---

Helmand Province Mission

No, I will not give way. My hon. Friend took more than half the time, and I have little time to reply to the points that he has made. To be clear, had we not taken military action in Musa Qaleh last year, Taliban brutality would still be in the ascendant and the children would have no school. What I have just described is an example—just a microcosm—of what we are attempting through the comprehensive approach, and part of that approach is in counter-narcotics. That is for two profoundly important reasons. First, Afghanistan simply cannot develop and build itself as long as its foundation is an illegal narco economy. Secondly, the product of that economy, heroin, wreaks untold misery both within Afghanistan and more widely. We should remember that almost all the heroin on our streets originates in Afghanistan. We attack that trade through a multi-dimensional and sophisticated approach. Eradication focuses on those for whom alternative livelihoods are available—the targets are the greedy and not the needy. The targets are the wealthy facilitators, financiers and traffickers, not the unfortunate poor who are forced to grow opium by the brutal landowners who lurk in the shadows, and our attention is focused on those landowners. It must be remembered that our involvement in those efforts is necessarily a supporting one: Afghans are in the lead, as they should be, from President Karzai down. Some progress has been made: in 2007, the number of poppy-free provinces in Afghanistan more than doubled from six to 13. My hon. Friend has said that we do not raise some of those issues because of the Americans. We do not raise some of those issues because we are in a country at the invitation of its Government. Importantly, as he knows and mentioned throughout his contribution, Afghans lead on those policy areas. The Afghan Government build their own capacity, and we do not take over and dictate to them. My hon. Friend has decried American policy on aerial spraying, but knows that the Americans cannot engage in aerial spraying without the agreement of the Afghan Government. We agree with the Afghan Government that that would not be a step forward or an appropriate way of tackling narcotics cultivation in Helmand province and elsewhere in Afghanistan.