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Conventional Weapons

My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Jay in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on obtaining this debate. It is marvellous that the debate is taking place so soon after the Geneva conference in which he played a distinguished part. I also express my pleasure that once again the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is taking part in this debate because, between them, the two noble Lords have done so much to keep this issue alive. When I last spoke on this in the debate in May, I mentioned my experience both as a military commander and as somebody involved in demining, which had conditioned my view about these weapons. At the risk of boring the House, I would like to return to that because I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Elton, mention the after-action comments of the United States Third Infantry Division in Iraq, who pointed out that it was not just a case of the damage caused to civilians by unexploded weapons but of the difficulties imposed on the movement of its own troops which made these inappropriate weapons for that type of conflict. When I commanded the British Third Armoured Division for two years, which was the first division to be given a counterattack responsibility within the NATO forces in Germany, my task was to go quickly to places where I could deliver a counterattack, following an advance by the Russians. We were then concerned particularly about problems of movement. We were able to take action around our own marked minefields because we knew where they were. But when you looked at the state of the battlefield, you realised that they were not the principal inhibitors; the principal inhibitors were the unmarked, random minefields, many of which had been delivered by cluster munitions. They had been put down for what was then a military purpose. The development of these weapons began in Korea when people were concerned with taking on massed Chinese infantry. They required a weapon to take action against mass—fine. The next development took place again in the context of mass, but against mass armour. The idea developed of cluster munitions which could deliver top attack—as it was called—many of which could take on the more vulnerable top parts of a tank and could help break up massed Russian armour. At the time, as military people, we welcomed those because of what they did when we had a purely defensive posture. But once movement began and the inhibitors, particularly of the failed weapons, began to cause problems for our own movement, we realised that these were not appropriate weapons where movement was concerned. That was during the Cold War when we were talking about war between what are called industrial nations by armed bodies of uniformed troops on ground which was dedicated to the battle between them. That, of course, is not the nature of warfare, particularly since the end of the Cold War. We are not talking about war between the armed forces of industrial nations; we are talking about, in the words of General Sir Rupert Smith, ““wars amongst the people””. It is the people who we have to consider. I was also involved in demining in places such as Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. I am sure that the Minister will remember the welcome that the demining fraternity gave to the pronouncement by the new president of the World Bank, of which he was then a member, in July 1995, when for the first time he said that the World Bank recognised that demining was not a purely military activity and it therefore qualified for World Bank funding for post-conflict reconstruction. That was one of the most important statements made in this area, because until then demining activities were severely frustrated by the lack of funding. When we went to carry out the demining, it was easy to clear mines that were marked, but it was not easy to clear those that were unmarked. One was particularly concerned about the random delivery by cluster munitions all over the place, which were not marked; nor did anyone know the failure rate. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned the figures that have been produced following the completely unjustified use of those weapons, particularly the M85 in Lebanon, because they drive a coach and horses through the previous figures given to justify their use. There has been one other development since our last debate in May; the publication in America of the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. It is the result of work done by General David Petraeus, who is the senior commander of the American forces in Iraq. The manual is one of the most remarkable documents that I have ever come across, because it completely reverses the previous United States’ approach to warfare of this kind. It used to be based on what was called the ““doctrine of overwhelming force””. Overwhelming force was just that; the application of everything that you had every time that you took part in any form of conflict, because they felt that that guaranteed quick success and would save lives. They have analysed the results of using these sorts of weapons, particularly in Iraq, and the report of the third division, which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned, played a large part in that. At the beginning of the manual, there are two very interesting essays. One is by Colonel Nagl, who is one of the American army authors, who was in Iraq, in which he says that the American army was completely unprepared for this type of conflict. The other essay is by Sarah Sewall, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Inter alia, she says: "““This counterinsurgency field manual challenges much of what is holy about the American way of war. It demands significant change and sacrifice to fight today’s enemies honourably””." She also postulates that the manual may also reveal America’s moral anxiety: "““The nation is trying to heal wounds caused—once again—by failings and abuses in the field””." In particular, commenting on the new doctrine, she says: "““The new US doctrine embraces a traditional—some would argue atavistic—British method of fighting insurgency, learned during its early period of imperial policing and relearned during responses to twentieth century independence struggles. Accordingly it adopts a population-centred approach instead of one focused primarily if not exclusively on the insurgents. The latter approach concentrates on physically destroying the unseen opponent, embedded in the general population … The field manual directs US forces to make securing the civilian, rather than destroying the enemy, their top priority””." When I mentioned this in the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said to me that although he completely accepted what I was saying, he suspected that I would be, "““among the first to tell us that we should also listen to the advice of those who command our forces””.—[Official Report, 17/5/07; col. 322.]" I am the first to listen to such advice, and when I was commanding forces I hoped that people might listen to mine. But bearing in mind the type of warfare and the sort of appreciation that the Americans have now carried out as a result of their experiences of what using these weapons has done to their ability to fight war among the people, I suggest that there cannot be a British military commander who could justify the use of these weapons in the sort of warfare now taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. People say, ““Oh yes, but you need them as direct-fire weapons””. You do not. For direct fire you need all the weapons that people in Afghanistan have been calling for and, fortunately, they have been appearing—the multi-barrelled grenade launcher, the heavy machine gun and other weapons which you can deploy and have line of sight against the people who come at you. You do not need these indiscriminate weapons because, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, they not only take innocent lives, have a residual effect for years to come and undermine all your efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people to your cause—which is why you are there in the first place—but because they leave behind material which inhibits the use of the ground over which they have been fired for the practical purposes of post-conflict reconstruction, which may be farming, roads, buildings or whatever. I am very sorry that the result of the meeting last week in Geneva was really ““festina lente””—make haste slowly and negotiate whether to have a proposal, rather than getting on with it. There is evidence from everyone, not least the military commanders on the ground, that these weapons are wholly inappropriate for the sort of conflict in which we are currently engaged. Surely now is the time to follow the Prime Minister’s welcome remarks and ban them.