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Armed Forces: Future Defence Policy

My Lords, almost all informed commentators know that the political strategy in Afghanistan is failing. I believe that we have to think quite out of the box if we are to get a long-term solution to Afghanistan. Let us first admit that a western-style democracy is not under starter's orders in Afghanistan. To try to unify and democratise a country that is totally fragmented historically, socially, politically and economically, with the Taliban capturing, sometimes by force, the hearts and minds of a growing proportion of the population is like trying to grow melons in the desert without irrigation. We need to face the fact that for many countries electoral democracy is not essential for stability and prosperity. China is an obvious example. What the political solution for Afghanistan should be is perhaps not for this debate, but let us recognise that a military solution is a road to nowhere. I had the privilege of visiting Helmand as part of a parliamentary delegation in July during Operation Panther's Claw. The organisation, administration and facilities at Camp Bastion and Kandahar airfield were superb. Our troops in theatre are being extremely well looked after. The quality of the trauma treatment at Bastion hospital is probably the finest in the world. The morale and motivation of Army and Royal Air Force personnel we met were inspiring and deeply moving, but there were equipment inadequacies; some of them, such as helicopters, are difficult to deal with, but for others there can be no excuse. I shall give just one example: some of the radio sets of the British infantry—the unit we visited was the Black Watch—still have rigid aerials that can easily bend and often break in action in urban fighting. The radio can then fail. A radio is a weapon. When I later raised the point with a senior officer in Helmand, he said, with exasperation, that they had been trying to get the problem fixed for months. I suppose that we should not be surprised that the Ministry of Defence wasted billions of pounds and years of precious time trying to introduce the new Bowman radio system when it cannot even get a flexible aerial for use on one of the toughest battlefields in the world. I hope that the Minister will get the answer to this point by the end of the debate. It should have been "action this day". One does not have to visit Afghanistan to recognise the military problems. The setting up of forward operating bases achieves little except casualties. The troops have to be airlifted into the FOBs and cannot effectively control the surrounding land. They get shot at or bombed when they go out on a four-hour patrol and although they can visit neighbouring villages, the Taliban imposes a curfew at night so that it can replace IEDs near the FOBs, so the troops cannot give confidence to the locals to stand up to the Taliban and end up defending no one but themselves. It is not surprising that the provision of any meaningful aid for restructuring is impossible, at least in Helmand, under such conditions. The Afghan troops are proving a broken reed or worse. First, they hate serving in Helmand. The Foreign Secretary told the Commons on 16 July that although NATO had trained 90,000 Afghan army personnel, there were only 4,000 based in Helmand and only 450 were available to support us in Panther's Claw, an operation in which some 15,000 coalition forces were engaged. Secondly, Afghan troops are of doubtful loyalty. I recently heard of a young British Army officer who found an Afghan soldier attached to his platoon in an FOB using a mobile phone to organise a Taliban attack on that FOB. A serious risk is to the coalition supply lines. Nearly everything comes into Bastion and Kandahar by air, largely using civilian contractors from various countries. If the hostility between Iran and the Taliban were to be reduced, I fear there would be a real risk of effective surface-to-air missiles being supplied to the Taliban. Where would the whole operation be then? Remember that when the Americans supplied the mujaheddin with SAMs it was the beginning of the end for the Russian military operation. The lack of reality in the Government’s thinking is underlined in Gordon Brown's introduction to the White Paper UK Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan: The Way Forward which starts: ""The four great challenges of our time—the global financial crisis, climate change, global poverty and global security—are alike in requiring an appreciation of their scale"." His problem is that he appreciates little and controls less. He stares into space and sees a mirage: himself leading the world in every direction. In fact, our Prime Minister is controlled by events, and all he does is to respond to every populist pressure whether reflected by the domestic media or proposed by some other Government. On defence, there has been neither strategy, vision, resources nor, least of all, political leadership. Mr Brown has been Prime Minister for only two and a half years, yet he is already on his third Defence Secretary. Try as I have I cannot find anything in Mr Ainsworth’s experience, talent, political weight or performance to justify him holding one of the most crucial Cabinet posts for Britain today. How lucky the Government are to have five former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, representing all three services, taking part in this debate. I am delighted to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, who is one of the first-class Ministers that this Government have had. It would be nice if the Defence Secretary would come along and listen to this debate. I have one message for the chiefs of staff today. They must insist that the Government, Labour or Tory, do not commit our forces with inadequate resources in men or equipment for the task. It is they, the chiefs of staff, who are professionally qualified to make that judgment. They must make it, privately if possible, but publicly if necessary. Nor do I have much confidence in the Civil Service leadership at the Ministry of Defence. Let us not forget that the Permanent Secretary since 2005, Sir Bill Jeffrey, distinguished himself as director-general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office between September 2002 and April 2005, the very period when Dr John Reid famously denounced it as "not fit for purpose". But perhaps most worrying is the Prime Minister's repeated claim that by fighting in Afghanistan we are preventing terrorism coming to the streets of Britain. That is not just nonsense, it is very dangerous nonsense. I conclude with two points. First, what we are doing in Afghanistan may well be enhancing the threat to the security of Britain. Secondly, the best place to defend our homeland security from terrorism is at home rather than on a foreign field. Sadly, we are still not doing all we could on the home front. The real threat to Britain comes from domestic jihadists inspired from many points around the world, but who are usually trained not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan.