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5.17 pm
Mr. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth, East) (Con): It is a pleasure to be the final Back Bencher to contribute to what has been an excellent debate that has primarily focused on Afghanistan. I have begun every speech in a defence debate by saying what a shame it is that we have to use these debates, which arise once in a blue moon, to discuss the fact that we are war. We should have regular updates on the situation. Our armed forces are firing some 10,000 rounds of ammunition every day, and that is an indication of the seriousness of the situation and why we should have better information and more opportunity to debate it.
Afghanistan is at a critical juncture. Eight years after the invasion, we have demonstrated how we might lose the war, wasting half a decade by not providing enough forces, money or leadership-or even agreeing our objectives. As in Iraq, we removed the threat, leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban were quick to exploit. Because of the distraction of Iraq, the west never fully came to terms with the scale of the operation required for success. That contributed to the biggest schoolboy error of all-the failure to have a co-ordinated, integrated, properly funded and locally supported plan. If the stream of hearses regularly filing through Wootton Bassett has not made us realise that the current strategy is not working, General Stanley McChrystal's interim assessment confirms it.
I have visited Afghanistan every six months or so since being elected and have made every effort to understand what is happening out there so that I can support our armed forces. It therefore saddens me to say how badly we have let our troops down and how much the security situation has deteriorated. I am talking about troop and equipment shortages, poor co-ordination of the Whitehall message, an absence of Cabinet leadership, scant support for reconstruction and development, and no clear plan. Only by blindfolding our troops as they departed for Helmand could we have hindered their chances of success even further.
These are harsh comments, but I make no apologies for them. They are directed not specifically at the Front-Bench Members here-they are as dedicated as anyone to success in Afghanistan-but at No. 10 and the co-ordination of the Cabinet. We come here regularly to salute the bravery and professionalism of our soldiers, but then do not give them the tools to succeed and conclude the mission. After eight years, the lack of progress has not gone unnoticed. Doubts are growing about the war in both the UK and the USA, and leading commentators and politicians are suggesting that it is turning into President Obama's Vietnam.
We now have two distinct groups, one supporting a surge and a substantial increase in troop numbers-I do not know whether that would be time-limited-and a
second supporting what has been labelled as "cut and walk". That would involve slowly down-sizing, leaving behind special operations and drone capabilities very similar to those in Pakistan. The US military is clearly showing its strength in supporting a surge and dispatching its brightest senior military commanders to Afghanistan, but, on the other side, some politicians, perhaps with one eye on the polls and the other on the congressional elections in November 2010, are urging huge caution.
The delay in making the decision is playing into the Taliban's hands, as has been mentioned already. The reasons not to pull out are very clear and have been echoed again and again in this Chamber. We need only to look over our shoulders at what is happening in Pakistan even today to see the chaos that might occur in Afghanistan were we to pull out now. What would it say to the rest of the world if a second superpower were to be beaten by Islamic fundamentalism? We need to recognise that this is not a war of choice, but a war of necessity. It is also a new style of warfare involving counter-insurgency. We must get used to it and get good at it.
Two other places are appearing on the horizon: Somalia and Yemen. We already have sizeable forces in Somalia, which will become a problem too. We need to get this right. Several factors need focusing on-I do not have time to go through them all in detail, but I shall mention them very briefly. First, it is for us here to move to a war footing. It is not acceptable to read out a list of the fallen at every Prime Minister's questions, if the nation does not understand what we are fighting for. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) made the point that we need to educate the public about why we are there. Recognising that we are at war means providing the resources needed to win, and it will require proper debates in this House to keep us informed and allow us to scrutinise what is happening.
Secondly, improvements in Afghan security are needed. That point has been repeated again and again. However, we cannot go in there, after six years, and say, "Yes, we are now going to train more troops." We have to get good at training troops no matter where they are. That is the type of counter-insurgency warfare that we now face, and anyone who reads General Petraeus's book will recognise that point. We must move away from the cold war mentality and understand that after the war of fighting comes a period of peacekeeping that will include training local troops, whether in police forces or armies. We have to get good at that, whether that means us, NATO or both.
We also need to consider other ways of strengthening the security system fast. The awakening project in the al-Anbar province is a great example of that. The militias there have a binding loyalty to the local areas that they are trying to protect and so they want peace. That is opposed to what we have at the moment, which is a very difficult, procrastinating approach that has shown no mileage after six years in theatre.
Thirdly, I come to improvements in our stabilisation capability. We must recognise that the Department for International Development is not up to the job. I say that bluntly, but it was never designed to do the job of stabilisation, reconstruction and so forth. The budget for our war fighting is now £3 billion a year. Our budget for stabilisation is £130 million a year. That discrepancy means that our soldiers will be continually looking over
their shoulders after they have done their work at the top of the hill. They will be wondering, "Who on earth is going to sort out the village beneath?" That cannot go on and needs to change.
