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4.36 pm
Mr. James Arbuthnot (North-East Hampshire) (Con): I shall do my best to stick to six minutes, Mr. Speaker.
I profoundly respect the views of the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), but I also profoundly disagree with them. He made the same points in relation to Iraq, and I think that he was wrong in relation to Iraq. In Iraq, we have seen what is not at all a comfortable country emerging out of darkness, and we have seen the success in transferring to local security people a job that was previously taken on by the Americans and the British. We have seen Iraqis taking a degree of pride from their success in reducing, although not eliminating, the corruption, violence, bombs and sectarianism in that country. I believe that we ought to express the hope that the same can be achieved in Afghanistan. Indeed, it is essential that we work towards that.
I agree with the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt) that the arguments need to be better made and to be spread around in the pubs and clubs of this country, because we are tending to lose the notion that our troops need to be in Afghanistan. I am sure that they do need to be there, because of the instability of that general region and the fact that there is a link between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and another direct link from Pakistan-and increasingly from Afghanistan-to those communities in this country.
We must also remember that Pakistan is nuclear-armed, and the fact that there is now a total threat to this country as a result of the instability of that region means that we have to continue with this battle and win it. The alternative of withdrawal is not one that we should contemplate.
The general aims of the comprehensive approach are very laudable, and I pay tribute to the Departments of Government, which never used to work together and have never liked the notion of doing so to the extent that they are trying to do now. They are still struggling, particularly in Whitehall. On the ground, the comprehensive approach is much better appreciated and much better strived for than in Whitehall. There needs to be better training and better working together here, but overall the comprehensive approach is the only way forward.
I feel that it is absolutely essential to support this mission in Afghanistan-the entire country needs to support it-but support means certain things. It means giving our armed forces and the other components of the comprehensive approach the equipment that they need. More helicopters are needed in the region-it is not just our armed forces that need them-but helicopters themselves are not enough. The Defence Committee's report today brought out the fact that helicopters require manpower, training and support, so just producing helicopters will not solve the problem. Of those four things, manpower is the most under pressure at the moment. We also need more uniform helicopters. There are lots of Chinooks of many different types, and the complication and expense of dealing with an imperfect and non-uniform fleet are extremely difficult for the Ministry of Defence. We need better vehicles. I hope that others will talk about that, because some of the vehicles in theatre are having to be withdrawn. We also need a better, more up-to-date air bridge, so that our troops do not have to wait in appalling conditions in order to take advantage of their leave. So we need more and better equipment.
We also need people. Reference has been made to the 2,000 troops that I understand were asked for in recent weeks. This morning, I tried to get out of the Prime Minister whether that was true, but I did not manage it. The shadow Secretary of State got it exactly right; we need troops not only to take ground, but to hold the ground that they have taken and to build on it. If we have too few troops to hold and to build, we risk unnecessarily the lives of the soldiers who were used to take the ground. We need a significantly larger pool of troops in our armed forces to be available to go, without pressure, to Afghanistan.
The final thing that we need is the money to support this operation. On Monday, I asked the Secretary of State what the Chancellor of the Exchequer meant when he said that our armed forces would not be short of money. I was told that it was established by the increase in the expected urgent operational requirements money that was announced on that day that the Treasury meant what it said. However, the UOR money for this year is capped at about £735 million, whereas last year's cap was at more than £1 billion. So, there has been a decrease in that money, and that is not because the threats have reduced or because the urgency has reduced; it is because the available money has reduced. I do not think that that is the right way to treat our troops.
4.43 pm
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), and I wish to congratulate him on his Committee's report. When it comes to equipment it always becomes very difficult for those not closely involved, because there are always several sides to the story. Helicopters have been discussed, and one thing that struck me when we flew down in them on our visit to the area was how much they were resented by the local population-helicopters fly over their houses, so they find them incredibly intrusive. So people will have to go on the ground and we need to be realistic.
