Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Viscount Slim

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am absolutely sure that that assessment is expert, well informed and right. It is our desire and intention to maintain momentum on a number of fronts. My noble friend talks about mission creep. In a sense, the narrow and single objective to start with after 9/11, which was that somehow al-Qaeda was to be crushed and Osama bin Laden captured from his hiding place, has widened into a much bigger issue. Of course, the context has widened as well. We have seen the growth of jihadist, extremist Islam; we have seen it spread into other countries. We have seen difficulties in neighbouring countries. We have seen the rise of obduracy in Iran. All those matters have unfolded while we are struggling. That merely confirms that in the 21st century, if we want a civilised, global and stable society, we will face many such struggles in future. They will not be over quickly; they will take a long time.

[Viscount Slim]

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister said and I was very heartened by what the noble Baroness said. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is quite right: there is a big tribal problem in this area. However, if the Minister cared to go to Quetta and had a cup of coffee in one of the many cafes there—as he well knows, it is a Taliban rest camp—he would find that the cafe talk of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is, “These chaps talk about a surge. These chaps then talk about leaving. We’ve won”. That is very dangerous when we are talking about discussions with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Is it not wise to get them on two knees—or certainly one—before we have those talks? We have examples in the Lebanon and in Gaza of what happens: Hezbollah and Hamas have got closely, cunningly integrated in government, cabinet, parliament and the workings of the city and the surrounding countryside. Their influence is immense. This will be the aim of the Taliban and al-Qaeda if they get their hands in any way on the Afghan Government, weak and corrupt as they are. This happy talk about, “Let’s all get round the table”, is very dangerous for ISAF, NATO and Britain. I would like to see full confidence that ISAF, Britain, America and the other countries are going to sort these chaps out—that we are going to win and only then will we talk. With everyone opening their arms and saying “Come and talk”, we are walking straight into a great problem for five to 10 years in the future.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I cannot for a moment question the wisdom and experience behind that either, except to say that one talks about winning and then, as we learnt in Iraq, one needs to talk about how the win is secured. As the former President Bush found in his famous observations, to win in the short term is something that can apparently be done on the surface. However, a win in the long term means that as we are, we hope, a civilised 21st-century globe, the nations within it— including our own—cannot afford to have a poisoning influence at the centre of things. Whether we like it or not, while we must be as forceful as possible in the military suppression of the violence and extremism, there will, in the end, have to be a state created in which those who may have been involved with or even inclined to support the violence and rebellion of insurgents in the first place have to start playing their role as proper citizens. They will have to be included, so I half accept what the noble Viscount says, but the obvious strategy is to press ahead with what we are doing. We are confident that we are making progress. Beyond that progress lies the possibility of politics and of social, civic and economic development. Then we will have a world in which Afghanistan will no longer be the appalling headache that it is now.