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Defence in the World

The process of handing over, or provincial Iraqi control as it is known—or PIC as it is known to those who love to use only the first letters of words, as the military do—is a condition-based process. We are only one of several parties who are involved in making the decision on that. Part of that process is that the Iraqi Government must not only have a willingness to take over control, but be in a position to do so. The point about our troops in Multi-National Division (South-East) is that we are making progress along the strategic path that we have set and we are not deviating from it, which means that in the near future, we will be in a position to re-posture our troops. Exactly how we do that will depend on the commanders’ advice on the ground as to what the specific operational plan should be. That will then affect the number of troops that we need, because protecting static bases is more expensive in terms of troops and manpower than collecting people together. However, there is of course a consideration as to whether collecting people together in that environment makes them more vulnerable, and as to how we can protect them there. All those matters have to be decided by operational commanders. The intention is to get to the point where we can hand over control not just to the Iraqi security forces, but to their local government and politicians, so that they can run that part of the country independently of us and we can adopt a posture of over-watch. We will do, for example, what the Australians do in Dhi Qar and al-Muthanna, the two provinces that have been handed over: stand by, ready to go to the assistance of the local security forces, if necessary. Interestingly, in both those provinces the political situation and the security situation have remained stable. Although there have been incidents, on both occasions it was possible for local politicians and security forces to deal with them. They did so in a perhaps more Iraqi way than we would have, but through a mixture of exactly the same factors as we would use in dealing with disturbances on the streets in any of our communities. In other words, the local political leadership and the security forces— the police, or others—deal with them and try to calm the situation. That is the position that we are trying to reach. I hope that that has been of assistance to the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey). Some people become obsessed with the specifics of the assessment, but in our view we remain on course. However, we have to make sure that the conditions are right and that everybody is able to move at the same pace with us along this route. In Afghanistan, the challenges are different and the environment is different, but many of the basic principles are the same. We cannot succeed by military force alone, but at the same time, progress is impossible without basic stability and security. As a result of our efforts, basic security is improving but it is still under threat. In one of the world’s poorest countries, where development is desperately required, the Taliban stand in the way, callously indifferent to the interests of the local people.