I wish to say a little about what the end game is likely to be, because one of a number of important comments made today related to the inclusion of Afghanistan and Pakistan in this. The Secretary of State indicated that greater co-operation is clearly taking place on the border, certainly on the one with Baluchestan. What is happening in Helmand reflects what is happening on the Pakistani side to make the border more secure. This will also be about the build-up of the Afghan national police and army. It is clear that we have been much more successful with the army than with the police, but we should be careful about the words we use. When we were in Afghanistan it was clear that people there referred to their policemen as soldiers and they referred to their soldiers as warriors. This is not the kind of police force that we are used to-it is much tougher, and at the moment it is still being recruited along tribal lines. Until there is a police force in Afghanistan that does not follow tribal lines, we will continue to have the sort of problems that have been described.
Afghan warfare is very different. The history of the country shows that no outside force has ever succeeded in conquering it. What is different this time is that foreign troops are there with the consent of the Government. Their writ may not travel far beyond the capital, but it is the beginning of a settlement. It will have to be seen in two distinct phases. We need to be careful when we talk about the Taliban: there are Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and central Asian Taliban, and then there is al-Qaeda, and we are not entirely sure where they are from. There are also small pockets of 100 or so insurgents, so we need to be careful about language. Even in Helmand, when they talk about foreign Taliban, they may mean Afghan Taliban from a different province.
We need a military presence that the Taliban-the insurgents, whoever they are-know will stay and fight, not pack its bags and leave. Then will come the point at which we have to bring those people into the political process. The Afghan way of warfare does not mean winning on the battlefield, but by defection. What years of history have taught Afghans is to wait and see which is the winning side-and that is the side to join. That is how we have brought warlords into the process, and that is what the long-term strategy for our military presence should be.
We have to be very forceful on the military end, but negotiate to bring people into the process. The elections in the summer will be important in that, but we should be careful about thinking that the elections mean democracy per se. The voter registration and other processes will set the scene, but there is deep corruption in the country, and we should be honest about that. The corruption
starts at the top, and the aid that comes in gets sliced all the way through. However, that is better than the alternative, and one of the most encouraging changes in terms of Government policy-I have visited three times in the past five years, and things have changed-was the DFID White Paper, which made the clear commitment that the Foreign Office and the MOD would work much more closely together when it came to international aid. Certainly, with the role of the senior representative in Helmand, Hugh Powell, who pulls together the international effort with our Departments' efforts, we are moving in the right direction.
We must not give up. We must not say, "It's so awful, there's nothing we can do." We owe it to our troops to pursue our strategy. These are the most crucial, and potentially most damaging, stages of the operation, and we have to ensure that the casualties were sustained for a reason worth fighting for.
4.48 pm
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC): Although I voted against the incursion into Afghanistan, that is an irrelevance today. We owe our allegiance to the men and women who are in harm's way. We owe it to them to support them fully, in every possible way, including kit and so on.
I have heard it said that in warfare deaths are inevitable. That may be so, but the most disturbing and galling part of this current situation is that three quarters of recent deaths, so I am told, were avoidable. Had the Government provided adequate kit and equipment for the military-sufficient helicopters and properly armoured vehicles-many of these roadside deaths would not have occurred.
If that statistic is not bad enough, the situation is compounded by the lack of a clear military objective and strategy in Afghanistan. On the one hand, the Prime Minister says that he wants to draw down troops after the Afghan elections, but on the other, the military top brass say that they want an extra 2,000 troops. What are we to make of those conflicting statements?
I have also heard it said that the conflict is about bringing democracy to Afghanistan, but the country has never been a democracy. It has been a tribal society for centuries and I do not think that it is possible to impose a democratic system on it.
We owe the troops a definite duty of care in every way possible. The military say, "More boots on the ground, more bodies in bags." That may be crude, but that is how they talk. Some strategists argue that a surge of new troops provides more of a target, and the lesson from Northern Ireland is that it is better to use more helicopters. As has been noted, the Americans learned in Vietnam that multiple casualties turned public opinion against them, and I hope that we never reach that stage.
