---

Iraq and the wider Middle East

One will just have to make a judgment—[Laughter.] That is what politics is all about. It has been the Government’s appalling judgment that has got us into this position, but now we are in it we have to use our judgment as to when we can get out. It would be unwise, for reasons that have been stated earlier by my colleagues, to give a specific date, because we cannot know how the situation is going to develop in Iraq or in surrounding countries. I have often intervened about Iraq, and I do not want to bore the House by repeating things that I have repeatedly said, so on this occasion I will talk about another country that is closely involved in the so-called war on terror, before we get too deeply enmeshed elsewhere. It was famously said that the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Likewise, Afghanistan today is not worth the bones of a single Lincolnshire marine. It is an unwinnable war, fought in an area that is no longer of great strategic or economic importance, as Afghanistan is a backward country that does not pose any military threat to Britain. For at least 3,000 years, Afghanistan was one of the military, religious and commercial crossroads of the world, but that is no longer the case. International trade is no longer conducted by camel caravans and mule trains. The Khyber pass is no longer Russia’s gateway to British India, but a winding, ambush-prone road to Islamic Pakistan which, in the adjoining north-western tribal areas, is inhabited by Pathans, who are virtually indistinguishable from the Afghanis on the other side of an easily-crossed artificial frontier, with whom they share a similar religion, culture, traditions, tribal loyalty, lifestyle, and a dislike of foreigners and the Pashto language. Russia finally learned its lesson in Afghanistan in the 1980s, retreating after 10 years of incredibly savage warfare that left 30,000 Russians dead. We are apparently intent on re-learning that lesson for a fourth time. My father fought in the third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. He acquired a great respect for the Afghanis’ bravery in battle and had a firm belief that British troops should never again be required to fight there. My own visits to the country have convinced me that he was right. Four arguments are, or were, advanced to justify this fourth war: that Afghanistan will provide a unique training ground for al-Qaeda’s international terrorists unless the Taliban are crushed; that Afghanistan is the main source of the heroin entering Britain, so its poppy fields must be destroyed; that the Taliban impose an extreme interpretation of the Sharia code of Koranic justice and deny women education, and thus cannot be tolerated by us; and that President Karzai is the democratically elected leader of the Afghan people, so we in the west have a duty to support him. All those four arguments for fighting in Afghanistan are unsustainable. I supported the original strike against al-Qaeda training areas in the Tora Bora mountains following assurances from Ministers that it was to be a lightning SAS-style intervention of temporary duration, not a prolonged occupation of the whole country. Al-Qaeda no longer needs to train in Afghanistan as it is training, we are warned by our intelligence services, in many parts of the world, including Britain. Indeed, it is reported that British-born and trained terrorists are now being exported to other countries. Iraq is a much better training ground for al-Qaeda than Afghanistan, but before our invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein ruthlessly kept it out. The Afghanis are not Arabs, and few of them speak Arabic. There has always been tension between the Taliban and the relatively sophisticated Arab leaders of al-Qaeda, most of whom are from Saudi Arabia. As far as we know, Afghanis were not involved in the planning or execution of the attack on the twin towers in New York, nor did they have any foreknowledge of it. The Taliban—a word with far too precise a meaning in western parlance, as it simply translates from Pashto as ““Islamic student””—are not a movement with any known international or extra-territorial ambitions. They are a home-grown, home-supported, Afghan phenomenon, and no other Islamic state has any ambition to emulate their religious and political model. Almost all sensible Muslims elsewhere are embarrassed by their excesses. The second argument advanced to justify the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was that it would curtail poppy production, but that aim has been explicitly abandoned for the foreseeable future. It should have been obvious from the outset that any attempt to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people was incompatible with any attempt to deprive them of their main and often only livelihood. Moreover, the geography of the area—there are a hundred passes over a frontier spanning a thousand miles in mostly rugged country—makes a physical blockade designed to stop heroin smuggling out of Afghanistan well-nigh impossible. Much of that heroin goes through Iran. We must try to stop heroin being brought into Britain, but that will not be achieved inside Afghanistan, and it will not be accomplished, either, by an ““unfit for purpose”” Home Office. Most of the money from heroin does not reach the peasant growers, but goes into the pockets of Afghan warlords and many of President Karzai’s own Ministers. That speaks volumes about the reality of the so-called democracy in Afghanistan. President Karzai is obviously a brave man—he needs to be—but he is widely regarded as a western puppet. All four of the arguments for the invasion of Afghanistan are misjudged. Even if they were not, there is a practical consideration that makes them otiose—the war cannot be won. Last week, General Richards, who is the retiring NATO commander in Afghanistan, said that it will take one more year to defeat the Taliban if more troops are provided. When I was in Vietnam, I remember General Westmorland, who had 500,000 American troops under his command, saying exactly the same thing to me about the Vietcong. A further ““surge”” of troops will not bring permanent victory. The Prime Minister and his demoralised Defence Ministers are struggling to field one more battalion of about 600 men. It would be comic if it were not tragic. Every Afghan is a soldier, and we should not send any more of our young men to die fighting them. Before Pakistan is further destabilised, before the containment of Iran is made even more difficult, and before NATO is discredited, we should get our armed forces out of Afghanistan.