Now the troops are leaving, all are wise AFTER the dreadful events in Afghanistan. This is what they said in 2006.
February 2006
John Reid said the role of the British forces in Helmand was fundamentally different to that of the US forces elsewhere in Afghanistan. He said: "We are in the south to help and protect the Afghan people construct their own democracy.
"We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction."
Afghanistan
26 Jan 2006 at 12.20 pm
The Secretary of State for Defence (John Reid):
British Government have undertaken an unprecedented degree of cross-governmental co-ordination to ensure that this is a fully integrated package addressing governance, security and political and social change.
Last September, I visited Afghanistan. I saw for myself the real hope that the international community has brought to a new generation of Afghans: the hope that at last the Afghan people can rebuild their country, the hope that Afghanistan can take its rightful place as a country where men and women alike can live in peace and freedom, the hope for a better future.
.We cannot ignore the opportunity to bring security to a fragile but vital part of the world, and we cannot go on accepting Afghan opium being the source of 90 per cent of the heroin that is applied to the veins of the young people of this country. For all those reasons, it is in our interests, as the United Kingdom and as a responsible member of the international community, to act.
Military Deployments (Afghanistan)
11 am
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con): I am most grateful for the opportunity to have this debate and to the Minister for coming to listen to it. I thank him for the time that he gave to me recently, and I have no doubt that his reply to everything that my colleagues and I say will be similarly measured.
It is St. Valentine's day and we should spare a thought for the wives, families and girlfriends of the marines of 42 Commando Royal Marines who left for Afghanistan today. I have no doubt that, as their commanding officer said, they are focused and full of energy, drive and aggression, but the girls they leave behind will not be. The next few months will be extremely difficult, dangerous and worrying for them, and we should bear them in mind.
It is into that maelstrom that we are about to plunge more British soldiers. Afghanistan is no stranger to the British Army and the British Army is no stranger to Afghanistan. We had three semi-successful expeditions there in the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, and when operations began in Afghanistan in 2001, I thought that we would be able to bring it back to the condition that it reached during the 1960s when there was a democratic Government, when there were elected representatives, when there was peace throughout the country—if peace can ever be created in Afghanistan—and when the country was on its way to a new form of prosperity that it had not seen for many years. The British military intervention—the allied intervention—after 11 September 2001 was correct and I salute those soldiers, sailors and airmen who took part in that expedition. I would not hesitate to support a similar expedition again if the circumstances pertained.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): My hon. Friend makes a cogent case. There is another factor about the deployment which is, I think, unique. The Secretary of State has made it clear that there will be a deployment only if there is an alternative livelihoods programme, supported by the Department for International Development. I know of no precedent in recent times when DFID was involved in a similar ongoing conflict, trying to maintain an alternative livelihoods programme. When the period of conflict ended in places like Sierra Leone, there was post-conflict reconstruction involving DFID and the development agencies, but I know of no examples of DFID and non-governmental organisations being caught up in the complex situation that he outlined. It has not happened in the other PRTs in Mazar-e-Sharif and elsewhere in Afghanista
Mr. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth, East) (Con): Many of us have concerns about precisely that point. No sooner had British troops been deployed to north-west Afghanistan than they were asked to go and help the Norwegian force in the north of the province. The Minister needs to make clear what their objectives are. Are we there to help security in the south, or are we now there—because of mission creep—as a rapid reaction force for the whole of Afghanistan.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): I am unsure whether the Minister is aware of a written parliamentary answer that I received from the Minister for the Middle East on 9 February 2006, in which he quoted President Karzai as saying at the London Conference:
"In my view, and in the view of the United Nations that shares it with me, perhaps Afghanistan will need at least 10 years of a strong systematic consistent effort in eradication, in law enforcement and in the provision to the Afghan farmer of an alternative economy".
Will my hon. Friend press the Minister on what the objectives are in this troop deployment and on whether, if the situation gets worse or if we do not achieve the aims, he is prepared to commit further troops to achieve that?
