Shoots of stability seen in Musa Qal'ah

From Afghanistan to Sudan, countries emerging from conflict need stability above all else. The UK's Stabilisation Unit is a pool of calm advisers who bring their expertise to the world's most troubled hotspots:

"It's that perfect smell: a little bit of diesel, mixed with spice, and scented with some acridity in the air, too. The municipal service of waste disposal hasn't really got a foothold yet - that's something we're currently working on."

So beams Mike McKie, if indeed you can beam on a telephone call from somewhere in a forward operating base at the very front of the front line in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

He's talking about the bazaar in Musa Qal'ah, an iconic, deadly little town that has changed hands twice in this conflict, and which he has called home for the last four months. Mike is there because he volunteered as a 'stabilisation adviser' for the UK Government's Stabilisation Unit, which sends civilians to dispense their expertise in areas of the world that need more than just emergency humanitarian aid but aren't yet 'stable' enough for longer-term development work.

The bazaar is one sign that things are changing for the better in Musa Qal'ah Mike believes:

"When Musa Qal'ah was this incredibly dangerous place, you'd have found a thriving bazaar all right, but it was based on an opium economy. Now, you find a thriving bazaar based on licit practice. If we were to walk down there on a Monday or a Wednesday in particular, it would be filled with people and animals. We have a thriving livestock market on those days.

"It's got that very typical 'emerging economy' smell you might associate with other developing countries around the world," he enthuses. "There is a buzz of income generation."

Mike McKie used to head up operations for Save the Children in southern Sudan, and has the unflappable air of someone who is used to working in some of the world's livelier places:

"When I arrived here in early August, it was a little bit hairy. But after the end of the election, things have settled down. It's no worse than any other place I've worked in the world where you would expect to find the odd bang here or there."

His role, he explains, is "to design projects and programmes intended to bring about political stability". Specifically, he's working with the recently installed mayor, the district governor, the district director of education, and the health services.

One project he has helped initiate is "a hybrid power-generation idea". In Musa Qal'ah, electricity is only available for two days a week:

"I've been able to supplement their supply," he explains, "by installing a generator that can be turned on when the power goes off. The net effect is that it's run by the local government through the mayor. It will provide a source of income for the municipality, and will help the government dispense its responsibilities to the population."

Everyone's a winner.

The Stabilisation Unit, established at the end of 2004, is jointly 'owned' by the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Led by Richard Teuten, the Unit had a chance to demonstrate its cutting edge at the end of 2005 when it was asked to lead a 'provincial reconstruction team' (PRT) to design an operational plan for the UK's engagement in Helmand:

"It was by no means perfect," recalls Teuten. "But it was a step forward."

On a recent trip to Helmand, General McChrystal, the US Commander of the war in Afghanistan, said that he thought the PRT was "a model for the rest of Afghanistan". In early 2006, a PRT was established in Basra to unify various UK 'stability' initiatives into one organisation.

The issues the UK faces can often be complex Teuten points out:

"[In Somalia, for instance] you have a range of concerns around a mix of terrorists, potential migration flows, humanitarian suffering, and the possibility of instability affecting neighbouring countries.

"We help departments across the UK government work out the relationship between those concerns, the relative importance of each to the UK, the tools we can use to address those, and then help develop a strategy that sets an aim, a series of objectives, and the activities needed to achieve those objectives."

The Stabilisation Unit is operating in a range of countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Kosovo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It has been actively recruiting in order to cope with its expanding mandate.

The permanent staff based in Whitehall are increasing from 35 to 66 in the next few months, and its pool of individuals outside government has grown from 600 to 1,000. Around 120 are deployed in any one month, of which 70 to 80 come from this pool of civilians; the rest are police.

There are stabilisation advisers in each of the seven forward operating bases in Helmand. And this really is front line work, despite Mike McKie's cool:

"No environment is risk-free," admits Richard Teuten. "And it's not for everybody. The people who volunteer for this kind of work are those who feel they can make a difference to the Afghans who have been suffering so badly, or the people of Darfur, or those in eastern DRC.

"They have a sense of wanting to be a part of an international effort to resolve a problem and make a difference for the people of that country."

The story they tell about why the UK is there, of course, is crucial for a collective sense of purpose and vocation:

"In Afghanistan," he explains, "the narrative is now much clearer: we are there to protect the British public, to control the risk of terrorism. We are not there primarily to control the drugs, but we recognise that drugs are linked with the terrorism and insurgency."

Mike McKie agrees about the power of the story, but likes to see it from another angle:

"The better story to be told is what they tell about us," he maintains. "The district governor here was formerly part of the insurgency, and then decided to move over to the Afghan Government and disassociate himself with the insurgency altogether.

"His message to his own people is that the coalition forces are not the enemy. Rather, he talks about the insurgency as the enemy of Afghanistan. And that's a very refreshing change in my opinion. I simply reinforce that when I meet people south, north, east or west of Musa. In fact, the outward attitude of the ordinary Afghan is a welcoming one."

McKie is pleased with the successes of the Stabilisation Unit. Musa Qal'ah now has a mayor, for example, and an embryonic district council at which members of the community will be encouraged to make their own decisions on how to administer funds made available to them by government:

"They're moving on now to think about taking on development initiatives for themselves," he said.

Which is surely the point. There is a palpable sense of optimism about the nature of such progress - which is not always communicated through the mainstream media:

"It's a much more difficult story to tell on television than the sad loss of military colleagues," confirms Richard Teuten. "But there is real progress in Helmand - increasing numbers of districts in which the governor and the government are meeting the needs of the people. And where the people are seeing the government as the main source of authority."

Mike McKie's stint in Helmand finishes in July, but "the way things are going," he says, "I'm already thinking about extending my time here. We are moving into such exciting times where serious changes are just over the brow of the hill."

This report by Brian Draper was first published in Issue 48 of Developments - a free quarterly magazine from the UK Government's Department for International Development designed to increase awareness of development issues.