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Troop Deployment (Afghanistan)

On the first point, my hon. Friend is labouring under a misapprehension. The idea that the United States would be reducing its troop numbers in Afghanistan from about 18,000 to supplement them in Iraq, where at one stage there were about 180,000 troops, is an incorrect assumption. It is likely in both areas, depending on conditions, that US troop numbers will diminish, probably by the order of 2,000 in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where the deployment was as high as between 160,000 and 170,000, to possibly under 100,000 by the end of the year. None of what we have been discussing today is related to any of that reduction. What has been a feature of discussion in NATO and wider, as I think the House will be aware, is to what extent we can synergise—bring together—while keeping separate, the American-led mission of anti-terrorism, Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO-led mission of reconstruction, under United Nations auspices, ISAF, which we will take over in May of next year. There have been discussions on how the two missions relate to each other, but to reduce that to an assumption that an entry into the south is based on the fact that the Americans want to reduce troop numbers is a gross and misleading over-simplification.