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Defence in the World

If those accounts are true, it is amazingly foolish and misguided on the Americans’ part. If the Israelis had got to the point of being ready to sit down and have such discussions, what possible strategic benefit does the United States regime imagine is being served by preventing them? One can merely hazard a guess. It seems foolish. We are in for the long haul in Afghanistan. Britain is committed to that. There is a political consensus here in favour of it and a distinction to be drawn between our actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. We are part of a much wider coalition in Afghanistan, where we are needed. If we were not there, the Taliban would soon re-establish themselves. There is clearly much wider acceptance of the presence of foreign troops by the Afghan population than by the Iraqis, and there is nothing like the appalling death toll of Iraq. One must not however underestimate the difficulties that we face in Afghanistan. Our forces are stretched, our funds and troops are spread in two places, our mission there requires land and air power and there is a serious shortage of helicopters and specialists who are needed for more technical operations. The interesting observation was made in a letter to The Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks ago that there are more personnel from the Royal Navy than from the Army in Afghanistan. I do not know when the Navy last fought a war for us in a landlocked, mountainous country. However, the action is a credit to the Marines and the others who are fighting there at the moment. Indeed, 1,000 or so of my constituents are serving there until April. I hear from them directly and their families the genuine difficulties that they encounter. Some of the reporting of the shortages is misguided and some points get exaggerated. However, there is no doubt that, on arriving in the autumn, troops were shocked to discover how bad some of the equipment at their disposal was and the amount of cannibalisation of parts that had taken place. The Taliban have proved to be an effective adversary: they know the terrain, and if we leave them unchallenged, they will return in great numbers. They retreat into the hills over the winter months, and from previous experience we know that there is a real risk of their coming back and making themselves known in the spring. The peace will not come easily, and the nation building that will be needed to make Afghanistan secure and stable for the long term will take many years.