Force protection equals duty of care to soldiers. The diary of a young platoon commander in the Welsh Guards was published recently. Lieutenant Mark Evison, 26, wrote:
"I have a lack of radios, water, food and medical equipment. This, with manpower, is what these missions lack. It is disgraceful to send a platoon to a very dangerous area with two weeks' water and food and one team medics' pack. Injuries will be sustained
which I will not be able to treat and deaths could occur which could have been stopped. We are walking on a tightrope and from what it seems here are likely to fall unless drastic measures are undertaken."
That brave young man died in May.
We have also heard of the recent coroner's report into the death of Corporal Mark Wright. The coroner said that there were three main reasons for his death, two of them being a lack of lighter helicopters fitted with a winch that could have pulled the troops away and the administrative delay in sending a suitable helicopter.
Ultimately, the only way to get our troops out is to arm and train the Afghan national army properly, but the problem is that leaders are in short supply. Combat units report shortages in about 40 or 50 per cent. of the equipment that they require, so things are not going well in that regard, either.
The hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) spoke about the Taliban regrouping and about the flourishing heroin trade. He said that Britain was backing a Government full of corrupt practices, while too many ordinary Afghans are not seeing any reconstruction at all. We need to look at the military objectives and the immediate military strategies if we are to keep public opinion and the House informed. That is going ahead now in Washington, and the same thing needs to happen here as well. Many military commanders, and the families of front-line troops, are not convinced that the best strategies are being pursued. That needs to be addressed very swiftly.
However, what the Prime Minister said this week is surely an admission of the fact that the troops are not adequately equipped. Three quarters of the deaths in Afghanistan have happened because of roadside bombs. It is not a new tactic: it was known and probably expected, so why are the heavy armoured vehicles being ordered only now? How many more brave men and women have to die before the equipment is delivered?
There have been loud calls to discontinue the use of the Snatch vehicle in some operational theatres. Why is it only now that the Prime Minister has announced this ordering of equipment? The same is true of helicopters. I will not go into the sterile debate that we had earlier this week, but it is a big issue.
I was in Basra and Baghdad a few years ago and I know that helicopters are much more effective than vehicles that have to travel on dangerous roads. We need to concentrate, as the Americans are doing, on force protection. I hope that the UK will do likewise. Commanders in the field protect their troops, and I hope that the Government will have drastic rethink of their current strategy and objectives. They must keep this place-and, crucially, the public, informed.
4.54 pm
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): As a parent, I find it extremely distressing to see photographs of the young men who have died in the conflict in Afghanistan. Many are so young: I find it hard to come to terms with the death of an 18-year-old barely out of school.
Parents and families have taken solace from the fact that their sons have given their lives courageously in the service of this country, and I share that view wholeheartedly. When those young men signed up for military service,
they signed up to the compact under which they pledged their lives to the service of this country. However, there are two sides to that compact; we are the other side. We pledge to do all that we can to keep them out of harm's way, and to ensure that they are treated properly when injured and that their families are cherished if they sacrifice their lives. Many statements have been made today about the way in which we are fulfilling that compact, and it is important that the Government consider those messages seriously.
Another element of that compact is that we do not send our young men into unnecessary and ill-judged wars that cannot be won. I believe that the Government have failed that critical element of the military compact. This is an unnecessary and ill-judged war that cannot be won. After eight years, it is becoming increasingly difficult to answer the question, "Why do we need this war?" It was a reaction to 9/11, started with a failed bombing campaign and led inevitably to invasion. The objective was to destroy al-Qaeda, but inevitably when the bombing strategy failed and we moved to invasion, we discovered what leaders of the British empire discovered in the 19th century and what the Russian's discovered in the 20th century-that it is impossible to fight a successful war in this terrain. I must add that all those invasions claimed the consent of the people.
