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Defence Policy

It is a pleasure to be the concluding Back-Bench speaker in what has been a very interesting debate on defence policy. There has been huge focus on Afghanistan and that is where I will focus my remarks as well. I have recently returned from yet another trip there and I am concerned that we might be heading towards a civil war there unless we see some huge changes in strategy. It is seven years on and there are four clear areas of concern. First, there is a lack of international co-operation, with a mess of confusion of command and control between the UN, the EU and DFID. Every day, £700 million is spent on military matters in Afghanistan but only £7 million a day on humanitarian matters, and that ratio needs to change. Our soldiers are at the top of the hill, holding the ground, looking over their shoulders, expecting something to happen in the village below. It does not happen and that is why they stay longer and longer, wondering what they are doing there. My next concern is the Afghan constitution, which we touched on in an interesting debate yesterday. I do not believe that the one-size-fits-all solution is suitable for Afghanistan, which is a wonderful mixture, with myriad ethnic groupings, alliances and allegiances. They do not all look to Kabul and President Karzai for leadership, but to their local jirga and the local head of the town or the village. That has been completely ignored in the constitution. We need to look at local autonomy, giving a little emphasis to the local leadership, but that has not happened. The only time that the 10 ethnic groups, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) touched earlier, ever came together in the past was when a foreign force came in and they joined together and rallied to try to destroy it. Then they returned to arguing with or fighting each other. We need to recognise and celebrate those differences, not think that there is one size that fits all. There is also a lack of vision or strategy for the country. Access to the markets is limited. If any country has some product to sell to an international market, it needs to be able to reach that market. The three main arterial routes in Afghanistan are difficult to travel. There has been no decision to build any railway; only the Iranians are considering one in the east of the country. We need to ensure that there are better methods of reaching the Indian ocean and the trans-Siberian railway to export whatever produce can be grown. Before the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan was one of the greenest countries in the world. That has now been lost because of the lack of irrigation systems; 92 per cent. of the water runs out of the country and only 8 per cent. is harnessed. Those are the sort of issues that need to be tackled, but no one is doing so because each area is working on quick impact projects rather than following a bigger plan, linking together and providing a marketing strategy that can lift the country off its knees. It has taken a long time to understand what is happening in Helmand and to achieve co-ordination between the MOD, the FCO and DFID. There is talk of handing over to the local military, but I am afraid that only 400 soldiers have been trained locally, and that is not enough. Despite a target of 135,000 soldiers, there are only 400 of combat capability. After seven years in Afghanistan and five years in Iraq at a cost of £9 billion to the taxpayer, it is right to ask why it is taking us so long to make the transition to peacekeeping from war fighting and whether we could do better. Recent military engagements are increasingly characterised by the rapid defeat of the enemy by a relatively small deployment of forces, but an inability to respond to the ensuing lawlessness, which ratchets up. It starts with looting and eventually the enemy starts to regroup, and nothing happens during that small window of opportunity of limited security. We win the peace but we lose the war. There is an absence of a mature plan for post-conflict operations. That leads to delays in restoring essential services, establishing a basic rule of law and restarting the economy. Our troops remain rather than return home as expected, and the cost of the entire operation ratchets up ever higher. I propose that after consultation there should be a radical overhaul of defence policy and how the UK conducts reconstruction and stabilisation. I would like a new stabilisation and reconstruction force to be created. I stress that that is my personal view, but I hope that my party's Front Benchers and the Government will consider it. Such a force would allow Britain to complete the overall mission in a more timely and humane manner. We cannot rely on the UN and the EU to do that; we have seen that they are not capable of it. Nor can we rely on the Department for International Development to do it, because it does not work effectively in insecure environments. States such as Afghanistan lack the initial capability because the facilities are simply not there. I want the military to lead a large-scale, specialist reconstruction and stabilisation force with the objective of filling the gap between emergency humanitarian assistance and longer-term development assistance, trained and equipped to make a prompt, visible and effective impact on the way of life so that the future looks brighter. I would like the force to be able to provide continued security operations, local policing, humanitarian relief, emergency housing, emergency shelter, food, water and basic health facilities and enable the restoration of power and grass-roots local governance. That would be to plant the seeds; they would not be expected to flourish immediately. However, we would be proving to the locals that we meant business and wanted to empower them rather than take over. I should also like education facilities to be reconstructed and agricultural programmes to be initiated. The brigade-sized reconstruction force would have to be familiar with post-conflict non-governmental organisations and work with the EU, the Department for International Development and the USA. Gaining experience before we go in—that is my vision. Believe it or not, all that is happening today in Afghanistan thanks to our military, not by design but by accident. No one else is doing it.