC ‘cause I think this is really important. The US it shares – considers itself competing with China in many things, but its own fear of international entanglement, especially with international legal treaties, is an issue that should be discussed. It applies to the ICC case, which is considered controversial, but frankly, even the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US observes, it refuses to sign. And obviously, this goes deep into history, but I’m really clear about this. If the global trend to impunity is to be taken on and if you accept that the global trend to impunity is being led from undemocratic states, authoritarian states, autocratic states, and you want to fight that trend, it will not be fought as long as impunity can be seen in the actions of states, which claim to be democratic, constitutional and otherwise law-abiding.

Frankly, that’s one reason I felt so strongly about the prorogation of Parliament in this country the year before last. You can’t have ‘specific and necessary exemptions’ from obeying the law. And you certainly can’t do that if you don’t want to have Mr Lavrov spend every press conference and every meeting telling you about your hypocrisy in lecturing him about impunity if you’re not living up to your own rules.

So, sorry to do the old Politician’s trick of referring you to a speech I made, but I would very much like you to read a speech I gave at the Council on Foreign Relations in December this year, December the 15th, it’s on the – if you type in David Miliband Morse Lecture, it was not in Morse Code, but it was at – it was the Morse Lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. It was about this point, amongst others, that getting our own house in order is the fundamental prerequisite for then being able to build a more accountable system globally, ‘cause any suggestion of Golden Ageism or unmediated virtue on our own part is obviously not accurate, never mind sensible. And so, I’m proud that the UK signed the ICC. Under the Clinton administration, the US actually did – the President signed it, but it didn’t go through Congress and so I hope that’s an answer.

I haven’t read the MSC Report, but I’ll be going to Munich on Thursday/Friday. I mean, from your description of it, I do agree, but my argument, and it comes back to this story I told about going to Afghanistan in 2007, the idea that you win the military battle and then you forge the political settlement is completely cart-before-horse. I’m afraid I’m persuaded, and there’s a brilliant book actually, and what’s his name? It’s an American, Carter?

Member

Malkasian.

David Miliband

Malkasian, Carter Malkasian.

Lyse Doucet

Yeah, of the Pech Valley.

David Miliband

Sorry?

Lyse Doucet

Of the Pech Valley.

David Miliband

Yeah. Well, he did do a subsequent book about it.

Member

American War.

David Miliband

The American War in Afghanistan. He gets it right, in my view. He goes back to 2001/2 and here’s a – I know we haven’t got time for this, but I think this is quite interesting. He makes the point that I completely agree with, that’s – this isn’t the interesting bit, but it’s an important part of the story, that the exclusion of the vanquished from the peace talks in 2001/2…

Lyse Doucet

Everyone thinks – yeah, a lot of people make this point, yeah.

David Miliband

…was a massive mistake. Here’s the interesting thing, which I didn’t really know. He puts the blame fair and square on the shoulders on Donald Rumsfeld for this who, in the US system was adamant, adamantine, adamant that they, the vanquished would not be invited to the Bonn Conference. However, here’s the thing that this Carter Malkasian generates. He’s got these papers which show Rumsfeld was absolutely clear-eyed about where an occupation strategy would land the US. He effectively predicted the next 20 years, even though his own actions led to the 20 years happening. So, my view, very strongly, and I think this has very wide applicability, it’s got applicability in Iraq and elsewhere. If you don’t have institutions of political power that share power in a way that is legitimate and credible, then you’re not going to be able to generate any kind of domestic political stability.

Now, the Ukraine case, I don’t think falls into that category, because Ukraine is more democratic than it was five years ago and it’s really a category error I think. I don’t know – I’m sure the – I’d be surprised if the MSC were saying this. It’s a category error to see what’s going on in Ukraine today as being internally generated. It’s not a civil conflict. It’s a threat from its neighbour to walk across its borders, march across its borders in contravention of everything. Shall I just answer the Resettlement Scheme?

Lyse Doucet

Very quickly, yes, yes.

David Miliband

I’m sorry.

Lyse Doucet

Discipline’s part of democracy, but with Chatham House’s permission, we’ll go a little bit over, but it’s an important question, and I apologise in advance to the many hands, for the other questions.

David Miliband

You’ll get me drummed out from a membership that I don’t have. So, the…

Lyse Doucet

Oh no.

David Miliband

Sorry?

Member

It’s a complement.

David Miliband

Oh, I see, I didn’t realise it worked like that. The – ‘cause the Council on Foreign Relations in America won’t let me be a member.

Lyse Doucet

Okay, answer the question, since you guys were talking.

David Miliband

Just on the Resettlement Scheme, there were three questions, and here’s the bit that – I want to answer them together. In 1975, after the Americans left Vietnam, President Ford got the UNHCR to do the registration of Vietnamese for the Resettlement Scheme because there were no US Consular Officials there. That’s what should happen now, and so you knew the answer all along, but …

Lyse Doucet

UNHCR’s overwhelmed.

David Miliband

And so, do any Afghans know about resettlement? Of course not. What they see is a massive bureaucracy that they can’t navigate, and in the case of part of the US bureaucracy wanting a so-called P2 Programme, Priority 2 Programme, they’ve got to leave the country to get a Visa to come to America, but they can’t get out of the country without a Visa. I mean, it’s completely core. So, if the UK Government said to UNHCR, “Look, you’re on the ground in Afghanistan, as part of the UNAMA Mandate, UN Afghanistan Mission Mandate that’s being renegotiated in the Security Council at the moment, we will commit to X-thousand places a year and we want you to go and find the people who have good reason to be fearful of their own future.” That would then establish – get them to establish the mechanism, and then you can start doing the resettlement. But until that happens, no chance.

Lyse Doucet

And with my – with great apology, ‘cause we’ve gone – I’m so sorry, the gentleman, the bad news is that we’ve run out of time. The good news is that there will be a reception upstairs and you will get a chance to ask your question directly to David and if a big enough crowd gathers around you, it will sort of feel almost the same as if you had asked it here. And there’s really, really good questions on the online as well, which I’m really, really sorry that perhaps you’ll get to some, and I will just end by one of my favourite quotes from David Miliband, which I often use, in which he says, “That when you look at the statistics and you look at the reports from a long way away, they can really make you depressed. But when you go to the ground, and meet the people, it gives you optimism.”

And I think that this is a very complicated situation in Afghanistan and many other countries also convulsed by, to use your word, ‘catastrophe’. But I think what has come out of this session is that there is an understanding about the urgent need to help the people who are starving, who need every possible need and so, David and I both thank all of you for coming to join us here today. We hope you’ll come upstairs as well to join us for the reception. I think all of you who joined online with really excellent comments, I’m so tempted to read some of them, but thank you very much. Thank you [applause].