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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I will not, because I am running out of time. The area that I visited is on the main A1 arterial route that leads out of Afghanistan. It was a delight to see that every third vehicle was a huge articulated lorry moving in and out of the country, but the pace is very slow. If we are to leave not in three decades but in, let us say, one decade, we must give Afghanistan an economic plan enabling it to look ahead. The provisional reconstruction teams that operate around the country are engaged in short-term projects. They are doing things for tomorrow. Why? Because the captain or major in charge must leave after his six months showing that something has actually been done. That is outrageous. He should be working to a grander plan, allowing the country, region or community to move forward. A good example of a waste of money is the £420,000 spent by DFID in Lashkar Gar, in Helmand, on a park for women. That is disgusting. It might be an important aspect at some point, but I do not believe that it is a priority today. We see a lack of joined-up thinking there. There is much to be learned in Afghanistan. Unless we take advantage of the huge international effort there, and harness it in a way that we are not seeing at the moment, we will fail and the situation will worsen. I also believe that it is time to consider talking to the Taliban. I say that with difficulty because my brother was killed by al-Qaeda, but I put forward the question: is it now time to consider talking to the Taliban? Unless we start raising those very difficult questions, we could find ourselves in Afghanistan for a very long time.