Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT HON
DES BROWNE
MP, BRIGADIER STEPHEN
ANDREWS CBE AND
MR DAVID
GOULD CB
11 JULY 2006
Q20 Mr Hamilton: The security situation
in Helmand Province has altered and is quite tenuous. Has that
altered the proposal of the timetable for ISAF to look at the
remaining issues in eastern Afghanistan?
Des Browne: The transfer of authority
in relation to stage three of ISAF is due on or about the end
of this month, as far as I recollect, and then it is our ambition
that we will move quickly to stage four because the logic of this
deployment of ISAF forces south and east is that the best opportunities
may be created when stage four takes place and then we can, as
people will understand and would have been obvious to you in Afghanistan,
bring under the single control of ISAF quite significant assets
which the Americans have available, in particular air support,
and you would have seen the significant presence of air support
that the Americans have available at Kandahar Airfield. The conditions
that will allow that are a matter for discussion in NATO, and
in particular involving the United States, and those discussions
continue. It is our ambition to be able to see an early move to
stage four, for the very obvious reasons that I have just expressed.
Q21 Mr Hamilton: The takeover is
on 31 July so that is going to be rather difficult. Minister,
could I express a view that, like most Members of Parliament,
we have a good feeling in our constituencies for what is happening
throughout the area. I support Afghanistan. I believe that what
we are doing there is good work and I am pleased to see that the
troops actually believe the same. However, I am rather concerned
that more and more people are not distinguishing between Afghanistan
and Iraq, ie in one country it is an army of occupationthat
is a point of viewand in the other country we are there
to try and support. It does worry me that the view being expressed
by I think a substantial number of the public is that they see
no difference. How do you overcome that?
Des Browne: The fact that people
play from one theatre into another their views, whether they be
prejudiced views or whether they be views that they hold for reasons
of analysis, and the transfer of views that relate to one theatre
into another is a degree of prejudice, and I do not use that in
a pejorative sense. That does concern me. Repeatedly in the opportunities
that I have had to put across an explanation of what we are doing
in Afghanistan I have faced down just those allegations on a number
of occasions, but I have long learned that I cannot control what
other people say or do or indeed write. Those people who are opposed
to the Government's position in Afghanistan in that sense get
a vote as well as everybody else and they exercise that vote and
will deploy the resources that they want in order to undermine
the Government's position. My position is unequivocally clear,
and I have made it plain in the House on a number of occasions
and outside of the House, and that is Afghanistan is a noble cause,
supported by the United Nations, supported by NATO, supported
by a significant number of other countries (almost the whole of
the developed world), supported by the Afghan Government themselves,
and supported by the Afghan people. The only way that I can overcome
the prejudice that you identify in other people is to continue
to explain as best I can why we are there and what we are doing
and hope that people begin to understand it. I have, I have to
say, had a sense over the last weeks that some of these arguments
are beginning to get through, certainly in the media, and that
there has been a balanced reporting of Afghanistan, explaining
not just the challenges, which are manifest and everybody knows
are there (and it does not make the place any less dangerous or
any less difficult to do because it is a noble cause) but I think
there is a degree of support for what we are doing in Afghanistan
that would be reflected in public opinion.
Chairman: Almost every single colleague
here has caught my eye and I will be as fair as I can be and I
will get round to everybody but I will start with Mark Lancaster.
Q22 Mr Lancaster: I want to probe
the nature of the reinforcement. I mentioned it briefly in the
Chamber but when you look at the troops that you have announced
yesterday, certainly from an infantry point of view, they are
all composite companies. We are talking about a company being
formed from a whole Commando brigade. We are talking about a company
being formed taken from the Second Battalion Royal Regiment of
Fusiliers. We are having to cobble together companies in order
to try and reinforce Afghanistan. If the current spike of activity
continues beyond the duration they are expecting of a couple of
months, is this not a clear sign of the absolute overstretch of
our troops? What are you going to do next? Cobble together more
companies? Is there a single formed infantry company going or
are they all composite companies?
