Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

I am not saying that. As my hon. Friend will have heard, some have argued that it will take 30 years, but the fact remains that it will take some time. We know, for instance, that the training of the Afghan army is proceeding better than that of the Afghan police. Many people are having to be trained to take over responsibility for security. How can anyone say at this stage whether that will take a year, two years or three years? We shall have to make the judgment at the appropriate time. If we say that we will be out of there in two, three, four or five years, what does that tell the Taliban? What does it say about our commitment there? The issue is our commitment and the message we are sending to our enemies; we must get that right at the beginning. I am not going to specify a time limit, although I do not want us to be there for 30 years. We must ensure that we complete the project of training the security forces and securing stability in Afghanistan in the correct way. I should like to hear from Ministers how the training of the Afghan police and armed forces to take over responsibility for security will be paid for in the coming years. The cost, and our contribution, will have to be substantial. We are not talking about just two, three, four or five years. As we have heard, Afghanistan is a very poor country. How could it sustain those arrangements on its own? We must continue to maintain 100 per cent. political commitment to Afghanistan, to ensuring that our NATO allies contribute more, and to dealing with corruption, which is particularly important. I hope that President Karzai will be true to his word, but I suspect that the task will be much more difficult than we expect. We must deal with it on both the national and the local level. We need a proper system of justice so that people need not seek justice from the Taliban. There should be no illusions that there will be a western-style democracy. I cannot believe that anyone seriously imagines that that is possible, and we should not give the impression that it is. What is needed is a system that takes account of tribal and ethnic issues, and as I have said, security is key to that. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), mentioned events in Musa Qala. We need security so that the Afghan people can see that we are making a difference to their lives—for instance, in schools and hospitals. I recall visiting a hospital in Lashkar Gah—if it could be called a hospital; it was just an old building containing one or two bits of equipment. There was a long queue of people who were trying to be seen, and doctors and nurses were desperate for equipment and support. We must do more, whether it is building more bridges, building better housing or providing more commerce and business. That must be part and parcel of what we are doing in military terms as well. We must also try to understand the tribal system better and bring more of the elders on board. We should work with tribes and elders in the villages and elsewhere. I am not in favour of the argument that we should pay ex-Taliban fighters to do our work for us or with us. We may be able to bring some over to our side, but I am not sure that there can be a wholesale policy at this stage. However, I have not been in Afghanistan for more than a year, so I could be mistaken. If we are to talk of reconciliation, we should do so only from a position of strength. The same applies to the Afghans. I referred earlier to the danger that the insurgents would see our weakness if we spoke the language that I have sometimes heard spoken about reconciliation. Of course reconciliation will be necessary—there is a history of reconciliation in the case of all insurgencies—but it must take place from a position of strength, and must involve the Afghans themselves. I recently spoke to a mother who was very proud of her son and what he was doing out in Afghanistan. He believes he is making a real difference there, and she does as well. She believes it is a cause worth fighting for. However, she also mentioned the political and press debates about the undermining of the morale of our service personnel in Afghanistan, and the support that they need. They believe they are doing a job out there, and we must give them wholesale political commitment. The job will be difficult, and it will be absolutely tragic for those who lose their lives, for their families and for the casualties who are wounded, many of them seriously. However, I come back to my earlier point: we must look at all these issues, but we must make decisions based on what is in the interests of our national security and of western security, and, of course, on what is in the interests of the people of Afghanistan. They must also be based on the Pakistan security issue and the consequences of that going wrong. We must make the point time after time that this is about stopping terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda getting back into Afghanistan or getting a base. It is about maintaining security there, and preventing Pakistan from going to the insurgents and their being given a chance to get into power there. There is a further point, too, which seems to have been lost. We said at the outset, back in 2006, that we were in Afghanistan in part because of the poppy and heroin. That is a major problem, and we should not shy away from the fact that we said that. It is part of the process as well; after all, 90 per cent. of the heroin that ends up here comes from Afghanistan. Our aims must be to build a stable, more secure Afghanistan, to provide security, to allow the country to develop and to make sure we train up its armed forces and police; that is key to our future there. However, in order to ensure success in Afghanistan, we must have 100 per cent. political will to see this through, and we must make sure that our armed forces, who are sacrificing their lives, see that political will. We must also make sure there are enough troops and service personnel out there. We must have boots on the ground in order to make sure that development and security come about.