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Defence Policy

In reply to an earlier intervention, the Secretary of State made the point that in Afghanistan the United Nations agencies were under pressure from the Taliban, whose members were effectively trying to kill their people on the ground. May I put it to him that wherever we are up against militant Islam—or, indeed, other forces such as those confronting the troops deployed in Darfur—we are subject to such risks? It is a fact of the modern military environment that civilians are targeted. I suggest that part of the solution lies in a degree of blurring of the military-civilian interface, and in bringing more civilian skills and expertise to the military framework through reserve forces and other wider measures, rather than simply trying to persuade what are essentially civilian agencies to do work on which they will ultimately be unable to deliver.