Des Browne: I am not in a position
to answer that question in detail. It may well be that Brigadier
Andrews is able to answer that question specifically.
Brigadier Andrews: I am sorry,
I am not able to.
Mr Lancaster: Can you really not find
one single formed company to go to Afghanistan at the moment?
Chairman: This is not meant to be critical
of Mr Lancaster but I think he asked it yesterday.
Mr Lancaster: I did not get an answer.
Chairman: It would be helpful if you
could possibly write to us with an answer to the question which
has now been asked twice.[2]
Q23 Mr Lancaster: And no answer.
Des Browne: Chairman, I appreciate
that and to the extent I am unable answer that question, then
clearly that is a criticism of me and I should have anticipated
that very specific question. I will provide the information. I
suspect that the question is designed in that form to draw attention
to a broader issue than just that specific point.
Q24 Chairman: That is fair.
Des Browne: If I can address the
larger issue, which is the issue of whether I am anticipating
or, indeed, expecting that we will need to do just the sort of
thing that Mr Lancaster suggested that I would need to do next,
I say to him that a significant amount of thought and preparation
went into that announcement yesterday. As I said in the House,
the process of review started some time ago, indeed, it started
around about May, and it went through the normal processes of
being "staffed up", as they say in the Ministry of Defence,
until the point when it came to me, and I am satisfied that we
have now made a decision that will give us the full strength and
the configuration that we need for the future in Afghanistan and
so I am not anticipating or expecting doing the sort of thing
that Mr Lancaster has suggested. With regard to the question of
stretch, I do not accept that we are overstretched. The CDS made
it perfectly plain yesterday that our forces are stretched in
relation to certain key aspects. There is a degree of stretch
but we are able to carry out what we need to do. That is all set
against, of course, the context that, in my view, we do not have
any alternative but to do what we are doing in Afghanistan, for
all of the reasons that I have listed on a number of occasions
in the House and do not wish to repeat.
Q25 Chairman: Secretary of State,
did you say you do not accept that there is a degree of overstretch
or that you do accept that there is?
Des Browne: I do not accept that
we are overstretched; I accept that there is stretch.
Q26 Chairman: Even though you said
yesterday that most of our forces would be outside the harmony
guidelines?
Des Browne: Yes. I am praying
in aid the words of the chief of the defence staff, who, when
asked these very questions yesterday repeatedly on the media,
said, yes, our forces were stretched but they were not overstretched.
Q27 Mr Hancock: I would like to ask
two specific questions. I think the word that you used was people
being "prejudiced" against the Government's actions
on behalf of this country in Afghanistan. I think "prejudice"
is the wrong word. I think most people in this country rightly
thought the fighting in Afghanistan was over and believed that
to be the case four or five years ago and are a little surprised
by what has happened. So, I do not think "prejudice"
is the right word, I think the British people are rightly surprised
at what has happened in Afghanistan. My main question is this:
once again, it would appear that the UK are providing a disproportional
amount of fighting soldiers to those of our NATO allies, excluding
the Americans, and I am a little surprised, to say the least,
because I thought when we entered into this, other than the command
structure, which was going to be wholly UK, the fighting elements
or the other troops involved would be fairly spread across other
NATO countries. I await with great interest, unless you can tell
us today, announcements in other foreign capitals of NATO countries
of their increased numbers of deployed troops to Afghanistan who
will actually do some fighting. I think the British people are
entitled to a straight answer about where our NATO allies are
on this very important issue of troops who will do fighting in
Helmand province, the same as British soldiers are expected to
do.