I believe that the strategy of destroying al-Qaeda flies in the face of all that we know and understand about modern terrorism, which does not need a fixed territorial base. As we have discovered, modern-day terrorists can be based as much in Leeds as in the mountains of Afghanistan itself. The attempts to evict al-Qaeda from Afghanistan have simply led to its wider dispersal across Pakistan, Somalia and terrorist cells deeper into western Europe. If the war aim was to destroy or remove the Taliban because they harbour al-Qaeda, it completely underestimated, as hon. Members have said, the complexity of the relationships within the Taliban and the scale and depth of support for them in the region, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
If the objective of the war was to tackle terrorism associated with al-Qaeda, a more effective alternative would have been to focus on states' policing role in gaining intelligence on terrorist organisations and activities and in intervening to prevent terrorist strikes. As important is to negotiate with elements that might be attracted to support or harbour terrorists, to divide them wherever possible and to ensure that we gain some purchase on negotiating opportunities with the Taliban. Of course, an effective anti-terrorist strategy must ensure that no action is taken that mobilises support for terrorism, and must win the hearts and minds of potential recruits by addressing grievances. Far from addressing such a strategy, the war in Afghanistan is using resources on military action that should be used in the policing and prevention of terrorism. Far from isolating the Taliban, it has spread their influence into Pakistan, and far from dividing them, it has united Taliban elements into a cohesive fighting force. Far from winning hearts and minds, the war, as in Iraq, has become a rallying symbol for terrorist recruitment.
A tragedy is being played out in Afghanistan, and in our society too. The argument that we are tackling the drugs problem has been undermined today. Afghanistan is now the drug capital of the world. There is the argument that we are installing a democratic Government,
but, as has been explained today, that Government are corrupt and considered illegitimate even by their own people-it is a Government of warlords oppressing their own people. As my hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) said, the argument about the oppression of women has been undermined by women in Afghanistan demonstrating against oppression that they say has actually been worse than under the Taliban.
We need to address this tragedy: the lives being lost, the families being destroyed, the immense human suffering. At some stage, the Government will have to face up to the need to negotiate a withdrawal. We need to request that other regional powers come to our aid in negotiating with all parties, including the Taliban, a constitutional settlement for the long-term future of Afghanistan. The strategy must involve conflict resolution, bring people together, and recognise their grievances and why they have taken up arms, as they see it, to protect their own country. It is also about developing an alternative terrorism strategy involving intelligence, policing and ensuring respect for the grievances that lead people to take up terrorist activity. The sooner we come to terms with that, the sooner we can end the suffering of the British and Afghani families who have been drawn into this tragic and desperate war.
4.59 pm
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): The Government have a lot more to do to win the battle of hearts and minds, not just in Afghanistan, but in this country. I am pleased to say that in 30 minutes' time, in Colchester, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, Brigadier Chiswell, will be doing just that. He will have a briefing with more than 100 leading members of the local community, in what is being billed as a "Post Afghanistan Operational Presentation". That is where I would be if it was not for this debate.
Aspects of this debate will be fed back to our troops in Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand province. Aspects of it will also be picked up by the families of those serving there, those who have served there and, particularly, the families of those who have lost loved ones. This time last year, as the Secretary of State for Defence will recall, it was soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade who were taking the brunt and losing lives. I visited Afghanistan twice last year, and I suspect that the morale there today is as it was a year ago-very upbeat, with people determined to get on with the job.
We in this country admire that professionalism. We sent troops to Afghanistan because it is in the interests of the civilised world that there is success there. I am delighted to say that tomorrow, to show that respect, the honorary freedom of the borough of Colchester will be bestowed on 16 Air Assault Brigade. I have every confidence that for the fourth time in 12 months, the High street will be packed with thousands of local people. Sadly, two of the occasions on which that respect was shown were military funerals, but there was an upbeat mood at the "welcome home" parade. On Saturday, the Colchester military festival will take place, and in excess of 20,000 people are expected. That is all part and parcel of winning hearts and minds in this country. Although I voted against the Iraq war, the Government are absolutely right in what they are doing in Afghanistan, and I support them 100 per cent. in that.
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