Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

Pakistan is a sovereign country. British and allied forces are already involved on the borders of Pakistan. If Pakistan were to require our help, that is something that I would consider, but let us be in no doubt that the core of this problem lies in Pakistan. Watch the news and see what is happening there every day. The rebels are not just challenging troops in the field: they are attacking at the heart of that country, taking on Government and defence establishments and inflicting enormous casualties. If we continue to divide these two parts of the war, we miss the essence of what the Taliban, backed by al-Qaeda, are trying to do. I ask the Government to read the history books. When we went into Helmand in 2006 I made a speech, as did colleagues, asking the Government not to look only at the British history, but at what happened to the Soviets in that area and others on the border. We are inviting the sort of war in which the Soviets became involved—and the sort of casualties that they suffered. They were prescient words. Those who write off British policy in Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th centuries as a universal failure are wrong. Yes, the first expedition in 1842 was a failure, 1919 was probably a score-draw, but 1878-80—in the parameters of the time—was a success. In 1880, there were two different theatres, but there was fighting between Gereshk and the Helmand river against the Talibs and the Ghazis—for which read Taliban and al-Qaeda, as they were the religious extremists of the time. It was by the same regiments against the same tribesmen, in a very similar region, with a political backdrop that is remarkably similar. A Government fell in 1880 over what happened in Afghanistan. We thought that we had got things right a couple of years before, but too quick a withdrawal led to the disaster of the battle of Maiwand in July 1880 and to other problems that were only solved finally by military might. Let us also be clear that if we displace terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we have heard tonight, there are many other places where al-Qaeda will spring up. I am not concerned so much about the Taliban, who have no desire to fight in this country or to kill people inside our borders. They are a nationalistic organisation that we can defeat, not so much militarily, but in the same way as we did in the 1880s and 1920s—by boxing clever and peeling people away from the idealists. I also ask the Secretary of State to look at the problem of Somalia. What we think we may have got on top of in Iraq, and what we are struggling to contain in Afghanistan, has been by no means solved in Somalia. I ask him to look especially carefully at the naval resources that he is able to commit to the waters off the horn of Africa, and to dedicate resources there to prevent Somalia from developing into the sore—the hotspot, the disgrace—that Iraq did and Afghanistan is becoming.