---

Afghanistan (Force Levels)

On 1 February, I announced the forthcoming rotation of our troops in Afghanistan. At that time, I undertook, once I had spoken with my fellow NATO Defence Ministers at Seville, to update the House on any further changes to our force structure. That is what I am here to do today. I want begin by highlighting the progress and achievements in Afghanistan during 2006. NATO has continued its expansion of responsibility for this vital campaign into the more challenging south and east of the country. We have faced down the Taliban in their own back yard, delivering security and bringing the reach of the Afghan Government to places that have hardly seen it before. We have unified the military mission under the leadership of General Richards and the British-led allied rapid reaction corps. Across Afghanistan, we have built schools, mosques, roads, wells and markets. We have defended and reinforced five years of progress, including the first elections in decades, remarkable improvements in education, and the return of 5 million refugees. I say this because, before we talk about what more we must do, we should understand what is at risk if we do not continue to live up to the collective commitment we have made to Afghanistan and its people. I am not here to herald this as a job done. I am not painting a glossy picture; our mission in Afghanistan faces serious challenges and the country faces serious problems. But I am here to explain why we must keep working to meet these challenges and to secure Afghanistan’s future. I have said many times from this Dispatch Box that there is no purely military solution to Afghanistan’s problems. What military forces can do, as has been shown right across the country, is increase security. But unless we can help the Afghan Government to bring security to all their people, and convince them that they and NATO are going to defeat the Taliban and others who try to block or destroy progress, everything else that we have achieved in Afghanistan will remain at risk. At Seville, NATO’s senior military commander— the Supreme Allied Commander Europe—reminded NATO members that it is in the south and east that the security challenge is most acute. He identified a further need for robust, flexible, manoeuvrable combat forces to strengthen NATO commanders’ ability to tackle the challenge across those regions. We believe that every NATO partner should be prepared to do more to meet that need. At Seville, some announced that they would do so. America promised an additional 3,000 troops. France has offered more close air support. Germany has pledged six reconnaissance Tornadoes. Lithuania has pledged additional troops. All those contributions are welcome. They build on earlier commitments made at Riga in the autumn, principally by Poland, which committed a battalion to the east, but we must be realistic about how many nations have the ability to take on the tasks facing NATO in the south and the east. I have lobbied our partners consistently for more help in those regions and I will continue to do so, but it is increasingly clear that at present, when it comes to the most demanding tasks in the more challenging parts of Afghanistan, only we and a small number of key allies are prepared to step forward. That is why we have decided to commit additional forces to Afghanistan. Put simply, the alternative is unacceptable—it would place too great a risk on the progress we have made so far. That is a risk we simply cannot afford to take, for the sake of Afghanistan and of our own security. We may be shouldering a greater share of the burden than we might like, but so are others, and we do so in the knowledge that this is a vital mission and one that is directly in our national interest. I turn now to the details of what this decision means in practice. The UK has decided to fill one of SACEUR’s most pressing requirements—a manoeuvre battalion for Regional Command (South), which is an area that covers Helmand—the base and responsibility of the existing UK taskforce—but also the strategically vital neighbouring provinces of Kandahar, Oruzgan, Zabul, Nimruz and Daykondi. We propose to deploy a battlegroup comprising elements of an infantry battalion, the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh, which will be augmented with a company of Warrior infantry fighting vehicles from the 1st Battalion, the Scots Guards. It will include additional artillery, including a regimental HQ and a battery of light guns from the 19th Regiment, Royal Artillery; a brigade surveillance group drawn from the 5th Regiment, Royal Artillery; and a troop of guided multiple launch rocket systems from the 39th Regiment, Royal Artillery. We shall also deploy additional reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities, four more Harrier GR9s to provide close air support, four Sea King helicopters from 846 Naval Air Squadron to increase our support helicopter capacity, and another C-130 Hercules. Some of the forces deployed will be reservists, although I am not yet in a position to inform the House of how many. I will write to confirm that. In terms of overall numbers, that adds up to nearly 1,400 additional personnel. Some will deploy from the roulement in May, but the majority will deploy over the summer. They will be based mostly in Helmand, with some at Kandahar airfield, although they will provide NATO commanders in RC (South) with a flexible capability for use across the southern region. In total, our forces in Afghanistan will increase from around 6,300 to settle at about 7,700 personnel. The current planning assumption remains that those forces are committed until 2009. I am well aware of the pressure that this will continue to put our armed forces under. I have made it clear in the past that this Government fully recognise how much we are asking of them. I want to take this opportunity to say again on behalf of the Government how much we admire the professionalism, skill and bravery with which they do the hard and dangerous work that we ask of them. I repeat that ensuring that they have the support and equipment that they need remains my highest priority, but I also want to make it clear that we would not make this decision to commit extra forces unless it was in accordance with unequivocal military advice. I and the chiefs of staff agree that this additional commitment is manageable. Before closing, I want to address some misconceptions about this decision which have circulated over recent days. The first is that our recent decisions on Iraq were driven by our desire to do more in Afghanistan. That gets things the wrong way round. Our planned drawdown in Iraq, announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last week, is driven by the conditions on the ground. It is the situation in Iraq that determines what we do there, not the situation in Afghanistan, but of course our plans for Iraq and for other operational theatres, including the Balkans, affect our ability to do more in support of NATO in Afghanistan. In that context, our decision last week on Iraq makes today’s decision that much easier. The second misconception is that the enhancement reflects poor planning in the first place. That is simply not true. As a general point, it is wrong to suggest that any enhancement must reflect poor planning. Inevitably, much is learned during a deployment, especially in the early stages, and the force structure should adapt. That was reflected in the enhancements that we announced last July and in some aspects of the roulement announced on 1 February. It is however a straightforward error to interpret today’s decision as implying anything about the adequacy of the Helmand taskforce. That force is clearly up to the job; it overmatched the Taliban in every engagement last summer, and during the winter it has been able to take the fight to the Taliban on our terms, while securing the area around the provincial capital and vital reconstruction projects such as the Kajaki dam. Today’s decision is a commitment to the southern region as a whole. The additional forces will meet NATO’s requirement for troops who can work across the region, in Kandahar and elsewhere. They provide commanders with greater flexibility and greater capacity to support the Afghan military while they develop the skills and confidence to do the vital work for themselves. As I have said before, that remains our long-term exit strategy. In announcing this significant additional commitment, I assure the House that my resolve to secure contributions from others remains undiminished. However, I put it to the House that we must protect the progress that we have made so far, and protect the Afghans’ own hope and determination. That is the Government's intention. We believe in this mission; we believe in the international community’s aims in Afghanistan and are proud to play our full part in achieving them.