Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

This has been a very good debate, and I apologise to Members from all parts of the House if the pressure of time means that I am unable to underline some of the particularly good individual contributions that have been made. It is no surprise that a great deal of today's debate has focused on Afghanistan. In general, the issues that were focused on fell into four groups: why we are in Afghanistan; the cost of defeat in Afghanistan; what we mean conceptually by winning; and, the need for consistency in messaging. Several Members, including the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary, made the point that we are in Afghanistan for national security reasons. We initially went in to deny al-Qaeda the space from which it launched those attacks on the west in which many thousands of innocent people, including British citizens, died. That was achieved relatively quickly, but we must continue to deny al-Qaeda the space. We also need to stop the contamination and potential destabilisation and, indeed, collapse of Pakistan. In other words, we need to see what is happening in Afghanistan in geopolitical, not social, terms. As a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends said, we cannot conflate the military mission with the reconstruction mission. If we try to describe in reconstruction terms the reasoning for undertaking a national security mission, we are likely to confuse the British public further. We also need to be consistent in our messaging. We are either in Afghanistan as a result of a national security imperative or we are not; we cannot change the reasoning week by week. If one week we say that we have to see the mission through, we must not later send the mixed signal that we would not be there if we could possibly avoid it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) made one of the best speeches that I have heard him give in Opposition. He asked what was different now from the situation when Russia attacked and occupied Afghanistan. He gave a number of examples, including the fact that the Mujaheddin had widespread support that was militarily and politically well beyond the boundaries of Afghanistan. The Taliban do not; they are a small and isolated grouping. I should like to add to my right hon. and learned Friend's arguments. We have seen the emergence of China. Someone mentioned earlier that Afghanistan had pretty much nothing going for it. China, however, has made a major investment in the copper deposits there and that offers a genuine opportunity for Afghanistan to make a positive contribution to the global economy. Since the Russian invasion, we have also seen the emergence of a genuinely globalised economy with the opportunities that that brings. Afghanistan now has a democratic Government, who may not be up to the standards that many in the west want, but they are certainly an improvement on what was there before. My right hon. and learned Friend also concentrated on what he regarded as the three most important elements of strategy: the training of the Afghan national security forces; the need in the longer term for continuous military support through air support; and the need for political progress while accepting what is possible and in what time scale. My right hon. and learned Friend is fond of quotations. In backing up what he said, I remind him that in 1972, the great Pashtun activist Khan Abdul Wali was asked by a journalist to what he owed his first allegiance. He replied:""I have been a Pashtun for six thousand years, a Muslim for thirteen hundred years, and a Pakistani for twenty-five."" We need to understand the history and complexity of the region in which we are involved. We have to add one more element to the strategy: General McChrystal's concept that the centre of the insurgency is population-based, and that we have to have a population-centric result. As the general said, we need to shift our emphasis, not to how many of our enemies we kill, but to how many we shield in safety in the Afghan population. We need to see through that security, which we promised from the outset. As has been said in the House before, we have to have a change of mindset. In a counter-insurgency, a defection is better than a surrender, a surrender is better than a capture and a capture is better than a kill. We will need to see such a change if the American response is to be closer to General McChrystal's assessment. I would say to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), if he were still in his place, that I have always found the general's assessment compelling. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) talked about what a disaster it would be if we withdrew precipitately. That message was echoed by other Members. It would be a disaster for decent Afghans trying to achieve a better life, many of whom have been willing to sacrifice their own security to help us in the conflict. We cannot betray them. It could be a disaster for Pakistan and for the broader concept of the western alliance. What cohesion or credibility would we have if we pulled out unilaterally? That message was echoed by the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) in his speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) said that nowhere was our reputation more important in this context than in our relationship with the United States. After Iraq, including Najaf and Basra, we have to be extremely aware of the reputation of our armed forces. We must give them the support that they need to do the jobs that we have asked them to do. Pakistan was touched on by several hon. Members, and it has four problems that we need to understand. First, there is an economic crisis in the country, and the Government are struggling to keep their chin above water. That will go on for some time and will require a huge amount of international aid if we are to give the Government the support that they will need for stability. Secondly, there is an endemic political problem in Pakistan with the structure of its democracy. Sometimes I think that we have a cartographer's view of the world—drawing a border around something makes it a country, and it can be treated in the same way as we would treat neighbouring European states. But Pakistan is not like that. Its political structure is prone to becoming a regional winner-takes-all set-up, and therefore internal political stability is difficult to achieve. Thirdly, Pakistan is militarily designed for state-on-state warfare. Its armed forces are shaped for that and, because of the continuing tensions with India, many Pakistani forces are prepared for deployment in that direction. They therefore do not have the means to deal with the fourth element, which is the anti-insurgency, anti-terror action that we are now demanding of them. We need to understand some of the regional complexities. Most of the Pakistani army speaks Punjabi. If they are stuck up in the north-west, they will not even speak the same language as the people whose security they are trying to guarantee. If the international community gave Pakistan more support and perhaps less criticism, it would be able to assist us more than it is sometimes able to do, given some of the rhetoric that comes from some of the countries supposedly helping it. In particular, we should look to countries such as Saudi Arabia to offer greater support to Pakistan, especially its organs of state, than they have done in the past. When we have a mission such as that in Afghanistan, for which public support is diminishing—everybody in the House has to accept that that is happening—it is very tempting to come up with a timetable that suggests a way out, once we get to x date. Timetables are both wrong and dangerous. Yes, we need benchmarks to determine our success and to show us that our aims have been achieved, but they should not be marks on a calendar. Timetables risk undermining the confidence of our allies, who wonder if our hearts are really in it—if we have the moral fortitude to see through what we have described as a national security imperative. Introducing a timetable also runs the risk of reinforcing the confidence of our enemies, because it tells them that if they can only outlast us, they will be victorious. That is the greatest danger we face, undermining the morale of our own forces. Tempting though it may be in the short term for politicians, it is wrong for all sorts of reasons.