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Afghanistan Strategy

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes some reasonable points about the state of Afghanistan, but let us consider the alleged progress and the current position. There was talk of progress this morning and I am sure that there will be more. We made a great fuss last August about the fact that a turbine was conveyed to the Kajaki dam, which had been bombed by the Americans in the previous war. That was regarded as a huge triumph. It took 4,000 soldiers to get that turbine there—I have been told that there were 3,000 NATO and 1,000 Afghan soldiers involved in that one operation. How much electricity has it produced? It has not yet produced enough electricity to light a bicycle lamp. In fact, there is one less turbine there, because another turbine has broken down. Let us consider the situation of the Americans. They are paying $1,500 per lorry in protection money to the groups that regard themselves as security firms to get all their goods from Kabul to Kandahar. Most of that money goes back into the pocket of the Taliban. That is the reality of life in Afghanistan. There is a President who cannot travel 30 miles outside his own capital. That is the reality. The Taliban are very much in control of movements there. Let me just give one more example that has had very little publicity. Back in August, there was a huge fuss about the number of helicopters in Afghanistan. In 10 days, we—the British Army—destroyed two of our Chinook helicopters, which cost £40 million each. They were not wrecked beyond repair—one of them had had a heavy landing and the other had some bullet holes from hand guns—and both could have been repaired at little cost. We did not repair them or wait 24 or 36 hours to get a heavy lifting helicopter to take them out to a place of safety. We blew them up because the security was so bad we could not guard them for the 24 hours it was necessary to do so. That is the truth, but we do not see blazing headlines about that in our newspapers. The mythology is continuing that there is the possibility of victory. The words "possibility of success" were used this morning. I do not believe that there will be success and I want our soldiers to be brought home.