Delivered, September 30, 2018, Birmingham, UK:
"I’d like to say a few words about Development and Defence and the connection with two of the biggest donors to Overseas Aid, the United States and Britain.
I used to be a soldier. My Regiment was The Black Watch – a short name with a long history.
In 1963, the pipes and drums of The Black Watch toured America, playing famous venues such as Madison Square Garden. Their last concert was on the lawn of the White House in the presence of President Kennedy. A week later, the President was dead and Jackie Kennedy requested that the Black Watch lead the funeral procession, the only non-American military unit ever to have taken part in a US State occasion.
Some months later, in an effort to secure British support in south-east Asia, Lyndon Johnson, recalling the funeral, asked Harold Wilson for The Black Watch. Wilson refused and Britain played no part in the Vietnam war. In 2004, after a similar request from Bush to Blair, The Black Watch deployed to Iraq for the battle of Fallujah in the so-called Triangle of Death.
At 1300hrs on 5th November 2004, a car driven by an unshaven man with pale features, approached a Black Watch checkpoint south of Fallujah held by the Pipes and Drums platoon. He drove at an unremarkable speed, was seen to smile and then detonated a suicide IED. The blast killed Sergeant Stuart Gray, Private Scott McArdle and Private Paul Lowe. Eight soldiers were wounded. In peace, these men were outstanding pipers and drummers. In war, they were soldiers. The blast ripped the heart out of the band. It’s hard to play without your hearing, fingers or limbs.
In 2015, I left the Army to lead The HALO Trust, the world’s biggest mine clearance organisation. HALO was founded by a Scottish soldier thirty years ago. We operate in 25 countries and employ over 8,500 local people. These people would otherwise be destitute, displaced or recruited by ISIS or the Taliban. Last year alone, 1.7 million people benefitted from our work.
HALO is an Anglo-American charity meeting the humanitarian expectations of both countries as well as our European and other global partners. Whatever you may have heard about cuts to aid, the truth is that the Trump administration has increased its spend on weapons removal to just over $300m a year, so I’d like to acknowledge publicly that American support.
This year, HALO has opened a programme in Iraq. We are clearing improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, from around Fallujah - ironically, or perhaps appropriately, where I fought with The Black Watch in 2004.
Unlike earlier wars, fought largely in open country, the war in the Middle East has been focused on great cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Aleppo, Mosul and Raqqah, where booby traps proliferate and bombs lie buried in pancaked concrete buildings.
Let me give you an idea of the scale of the problem. There are an estimated 8 million tons of conflict rubble in Mosul alone. That’s three times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
I don’t need to labour the point that further conflict in the Middle East could easily bring terror back on the streets of Britain.
HALO is addressing the problem of urban explosive contamination through the use of British technology adapted from that other mining sector, mineral extraction, using crushers, sifters and diggers. Penny Mordaunt’s announcement of the Hope in Conflict Fund – a tech challenge to organisations around the world – is an opportunity to find new solutions to our work.
Iraq is our newest operation, but Afghanistan is HALO’s longest running programme. An Afghan has led HALO there since the early 1990s. Of his 3,700 deminers, only five are ex-patriate staff. A few years after my time in Iraq, I commanded Task Force Helmand. In place of that very British, very military and very expensive solution to Helmand, HALO presents a very Afghan and very affordable answer to the problem.
Britain and the US have been longstanding supporters of mine action in Afghanistan and indeed globally. Over ten years, DFID has funded the clearance of Herat Province, benefitting 370,000 families.
In Afghanistan, our deminers could have swollen the ranks of the Taliban. Instead, they were given the dignity of a livelihood. Outputs such as these should silence the most vocal of aid critics, for it shows that aid is not only the right thing to do, it is also an investment in our national security.
Recently, Afghanistan has been clouded by violence. Despite this, in February I hosted a visit by Ruth Davidson to Kabul. Ruth, as some of you may have heard, is no shrinking violet – and I’ve rarely seen a happier face than when we let her blow up a landmine. But there are plenty of other women in this Sector and HALO has also hosted Priti Patel in February 2017 in Afghanistan and Penny Mordaunt at our southern HQ in Salisbury, a few days after the last Novochok incident.
The .7% of GDP that the UK commits to overseas aid is often a subject of controversy. Should more be spent on domestic priorities? Should more be spent on Defence? There is only one great writer on war - Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz, whose thesis centres on the trinity of people, army and state, doesn’t get much of a hearing in the Aid world. Penny Mordaunt has described the three Ds of Defence, Diplomacy and Development – this is the modern Clausewitzian trinity. As a Mine Clearance charity led by ex-soldiers, HALO sits at the junction of this trinity, now known in Whitehall as the Fusion Doctrine.
HALO is distinctive from other aid charities in that it is not simply giving aid to needy people, it is enabling people (with training and leadership) to help themselves. A good example of the Fusion Doctrine is the DFID initiated new National Security Council Strategy for Africa, which brings together aid and trade.
NGOs and the military are sometimes wary of each other. Since we are both funded by the tax payer, I don’t think that is good enough. It is my belief that military support is required in countries where conflict still spills into humanitarian space. In a world in which we face threats that are increasingly hybrid in nature, we surely need a fused response between military, agency, diplomatic and non-governmental organisations.
It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the reconstruction challenge in the Middle East. But it’s worth remembering Mozambique. For 22 years, the UK supported mine clearance there, led by HALO. In 2015, Mozambique was declared mine free.
The UK recently committed £100m to ridding the world of landmines. This took strategic vision and I salute this Government for making it possible.
But if the UK helps consign landmines to the history books, what about the clearance of IEDs, bombs, rockets, small arms and other ordnance for countries? Just as the US have done under successive administrations, I think it is time that UK Aid was more focused on addressing these threats. So alongside the UK’s Global Mine Action Programme, I would like to see a Global Weapons Reduction Programme focused on countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Such a fund might be available to NGOs such as HALO employing ex-servicemen, or it might just as well be open to spare capacity in Defence.
I readily concede to having skin in this game and my mind sometimes returns to that suicide IED in 2004. But personal anecdote isn’t a good enough reason to do something. There are three questions that should be answered: is it in the national interest? Is there a humanitarian need? Can it be done? The short answer to all three is a resounding yes."
