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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I was about to come to the points that the hon. Gentleman raises. Although there is the review being undertaken by General Petraeus, in which the Prime Minister says that Britain is now involved, the first priority of the Government and President Obama seems to be to increase our troops. We are not against that, and there is clearly a need for it, but it would be totally wrong if that were where the policy ended. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) has argued that we need to go beyond that and talk to parts of the Taliban that can be engaged with. We need to consider setting up a regional contact group to bring in countries around Afghanistan so that they can play a more constructive role. It is to those points that I now wish to turn. The truth is that a military solution will not work by itself; we all know that. The hon. Member for Pontypridd laid out all the reasons for that, and I would add a few more. The idea that NATO forces could stay there for 30 years is nonsense, not only because there would be no public support for it, but because the Afghans would not want it. Unfortunately, the popularity of the NATO forces is reducing as months go by, and the history of Afghanistan shows that if there are foreign troops on its soil, there will be a nationalistic urge to reject them. We should understand that, not least because of the three Anglo-Afghan wars in the 19th century. The only other way for the international community to support law and order and to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is to support the Afghan army and the Afghan police, something on which the Foreign Secretary focused. That is being done, and we welcome the Government's moves in that area, but how will the long-term costs of that process be managed? The cost of the Afghan army and police at full strength, as anticipated by the Americans, would be more than $2.5 billion a year. That would take up all of the Afghan Government's budget at the moment—indeed, more than that. Even given optimistic assumptions about Afghan growth and how much would flow into the exchequer in Kabul, many estimate that the Afghan Government would not be able to afford the cost of their own army and police force, even in 10 years' time. The army and the police would eat up all the resources available to the Afghan Government. We are left with the international community shouldering the burden—but how sustainable is that in the long term? Can we really expect the Afghan people to have real faith in the credibility and legitimacy of the Afghan army and police if they are funded by the international community for ever? That is not sustainable, so we have to look at other ways of reducing and ending this conflict, which means talking to different people on the other side, and considering a diplomatic solution in that region. I shall explain why that is critical to the future of our deployment in Afghanistan. Many people in the Pakistan establishment, particularly the intelligence services, feel that the deployment in Afghanistan is a threat to Pakistan. They may be wrong about that—I think that they are wrong—but that is what they believe. The history of the thinking of Pakistan's intelligence services shows that they have long been paranoid about India. Pakistan's forces are deployed and structured to fight a war against an Indian invasion, and it sees many of the developments with US and NATO forces in Afghanistan as some sort of coalition with India. Although no one will necessarily publicly state that, there is quite a lot of evidence and academic work suggesting that it is the case. Unless we engage with those in the Pakistan leadership and say, ““We're on your side. You're part of the regional contact group that will take some of the decisions on the way forward, and we will bring you in along with China, Russia and Iran””, and deal with their fears and suspicions to ensure that Pakistan is part of the decision-making process, which it clearly is not at the moment, we will not get a stable framework that will enable us to build peace over time without massive deployment of our troops or massive subsidy of Afghan troops. That is the only way forward in Afghanistan. Both the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks talked about Iran at length—rightly, because it must be at the top of the list of other foreign policy challenges, and I agree with what much of what was said. The new President of the United States is committed to much greater engagement and wants to talk to the authorities in Tehran, and that should be welcomed. It raises the question of how we tweak our existing sanctions policy if we are to embark on thorough engagement. We have long supported the sanctions regime, which has cross-party support, and we are concerned about other EU countries that do not back it. Italy, Greece and France seem to export an awful lot to Iran and I am concerned by trade figures, which show that Austria, Belgium and Germany are fast increasing their exports to Iran. Like the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, we condemn those EU countries for not playing their part in the sanctions.