Combat Troop Withdrawal (Afghanistan)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Paul Flynn

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

Yes, I do, but I know from a report from the United States that only 7% of them are capable of acting alone. One third desert every year. We have given them the job of guarding prisoners, but in one incident 500 prisoners escaped. Many soldiers and policemen use the drugs that we are there to eliminate. The police are hated in many parts of Afghanistan not only because they are endemically corrupt and always have been, but because, unlike the Taliban, they practise bacha bazi—a perverted abuse of young boys that has always been part of the Afghan police’s tradition. Does the hon. Gentleman really believe that the Afghan army and police will behave like British bobbies or British soldiers? That will not happen. They will revert to the cruel practices of the past. Afghanistan is a country of massacres and inter-tribal bloodshed between the Hazaris, the Baluchis and so on. The idea that we can impose our will by passing an Act in Parliament is a myth.

Whenever such issues come up on television and a new death is announced, BBC News 24 and Sky News bring in the same old regular half a dozen people—someone from the Royal United Services Institute, or a leader of our soldiers in Afghanistan—to say the same soothing words. Rarely do we hear the voices of my hon. Friends and those of us who opposed this bloody war for the past 11 years. We are rarely heard.

There is a new fiction, being used—astonishingly—by the new Secretary of State for International Development. She took me to task when I said that the result of this war is that we have lost 437 UK lives and uncounted Afghan lives, and 2,000 of our troops have come home broken in body and mind. Eight Afghans were killed in one day in September. August was the worst month for Afghan civilian deaths in the whole 11-year period, but the Government wanted to conceal that. There was no event to mark the 11th anniversary of the start of the war, but there were celebrations for the anniversary of James Bond on that same weekend. We try to hide the deaths by diverting coffins from Royal Wootton Basset and taking them around back lanes. The Government have twice tried to stop the naming of the dead at Prime Minister’s questions. It was moved to Monday, and then to Tuesday. Only because Back Benchers were angry and wanted it back where it belonged, so that it received the attention of Parliament and the press, was it moved back.

We now have a new and breathtaking fiction that we will hear about this weekend. I told the Secretary of State for International Development that 2,000 of our soldiers had come back broken in body and mind, and that if the pattern of the Falklands war and the Vietnam war continues, more of our soldiers will take their lives in the years to come than died in combat during the war.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I must again knock down that myth, which keeps being repeated. I know that the Minister agrees with me on this. The claim that more Falklands veterans committed suicide than died in the war is just not true.

[Paul Flynn]

Okay, we will have this out. If my hon. Friend does not believe that of the Falklands war, he should believe it of the Vietnam war. The figures come from America—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend will have his chance to speak.

Let us see what the Government’s thinking is. This weekend, there will be worthy celebrations of an Afghan veteran who achieved a Paralympic medal. The Secretary of State for International Development told me that I was being pessimistic about the war in saying that 2,000 soldiers were broken in mind and body, when about half a dozen came back from Afghanistan and earned Paralympic medals. We are all delighted to see the success of the Paralympians—not only the victims of war, but others who have been cheated by life or nature and have achieved an eminence that we all celebrate quite rightly. However, was the right hon. Lady trying to say that the deaths of British troops, the terrible injuries, and the suicides that I mentioned are somehow justified by that? Was it somehow ennobling that 16 million people died, as the Prime Minister seemed to be saying? The man quoted by the Prime Minister did not acquire immortality; he acquired oblivion. His name was forgotten; it was not even mentioned. His life was stolen from him by the lies of politicians and the military.