Mr. Ellwood : It is worth pointing out that we are sending 5,000-odd troops to an area twice the size of Wales. Although I want a successful transition to a peaceful Afghanistan—we all do—that will simply not be possible if we do not have the right manpower on the ground.
Paul Flynn (Newport, West) (Lab): I join in his congratulations to our soldiers in Afghanistan on their courage and professionalism, but I cannot share any of his optimism. I feel a sense of hopelessness about the whole operation. We all pray that it will be a success, but there is very little to suggest that it can be.
The likely outcome is the "Colombianisation" of the whole of central Asia, and the possibility that we are entering into our own British Vietnam. Look at the experience of the Russians: they went into Afghanistan with great hope and confidence, but they were there for 10 years and lost 15,000 soldiers. When they left, there was an army of mujaheddin of 30,000 surrounding Kabul because the occupation antagonised Afghanistan's population. We know that the answer to terrorism is not to go in with guns blazing, but to win the hearts and minds of the people. By going into Helmand province we are losing the hearts and minds of the people. The province has been relatively peaceful, but it has one economy: growing poppies. The rest of the economy was destroyed, partly by the Soviet invasion. We are about to go in and eradicate the region's only means of support and the only way for its people to escape the dirt poverty of their existence.
There is an alternative, which is to respond to another crisis in the world. If someone in a developing country is dying of AIDS or other diseases, there is only a 6 per cent. chance that they will get relief from their agony by using diamorphine. There is a world shortage of the drug. Some 70 per cent. of the world's supply of morphine is used in 7 per cent. of developed countries, so there is little chance of it being available for someone in a developing country. In Afghanistan, we are destroying the raw material for making morphine, as it is also the raw material for making heroin. The alternative is to license some of the poppy growers in the Helmand province, to win them over to our side, and to solve the problem of the world shortage of morphine. That is a simple solution. It is not guaranteed success and there are difficulties involved, but it offers at least some hope. The alternative is one of hopelessness.
Going into Afghanistan was justified on the grounds of attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but it was also justified on the basis that the country produced 90 per cent. of the heroin on the streets of Britain. What is the situation now? It is exactly the same. Have we reduced the crop? Not at all. In fact, the heroin on our streets is now cheaper than ever because there is a greater supply than ever. We have achieved nothing in the years there. Our mission—the British soldiers' mission—is to eradicate the crops. There has been a reduction of 20 per cent. in the area cultivated, but a reduction of only 2 per cent. in the amount of heroin produced, because of increased production. If the mission were successful and we destroyed the entire crop of Afghanistan poppies, all that would happen would be increased planting in Myanmar, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and north Pakistan. But that eradication will not happen; the squeezed balloon principle will operate. So we are on a mission impossible as far as the eradication of poppies is concerned.
Far more dangerous is what we will do with the population of Helmand province. If we are successful and reduce the poppy crops, we will affect farmers there, who want to make a living. That is their primary motivation. Four of them were here last week, talking about their position. They would love to go into the legal production of opium for morphine. They want a peaceful future, but we are repeating exactly the folly of the Russians, who created the mujaheddin and incited them, and who were driving the Helmand farmers into the arms of the Taliban.
I do not wish to add to the fears of the families who today saw off their loved ones, but I believe that we are sending our troops into the gravest danger. You asked for brevity, Mr. Weir. I should have liked to go on at some length, but I shall make my points briefly. I am more concerned about this military expedition than any other that we have ever taken. We are putting our brave soldiers at the gravest possible risk by sending them to Helmand province. There is no precedent of success in such circumstances. Operation Enduring Freedom has become "operation enduring stupidity".
The idea that we can eliminate a drug at the supply stage has been proved to be false. In a report published by the Government's strategy unit, Lord Birt—who no longer works there—emphasises again and again that we cannot eliminate drug use from the supply side because of the enormous demand and the sums of money to be made. We must solve the drugs problem on the streets of Chicago, Cardiff and London; otherwise, the enormous demand there will suck in the drugs. The trade is lubricated by the huge amounts of money made at every stage, from the poppy field to the street corners. The answer is not to try to destroy the supplies. That has been a total failure. We spent much money and achieved no reduction.
