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Defence Policy

The Minister shakes his head, but the mosque in Musa Qala is being built not by the Department for International Development, the EU or the UN, but by Royal Engineers. Why? Because that is exactly what they want to build, because the locals want it. We lost the town once before because nothing was happening. The Royal Engineers got frustrated, so they did things themselves. Let us acknowledge that no one else is better positioned than our military to do such work in that small window of opportunity of about six months to a year. After that, we could hand over to the many organisations that do such a wonderful job in those areas. As I suggested, I envisage the unit as a brigade-sized one. That is the minimum size required if it is to be able to dovetail into the operational environments in which we are involved. I would leave the Ministry of Defence to determine the detailed make-up, but I would see a massive contribution coming from the Territorial Army, who have myriad skills. I am thinking not only of bricklayers and so forth, but of civil servants from the local council who could be TA-trained so that they could look after themselves in a dangerous operation and go straight to the local jirga to explain how to set up a simple council, for example. That is the energy that I would like to be put in, but that does not happen at the moment. I turn to the long-term objectives. So important is a stabilisation force that I envisage a two-tier echelon developing in the UK. The first would be the combat brigades and the second would be stabilisation forces. Brigades would rotate, playing a similar role, so that there was a firm understanding of the importance of their work. The first thing that will be asked about my plan is where the money would come from. DFID has a massive budget of £5 billion; the cost of being in Iraq and Afghanistan is £9 billion already. The capitation costs of a brigade is about £100 million a year. I envisage a small proportion of DFID's £5 billion budget being taken away; it would be for humanitarian aid, but it would be given to the MOD so that it could establish a brigade-level stabilisation force to do the work. General Petraeus said that our objective should no longer be to defeat the enemy, but to enable the local. That is taking rather a long time. It did not happen in Iraq and it is taking far too long in Afghanistan. There has been a revolution in how we conduct war; we have moved from operating on a cold-war basis to doing so on a counter-insurgency basis, and we require the same revolution in our peacekeeping capabilities. The US is doing exactly that, but the UK Government Departments continue to pursue separate agendas and territorial battles over funding. The consequence has been inefficiencies and delays in following our armed forces in their efforts to provide a secure enough environment for stabilisation work to begin. If we as a country are willing to step forward when other countries hesitate in order to support democratic values, defend borders and challenge rogue states, then we must have the right tools not only to fight wars but to keep the peace.