We are in the same position that we were in at the end of the first world war, in which my father fought. He was shot on 10 April 1918. He was taken prisoner and his life was saved by a German patrol, but he lived to curse the military that he believed in when he was a boy of 15 who went to war, as a patriot, to protect the small nations of the planet. He could never again do what he called a man’s job, and in 1935 his pension was changed. It was a tiny pension, paid to him because his wrecked physical condition was attributable to his war wounds, but a cost-cutting Government changed the word “attributable” to “aggravated”. He went in as a perfectly fit 15-year-old, but later they halved his pension. For understandable reasons, he was bitter about those who on Armistice day stood erect, with a tear in their eye, mourning our brave boys. Quite rightly, the word that came to him was “hypocrites”.

I believe that we should mark the war and the consequences of it not in the heroic terms of Rupert Brooke and others who suffered in war. We must see the reality of what we have done and the consequences. We should bring our troops home from an unwinnable war. Rather than the picture presented of a worthy war and the half-a-dozen deserving Paralympic medallists, we should see war for what it is and in terms of the description of death in war by Wilfred Owen:

“Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

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[Mr Jones]

No, it was not. Let us remember: in Afghanistan we were also dealing with a failed state that had been in chaos, with warlords and fighting since the fall of the Communist Government. In terms of the safe havens it would have given, it was right to try to bring stability and benefit to the Afghan people.

The hon. Member for Newport West refers to some kind of Christian campaign. He should remember that Muslim nations are fighting alongside our forces in Afghanistan, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and, one of the largest Muslim countries, Malaysia.

[Paul Flynn]

The hon. Gentleman is disgracefully fictionalising what I said and attacking an absurdity of his own creation. Does he not agree that the main question we have to deal with is why we behave as the poodle to America, in a way that Harold Wilson did not. We believe that we have to go wider and wider still; that we have to punch above our weight, which always means dying beyond our responsibilities. Why did we go into Helmand?

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman talked about conspiracy theorists, and I have to say that he makes a very good one; perhaps he ought to take it up as a career. Muslim nations are fighting alongside ISAF. To describe Afghanistan as some kind of Christian crusade is complete nonsense.

[Paul Flynn]

Mr Crausby, what the hon. Gentleman is saying is outrageous. It is an outrageous speech.

[Mr David Crausby (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Kevan Jones.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman did say it—

[Paul Flynn]

Read what I said.

[Mr Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman does not like what he says being challenged, I am sorry—

[Paul Flynn]

The facts are in a letter that I wrote in 2003 to Tony Blair. It is there, it exists and I stand by that letter. By going into Iraq and Helmand, we increased the terrorist threat. Answer that.

[Mr Jones]

I will move on to the point the hon. Gentleman made about Daniel Collins and the individuals who lost their lives in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and other places.

I accept that people have come back from Afghanistan and Iraq with mental health problems, their bodies broken and their lives transformed for ever. Something that has come through the debate is the idea that politicians and Ministers take decisions easily. They do not. The Minister will back me up on this point: one of the hardest parts of being a Defence Minister is getting the phone call, sometimes late at night, reporting that someone has lost their life in Afghanistan. A memorable weekend for me was in 2009, when I was duty Minister, and we lost eight individuals. Ministers do think about those people. It is not easy to divorce our emotions from such situations. Like me, the Minister will have met many families after such events and spoken to them, and he knows it is not easy. It is not the case that we take decisions with no thought of such events. Of the work that I did in the Ministry of Defence, I am most proud of putting in the Army recovery capability to assist those injured in the service of our country. It is a credit to the Minister that he continued that work when he was veterans Minister.

It is easy to say that nothing has improved in Afghanistan. I first went there in 2003, with you, Mr Crausby, and I have been six times since. It is very different now from the place it was in 2003: six provinces have transitioned to Afghan security control and Kabul, which was under curfew and blacked out with little activity on the streets, is today a bustling and different city. Is the security threat still there? Yes, it is. Is that only in Kabul? No, it is not; it is throughout Afghanistan.

People sometimes give the impression that Helmand has not improved. I first went to Lashkar Gah—with you, I think, Mr Crausby—in 2004. The only place that we could go was the provincial reconstruction team’s office. In the town itself, there was no market, no activity, no schools, no functioning public works or any local government. When I went back three years ago, I went to central Lashkar Gah to see the governor, and it is a very different place. Progress has been made.