One of our newspapers had a headline on the subject yesterday and was mocked for its pains by a Minister at the Foreign Office, who mentioned the muesli-eating and The Independent-reading people who attend the first nights of Harold Pinter plays. That is a despicable attitude to something so serious. It is not a subject fit for humour. What The Independent wrote had an air of prophesy about it. Its front-page headline was "Into the Valley of Death". Someone looking back on this folly in 10 years' time—a latter-day Tennyson—might well amend the words of Tennyson's poem about ministerial and officer folly to talk about the tragedy that is about to unfold. Tennyson started off by saying:
"Someone had blunder'd . . .
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death"—
or into the mouth of Helmand—drove the 5,000.
11.29 am
Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk) (Con):
Although I do not necessarily agree with everything that the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) said, I should say that of all the operations in which British armed forces have been involved during the past decade, this deployment to Afghanistan fills me with a degree of trepidation.
My fear is that unless we are very careful indeed, people in Afghanistan, whatever the wiring diagrams or mission statements, will see coalition forces not just as supporting their Government, but possibly as the enemy as well. Indeed, the Taliban and al-Qaeda will knowingly go out of their way to provoke the coalition forces into aggression.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud)
That is a real dilemma. How long will the situation last? Who will take the action?
There is a view that the situation is containable, because our worthy people will go in for so long, but it would be nice if my right hon. Friend the Minister would tell us about the time scale and the exit strategy.
Let us not misunderstand the point: Afghanistan was taken back to the stone age by the Taliban. We are not talking about going back to the 1960s and rebuilding. Aspects of life in Afghanistan were taken back to the dark ages. We were driven past the Olympic stadium—it is wonderfully named—to see where people were slaughtered daily. We all saw images of that. It was a ritual way of allowing the Taliban to enforce their power. The experience was terribly moving and deeply concerning, given the level of depravity that any regime can manage.
My final point—I make no apology for finishing on this—links directly with what my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West said and is about narcotics and relocation. I have asked this question a number of times, because part of the strategy was to work with the Pakistani authorities, but I ask it again: what is the relationship between what we are asked to do in the south of Afghanistan and the Pakistani authorities' original pledge to move northwards? Since then there has been the earthquake, which has caused terrible devastation and destabilised the Musharraf regime, but we still need to know what is happening.
Mr. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth, East) (Con
If I may pose the big question: why on earth are we trying to create an Afghanistan and keep it united in the first place?
Helmand is an extremely dangerous area. Government offices are regularly attacked and schools are set on fire. Indeed, the latest reports are that 165 schools—about half the schools in the province—are now shut because of the dangers. The local police force for the entire area, which is twice the size of Wales, is about 500. The police have about 30 trained people dealing with narcotics, not one of whom operates on the border. The situation is very dangerous indeed. There were 20 attacks last month and suicide bombers regularly cross the border from an al-Qaeda training camp about 20 miles south.
If we deal with the poppy problem, we will deal with much of the threat in Afghanistan.
The United Nations International Narcotics Control Board allows 16 countries to grow large quantities of opium under licence, including Canada, France, Austria, Turkey and India. I encourage the Minister to have words with his counterparts in those countries and ask why they cannot relinquish their licences, give up the trade and allow Afghanistan to produce and sell opium legally for medicinal purposes.
Paul Flynn : I am interested by the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that countries should give up their licences. There is a huge shortfall of diamorphine in the world, so what we need is additional production, not for anyone to end production.
Mr. Ellwood : If that is the case, I stand corrected, but I pose the question to Minister: why have we not gone down that road and legalised what is required in Afghanistan? I understand that there is an annual requirement of about 10,000 tonnes of opium for medicinal purposes, and in Afghanistan about 4,100 tonnes are illegally produced. The maths is simple and there is a straightforward solution to Afghanistan's biggest problem.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD):
The Liberal Democrats support the Government and the international consensus on what is proposed for Afghanistan.