Des Browne: In relation to the
preamble to your question, I used the word "prejudice"
in the context of the question that Mr Hamilton asked in a very
specific way and I made it very clear that I was using it in a
very specific way, but it would not advance anybody's understanding
of anything for us to debate that at any great length, so I will
resist the temptation to do so. ISAF is a NATO force. It is true
that we have accepted responsibility with the Danes and, to a
lesser degree, the Estonians, who make a very small contribution
to what we are doing but, nonetheless, are presently for Helmand
province. We have accepted the responsibility to generate the
force that is necessary to do the task that we have taken on,
and I look to all of our other NATO allies to generate the force
that is necessary to carry out the responsibilities that they
have taken on. I accept that that needs to be a continuing discussion
and I continue to have those discussions both with the NATO commander,
with the General Secretary of NATO and with my fellow ministers
of defence in NATO countries to encourage them to do more where
they have the capability to do it.
Q28 Mr Hancock: Has the British Government
specifically requested the NATO Council to increase the number
of troops deployed from other NATO countries to Helmand province?
Des Browne: No.
Q29 Mr Hancock: Why not?
Des Browne: Because I do not accept
that it is necessary for us to specifically request other countries
to provide forces for Helmand province. I think we need to look
at what we are doing in Afghanistan across the country, and other
countries, including many of our NATO allies, are making a significant
contribution, proportionate in many cases to their ability to
be able to do it in other parts of Afghanistan, but we continue
to argue for additional deployments where we believe there is
the appropriate capacity for that to happen.
Q30 Chairman: Do you believe that
the share of the load in Afghanistan taken by the British is fair?
Des Browne: I believe that the
share of the load taken by the British in Afghanistan is appropriate
to the level of responsibility that we took on. We took on the
responsibility to make a contribution in the context of the weight
of NATO forces and Helmand, but the overall force that NATO have
deployed in Afghanistan covers more than just that part of Southern
Afghanistan.
Q31 Mr Hancock: Very few of the countries
have troops on the ground who are actually willing to go in and
engage the enemy, whether that be the Taliban or anybody else,
and disproportionately the UK are bearing the brunt of that, with
the exception of the American forces that are deployed there,
but they are not there as part of NATO, they are there as part
of the US Armed Forces. The American soldiers in Afghanistan are
not under NATO command?
Des Browne: The forces that are
deployed to the south in terms of ISAF and are under the commander
of ISAF are not deployed there with any caveats that prevent them
doing what you say.
Q32 Mr Jenkins: Secretary of State,
I wonder if you would outline something for me, either today or
in a note. I am not quite sure with regard to Afghanistan the
exact position we are in and why we are there. I have got two
stories here. First of all, when we went in we went in with "scenario
A" and we are now meeting, albeit I think for legitimate
reasons, more resistance, so we need extra troops to safeguard
and secure "scenario A". The alternative story is that
we went in to do "scenario A", it went so well we moved
on to "scenario B" and now we require the extra troops
to ensure that we are going to do and A and B at the same time
because we are now pushing back the Taliban and gaining greater
ground at a faster rate than anticipated. Could you clarify exactly
what it is, which scenario is the right one, and also can you
tell us what the difference is between A and B, so that I can
have it clarified in my own mind?
Des Browne: I think what we cannot
do, Mr Jenkins, is separate the need for security from the necessity
of rebuilding and reconstruction. The two of these go together
in the context of Southern Afghanistan. We need to create security
in order to rebuild, and it is the division of these two necessary
component elements of what we are doing into separate processes
or parts of the process, saying that they are mutually contradictory
that is at the root of this apparent confusion about what we are
doing in Afghanistan. I cannot make it any plainer than to say
that the original configuration of the force, including Apache
helicopters, Attack helicopters, including artillery, including
some of our most able fighting units should have made it clear
to anybody and, indeed, was explained as being configured and
also to generate the security that would allow reconstruction
to take place. These are not two contradictory elements of what
we are doing and to suggest that we went in to do reconstruction
and now we are doing something else is fundamentally to misunderstand
what I believe was explained quite clearly by my predecessor at
the point of deployment. Chairman, if you would allow me just
a few sentences on this. I will not go into the detail that I
could, but what has happened is that when we deployed, in terms
of delivering security, the commanders on the ground saw an opportunity
to go further and to go faster than we had originally planned.