I hope that I do not misquote my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West again, but I would like to touch on the point he made about education and girls. One of the most moving things I have seen was at a girls’ schools in Kabul in 2003—you were with me, Mr Crausby. We met a courageous lady who described how she taught 3,000 girls in a school; she had to do so in shifts, because a lot of the older girls had missed out on education—I do not accept that the Taliban allowed girls to be educated. I said to that lady, “What did you do when the Taliban were in power?” She said, movingly, that she and other teachers taught girls privately in their homes. I said that that must have been a brave act, and she said, “No, that wasn’t brave. My deputy head, who was executed, was brave.” Her only crime was bringing education to girls—such was her dedication to education. It is not the case that we are not making progress in girls’ education and so on.

With regards to the combat role, the Opposition have put it on record that we will support the Government on the deadline for combat missions to end in 2014. What my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West said about ending the combat role is interesting. He gave the impression that somehow we will continue our training role with the Afghanistan security service—I apologise if I am misquoting him again.

[Paul Flynn]

We can take troops out of harm’s way as we did in Iraq. We are waiting in the departure lounge there to bring the troops out. There must be a way. When we left Aden, we put the equipment together and bombed it. We have an enormously costly task, and it will take at least three years to bring out the equipment. We are handing over £1 billion of equipment to the Afghan police. What does the hon. Gentleman think £1 billion of equipment will be used for?

[Mr Jones]

All I was going to say was that the hon. Gentleman is therefore not in favour of continuing to train the Afghan security services.

[Paul Flynn]

I did not say that.

[Mr Jones]

Well, is he or is he not? If he is in favour of continuing a training role, it is not without risk. In Iraq, we had embedded teams in the Iraqi armed forces, and that was not without risk. It is not the case that somehow after 2014 we will be able to avoid all casualties.

[Paul Flynn]

Let me make it clear. In corresponding with Ministers, I have said that one of the things that we should stop is instructing our soldiers to dismantle improvised explosive devices. There is no point in finding out who made the IEDs, because if the makers were put in prison, they would be allowed to escape. There is no point in going on many of the patrols that the Americans are currently doing. People go on fruitless patrols and are killed. We have to withdraw from that combat role because it will disappear. There are other tasks that must be done before we can pull out.

[Mr Jones]

I understand that point. All I am saying is that that is not without risk. In 2014, even in a training role, our armed forces will not be out of harm’s way. As for the way forward, building up the Afghan security forces will be the key element, and progress is being made on that, but I actually agree with my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that what we need to achieve from the process is a political solution. That is about engaging not only with the Afghan people but with Afghanistan’s neighbours.

I completely disagree with the conspiracy theory nonsense that there is a military-industrial complex and that people actually want war to ensure that they can sell weapons. The idea that senior military individuals get some pleasure out of war is wrong. The military that I have worked with in the Ministry of Defence feel every single loss as hard as anyone else, and they certainly do not want to put people in harm’s way if they can avoid it.

Finally, let me touch on drones—unmanned aerial vehicles. A common impression is given—the hon. Lady did it again this morning—that these weapons are under no control and are firing at will at any targets. May I suggest that she ask the MOD for a briefing on targeting policy? She might be surprised to learn that there is a legal mandate before any target is chosen. Lawyers sit in—

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Flynn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jones]

I will not, because I need to give the Minister time to reply. In conclusion, people talk about winning wars, but it is not about that in Afghanistan. I never liked the expression “the war on terror”, because this is an ongoing struggle with Islamic terrorism not just in Afghanistan, but in the rest of the world for many generations to come. I pay tribute to our armed forces, and hope that we all think not just of those who have lost their lives and have been injured but of those who are on service today in Afghanistan.

Sovereign Grant Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Paul Flynn

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn]

rose—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—