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Defence Policy

It is a pleasure to be the final Back Bencher to contribute to what has been an excellent debate that has primarily focused on Afghanistan. I have begun every speech in a defence debate by saying what a shame it is that we have to use these debates, which arise once in a blue moon, to discuss the fact that we are war. We should have regular updates on the situation. Our armed forces are firing some 10,000 rounds of ammunition every day, and that is an indication of the seriousness of the situation and why we should have better information and more opportunity to debate it. Afghanistan is at a critical juncture. Eight years after the invasion, we have demonstrated how we might lose the war, wasting half a decade by not providing enough forces, money or leadership—or even agreeing our objectives. As in Iraq, we removed the threat, leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban were quick to exploit. Because of the distraction of Iraq, the west never fully came to terms with the scale of the operation required for success. That contributed to the biggest schoolboy error of all—the failure to have a co-ordinated, integrated, properly funded and locally supported plan. If the stream of hearses regularly filing through Wootton Bassett has not made us realise that the current strategy is not working, General Stanley McChrystal's interim assessment confirms it. I have visited Afghanistan every six months or so since being elected and have made every effort to understand what is happening out there so that I can support our armed forces. It therefore saddens me to say how badly we have let our troops down and how much the security situation has deteriorated. I am talking about troop and equipment shortages, poor co-ordination of the Whitehall message, an absence of Cabinet leadership, scant support for reconstruction and development, and no clear plan. Only by blindfolding our troops as they departed for Helmand could we have hindered their chances of success even further. These are harsh comments, but I make no apologies for them. They are directed not specifically at the Front-Bench Members here—they are as dedicated as anyone to success in Afghanistan—but at No. 10 and the co-ordination of the Cabinet. We come here regularly to salute the bravery and professionalism of our soldiers, but then do not give them the tools to succeed and conclude the mission. After eight years, the lack of progress has not gone unnoticed. Doubts are growing about the war in both the UK and the USA, and leading commentators and politicians are suggesting that it is turning into President Obama's Vietnam. We now have two distinct groups, one supporting a surge and a substantial increase in troop numbers—I do not know whether that would be time limited—and a second supporting what has been labelled as "cut and walk". That would involve slowly downsizing, leaving behind special operations and drone capabilities very similar to those in Pakistan. The US military is clearly showing its strength in supporting a surge and dispatching its brightest senior military commanders to Afghanistan, but, on the other side, some politicians, perhaps with one eye on the polls and the other on the congressional elections in November 2010, are urging huge caution. The delay in making the decision is playing into the Taliban's hands, as has been mentioned already. The reasons not to pull out are very clear and have been echoed again and again in this Chamber. We need only to look over our shoulders at what is happening in Pakistan even today to see the chaos that might occur in Afghanistan were we to pull out now. What would it say to the rest of the world if a second superpower were to be beaten by Islamic fundamentalism? We need to recognise that this is not a war of choice, but a war of necessity. It is also a new style of warfare involving counter-insurgency. We must get used to it and get good at it. Two other places are appearing on the horizon: Somalia and Yemen. We already have sizeable forces in Somalia, which will become a problem too. We need to get this right. Several factors need focusing on—I do not have time to go through them all in detail, but I shall mention them very briefly. First, it is for us here to move to a war footing. It is not acceptable to read out a list of the fallen at every Prime Minister's questions, if the nation does not understand what we are fighting for. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) made the point that we need to educate the public about why we are there. Recognising that we are at war means providing the resources needed to win, and it will require proper debates in this House to keep us informed and allow us to scrutinise what is happening. Secondly, improvements in Afghan security are needed. That point has been repeated again and again. However, we cannot go in there, after six years, and say, "Yes, we are now going to train more troops." We have to get good at training troops no matter where they are. That is the type of counter-insurgency warfare that we now face, and anyone who reads General Petraeus's book will recognise that point. We must move away from the cold war mentality and understand that after the war of fighting comes a period of peacekeeping that will include training local troops, whether in police forces or armies. We have to get good at that, whether that means us, NATO or both. We also need to consider other ways of strengthening the security system fast. The awakening project in the al-Anbar province is a great example of that. The militias there have a binding loyalty to the local areas that they are trying to protect and so they want peace. That is opposed to what we have at the moment, which is a very difficult, procrastinating approach that has shown no mileage after six years in theatre. Thirdly, I come to improvements