of Evaluation Department (EvD). The success of the Evaluation is due to many people and EvD would like to acknowledge the contribution made by the evaluation team itself and thank DFID Afghanistan staff and development partners who engaged with the study. The evaluation focused on DFID's programme during the period 2002-December 2007, with updates provided for 2008. The evaluation was conducted in 2008, and included a one week inception phase carried out by EvD and Jon Bennett, the ITAD team

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... der for this CPE, and three weeks of fieldwork in London, Kabul and Lashkar Gah (Helmand Province) carried out by the consultancy team. In writing this report, the evaluation team has-at our request-not focussed on UK interdepartmental programmes. For the future, we think it would be worth trying to develop a cross-Whitehall approach for some of our country evaluations. We have done this in the past on our policy related evaluations, for example on HIV and on the conflict pools. It adds complexity to the process and requires the support of a wider range of stakeholders at an early stage, but it would allow us to say more about policy coherence in international development across government. We will explore this further with UK government partners as part of implementing DFID's new evaluation policy. In accordance with EvD policy, considerable emphasis was placed on involving the country office staff during the evaluation process and on communicating findings. Despite this involvement, the country office does not necessarily agree with all the findings of the CPE; the report reflects the views of the independent consultants, and the DFID office's 'management response' can be found at the end of this report. EvD is encouraged that DFID Afghanistan has been able to use the recommendations of the CPE to inform development of its new country plan. We will be following up on the recommendations to ensure that DFID, in Afghanistan and Corporate Divisions, does give them due consideration.