Helmand Province

What my hon. Friend said is superficially true, but there is a big difference now from the situation 150 years ago. Our intelligence picture is likely to be considerably better and we will have something resembling an Afghan state. We are making a big mistake in the so-called war on terror—I would love to think of a different name because that is not apt. There are lots of broadly nationalist movements in the middle east and we make our problems worse because we lump them together with the super extremists. We must start to separate al-Qaeda from the Taliban and other nationalist movements in the region. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney suggested, although not directly vis-à-vis Afghanistan, we must dismantle the problems one by one. Take, for example, the Israel-Palestine problem. The Government, massively to their credit, have realised that it is one of the big games in town. We must pursue that approach, because until we get rid of those problems and separate them, al-Qaeda will mix in like those Indian troublemakers in the Pathan tribal belt all those years ago. That neatly leads me back to the wider picture. I spoke at the beginning of my speech about the drivers of radicalisation. Three years ago, no one outside Helmand had heard of places such as Sangin, Gereshk, Nowzad and Musa Qala. Today, they are clearly on the map and internet sites of the global jihad. I again assert that we are in Afghanistan for well-intentioned reasons, but how does the Minister think that TV news footage of war fighting plays among impressionable Muslims even in this country? The primary purpose of going to war in Afghanistan was to deny al-Qaeda a safe operating base. We achieved that aim a long time ago. Our secondary objective was the destruction of the Taliban. However, frankly—let us have some realpolitik—that appears to be beyond our means. Commanders can tell us that we are winning until they are blue in the face, and that increasing numbers of suicide and roadside bombings prove that, but, at some point, as in every other insurgency historically, we will have to make a deal with the Taliban. I have some sympathy with the argument that we must beat them to some extent and make them realise that they cannot win before we can make such a deal. Does the Minister agree that now is the time for a deal? The big strategic challenge for our generation is to win back the good will of all those people who were with us on 11 September 2001. We must do that over the next six months, or over 10 or 30 years. We must take al-Qaeda back to where it was in terms of popular support across the world in 2001, which was frankly nowhere. At the same time, in parallel, we must reduce its residual capacity. What we have been doing in Afghanistan is a long-term liability for the UK. It has been ill thought out and is counter-productive, and it is a further driver of radicalisation around the world and in this country, all of which contribute to our wider strategic failure. We have lost immeasurable amounts of good will since 11 September 2001 and it continues to haemorrhage away across the Muslim world and Pakistan in particular. It is time to free up resources to deal with the much more serious strategic threats that we will face in the coming months and decades. We need to win back that good will and fight the battles that really matter. When we do those things, we might be doing something to make our people safer.