091109_GA_Afghanistan

Mr President

Australia welcomes the opportunity to endorse and co-sponsor the General Assembly’s resolution on Afghanistan and to reaffirm our commitment to international efforts to build a more secure and stable Afghan state.

We would like to take this opportunity to record Australia’s deep sorrow over the deaths of the UN workers so callously murdered by the Taliban on 28 October in Kabul. We support all efforts to meet the security needs of UN staff in Afghanistan while enabling the UN to continue to play its indispensible role throughout the country.

Our collective task remains both difficult and urgent, as developments in Afghanistan over the last year – including a worsening security situation in many parts of the country – have shown.

The coming year or two will be critical to the success of efforts by Afghans, and the international community supporting them, to meet the pressing challenges facing Afghanistan. Achieving this will require renewed commitment to a focused agenda for action that is capable of delivering real improvements in priority areas of security, governance and economic development.

Afghanistan today stands at an important juncture. The difficulties that accompanied the Presidential election are well known, although it is important to note that the outcome respected the constitution and Afghan-led electoral process. Looking forward, the task before President Karzai is to form a government that can win the trust of the Afghan people by strengthening Afghanistan’s security, fighting corruption and delivering effective governance and basic services. Through our ongoing commitment in Afghanistan, Australia stands ready to work with the new Afghan Government and other international partners in support of these objectives.

There has been a growing recognition that the challenges facing the coalition in Afghanistan demand a comprehensive approach - one that builds strong connections between the military and civilian spheres, and views them as complementary parts of a single endeavour. Winning support for our mission among the Afghan people will depend as much on our success in helping the Afghan authorities deliver better services and clean government as it will on our achievements on the battlefield.

This is reflected in Australia’s approach to Afghanistan, which stresses the importance of a comprehensive capacity-building and development assistance effort, in addition to a substantial military and combat commitment.

On the military front, Australia announced in April a substantial increase in its troop numbers, from 1,100 to around 1,550. The principal aim of this increased contribution was to bolster our efforts in training Afghan forces in the southern province of Oruzgan, to get them to the point where they can take on responsibility for providing security in the province themselves.

Thus, we committed additional troops to form two further Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams in Oruzgan, on top of the team we already had in place. Australia also undertook to provide additional logistic support forces and force protection elements in Oruzgan, extra embedded planning and staff officers, and around 120 troops to assist with security for the elections and general security in the province.

Australia is also providing $US 200 million over the next five years to the Afghan National Army Trust Fund. Contributing to the Trust Fund supports the Australian Government’s objective of creating a self-sufficient Afghan National Army capable of providing security for the Afghan nation.

In addition, we are deploying extra Australian Federal Police officers to train and advise members of the Afghan National Police force. The Australian Federal Police is providing training to the Afghan National Police at Oruzgan’s Provincial Training Centre and also contributes through its role in counter narcotics, combating serious organised crime, providing strategic advice to the Interior Ministry and working with international partners. It has also helped develop national Afghan police investigations teams and contributed to the establishment of strategic police programs.

In addition to its work on the security front, Australia has also made a substantial contribution to the equally important civilian assistance effort. Since 2001 Australia has committed $600 million to aid, capacity building and reconstruction, including a pledge of $250 million in June 2008 for development and reconstruction assistance over three years.

Through the efforts of the Australian Defence Force’s Reconstruction Task Force and advisers from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), Australia has already completed a range of important development projects, including in Oruzgan province, such as upgrades to hospitals and health clinics and the construction of bridges. Australian aid has contributed to Afghan Government efforts to build over 800 schools and to provide basic health services to around 80 per cent of the population.

We are increasing Australian aid efforts to support capacity building and service delivery. We will provide up to six technical specialists who will provide advice to key service delivery agencies including the Ministries of Health, Education, Agriculture and Rural Reconstruction and Development.

One of our principal objectives on the civilian front is to help pave the way for a more effective, credible and durable system of government extending from Kabul all the way down to the district level. What Afghanistan desperately needs is a system of national government that is both trusted by its people and capable of delivering much-needed services throughout the country. Without it, the risk is that disillusioned Afghans will increasingly look to the Taliban and other destructive forces, rather than to the legitimate government, to meet their needs.

With this in mind, Australia is helping to build the capacity of the Afghan government at both the central and provincial levels so it can deliver better services to the Afghan people.

By contributing $87 million to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, Australia has supported significant improvements in the Afghan Government’s public financial management practices. This support is helping the government to produce transparent budgets and to ensure public funds are being used for their intended purpose. It is also being used to establish an external monitoring agent to oversee donor contributions to the Afghan Government’s budget and to strengthen the procurement and audit functions of the Afghan Ministry of Finance.

As part of our contribution to the Trust Fund, we are also supporting the National Solidarity Program. Run by the Afghan Ministry of Rural Reconstruction and Development, the program is aimed at providing small scale, community-implemented infrastructure projects and expanding the economic opportunities of the Afghan people. It has already reached 22,000 villages, or 68 per cent of the rural population, through delivering more than 44,000 infrastructure projects, such as irrigation systems, safe drinking water and health clinics, to rural communities.

Australia’s efforts in Afghanistan are of course only one part of a broader campaign by the international community to build a better future for the Afghan people. As the international community scales up its efforts in Afghanistan, effective donor coordination mechanisms will become even more important if we are to ensure transparency and the effective distribution of resources.

In such a complex environment, the organisational role played by the UN in Afghanistan is becoming ever-more important and challenging and we would like to note our appreciation for the efforts of the Secretary General’s Special Representative Kai Eide and UNAMA personnel.

Australia supports the draft resolution. We welcome, in particular, its call for reform to the country’s public administration to ensure good governance and accountability at both the national and sub-national levels; its interest in seeing further progress by the Government in establishing a more effective, accountable and transparent administration to lead the fight against corruption, and its call for improved service delivery in key sectors such as energy and water supply.