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Afghanistan: UK Forces

My Lords, I support my noble friend on the Front Bench in paying tribute to our troops in Afghanistan, whose performance has been absolutely magnificent. I am glad that he mentioned the Canadian performance. I believe that, proportionately, the Canadians have suffered as many casualties as we have—I declare an interest as a former Canadian soldier—which is in the Canadian tradition. But the performance of NATO in general has been profoundly disappointing. Many of the NATO countries, which could have been expected to do better, are not pulling their weight. Are some of them still exercising caveats about what their forces are allowed to do? I remember that on a previous occasion we were told that the German planes were not allowed to fly at night. This is particularly relevant since the Minister has announced that they are providing more aircraft. But my main point is: if there is a continuing lack of performance by NATO, will not the Americans in due course lose interest in it and will they not resort to coalitions of the willing, which is what happened for a while in the Yugoslav campaign?