Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

I am certainly not making this speech or writing anything on behalf of the Intelligence and Security Committee; I can tell my hon. Friend that for a kick-off. There are significant differences between the aims of the Afghan Taliban and their brother organisation in Pakistan, and al-Qaeda. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are fighting to take control of their respective countries, while al-Qaeda's objectives remain much more global. Al-Qaeda wants to destroy America and its western allies, as well as the Governments of the middle eastern states that it considers to be too pro-western. It has little love for Shi'a Islam or any other variation of its Wahhabi and Deobandi Sunni orthodoxies. The differences between the aims of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, however, do not mean that they can easily be prised apart. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) looks as if he has had enough of this, but I want him to listen. I believe that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are simply different faces of a common ideology—what one observer has defined as an""obdurate and uncompromising version of political Islam."" That has manifested itself in the form of murder and mutilation, from New York, through Madrid and London, to Mumbai and Bali. Osama bin Laden is but the best known of these obdurate non-compromisers; he and his disciples have a record of moving on, and they will continue to do so. As I said, al-Qaeda's response to the superb professionalism of the British armed forces and those of our allies has been to seek to re-establish for itself sanctuaries in fragile, troubled territories such as northern Yemen and war-torn south-central Somalia, as well as Pakistan. I do not believe that we or any other NATO member intend to deploy large numbers of our soldiers to fight in Yemen and Somalia, despite the possibility that al-Qaeda will use those places, as it used Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, to train its bombers and assassins. If we accept that al-Qaeda continues to pose a deadly threat to the United Kingdom and if we know that it is capable of changing the locations of its bases and modifying its attack plans, we must also accept that we have a duty to question the wisdom of prioritising, in Government spending on counter-terrorism, the deployment of our forces to Afghanistan. I am arguing once again that it is time to ask whether the fight against those intent on murdering British citizens might be served better by diverting into the work of the UK Border Agency and our police and intelligence services much of the additional finance and resources swallowed up by the costs of maintaining British forces in Afghanistan. General Dutton, the deputy commander of ISAF, says that it would be impossible to deny al-Qaeda the advantage of having training camps in a future Taliban-controlled Afghanistan without there being substantial US, NATO and Afghan Government troops on the ground for many years to come. I was interested to hear what the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea said about this issue; I very much agree with him. General Dutton argues that it will be impossible to destroy training camps—the potential springboards for terrorist attacks—simply by patrolling from the skies. In other words, the use of airborne firepower will have to be supplemented by very large numbers of ground troops. If previous conflicts are anything to go by, General Dutton is probably right. However, I am not convinced that life for al-Qaeda camp dwellers could not be made extremely dangerous and uncomfortable as a consequence of the attentions of unmanned Predator aircraft, attack helicopters, guided missiles and so on. The current wisdom is that NATO and ISAF should continue to build up troops, including British troops. General Dutton said recently that the ideal number of troops required to turn the tide in a country such as Afghanistan, with its 28 million people, is around half a million. Currently, many fewer than half that number of foreign and Afghan troops are available to him. General McChrystal has complained about that and wants more troops. Recent attacks in Kabul and other centres suggest that the current balance of territorial control is at best likely to remain, or more likely to shift, in favour of the Taliban. I hope that a Government will emerge in Kabul who are capable of convincing the Afghan people that they have a society worth protecting from the misogynistic, mediaeval cruelty and backwardness of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but I sense that the vast majority of the British public share my pessimism and believe that it will be a very long time before that happens. I also sense that the British public, for better or worse but increasingly, will become less tolerant of Governments placing at risk the lives of our armed forces by deploying them to such conflicts in support of outcomes that are complex and confusing. In other words, I believe that we have no choice but to seek different ways of ensuring this country's security, ways not only that the public find more acceptable but that will be more successful.