in our stabilisation capability. We must recognise that the Department for International Development is not up to the job. I say that bluntly, but it was never designed to do the job of stabilisation, reconstruction and so forth. The budget for our war fighting is now £3 billion a year. Our budget for stabilisation is £130 million a year. That discrepancy means that our soldiers will be continually looking over their shoulders after they have done their work at the top of the hill. They will be wondering, "Who on earth is going to sort out the village beneath?" That cannot go on and needs to change. The co-ordination of international development still does not exist. We need a three-star ISAF appointment, made or supported by the UN, to do the J5 tasks. I have pushed my big idea of sliding sizeable funds across from humanitarian projects under DFID to create a stabilisation capability, so that in the three to six-month window of opportunity after the initial invasion we can help the locals get off their knees, improve the employment situation, get security under control and start training the police, thereby winning hearts and minds before the enemy can regroup. I made this point earlier, but on Operation Panther's Claw in the Babaji area, let me reassure the Secretary of State that I do not doubt that the road is important. However, we cannot wait three years for one project to be completed. There are other projects that need to be undertaken at the same time, although I think that he is well aware of that. We are forgetting not just history, but the role of the Army in stabilisation. Let us look at what the US army and Abraham Lincoln did in the secessionist states after the civil war. It was the army that reconstructed and stabilised those places and got the economy going. Indeed, it even ran the local governments for a while—the army did that, not anybody else. The US army also did that in Japan, the Philippines and Germany. We, too, did that in Africa and India, as well as in Germany and Bosnia. Sierra Leone is another great example. It was the Army that helped to stabilise that place, not DFID or anybody else. Let us agree that the Army can do that. Fourthly, we need a more federal structure in Afghanistan to look after domestic matters. The scale of corruption in the presidential elections does not reflect the model of democracy that the authors of the Bonn accord had in mind when it was written. We now have an opportunity to update the model of governance. The current Kabul-centric model is already seen as too advanced for a state in its infancy. With decisions made in Kabul having little impact on rural communities in the surrounding 35 provinces, a more federal approach in domestic matters would allow provinces to expedite decision making, take more ownership of their destinies and reduce the high levels of corruption, which is exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) was saying in her contribution. A more federal approach would also fit more easily with the traditional tribal power structure that has dominated Afghanistan all the way back to when Peter the Great wandered through the area, as a glance at Afghanistan's history shows. When we had problems with Dost Mohammad in the 1830s, he was the big, powerful tribal leader there and was respected by everybody else, but he did not the run the country. All the tribes did their own thing in their own areas, and likewise with King Amanullah, the great reformer. He was in charge in Kabul. The groupings in the tribal areas did their own thing, but they respected the leader. Then there was Zahir Shah from 1933 to 1973. There was a powerful body in Kabul, but all the tribes, whether they be the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Hazaras or the Baluchis, did their own thing while respecting what happened in Kabul. There has never been an advanced centralised form of government in Afghanistan. I do not know why we suddenly think that we can walk in and impose one. My fifth point is about an economic plan for Afghanistan. I go there and ask people, "What is your vision? What do you want to do with your country?" but they cannot even see that far. We need to understand what they are good at. They were good at exporting agricultural produce—one of the best in the region—but they cannot do that now, because there is no infrastructure or train network, and yet Kandahar is only 38 miles from Spin Boldak, which is on the border with Pakistan. Link those two together and suddenly people can start exporting those goodies out of the country, which not only makes them money but, more importantly, gives people something to work towards, which they do not have now. There is no time to talk about the tactics in Helmand. However, I am concerned that we remain in control of our area of responsibility, which has 70 per cent. of the population, yet the Americans have turned up with 20,000 troops and are looking at the rest of the province, which is pretty rural. Why not focus on the population and get us and the Americans working in the same AOR? That would be a much better use of our forces. In conclusion, eight years on and with few tangible results in Afghanistan, the nation's patience and commitment is being tested. We have wasted half a decade with a half-hearted approach, yet it is modern engagements such as Afghanistan that we have to show we are becoming good at winning. Our entire strategy has to be reviewed. Britain has had a decade of fighting counter-insurgencies, yet our tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan in that period have not changed whatever. Finally, I pay tribute to the 2nd Battalion the Rifles, my own battalion, which is commanded by Colonel Rob Thomson, who has done a fantastic good, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Newbury mentioned. We are at war. Let us give our soldiers the support and resources that they deserve.