The co-ordination of international development still does not exist. We need a three-star ISAF appointment, made or supported by the UN, to do the J5 tasks. I have pushed my big idea of sliding sizeable funds across from humanitarian projects under DFID to create a stabilisation capability, so that in the three to six-month window of opportunity after the initial invasion we can help the locals get off their knees, improve the employment situation, get security under control and start training the police, thereby winning hearts and minds before the enemy can regroup.
I made this point earlier, but on Operation Panther's Claw in the Babaji area, let me reassure the Secretary of State that I do not doubt that the road is important. However, we cannot wait three years for one project to be completed. There are other projects that need to be undertaken at the same time, although I think that he is well aware of that.
We are forgetting not just history, but the role of the Army in stabilisation. Let us look at what the US army and Abraham Lincoln did in the secessionist states after the civil war. It was the army that reconstructed and stabilised those places and got the economy going. Indeed, it even ran the local governments for a while-the army did that, not anybody else. The US army also did that in Japan, the Philippines and Germany. We, too, did that in Africa and India, as well as in Germany and Bosnia. Sierra Leone is another great example. It was the Army that helped to stabilise that place, not DFID or anybody else. Let us agree that the Army can do that.
Fourthly, we need a more federal structure in Afghanistan to look after domestic matters. The scale of corruption in the presidential elections does not reflect the model of democracy that the authors of the Bonn accord had in mind when it was written. We now have an opportunity to update the model of governance. The current Kabul-centric model is already seen as too advanced for a state in its infancy. With decisions made in Kabul having little impact on rural communities in the surrounding 35 provinces, a more federal approach in domestic matters would allow provinces to expedite decision making, take more ownership of their destinies and reduce the high levels of corruption, which is exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) was saying in her contribution.
A more federal approach would also fit more easily with the traditional tribal power structure that has dominated Afghanistan all the way back to when Peter the Great wandered through the area, as a glance at Afghanistan's history shows. When we had problems with Dost Mohammad in the 1830s, he was the big, powerful tribal leader there and was respected by everybody else, but he did not run the country. All the tribes did their own thing in their own areas, and likewise with King Amanullah, the great reformer. He was in charge in Kabul. The groupings in the tribal areas did their own thing, but they respected the leader.
Then there was Zahir Shah from 1933 to 1973. There was a powerful body in Kabul, but all the tribes, whether they be the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Hazaras or the
Baluchis, did their own thing while respecting what happened in Kabul. There has never been an advanced centralised form of government in Afghanistan. I do not know why we suddenly think that we can walk in and impose one.
My fifth point is about an economic plan for Afghanistan. I go there and ask people, "What is your vision? What do you want to do with your country?" but they cannot even see that far. We need to understand what they are good at. They were good at exporting agricultural produce-one of the best in the region-but they cannot do that now, because there is no infrastructure or train network, and yet Kandahar is only 38 miles from Spin Boldak, which is on the border with Pakistan. Link those two together and suddenly people can start exporting those goodies out of the country, which not only makes them money but, more importantly, gives people something to work towards, which they do not have now.
There is no time to talk about the tactics in Helmand. However, I am concerned that we remain in control of our area of responsibility, which has 70 per cent. of the population, yet the Americans have turned up with 20,000 troops and are looking at the rest of the province, which is pretty rural. Why not focus on the population and get us and the Americans working in the same AOR? That would be a much better use of our forces.
In conclusion, eight years on and with few tangible results in Afghanistan, the nation's patience and commitment is being tested. We have wasted half a decade with a half-hearted approach, yet it is modern engagements such as Afghanistan that we have to show we are becoming good at winning. Our entire strategy has to be reviewed. Britain has had a decade of fighting counter-insurgencies, yet our tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan in that period have not changed whatever.
Finally, I pay tribute to the 2nd Battalion The Rifles, my own battalion, which is commanded by Colonel Rob Thomson, who has done a fantastic good, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Newbury mentioned. We are at war. Let us give our soldiers the support and resources that they deserve.
5.30 pm
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con): Unusually, we have had two days in a row in which to consider the grave problems facing our armed forces in the context of the Afghanistan campaign. Yesterday, we had a major statement from the Prime Minister and an opportunity to question him. Among the points that he acknowledged was the fact that 80 per cent. of our casualties arise from roadside bombs. That is an important factor-in fact, it is the supremely important factor because, although my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) has just said that we must concentrate on getting in, getting on and winning, the reality is that we need to wage a campaign in which we do not take levels of casualties that the public are not prepared to bear.
