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Middle East and Afghanistan

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and to congratulate her on her contribution to the debate today. She has had an illustrious and diverse career in the service of her country, as a number of noble colleagues today have emphasised. With more than 30 years’ experience in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, in posts as diverse as Singapore, Washington, Brussels and Bosnia, to call on plus spells as the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee as well as a BBC governor—not, I hasten to add, at the same time, as I understand it—I have no doubt that she will enlighten and enliven your Lordships’ debates for some time to come. I carry on more or less where the noble Baroness left off in turning my remarks to the work that we are trying to do in Afghanistan. I, like her, praise almost beyond my imagination the work that our Armed Forces have done there, whether they are regular service personnel or reservists. Their approach in establishing the early provincial reconstruction teams was both courageous and sympathetic. I ask noble Lords to imagine just handfuls of young soldiers working with the grain in vast tracts of Afghanistan’s interior. Years ago, I saw for myself, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, did recently, the genuine friendliness of our young soldiers engaging with local communities. I can bear witness to their resourcefulness in helping to deliver humanitarian aid and development projects. Their commitment in holding fund-raising events among their own colleagues in their bases to pay for micro-projects such as a footbridge, a well or a classroom, built with the help of local villagers, pays tribute to the dedication of those young men and women. Those projects may hardly be noticed in the general scheme of things, and perhaps it is not so surprising that those young men and women are prepared daily to put their life on the line to preserve and protect what they are achieving on behalf of the Afghan people and in the service of their country. We should be proud of them and salute them and their families. We could start by ensuring that the commitment shown by these young people, some of whom are barely out of their teens, in our Armed Forces is not cheapened by inadequate developments, by the inadequate deployment of personnel and resources, or perhaps by the threat of a widening capability gap due to unreliable, ineffective or inappropriate weaponry, transport and communications systems. The case of the Mastiff armoured vehicle is classic; after so many years, we have eventually begun to get it right. With a 30 per cent increase in violent deaths in Afghanistan this year, rising from 425 a month in 2006 to 550 a month now, and with suicide and road-side bombing increasing at a similar rate, we must ensure that the efforts of our military personnel are not diluted, diverted or squandered through the failure to set realistic, achievable objectives in Afghanistan and the neighbouring region. The present objectives are well known but are worth repeating. In summary, they call for the elimination of al-Qaeda, the defeat of the Taliban and the development of a stable and democratic Afghan state. They also call for support for the Afghan Government and internationally sanctioned counter-narcotics efforts and for the provision of support for humanitarian assistance operations. However, there are concerns that the progress made on the political and development objectives does not match the military investment and commitment that we and our NATO allies are making. The question is why the coalition forces were unable to turn the initial military success into sustainable security and stability in Afghanistan. The Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House has already been quoted in the debate. Its report is an important contribution to the analysis of how we can go forward. Its recent analysis shows that, although the operation suffers from a lack of resources and troops and has done in many people’s eyes since 2003, there is a more fundamental difficulty: those involved in the coalition have in many cases failed to develop the coherent approach needed to achieve the coalition and NATO objectives in that country. In particular, a comprehensive strategy to address the political objectives—the elimination of al-Qaeda, the defeat of the Taliban, and help for Afghanistan towards establishing a stable and democratic state—seems to have been subsumed in a collection of partial and ad hoc schemes and perceptions. That is a major difficulty in varying the international, legal frameworks under which the contributing forces operate. The national force deployments in Afghanistan are heavily constrained by restrictive caveats imposed by national Parliaments, as my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford has already mentioned. Chatham House gives two classic examples, among many more. My noble friend Lord Lee has already mentioned one: Tornado aircraft collecting reconnaissance data under one hat but being unable to pass the data on to those who need them under the other hat. There is also Operation Medusa, during which Canadian ISAF forces were confronted by entrenched Taliban units in strength. The Canadian commanders apparently asked four allied partners for relief but not one helped. The commanders were turned down each time on the basis that the legal restrictions would not permit their allied partners to come to the Canadian forces’ aid. That is a farce and a fiasco. Those cases illustrate a serious difficulty with coalition operations in Afghanistan. Not all ISAF members, as many noble Lords have noted, are prepared to share the increased risks of military expansion in Afghanistan—an unwillingness that reflects parochial domestic political pressures but presents a serious threat to NATO’s future operations and perhaps to NATO’s future itself. Helping Afghanistan to develop into a stable and democratic state is proving, if anything, even more daunting. The trends over time of increasing opium production are deeply depressing, as other noble Lords have noted. It is generally known that Afghanistan produces some 90 per cent of the world’s illegal opium, according to the latest UN figures. Even more depressing is the fact that that 90 per cent is up from 70 per cent in 2000 and from just over 50 per cent in 1990. The trend continues unchecked. The narcotics trade continues to fund the warlords and their private armies. It continues to feed corruption in the civil administration and to nurture increasing criminality throughout the country. With disagreement within the coalition about the way forward in eradicating the poppy crops and providing equitable and viable alternative livelihoods for the farmers, it appears that counter-narcotic plans are in danger of stalling, if not of failing altogether. Finally, no serious commentator on Afghanistan believes now that achieving the objectives of the war as set out initially will result from actions solely within the borders of that country. The conflict has become and has been recognised as a regional conflict that desperately needs regional solutions. Recent events in Pakistan—for example, the attempted assassination of Mrs Bhutto—underline the volatility of the region, particularly in the frontier areas with Pakistan. Inevitably—I am sure that the Minister will comment on this in his winding-up speech—the frontier areas in Waziristan and other tribal agencies, which have been the seat of unrest for centuries, are where the solutions must be found.