This is not meant as a flippant comment: perhaps deployed alongside our troops there should be a detachment from the National Farmers Union, or at least some people who can give guidance on alternative cultivation as well as the poppy cultivation to which the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) referred.
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con):
I start with strategy. On the surface, it seems fairly straightforward. We should have two strategic aims in Afghanistan: the defeat of terrorism, which took us there in the first place, and the building up of a society so that terrorism cannot return. I slightly take issue with the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), although I agree with him on other things, on the comparison that he made with the Soviet invasion. The invasion by the allied forces after the 2001 atrocities in America was very different to the Soviet invasion because it was not about outside society seeking to overturn the indigenous rule of the local people; it was about outside society seeking to protect itself from the unmistakeable aggression that originated from that territory as a result of the way in which the regime there, which had hijacked control of that society, had opened up that territory for terrorist training.
Paul Flynn : The hon. Gentleman is very knowledgeable about such things, but is he aware that the Soviets saw the invasion of Afghanistan as being almost wholly benign? They saw their mission there as rescuing the Afghan population from the middle ages and were astonished by what happened. They certainly created the mujaheddin in such numbers.
Dr. Lewis :
Saying that is, perhaps, to repeat the parallel with Vietnam. Hon. Members shuddered a little when the hon. Member for Newport, West brought that up, but I do not share his counsel of despair. There is no reason why this campaign should fail. There is, however, a parallel with Vietnam because when insurgencies were taking place there, the campaign was fought in such a way that restrictive rules did not enable the counter-insurgency techniques that had been pursued successfully in other campaigns—such as the Malayan campaign—to be applied sensibly.
12.16 pm
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram) :
We all know why we are in Afghanistan: the terrible events of 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania led to a greater knowledge and understanding of what was happening in that troubled country. That backdrop of profound evil is why we are playing a major role in Afghanistan and why the international effort is so deep, determined and committed.
It is right and proper that we show the people of Afghanistan that we support them. We need to show them that when people stand up for democracy and reject terrorism, as they are, we will give them our help. By helping them bolster stability, we counter extremism in this country and so help ourselves. By assisting the Afghans to rebuild their society and legitimate economy, we help end the flow of opium that floods our streets.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) said that alternative uses can be made of the opium poppy. That is unquestionably the case, but time and again he has asked the question and been given an answer, which he may not wish to accept. The suggestion has been analysed, as it could well have been a way forward—and it may be part of the answer at some time further down the line—but it is wrong to think that there is a simple solution to the problem.
Meanwhile, we seek to do what we did in Mazar-e-Sharif and elsewhere. We want to deliver engagement with civil society, or normal society, and be imaginative about alternative livelihoods. As I understand it—I have not been in Helmand, but I have been in Kandahar—extensive infrastructure is already in place. The Americans put in much of it in the 1950s and 1960s, and it could be the core of the solution. The area once was the bread-basket of Afghanistan. Can we get that back? We must because it will be the source of an economic future, not just for that part of Afghanistan but for the whole country.
On the comprehensive manner in which we went about the analysis, we spent a great deal of time dealing with senior military planners. The plan did not simply come out of the head of a senior politician who said, "Let us now do this." The objectives are clear for not just the UK Government but for NATO and, I believe, the international community. There seems to be an assumption that this country will provide all the people on the ground. It will not. Eight nations will be in the south. There will be extensive force packages from the Americans, the Dutch and the Canadians, and they will have considerable air support. The Harriers, which were mentioned, were in action yesterday to good effect.
Whatever threat manifests itself will be dealt with, and there is no contradiction between the missions in the east and the rest. If that were the case, it would have been the case all along, but we have not failed. We have achieved measures of success in the north and the west. We now face a bigger challenge.
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