British Army Maj. Gen. Phillip Jones Opening Statement
ISAF News Briefing – 1 July 2010 

Good morning, my name is Major General Phil Jones.  I would like to start off this morning by offering our congratulations to President Karzai, to Minister Stanekzai and to the people of Afghanistan – because as you will have heard, President Karzai signed the Presidential Decree that brings the Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program to life.  This is really excellent news.

Let me take just a few minutes to explain my role and where I think we are, from an ISAF perspective, on the reintegration process

I am the director of the Force Reintegration Cell here at ISAF and we work as a civil service for Minister Stanakzai, the presidential advisor on peace and reintegration. As you know, he is a minister with a ministerial portfolio but no real ministry as of yet. So we have been his civil service right from the outset. We are giving him the ability to take ideas and policy suggestions from the government, and to create programs from that and to get those programs back into the processes of the Afghan government. It’s really just a question of capacity as much as anything.

In the time that I have been here there is no sense that we, ISAF, are running the program and that Minister Stanakzai is simply approving what we do. He is absolutely leading this effort. He is extremely intelligent and articulate. He has a lot of experience with government and non-governmental organizations and understands programs. The more I work with him, the more respect I have for the way that he has personally vested himself into peace and reintegration. This is not something that is merely academic for him.

Our main effort for Minister Stanakzai has been to try and build the Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program, and we have been doing this since the London Conference. We have built a program across multiple ministries and focused at the district level and below. This program looks at villages and individuals and will create coherence and restore the dialogue between individuals and their communities and between communities and their districts. This program seeks to initiate grievance resolution, help resolve grievances and to maintain the dignity and honor of everyone involved in the process.

So where are we?

There will be no enduring military solution to the insurgency in Afghanistan. Only an enduring political process with which GIRoA will assure the future of Afghanistan.

This political process has continued to unfold since the London Conference. President Karzai had a major trip to the United States that was extremely successful. This trip led us towards the highly successful National Consultative Peace Jirga, another important step in the peace process.

Talking with Minister Stanakzai after the Jirga had ended, I could see and feel the very strong sense of satisfaction that he had regarding the Peace Jirga. He talked very passionately about the potential this has to offer for the Afghan people. He clearly sees this as an indicator of the legitimacy of the overall peace process and of President Karzai leading that forward. He also thought, and we completely support and agree with him, that there needs to be a very strong fight against those that oppose peace and that it is clear that the majority of the population believes this as well.

And so afterward, we worked very closely with Minister Stanakzai and others to ensure that this program flows from the Peace Jirga. Please understand, that for the peace process to work, the Afghan government will have keep to its promise of providing significant reforms. The Afghan population has some legitimate expectations of its government, and delivering on these promises will help the Afghan people see that their government is serious about improving the lives of all Afghans. And we are ready to help them do that in any way possible.

The future of the reintegration process is promising. There continue to be small pockets of reintegration occurring around the country and a few larger groups are starting to express interest in it as well.  People realize that this program is a benefit to entire communities, not just individuals. It is not a “guns-for-peace” program but a way for former fighters to lead peaceful and productive lives for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of their communities.

So we will continue to work closely with our Afghan government partners, with donor nations, to prepare for the Joint Coordination Monitoring Board that’s coming up, and on in to the Kabul Conference. We look forward to working with the High Council for Peace as well as with the Joint Secretariat to enact President Karzai’s vision for a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

With that, I will take your questions.