Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

There is a risk involved with anything that we do in Afghanistan; there is no risk-free option. The cost of withdrawal or of mission failure is absolutely huge. If the McChrystal proposal for more troops involved only a military surge, we would not be supporting it. I want to go into more detail about the political strategic changes that we think are essential. Our key test for the new strategy is the shape of the politics around it. Clearly, we need the political change at national level in Kabul for which the Americans and our Government have been pressing, and President Karzai might now be making the right noises. However, if corruption is not tackled in practice, and if Karzai is not prepared to give away more power or to revert to more traditional power structures at provincial, tribal and village levels, I hope that the price he might have to pay has been clearly spelled out to him. We cannot expect our troops to put their lives on the line if President Karzai does not act. One would have thought he would realise that, like former Afghan leaders, he will face risks if the mission does not succeed. Then we come to the international politics involved. Changes in the international dimension of the political strategy have at last begun to be made, but there is a huge amount still to do. The willingness of the Pakistan military to take on the Pakistan Taliban has been impressive, but there are still concerns that the Pakistani security forces distinguish all too readily between what they consider to be "good" Taliban and "bad" Taliban, with, outrageously, the "good" Taliban being those who are organising the Afghan insurgency. That cannot be allowed to continue. We have to understand why the security forces think that. It stems from the traditional belief/paranoia within the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence—the ISI—that India intends to attack Pakistan. According to the ISI, India is seeking a friendly Government in Kabul to make such an attack possible from two fronts. In ISI minds, therefore, a Taliban Government—or, indeed, civil war—in Afghanistan is somehow preferable to a stable regime for Pakistan's security. A Taliban regime might make overtures to India and make a joint pact—for example, on linked action on historic disputes over Kashmir and the Durand line. If the ISI were to change that view, the prospect of cutting off the Afghan Taliban leadership and direction, which currently sit comfortably in parts of Pakistan, would be greatly enhanced.