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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I welcome the Gracious Speech, although I was unable to hear it first hand because I was representing this House in Berlin at talks focused on the possible future transformation of NATO. I have been associated with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for 20 years, and having been vice-president in the past, I now hold the position of general rapporteur of the defence and security committee. For the past two years in that post, I have had to write reports on Afghanistan and visit that country. With regard to defence, I would like to concentrate my remarks purely on that subject this evening, because my opinions might be somewhat pertinent. The reports, which can be seen on the internet, concentrate purely on the facts, and have won warm approval from David Richards, who was general officer commanding on my first visit, and favourable comment from Dan McNeil, who is currently GOC. I would like to start with the point that NATO is doing a brilliant job. Our forces are performing valiantly and with enormous courage, despite the fact that resources are sometimes inadequate or ineffective. The problem is that, in my view, we are doing the wrong job. I shall explain. The role that NATO has had thrust upon it is one of promoting and protecting a system of governance, and ensuring that it is well established. When one considers that system, one finds oneself asking a number of questions. We must remember that Afghanistan is very much a tribal society. If one flies over it, one can see—especially over the Hindu Kush—that its communities are rather like cells in a beehive, which are isolated from each other. In the past, they have not been able to communicate with each other very well. That is not the case any more. People now have mobile phones and laptops, and there are radio masts on the ridges so that they can communicate very easily. In the past, the Afghan has been the sort of person who would say to himself and his neighbours, ““If the leader says it is all right, then it must be all right. I trust my leader.”” Of course, they are learning that things are not quite what they ought to be, because so much corruption is clearly evident. The system that they voted for some time ago—I doubt very much whether they would vote for it again—is one in which the normal Afghan is dependent on the patronage and protection of his provincial governor. In return, the provincial governor is dependent on the protection and patronage of Hamid Karzai, the President. Hamid Karzai is dependent on the protection and patronage of the White House. The whole system comes down along rather than going up the ways, as representative democracies should—expressing what the electorate and ordinary communities need and aspire to. With mobiles and laptops, people are now learning more about the way the world goes round, and they are learning about how corrupt and ineffectual the system is. They are able to phone the next valley and say, ““How come you are getting so much of that, and we are getting so little of this?”” As they discover that weakness in their system, what will their reaction be? We have to consider the prospect that they will eventually turn their anger on the system that is promoting and protecting such governance—namely, NATO. In other words, the situation will become an even bigger bloodbath unless we do something about it. What do we need to do? We have to ensure that the Afghan national army is bigger and more effective. It is only about 70,000 strong at the present time, but it is quite fearless in its work, and ferocious when it is asked to do a job. However, there are not enough people in that army. Sadly, the Afghan national police force is nowhere near as effective. It is largely staffed by drug addicts, and they are largely there because they cannot get employment anywhere else. The Afghan border patrols are so thin on the ground, they do not even have supplies of water in their feeble shelters, which are spaced miles apart along the frontier. The Afghan security forces have to be stabilised, increased in size and made more effective so that they can take over the task of securing the nation. Only when we get to that stage, and NATO pulls out, can we have confidence enough to say, ““Mission accomplished.”” I seem to remember that term being used some time ago, but now we choose to forget it. As well as establishing good security forces, other measures need to be taken. At this point, I am not taking a leaf out of the book of the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron), but he had his finger on the right page. We have to start talking—a dialogue. I am reminded of the quatrain by Edwin Markham, entitled ““Outwitted””:"““He drew a circle that shut me out—""Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.""But Love and I had the wit to win:""We drew a circle that took him in!””" I do not want anyone to laugh at this, but we have to do that with the Taliban and Iran. I am minded of the fact that since the second world war—I have a memory that goes back that far—all the terrorist organisations we have experienced have wound up becoming respectable, and we have had to enter into dialogue with them. We started talking to terrorists, but we ended up talking to representatives of state. It might not be the same with the Taliban, but we should at least start talking to them. Iran is shunned and demonised by America, along with other aspects of Islam, but we have to bear it in mind that it has the most acute drug problem in the world—far worse than in any other nation—and that it is desperately keen to reach a solution. Currently, in the absence of any sort of dialogue or exchange, it is trying to dig a trench two metres wide—that is fairly wide—by two metres deep, the full length of its frontier with Afghanistan, in an attempt to funnel trafficking into points where it can be controlled. If we could start a sensible, constructive and positive dialogue with Iran, it would create common ground on which we could take forward positive and constructive dialogue on other issues. We must bear it in mind that we have to handle Pakistan as well; the situation in Tajikistan is not quite so bad. I have about three minutes left. There are all sorts of aspects of the Queen's Speech that I would love to talk about.