That has been successful. The measure of success, of course, is
contradicted by the fact that we have lost brave soldiers in doing
that, apparently, superficially, but that is not the only determinate
of whether this is successful. We have in fact, in doing what
we have done, created a degree of security in very key and important
parts of Northern Helmand, and in doing that the commanders made
a decision to reinforce the best way of government and to support
the Government. That has generated a level of challenge in terms
of the resource that we have had, that has now been fed back to
us and we have reinforced and increased deployment in order to
hold that success, to sustain it for the length of time that it
needs to be sustained but also to allow it to continue to do what
was at the core of our plan in the first place, which was in Central
Helmand.
Q33 Mr Borrow: I just wanted to touch
on the issue of confusion over what the mission is, because some
of the commentators here in recent weeks have talked about confusion
about what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and, certainly when
we were there last week, I thought that the service men and women
had complete clarity on what the mission was. I wonder, Minister,
whether you want to comment on the fact that, if our service men
and women in Afghanistan had absolute clarity on their role and
their mission, is it not strange that so many commentators here
seem to be so confused?
Des Browne: With respect, Mr Borrow,
I do not think it is strange because there are people who, for
whatever reason (and I will avoid the word "prejudice"
again) consider it in their interest to be able to suggest that
there is confusion about this and create the confusion and then
consult that confusion that they have created to say that there
is confusion. There has been, in my view, clarity about what we
are doing. What we are doing in Afghanistan is necessarily complex
because it is a very complex environment and it is an environment
which has been created after three decades of conflict and, indeed,
a substantial part of that outright warfare. It is a very complex
environment, but there is a clarity about what we are doing, and
it does not surprise me, frankly, that the message that the members
of the Committee got back from our forces on the ground had the
clarity that I got from them when I visited Afghanistan. Indeed,
when I go to Iraq I distinctly remember conversations with 18
year old squaddies who had a far clearer understanding of what
they were doing than many people back here thought. In any event,
be that as it may, they have the clarity, their commanders understand
what they are doing, their commanders understand the complexity
of the situation and they understand what they need to do to be
able to achieve their objective. There is the danger that this
analysis begins to sound complacent, but it is not complacent
in any sense at all. The dangers that are involved in this are
significant, the level of risk that our troops take on when they
do this are significant, and I understand that, and that is why
I take very seriously my responsibility to ensure that they have
the resource to carry it out, but, frankly, and I repeat what
I have now said on a number of occasions, it does not help their
safety for people to be playing into that environment the fact
that there is confusion. I want to make this point. It was instructive
yesterday, in my view, that there was played on our media an interview
with a Taliban commander, and the timing of that interview must
have, probably did, predate the actual announcement in Parliament
of the deployment of extra resource. Anybody who wants to understand
the danger of seeding confusion when no confusion exists should
listen to that interview and hear that man, who is capable of
some of the worst brutality you can imagine, saying, quite specifically,
"British Forces say they are here for reconstruction purposes.
They are not. They are here for different purposes altogether.
They are here to fight a war". Feeding that information back
into the communities of Southern Helmand puts our troops at risk.
The Taliban have a very, very impressive information operation
and every single word that is said here in our media and in our
Parliament is taken advantage of by them and, in my view, it is
careless with the lives our soldiers to seed confusion where no
confusion exists.
Q34 Mr Borrow: Secretary of State,
that is the point. The people that I speak to in Helmand and,
indeed, some of your own commanders and diplomats, take the view
that we are very far behind in terms of the information war that
the opinion is being dominated by the Taliban with the villages,
and that also extends to reconstruction. According to your people,
actually only a tiny amount of reconstruction has been delivered
so far. You talk about having an environment of security to do
reconstruction, but what is to stop you, as the Dutch are doing,
using large groups of locals and branding that reconstruction
British, because we have only got a limited window to maintain
the goodwill of the Afghan villages?
