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Afghanistan: UK Forces
5.34 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Drayson): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about UK deployments to Afghanistan.“On Thursday, I spoke about Afghanistan during the defence debate. I reiterate the enormous debt we owe to the British soldiers who have given their lives, and who have been injured, serving there. I also salute the bravery of all of our forces working to bring about lasting change in Afghanistan. “On Thursday, I also said we had received requests for additional forces in Helmand and that I would announce our response as soon as possible. I will do that today. But first I want to place this response, and indeed the whole of our deployment to Helmand and Afghanistan as a whole, in its proper context. “On 11 September 2001, a devastating terrorist attack was launched against the West from within Afghanistan’s borders. This happened at least in part because we abandoned Afghanistan to become a failed state after the Soviet occupation. And this is why it remains overwhelmingly in our national interest to ensure Afghanistan does not revert to a haven for terrorists. It is also in the interests of the Afghan people, the vast majority of whom have no sympathy for terrorism or violent extremism. There are many malign influences holding the Afghans back and we need to fight them, but we should be under no illusion about what is required to succeed. Only by rebuilding Afghanistan, by strengthening its Government, its security forces and its legal system, and by tackling its desperate poverty, will we be able to help Afghanistan make real and lasting progress. I have heard all sides of the House agree that we should help. The UN agrees. NATO agrees. Thirty-six countries are providing troops to seal their agreement. We all agree. Everything we do and say should reflect this consensus. “It is also important to recognise where our efforts in Helmand stand in relation to the strategy for Afghanistan as a whole. NATO has been in charge of this mission for three years. It has helped generate the confidence for millions of refugees to return, and improved access to better medicine and education. It has followed a clear plan to expand security and reconstruction, from the north, to the west, and now to the more challenging south. We have been engaged in that process throughout, having until recently provided a provincial reconstruction team in Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. The southis more challenging, but this was always well understood—which is why NATO sought a firm platform of progress in the north and west first.10 July 2006 : Column 513
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5.54 pm
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, in thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement, I am bound to express concern that what it has told us today clearly comes as more of a surprise to the noble Lord and his ministerial colleagues than to the rest of us. The defensive tone of the Statement and the confession that this deployment is outside harmony guidelines is surely an admission that we have an insufficiently large standing Army. The cuts forced through by this Government are now putting enormous strain on our troops and their families.
The Statement follows a week of confused anouncements by the MoD. It is now painfully clear that several of the planning assumptions made in preparing for this deployment have proved to be disastrously mistaken. The military strength and resourcefulness of the Taliban are considerably greater than in the optimistic scenario adopted by Ministers. The Statement points out that the mission deliverance is complex. I hope that our servicemen and women really do understand what they are supposed to be doing there.
There are a number of gaps of detail in the Statement. Will the Chancellor be funding the additional reinforcements? Will troop numbers be increased for the training of the Afghan army? The Afghan national forces, army and police, with which our troops were to co-operate, have proved inadequate and unreliable. What representations have the Government made to their German colleagues responsible for training the Afghan police, to ensure that there is a vetting procedure to prevent Taliban infiltration?
The Minister failed to answer a number of the questions that I asked in response to last week's Statement. I will therefore put them to him again. What discussions are the Government having with the Pakistan authorities about insurgents crossing from the lawless border areas of Pakistan? When do the Government anticipate the reconstruction and opium eradication can start? When will we see NGOs on the ground? Is there sufficient medical support in theatre? We welcome the extra medical support mentioned in the Statement, but is it enough?
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We welcome the extra support helicopters. How many will be sent and when? Will the Minister assure me that they will not come from Iraq? The Apache has clearly been successful in Afghanistan. Will more be sent? We welcome the additional company and two platoons of infantry, but does the Minister seriously believe that this is a sufficiently large fighting force? These reserves are coming from Cyprus and form part of the essential reserve force for both Afghanistan and Iraq. From where will they be replaced? We welcome the extra engineers and logistical support to improve the local infrastructure. We have few enough resources to conduct a parallel “hearts and minds” campaign to entice the local population to back us.
