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Middle East and Afghanistan

My Lords, when I take part in foreign policy debates in this House, I am very impressed by the excellence of the speeches. Those of the spokespersons of the three main parties were, if possible, even more outstanding than usual. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Triesman and Lord Howell of Guildford, and my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire on the quality of the reasoning that they bring to these debates. Having said that, no Government have ever had a better wicketkeeper than the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. The test side playing in Australia would be very grateful to have his help. I am not altogether sure that his Government deserve him, but I shall not further qualify the compliment I pay him. I begin by picking up an important point that the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, made about Iraq. He said that little planning had been done on what was to happen after the victory. That is undoubtedly clear. However, it is rather worse than that. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, gallantly gave the best possible impression that he could of what is happening in Iraq. But what he understandably did not mention, for reasons of time, was the relative disaster that reconstruction has been in that country. Something like 80 per cent of the inhabitants of Iraq are unemployed. All of us in this House know very well that unemployment feeds young men and women into being only too ready to take up the cause of terrorism or anything else because they have no means of making a decent living. The noble Lord was kind enough not to mention the $18.8 billion which are believed to have been lost from reconstruction funds as a result of poor administration by the United States occupation authorities and western companies’ ludicrously high overheads. Those companies seized most of the work, such as smaller construction projects, that should have gone to the Iraqis. At present the citizens of Iraq are not only continually jeopardised and stressed by the level of insecurity and violence in that country, but still have only begun to get back the electricity, gas, water supplies and sewerage treatment that they might have expected to have 20 years ago. It is a very sad situation. I strongly recommend that anybody who finds me partisan looks at the website of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a position included in the Iraqi Appropriations Act by a handful of Congressmen, led by Henry Waxman of California. The website presents a candid, honest and extraordinarily disturbing account of the reconstruction in Iraq and the ways in which so much of the money that all of us, but notably the United States, have contributed, has been abused, misused and allowed to run into the ground. A further point, which I believe to be very important, concerns the desperate efforts to try to hand over to the Iraqi army and police. That is the way we need to go, but we are still not putting enough money into training those young men and we still fail to protect them. One of the sadnesses in Iraq is that, day after day, young male and female police recruits are slaughtered almost before they start their duties. Many noble Lords will speak about Iraq in this debate. It would be helpful if, at some stage, our ever ebullient Prime Minister were willing to recognise that the invasion of Iraq was a very serious mistake indeed in British foreign policy. I pay tribute to the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, who spoke movingly about Afghanistan. Her comments were very relevant to the situation. She spoke with great honesty about some of the problems Afghanistan faces. I will come to those in a moment, but I want to raise one other issue, which is a matter of great concern to NATO and which noble Lords with great knowledge of the alliance, such as my noble friend Lord Garden, might say something about. The Minister might also say something about it. We know that the time of General Richards in Afghanistan has been applauded by all sides. Here is a military leader who has captured the imagination of many of his colleagues—Afghan, American and other allies alike; who is almost universally praised for the way in which he has handled the operation; who has gone out of his way to bring the battle for hearts and minds alongside the battle for military advantage; and who, after just nine months of outstanding success in Afghanistan, is to be switched to another post. Surely NATO could take these matters rather more seriously. Nobody, however brilliant, could grasp the complexities of Afghanistan in just nine months. No sooner has General Richards gained a powerful leadership position in that country—one we all applaud for bringing the political and military campaigns together—than he is suddenly moved somewhere else, to be replaced by an American general, who was last seen in Afghanistan at the height of the period of occupation by troops three years ago. That is a great pity. I wonder why people could not be retained on the grounds of their outstanding performance, rather than switched around simply because of some bureaucratic decision made by a NATO which finds it very difficult to work like an alliance, and in which each member state still has to get sovereign permission before accepting even very straightforward operational requests from the generals, because of the way it is constructed. On Afghanistan, I want to follow what the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said about the terrifying dependence on the poppy crop as a means of keeping very poor Afghans alive. Some 2 million people are totally dependent on it. The astonishing figures suggest that this is an area where we are losing hand over fist. In 2001—a time, I regret to say, when the Taliban was very powerful—7,606 hectares, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, were devoted to the growing and cultivation of the opium poppy. This year 165,000 hectares are devoted to the opium poppy—the highest level ever in Afghan history. It is astonishing that, despite