---

Afghanistan

We very much welcome this short debate on this extraordinarily important subject. Let me begin by fully associating myself and my colleagues with what the Foreign Secretary said about the sacrifices of our armed forces, 247 of whom have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. All of us in public life in the United Kingdom should be humbled by the willingness of our armed forces to make sacrifices on behalf of the security of the people of our country. I pay tribute, too, to the work of our international partners in Afghanistan, particularly the Estonians and the Danes in Task Force Helmand, for the tremendous contribution that they have made. Very often, some of the smaller nations that contribute to the coalition are overlooked, and it is right that the House pays tribute to them. It is also right that we pay tribute to the civilians who are giving support to our armed forces, including those from many of our defence companies who provide support for the equipment that is necessary to carry out our role in Afghanistan. Finally, it is only correct that we recognise the role of service families and the continuing price that they pay for what our armed forces are doing in terms of the effort in Afghanistan. We find ourselves at a crossroads in Afghanistan. We have a new strategy—a counter-insurgency strategy based around protecting the people of Afghanistan to deny the insurgents the centre of gravity. I think that that is the right strategy. We have a renewed international focus and vast numbers of troops and equipment, primarily American, pouring into theatre. There is evidence to suggest that President Karzai recognises the importance of tackling corruption, and there is, finally, an understanding that delivering good local governance will provide enduring stability and security in Afghanistan. This all looks very promising—but all of us in the House would recognise that we do not wish to raise unrealistic expectations about the time scale in which progress can be made. The Foreign Secretary was right to begin by reminding the House of why we are in Afghanistan. There is only one justification for sending our armed forces into combat—because we believe that we are facing a national security imperative. It was essential that we denied to al-Qaeda the space that was being used to train and prepare for terrorist atrocities, and we largely dealt with that threat very early on. But there is a wider reason for being there—a geopolitical reason of regional stability. We cannot allow the contamination and destabilisation of Pakistan—a much larger and more important regional player, and a nuclear power to boot. It is correct that we remind the British public of the wider reasons why we are there, and see it in a proper geopolitical perspective. It is essential for us to do that in order to maintain public support. We must also remind our public about what the cost of failure would be were we prematurely to leave Afghanistan. Were we to be forced out, for one reason or another, on a timetable not of our own making, that would, as the Foreign Secretary suggested, be a shot in the arm for every jihadist globally, because it would send out the signal that we did not have the moral fortitude to see through what we believed to be a matter of our own national security—something that the Minister for the Armed Forces dealt with in his recent speech, which I commend. The impact of such a situation would be felt beyond the Hindu Kush and the Durand line: it would extend across the region into the middle east and north Africa in one direction, and south-east Asia in the other. We do not find ourselves in an easy situation in Afghanistan, but to leave prematurely without achieving our objectives would have far greater costs that would run many years into the future. We should be under no illusions: if we are not successful in Afghanistan, that will fuel latent fundamentalist sentiment in this country, as well as in others, and diminish our national security. The other reason we need to be successful is that if we are unsuccessful, that would suggest that NATO, in its first major challenge overseas, did not have what it takes to see through a very difficult challenge. That would be divisive and damaging for NATO's credibility and cohesion. If we can describe failure, how can we describe what success looks like? I believe that there is a clear consensus that success in Afghanistan will be achieved when we have a stable enough Afghanistan that is able to manage its own internal and external security to a degree that stops interference from outside powers and allows the country to resist the re-establishment of terror bases of the sort that the Foreign Secretary talked about. Those who are critical of policy in Afghanistan will say, "We'll never wipe out al-Qaeda", or, "We'll never wipe out the mindset that leads to this fundamentalist, violent behaviour." Of course we will not be able to wipe it out, but we will be able to contain it. We are talking about degrading the ability of those forces to a degree that they can be managed by the Pakistani and Afghan forces themselves without a need for wider coalition efforts. It is correct that we set that in its context. We are not trying to achieve the unachievable, but setting ourselves realistic aims. I believe that the goal of security is achievable, and that therefore our mission in Afghanistan is winnable. As I said, we have a new security strategy. In a population-centric counter-insurgency, success is defined by how many people are secure, not by how many insurgents are killed. That is, to some, a rather subtle change in how we describe the mission, but it is extraordinarily important. Eighty per cent. of the population in Afghanistan live in the rural areas, not the cities. Only 5.1 per cent. of the population in Afghanistan live in Helmand, and only 4 per cent. live in the British area of responsibility in Helmand. I say that because there is a great temptation in our media and those who comment on these things to read Afghanistan and Helmand as being synonymous. We are part of a greater coalition effort, and we need to see Afghanistan and what we are doing there in the round. For the past three and a half years, British forces have performed superbly and gallantly in the face of a very determined Taliban insurgency. We have seen an increase in the number of British troops, and we are now seeing a greater increase in coalition numbers and a very welcome increase in numbers in the Afghan national army.