But it was only last April that John Reid optimistically remarked that it may not be necessary for British troops to engage the Taliban because their primary role was reconstruction, not counterinsurgency. Our Armed Forces are now having to seek out the Taliban, something that Ministers said was never part of the mission. Do the Government now appreciate what our troops are likely to be taking on?There really must be a full debate in this House on the strategic context of the deployment of our Armed Forces in Afghanistan. We on these Benches have been asking for that for months, but the request has been rejected by the Government. Ministers have a duty, not only to Parliament, but to our Armed Forces, to bring these issues to both Houses to enable full debate on the purposes and progress of this mission. I cannot understand how the Minister responsible for defence issues in this House cannot support a debate.
This mission to Afghanistan must succeed. We will all be the losers if we are eventually forced to abandon Afghanistan. We shall have shown that we lack the will and skill to restore a failed state. All NATO members have to recognise how high the stakes are and that NATO's reputation and future is on the line.
Our troops in Afghanistan have our full support. Once again, the Government are relying on their courage to make good the shortcomings, in preparation and in judgment, of those who have sent them into action.
5.59 pm
Lord
Garden: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister
for relaying the Statement and providing me with an early copy of it.
As I have said on previous occasions, from these Benches we support the
mission in Afghanistan while regretting that the hapless adventure in
2003 into Iraq has meant that we have failed to give Afghanistan the
priority that it was both promised and deserved, as the Statement tells
us. While Iraq was not then a threat to the UK, even if it has now
become one, Afghanistan was different. It provided a safe haven for
al-Qaeda training camps, which produced thousands of terrorist
graduates, some of which have already committed mayhem around the
world, against British citizens, among others. To those problems, we
must now add the
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I do not join in the criticism on the definition of the mission. Unlike in Iraq, I agree that we have a coherent strategy in Afghanistan, which tries to bring together the political, economic and security dimensions. That is a good start—but making it happen is difficult and, as the Statement says, it is delivery that is complex. We focus very much on British involvement, but we must bear in mind all the time that this is a multinational effort and ensure that all components of that multinational effort keep in step in Afghanistan. It is entirely reasonable for our commanders on the ground to assess the situation, take opportunities, as the Statement tells us they did, to exploit particular openings—in this case to reinforce part of the north of Helmand province—and then to revise the force levels accordingly and change the mix if necessary. I welcome the fact that the Government have responded quickly to the commanders’ needs.
All of us who have followed what has been going on in Afghanistan have come to the same conclusion—that increased mobility for our forces is an important enabler. We have heard from across the Benches in the various debates the importance of transport helicopters. They are in demand for all operations, but are particularly important both in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Statement makes a rather vague reference to what is being provided in terms of extra flying hours and extra airframes. Does the Minister know how many extra helicopters there will be, what sort they are and what percentage of extra hours will be done? Whichever the answer is in terms of hours or airframes, it is not that that is the problem; the problem is providing the air crew to fly the helicopters. In answer to my Written Question on 24 May, the Minister showed just how hard-pressed the Royal Air Force Chinook, Merlin and Puma and the Royal Navy Sea King crews are already. What effect will the new level of activity have on our ability to train more helicopter crews, which we so badly need—if we are sending people forward, they cannot train people back at home; and on the excessive overstretch felt by this particular component, the helicopter air crew?
The phased enhancement of troop numbers is appropriate in reaction to the operational developments described in the Statement. The question there is what consequential effects there will be by having unplanned extra deployments and reinforcements going forward. What will be the effect on the training plans for those forces and on other theatres of operations? Will the Minister assure us that the Ministry of Defence is looking urgently at where it might scale back other commitments that our forces have? We keep on having the promise that things will be done, but could the Minister write to us with a series of things that will be done to reduce the load on our forces when it is possible?
