---

Foreign Affairs and Defence

We have heard speeches today that were wise, rational and intelligent; but we have heard others that were maniacally optimistic and foolish. The problem is that the wise speeches came from the Back Benches and the foolish speeches from the Front Benches. It is extraordinary to encounter such a denial of what has gone wrong. I shall confine myself to Afghanistan, but I would like to associate myself with the splendid speech of the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron), who spoke a great deal of sense on Iran and how we appear to be sleepwalking into war, while denying a fair hearing for what people and leaders in Iran are saying. It is so reminiscent of the build-up to the foolish invasion of Iraq, which has caused so many tragedies and achieved so little. An earlier intervention suggested that I was in favour of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, so let me make it clear that I supported the war in Afghanistan in 2001. I thought that it was reasonable because of the presence of al-Qaeda and its protection by the Government of the country. What I criticised at the time, and continue to criticise, is the idea that we can eliminate poppy growing or the supply of heroin from Afghanistan. That was always going to be impossible, yet we have invested £250 million of British taxpayers' money and achieved nothing. In fact, things have gone backwards. We know that production is now at its highest level ever—60 per cent. up on last year. The other side of the policy's attraction was that we were going to cut off the supply of heroin to the streets of Britain. In fact, it is now worse. Because of the over-supply of heroin, the price has reached its lowest ever point. It is now even more widely available, yet Front-Bench spokesmen continue to be in denial of that blindingly obvious fact. Again and again, they claimed that we were making progress on drugs and had turned the corner. We have turned so many corners in Afghanistan that we have been round the block half a dozen times, yet we have still ended up in the terrible position that we now face. Governments have never been able to cut off the supply of drugs on the basis of action on the supply side while the demand remains. The real drug problem is demand on the streets of Chicago, London and Newport, which is sucking in the drugs. If through some miracle we were able to eliminate all the production of poppy in Afghanistan in two or three years' time, it would still make no difference. The supply of drugs in Myanmar, Turkistan, north Pakistan and Kazakhstan would simply increase to fill the gap. It would be exactly the same as what happened in Columbia. For decades, billions of dollars were spent trying to reduce supply. We even had ““Plan Columbia””, the result of which was a 20 per cent. increase in the drugs produced there over the last 12 months. It is the squeeze balloon principle: we squeeze the balloon in one area and it grows bigger in another area. It is always an impossible task, but it is even worse in Afghanistan because of the mythology whereby people like to believe that the Government were democratically elected in something of a triumph and somehow work in the same way as a Scandinavian democracy does—but they do not. Lord Malloch-Brown—we should pay some tribute to him; he has had a bad day—said at the weekend that he recognises the failure. He is the one Minister who recognises that things are going terribly wrong there. His diagnosis is right, but his solution is not. He said that we all know who the big drug barons are. Yes, we all know who they are and the Afghanistan Government know who they are. One of them is a close relative of President Karzai and two others are provincial governors. Many others are also in the Government. We know that the country and the Government of Afghanistan are endemically corrupt. It is not possible to change that, however hard we try, however many bribes we give out, and however many lives we lose. We will not change that. There is another possibility. According to yesterday's The Guardian, a former civil servant who used to be in charge of the Foreign Office was in despair about the drugs situation in Afghanistan and now favours the turning over of the drug market to a legal supply of poppies for medicine. The case has been well argued. It happened successfully in Turkey. There is a shortage of morphine in the developing world because of its price. Someone who is dying of a terminal disease in a developing world country has a 6 per cent. chance of getting morphine. We could greatly increase the supply and turn the trade into a legal one. On the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, having supported the war in Afghanistan, the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who represents the Conservatives on the Front Bench, will recall a debate in Westminster Hall in March 2006, before we went into Helmand province. At that time, the Government's view—again, it cannot be unsaid because it was said—was that there was a hope, although not a promise, that the Helmand mission would be concluded in three years without firing a single shot. We have spent £1 billion in Helmand. We have discharged 2.5 million shots. In the first four and a half years of our presence in Afghanistan, we lost the lives of seven of our valiant soldiers, mostly because of accidents. Since then, we have lost a further 76 lives, and it is, tragically, an accelerating process. Does it not get through to the Government that perhaps something is going desperately wrong? I take my information from serving soldiers and hear a worrying message about their disillusionment, their feeling that they are fighting an impossible war and their anxiety to get out of the service, never to serve again. Probably the most worrying message of all is that the mood of the country has changed. It welcomed us in 2001. It was glad to see the back of the Taliban. It was fed up with their rules. Now, the people are so fed up with living in a country that has war without end that many of them would willingly welcome the Taliban back as a group that would create law and order again. There is no sign of improvement. Who can look at the situation and say that we can carry on as we are? Again, Back Benchers said the sensible thing in that debate. One of them likened it to the charge of the Light Brigade and brought the verse on that up to date. At a time when there was much support for going into Helmand province, that Back Bencher said: ““Bush to the right of them, Blair to the left of them, Holler'd and thunder'd, Someone had blunder'd, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die, Into the valley of Death, Into the mouth of Helmand, Drove the five thousand.”” Sadly, that prophecy has come bitterly true. We must urge the Government to reconsider what is going on. I am not talking about pulling out of Afghanistan altogether, because progress has been made, in particular on girls' schools. We recognise the progress, but we do not recognise the fact that it is in full retreat and, sadly, schools are closing. It is possible to consolidate the gains made around Kabul, but it is not possible to run the whole country and eliminate the main source of income for the farmers who grow poppies. That cannot be done. There is not a military solution. There is a solution by negotiation and by doing deals. I remember vividly another prophetic comment in 2001 by a Member of the Russian Duma, who told me: ““You Brits have conquered Afghanistan. Very clever. We did that in six days and we were there for 10 years. We lost 15,000 of our soldiers. We killed 1 million Afghans, and when we ran out, there were 300,000 mujaheddin surrounding Kabul. It will happen to you.”” We need to get some realism into the situation and decide on practical ways of dealing with the hearts and minds argument, because we are not going to win the hearts and minds when the Americans bomb and kill civilians. We saw on that splendid ““Panorama”” programme the other night a vivid picture of what is happening in Afghanistan. We know that we have hugely superior air power, and perhaps the most telling part of it was the pathetic sight of an elderly man and three children in a bombed building, terrified by what had happened. An uncounted number of civilians have been killed. For every death, the opposition to us from the Afghan people increases. That is a further threat to the safety and lives of our British soldiers. I believe that the Member of the Duma was right when he said that we may well turn Afghanistan into a British Vietnam. We can go in there with more troops and fool ourselves with the rhetoric that we heard this afternoon, but ultimately we are heading for a terrible disaster. If we do not make a deal now that is based on the true practicalities of what is taking place, we face a great calamity.