Des Browne: I think the simple
answer, Mr Borrow, is that there is nothing to stop us taking
advantage of opportunities that present to us to use local labour,
whether it be organised by us or organised by other companies
or organisations in the communities or, indeed, the communities
themselves to do just that work. Part of the announcement I made
yesterday was to employ 320 engineers from 28 Regiment Royal Engineers
to start those sorts of projects in the environment that we are
creating.
Q35 Mr Jones: Like Mr Borrow, I was
quite impressed by the clarity of what the mission is in terms
of people we met right from General Richards downwards. Also,
talking to commanders on the ground, they were quite clear that
they anticipated the action which is taking place now, the difficulties
that would take place in terms of taking, I think, as one described
it, the fight into the Taliban's back yard and also arguing that
it was important to do that rather than sitting in bases and waiting
for them to come to you; but I have to say, Secretary of State,
have we not got to also agree and accept that your predecessor,
in terms of the way he spun this out in terms of the spin machine
he obviously uses on a daily basis even in his new department,
actually led the public to believe that this was going to be a
little bit like the North, it was going to be a cakewalk, there
was not going to be any real action and, in fact, we were going
to be welcomed with open arms in Helmand. Are we not actually
responding really in the press to that map that he set out and
the confusion that he set out that you are now able to demonstrate
quite ably what is actually going on?
Des Browne: I do not accept that
my predecessor, John Reid, did anything other than explain how
difficult this was going to be, and I have repeatedly gone back
to the extensive statement and question and answer session that
was conducted in the context of that statement on 26 January to
reassure myself that he did do all of what I am saying and explain
how difficult this was going to be when he announced the deployment.
I think what has happened is that you have used a particular phrase
which is now being taken out of context and, in fact, consistently
misreported. In the context of questions that were put to him
about what the purpose was in going into Afghanistan, to use the
phrase which, as I say, has now been taken out of that context,
he was reassuring, I thought, the question, and others, that it
was not our intention to go there to hunt down the Taliban.
Q36 Mr Jones: But it was; I am sorry.
General Richards and others explained to us last week that part
of the plan, which is taking place now in terms of Operation Mountain
Thrust, was always to go after the Taliban; so this idea that
somehow we have walked into this by mistake, unless commanders
have told us something different and it is wrong, that was always
part of the plan?
Des Browne: That is quite a complex
question actually and when I give you the answer I think the Committee
will realise that. Operation Mountain Thrust is an aspect of Operation
Enduring Freedom, which is not under ISAF control and is not part
of what we are doing with the Helmand taskforce.
Mr Jones: I am sorry; that is not what
was explained to us last week.
Mr Havard: Yes, it was. You have misunderstood
it.
Q37 Chairman: Let us allow the Secretary
of state to answer.
Des Browne: There appears to be
a significant disadvantage to me, Chairman. I was not with the
Committee last week in order to be able to settle this competition
as to what was actually said, but let me just explain to the Committee
what my position is and what my understanding is. I think that
may be helpful and may advance the discussion and debate. Operation
Enduring Freedom is the American-led operation to hunt down the
Taliban, to hunt down the terrorists. It is undoubtedly the case
that in the northern part of Helmand, in the mountains in particular,
that operation is taking place. As I understand the situation,
the coincidence of that operation taking place and other factors
created an opportunity for us in terms of our deployment to move
into that area to create some level of security. That is what
happened, but we were not part of Operation Mountain Thrust in
doing that. I understand that that creates a degree of complexity
because the same, or near, space can be occupied by two operations
doing different things. The intention and the deployment of our
troops into Helmand was to generate security with a view to development
and to continue with the reconstruction focus. Clearly, that meant
that we had to be ready to fight in certain circumstances, particularly
since it was expected. It had been anticipated in the planning
that people, including the Taliban, would want to stop us trying
to do that. That is what has happened. However, because of a whole
series of factors, some of which are relating to what I have just
said, some of which are relating to opportunities to reinforce
the local governments and were operational decisions by the commanders,
we have got ourselves into the position where we are further ahead
and more geographically spread than we had planned to be in the
first place, and that is the necessity for the additional resources.