I
was astonished to see a month ago that we seem again to be volunteering
for the guardroom by offering an enhancement to our NATO response force
package
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I especially draw attention to the question of the reservists and the medical side. We have spoken about it before; the Statement says that we shall enhance the medical capabilities out there and we are using reservists for it. At the same time, when we dealt with reservists, the Government announced that we were reducing the number of medical reservists. Does that mean that we are going to reconsider that part of the equation now that we know that we need more?
The question of providing on-call close air support is not addressed in the Statement. The media have focused on Apaches, and there is some mention of them—although the problem with providing extra hours in that case is also a problem of providing extra crews to do it. But the Afghan veterans of the guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation do not fear helicopters as much as they fear ground attack fighters. The F16s and the Harriers can respond more quickly when our troops get into difficulty, and we have to ensure that we have an adequate number on quick reaction for that. If we are not sending more—and the Statement seems to suggest that we are not—what are we doing to generate more from our NATO allies?
That brings me to the effect that our change in the assessment of what forces we need has on our NATO allies. NATO assumes command at the end of this month in the south and some of the allied forces that we have mentioned have yet to deploy. Can the Minister tell us what briefing has been given to the North Atlantic Council to advise it of our changed perception of the requirement, and whether that has had an effect on the planned deployments by our allies? And what about phase four of this operation? We are only in phase three at the moment—the south. As the Statement says, we have done the north and the west and we are now doing the south, but we have yet to go to the east. Is that still on schedule for next year, or do we have a reappraisal of that?
Finally, I note that your Lordships seem to be establishing a routine, in that every Monday we have a Statement on Afghanistan, yet we are only two weeks from the Recess, which means that we shall not have an opportunity again until mid-October to discuss these matters. The Government in my view were very unwise to go back on their undertaking to have a debate in your Lordships' House on the overall policy towards Afghanistan and Iraq—and I am glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, is in his place, because he needs to lead in that debate. So how does the Minister see Parliament being kept in the loop through what may be some very difficult challenges in both operational theatres—Iraq and Afghanistan—throughout the summer?
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6.07 pm
Lord Drayson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Garden, for the clear and supportive tone that he took in responding to the Statement, which was in stark contrast to that of the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, who used language that really belies the situation in which we find ourselves. To describe the series of announcements that we have been through over the past week as confused is, frankly, unfair. My right honourable friend has kept the Houses of Parliament fully apprised of the situation as it develops, and those who are aware of the way in which troop deployments are reviewed and assessed by the military through the chain of command will know that the process takes time. It is a rapid process, considering the scale of the decisions that have to take place, but it cannot be short-circuited. It has to be done by the military commanders on the ground and should not be party to interference or micromanagement by Westminster.
The process that we have been through has been perfectly clear, in that the military commanders on the ground went through a review process at the point when full deployment took place for the first time, on 1 July. They were asked by my right honourable friend to ensure that when they undertook that review they made absolutely sure that they were truly asking for all that they need. Those requests have then been reviewed very speedily indeed by Ministers, in collaboration and discussion with other government departments, notably the Treasury, and a decision has been made very rapidly. That is why I can come to this House today and update the House on this further deployment.
To describe our initial deployment as “disastrous” is totally inaccurate. This is a response to a successful deployment, which has been able to move into the northern part of Helmand province earlier than had been anticipated. That requires a reshaping of the profile of the forces necessary, and that is what we are doing.I turn to the specific questions I have been asked by the noble Lords opposite. Yes, there have been clear representations to our NATO colleagues about the vetting procedures for Afghan police. Noble Lords will note in the Statement that additional forces are being provided to support the training of the Afghan police and army.
I have been asked when reconstruction will start. We have already seen significant improvement. The reconstruction efforts that have taken place through the cross-government collaboration between DfID and the Foreign Office—as my noble friend from that department who has joined me on the Front Bench will know—are making a real change on the ground in Afghanistan. We have seen the number of functioning health clinics increase by 60 per cent. Over 11 million children have been immunised. Two thousand schools have been rebuilt or rehabilitated. This is not the first time I have given the House these data. Why am I being asked when reconstruction will start?
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