---

Defence Policy

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I am happy to support his comments. When I was in Afghanistan, the conversations I held with the ambassador made it clear that Afghanistan alone could not solve the problems; the solutions have to be regional. Winning over hearts and minds is a slow, painstaking process; we need to win people’s trust. Earlier, the Secretary of State laid out our achievements in Afghanistan, not in traditional military terms of enemy killed or ground taken, but in terms of the number of children in school, how many of the population have access to basic health care and how far we have reduced poppy cultivation. In the north of the country, we have achieved a reduction. Contrary to the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang), who is no longer in the Chamber, military contributions helped in that process, because peace and stability in the north were achieved first. Farmers feel that poppy cultivation now poses more risks, which they are not prepared to take. They have more choice and feel more comfortable exercising it, because they know that the police and the Government will back them up. Our military presence is delivering for the Afghan police and Government the capability to do that. We have a long road to travel in the rest of Afghanistan, especially in Helmand, but just because we do not always measure our achievements in military terms does not mean that they are not military achievements. During my visit to Afghanistan, I was struck by the understanding among troops at every level of the complex nature of the operations they were facilitating and the delicate balance that had to be struck: on the one hand, raw soldiering to drive out the Taliban, and the next day setting up a shura, or village community meeting, finding out who the tribal leader is and helping them decide for themselves what they want for their community. Every soldier, sailor and aircrew member I met understood the politics of the situation; they understood the tribal nature of the population and the need to establish real Afghan ownership of the reconstruction projects under way. I can tell the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) that is not an aspiration—it is happening. Afghan faces do not merely head up projects; local Afghan labour is being used. Some of the service personnel whom I met who were doing that work were from the joint CIMIC—Civil Military Co-operation—group. Such an undertaking is nothing new. A civilian-military liaison branch of the Army was first set up in 1941, and in 1944 and 1945 teams moved into liberated towns in France and Germany, along with the leading troops, to occupy local government offices and establish authority. In 1997 the joint CIMIC group was established—a specialist unit that manages the interface between military and civilian organisations wherever British forces are deployed on operations. The majority of personnel in the unit are reservists who hold civilian jobs and have specialist skills for the type of work undertaken. I echo the remarks of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) in welcoming that work, and I too hope that more reservists will be used in that way, especially in Afghanistan. During my visit to Afghanistan, some of the most heart-warming and positive stories that I heard about reconstruction were from CIMIC personnel. The one that sticks most in my mind was from a Royal Navy female reservist officer who works with women in the villages. She speaks Pashtu and Dari, so that she can talk to the women in their language, and she is now on her second six-month tour of duty. She is working on a project with widows, because in Afghan society widows, with no husband to protect or support them, are totally isolated and have no income. The CIMIC officer works with village elders to set up women’s centres that provide training in skills such as tailoring or chicken farming. Other projects offer micro-finance, so that women can start their own businesses and bring money into their local village community. As yet, there is no proper adult literacy programme in Helmand, so the officers are also teaching the women to read and write through these women’s centres. The women are organising and are learning from each other. That is a breakthrough, because previously they were isolated in their own compounds. This officer is not only performing that international development role, but she is very much a serving member of our armed forces, and just a few days before I arrived, she had come under fire from a Taliban attack. We need these CIMIC officers, because it is too dangerous for non-governmental organisation civilians to do this work, but I agree with the Secretary of State that the long-term aim must be for the NGOs to take over, although that will be a long road. It will be a long, hard slog in Afghanistan—one that is dangerous for international coalition troops—but it is necessary. I asked one of the CIMIC reservists whom I met why he kept volunteering to come back to Helmand. He said:"““Politicians talk about a failed state but when you have seen a local hospital where the surgeons have to scrub up at a hand pump in the yard and if someone dies on the operating table the body is thrown out the back door because there is no mortuary, that is what I call a failed state, that’s why I’m here—for the people of Afghanistan””." In Afghanistan at least, the edges around a strict definition of a defence role, an international relations role or an international development role are blurred. I am clear that our defence emphasis in tackling the challenges of globalisation and preventing armed conflict over access to scarce resources, either where they lie or where the instability could make them a target for malign forces seeking to seize them, should be through supporting stability and democracy in those states. Having seen for myself in Afghanistan, I am clear that our armed forces are the best in the world at doing just that.