terribly expensive efforts to destroy the poppy crop, which last year cost the United States alone $235 million, we are seeing—because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, rightly said, there are no alternatives—it grow and grow. Most of the product comes to the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. We have to be more imaginative. One of the suggestions made by an NGO, which may not be practical, was to buy a large part of the poppy crop to make legitimate drugs, of the kind still badly needed, such as morphine and other painkillers. I understand the difficulty of doing that when the Afghan Government is highly corrupt. If we cannot do that, surely we could at least consider creating a kind of common agricultural policy for the other crops. If we have to pay too much for them for the next four of five years, it would still be far less expensive than what we are presently trying to do, and would enable Afghan farmers to lead decent and legitimate lives without being driven into what is increasingly a criminal economy in a large part of Afghanistan. I agree completely with the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, on the position of girls and women in Afghanistan. She is obviously right to say that we must defeat the Taliban, but we cannot do it by military means alone. We have to find economic reasons for Afghans to believe that supporting the Taliban is not in their interests, let alone in the interests of the world. I turn to two other issues—I am well aware of the pressure of time. The first, again, follows something that was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons—that is, the state of Lebanon. I say again as strongly as I can that I believe that our Prime Minister and President Bush made a desperate mistake in not insisting on a ceasefire in Lebanon at the beginning of the Israeli offensive on southern Lebanon. Why did we imagine for a moment that this weak but democratic, western-inclined state would be able to live with the consequences of so many civilians being killed and so many babies, who, as our televisions showed, were alive and then died, being carried out of burning buildings? That is no way to create support for a moderate Government in a country where hearts and minds are crucial. We have now put at risk the Lebanese Government, led by a decent, moderate and thoughtful man, President Siniora, whom the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and I have met and been impressed by. What did we think we were doing? As a result, not only have Iran and Hezbollah been strengthened but the Government of Lebanon may not survive for more than the next few hours because of the level of demonstrations in the street. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot! This is to shoot oneself in the heart, and it is an absurd thing to have done. I only hope and pray that Lebanon’s Government survive to take part in a wider regional peace process. But, frankly, the odds are against it at present and very much in favour of a Government whom we would not like to succeed this decent one, led by a decent man, who supported western ideals and western values. Lastly, I want to say a word about Israel and Palestine. It is worth remembering that it was King Abdullah of Jordan who said: "““I know people will say that there are several core problems in the Middle East … But for the majority of us living in this part of the world, it has always been the Israeli-Palestinian, the Israeli-Arab problem””," at the centre. That has been true for 40 years: it always comes back to the Israeli-Arab, Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Again, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, about the extreme interest and concern that we should feel for the brave initiative of Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister of Israel. He said only a few days ago—at the end of November—that he was in favour of making a major initiative towards the Palestinians, admittedly at a time when the Palestinian state is worse even than it has been over recent years because of the desperate plight of Gaza, to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester—I apologise to him for having missed the earliest part of his speech—made such moving reference. We should stop for a moment and consider how important that initiative is. There is reason to believe that Mr Olmert has long been in favour of trying to reach a decent peace with Palestine. However, there are two great worries. The first was mentioned by the right reverend Prelate and others, including my noble friend Lord Wallace. It is what appears to be the double standard that western countries apply to Israel and the Palestinians. They are absolutely right to say that the Palestinians, in the shape of Hezbollah, should recognise Israel and abandon threats to destroy it, but alongside that equally goes the absolute necessity for Israel to recognise that the war and the settlements are contrary to international law. An even-handed Government, which I should like to see ours become, would make that clear at the same time to both those Governments in order to create the possibility of peace. I have one other great fear, which I shall mention in this final minute. I do not know how many noble Lords saw the very troubling article that appeared in Ha’aretz on 3 December. In it, a very brave journalist, Gideon Levy, refers to the fact that, time and again, when peace has been very close between Israel and the Palestinians, when there was a referendum on the prisoner proposals, and when Hamas and the Palestinian Authority came together to create a united Government, a very high-level Palestinian figure has been assassinated and, shortly afterwards, the terrorism has begun all over again. So we now need to couple with our requests and demands to Israel and the Palestinians to pave the way for a peace that might be lasting—and, God knows, that too hangs on a thread—a request for an end to judicial assassinations, because they are completely contrary to the ability to run politics in a civilised manner and, in the end, will destroy those who are responsible for them.