Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

Let me answer the hon. Gentleman by making the following point. We did not go to Afghanistan to deal with the poppy trade, corruption or women's rights, important though all those are. We went to stop al-Qaeda being able to operate from within that country. We have already achieved that aim, which was the primary reason we went there. Effectively, al-Qaeda has been emasculated within Afghanistan. The mischief that it can get up to from the caves in the mountains is of very little consequence, in terms of its Afghan operation. The question is how we prevent that situation from being reversed, and how we sustain it. That means that we cannot simply pull out and create a vacuum; that would give the Taliban free run of at least half the country, if not the whole. The strategy has to have three components to it. First, as has been announced, there must be major training and enlargement of the Afghan national army, so that it can take over responsibility for security in due course. I hope that that can be done sooner rather than later, but that is not entirely within our control. When that has been achieved, it will allow the gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan of our combat forces on the ground—perhaps all of them—but there should be a continuation thereafter of NATO air support to the Afghan Government. That is a crucial part of the strategy that has to be endorsed. We should remember that when the Taliban were ousted in the first place, we did not have NATO ground forces involved; it was NATO air support, primarily from the United States, combined with Afghan anti-Taliban forces, that drove the Taliban out of power. The Taliban had no air power, and there is no prospect of their having any air power. They cannot conquer Afghanistan simply by having people on the ground if NATO, even after withdrawing its ground forces in three or four years' time, continues to give air support to the Afghan Government as and when required. That is the second component. The third component has to be that we recognise that, even at that stage, the Afghan Government will not have full control over large parts of the country, particularly in the south. Therefore I hope the international community will reach a treaty agreement with the Afghan Government that even thereafter, if there is evidence of al-Qaeda or other terrorist activity going on in any of the areas of Afghanistan that the Afghan Government still do not control, we will have a treaty entitlement to send in special forces or military operations to eliminate that terrorist presence and thereby ensure the safety of the world and of our own international interests. That is the practical way in which we can anticipate the gradual withdrawal of our combat forces on the ground, which will have major benefits in terms of reducing loss of life, but not surrender our obligations to the Afghan Government and our even more important obligations to the battle against international terrorism. Let me make one final point. The Prime Minister has mentioned that he wants to offer London as the site for an international conference on Afghanistan early in the new year. That may be a very good idea, but I understand that the Foreign Office has not yet decided even who it would like to invite to that conference. I would suggest that included in the guest list need to be not just the members of ISAF, not just the Afghans and the Pakistanis, but the countries that are close to and border Afghanistan and have a crucial interest in its future—Russia, China, India, perhaps even Iran, Saudi Arabia, and some of the other Arab states. I say that for two reasons, the first being that those countries have a strategic interest, just as we do, in preventing Islamic-inspired terrorism in the international community. In Russia, China, India and a number of other countries in the region, that is a strong preoccupation. The second reason is that it will be a way of reminding the wider public, including our own public opinion, of the point that I made when I started my remarks—that this is not just an American operation or a western operation, as Iraq undoubtedly was, but an international operation blessed by the Security Council of the United Nations. So the presence of Russia and China, not to provide troops, but to provide diplomatic and political support and in other practical ways, would demonstrate that the international community has a common will to ensure that terrorism cannot operate from within Afghanistan in the future. That will allow us not only to see a resolution of the problem, but to hold our heads high while we do so.