That, above all, is the single reason that people in this country are dissatisfied with the campaign in Afghanistan. It is not a question of a lack of patience, or of not spending enough money or of troops going back on a recent tour to the same forward operating base that they occupied two, three or four years ago. The country will not put up with a disproportionate cost in lives for a
campaign that shows no sign of ending. We cannot be defeated on the battlefield, but we can be defeated in the battle for morale. Above all, that is why the Government should focus on doing everything they can to protect our servicemen and women in the field and to ensure that they are not exposed to unnecessary risks.
I venture to suggest that, if our enemies in Afghanistan focused on a strategic objective of ensuring that they killed two or three British service personnel every week, keeping that up for a sufficient length of time would be enough to harden opposition to the continuance of the campaign. We must therefore be as canny as our opponents, not only because we owe it to our servicemen and women to protect them but because it is essential for the success of the campaign. We must go out of our way to ensure that our enemies cannot do the one thing that would force us to feel that we had to leave.
That is why I was disturbed to get an unsatisfactory answer from the Prime Minister yesterday, when I asked him about the fact that 80 per cent. of our casualties were caused by roadside bombs. I asked:
"What proportion of the convoys attacked by those bombs were resupply convoys, which could and should have been transported by air but which were not because of the disgraceful shortage of air transport capacity?"
The Prime Minister replied that he did not accept my conclusion. He went on to say:
"A lot of the casualties have, unfortunately, been those people who have been on foot patrol, trying to build relationships with the Afghan people".
That might well be true of some of the casualties, but it is certainly not true of all of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) intervened on the Prime Minister subsequently to say that he was
"staggered at the Prime Minister's characterisation of the deaths from IEDs as being caused by foot patrols and not by the lack of helicopters."
My hon. Friend went on to say:
"Commanders regularly complain of unnecessary logistical road moves."-[ Official Report, 14 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 316, 320.]
I know that to be true because I have had similar complaints made to me. This matter is not going to go away, and I advise Defence Ministers to ensure that it is a complaint that will not be repeated in the future, although it has been justified in the past.
My mind goes back to the "Defence in the UK" debate of 26 March, when we heard from three Government Back-Bench speakers, seven Conservative Back-Bench speakers and no Back-Bench speakers from the Liberal Democrats. Today, we have heard from five Government Back-Bench speakers, 11 Conservative Back-Bench speakers and, once again, no Back-Bench speakers from the Liberal Democrats. [Interruption.] I am asked why not, but I am afraid that I can provide no enlightenment on that.
The shadow Secretary of State and the Secretary of State rightly focused on the Afghanistan campaign, as did many other Members in our debate. The hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), who is no longer in his place, told the tragic story of Kyle Adams and concluded that we ought to give up, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), in a passionate and most moving speech, gave an account
of the loss of so many members of his former unit and concluded that we must crack on. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) made the important point, re-emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East a few moments ago, that we must work with the grain of Afghan society and not against it.
The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) wanted the nuclear deterrent to be included in the strategic defence review, while the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) wanted the aircraft carriers to be excluded from it. The aircraft carriers were also a cause close to the heart of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck).
Much concern was expressed about the need to give maximum support to those grievously injured in body and in mind. My hon. Friends the Members for East Devon (Mr. Swire), for Newbury and for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) spoke about that. In that connection, when it comes to reintegration of grievously wounded people into society, I welcome the emergence of organisations such as Soldier On, which is organised by a very able young man called Nicholas Harrison, who is determined to find ways in which an employment agency can be created in order to get people who have lost limbs into civilian work so that they can live their lives earning and working their own way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex stressed the absurd duplication of top-level bureaucratic posts, while my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) was as robust as he always is on both Trident and the carriers, adding a detailed study of the potential of the Hebrides missile-testing range.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) referred to the dangers of cyber attack, to which I would add the dangers of electromagnetic pulse attack. People are constantly talking about the possibility of rogue states getting nuclear weapons and using them to attack other countries directly, but a single nuclear weapon used by a rogue state and exploded above a target country could well do irreparable damage to its infrastructure without directly attacking the country itself. My right hon. Friend also stressed, as always, the vital importance of the aerospace industry and the necessity of keeping it as an essential part of our defence industrial base.
Huge concern was expressed about the threat to future reserves. Apart from the robust comments of the shadow Secretary of State, we heard contributions from the Chairman of the Defence Committee, from my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Sussex and for East Devon and especially from my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), who has shown a long dedication to the cause of the reserves. When the Minister replies, will he tell us whether the Government will guarantee first not to extend the non-payment of the Territorial Army beyond this six-month period and, secondly, not to extend it to the Army Cadet Force as well?
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