Chairman: I do not want to get into a
debate about what we were or were not told last week, so if you
could carry on with the Secretary of State.
Q38 Mr Jones: The important point,
which was made to us on a number of occasions, I accept the difference
between the two operations, but it was made quite clear that the
operation right from the beginning was not to sit in bases and
wait for the Taliban to come to us, we were actually going to
go and take the fight to them. In terms of how that was spun out
originally, that was not how it was done, the idea that this was
going to be a reconstruction phase. I am not saying that I disagree
with the strategy, I think it is a correct one, frankly, to actually
take the fight to them if you are going to bring in the reconstruction,
but it is quite clear from the commanders who have briefed us
that that always was part of the strategy, which actually was
a correct one.
Des Browne: I think this is a
discussion about whether my predecessor explained this properly
or not. I am absolutely certain that he did explain it properly.
I am also certain that those people who did not want to hear it
explained in that way, took advantage of one phrase that you have
used and have themselves spun that phrase into a position where
it is now routinely misrepresented in order to support a particular
argument. I do not think repetition of it here would help, and
I am not going to repeat it, but that is what happened and I do
not accept the fundamental premise of your argument, with respect,
Mr Jones, that John Reid did not explain what was happening properly.
Chairman: I want to move on to the very
important position of the Afghan National Army, Dai Havard.
Q39 Mr Havard: Can I say one thing
that I brought away from this visit was that there had been a
change, and the change was the visit of the DfID minister, in
part, the fact that the quick improvement projects were going
to go ahead and the fact that you have got 320 engineers going
to support that activity is absolutely crucial, it seems to me,
in the whole business of the reconstruction, but the other element
in that to support it is the Afghan National Army. We saw the
new training camp being built just to the side of the bastion,
and all of that sort of stuff. Unlike the Americans embedded trainers,
we have these mentors, liaison OMLETs, or whatever they are called.
We met some of those, and I notice in your statement yesterday,
and I would like you to explain this a bit further, if you would,
you said, "We are going to step up our efforts in this area
and we are therefore deploying additional staff in Helmand to
do that, because these Afghan National Army people are being trained
as they are deployed." Naturally the Governor wants people
on the ground, and that is happening, but I wonder whether you
could say something about that, because the other element that
we also saw was the new officer/cadet training establishment,
which was not there when I went there last November, and they
have done an amazing amount of work in the period since January
to get it up and going, but it is a question of how you resource
these things. What I could see was resources being taken from
operational activity in order to support a training activity,
and so I would like to know a little bit more about how you are
going to resource that element which seems to be absolutely crucial
in any plan that you have got about security involved in the Afghan
National Army?
Des Browne: I think that you are
absolutely right to recognise the development of the Afghan National
Army and the improvement of their capability to be able to take
over responsibility for security increasingly as being very important.
That development clearly is part of our exit strategy from Afghanistan.
When I visited Afghanistan I was able to see on the ground the
success of the OMLETs, the success of those people whom we had
embedded with Afghan National Army units. I was struck by the
fact that there were fewer of them than I had expected, and I
took advantage of an early meeting with Defence Minister Wardak
to quite specifically challenge him to provide additional resource.
He also recognised how beneficial it had been to his troops to
be working very closely with ours. Indeed, we have troops in Afghanistan
who are with these kandaks, as they call them, actually living
with them, fighting with them and sharing everything with them,
which has been remarkably successful; and the reports back that
I was given, and I am sure you were given, was that these were
very brave people who were very good soldiers and they were developing
significantly under our tutelage. I am now told that additional
Afghan troops are being sent to Helmand and we are increasing
our ability to be able to provide that level of support to them.
I have to say also, I discussed with the Minister the possibility
that by deployment to the Regional Army Headquarters and other
places we would be able to interact with these troops before their
deployment so that we could encourage them to come into Helmand,
which for some of them is a challenge because of what they hear
about Helmand province, and that is what we are seeking to do
with the additional resource that I have identified.
2 Note: See Ev 22 Back
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