Afghanistan

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In his speech of self-justification after the collapse of Kabul, President Biden reduced a complex military issue to only two stark alternatives. It was a gross over-simplification for him to pose a devil’s dilemma between either a massive troop surge on a never-ending basis or a ruthless, chaotic and dishonourable departure. It is ruthless because people who trusted NATO will pay a terrible price; chaotic because of a lack of foresight to plan an orderly and properly protected departure; and dishonourable because even if our open-ended, nation-building, micromanagement strategy was wrong, as I think it was, in 20 years we created expectations and obligations which those who relied on us had a right to expect us to fulfil, as the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has just said.

It has been pointed out correctly that for 20 years, NATO operations in Afghanistan succeeded in preventing further al-Qaeda attacks on the west from being launched under Taliban protection. That was indeed the key outcome, but unless we choose a better future strategy, the threat of its reversal is all too real. Not only may sanctuary on Afghan soil again be offered to lethal international terrorists, but other Islamist states may also decide to follow suit. How, then, should we have handled a country like Afghanistan when it served as a base and a launchpad for al-Qaeda, and how should we deal with such situations in the future?

These are my personal views on a defence issue unrelated to the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee. For the past 10 years, I have argued both inside and outside this Chamber, very often to the dismay of my parliamentary colleagues, that a form of containment rather than counter-insurgency is the only practical answer to international terrorist movements sheltered and sponsored by rogue regimes like the Taliban. Containment, as older colleagues will remember, was the policy that held the Soviet Union in check throughout the cold war until its empire imploded and its ideology was discredited. Islamist extremism has a subversive reach similar to that of revolutionary communism, and our task is to keep it at bay until it collapses completely or evolves into tolerant, or at least tolerable, alternative doctrines.

In Afghanistan, the task of overthrowing the Taliban and driving al-Qaeda into exile was quickly accomplished in 2001, and at that point NATO arrived at a fork in the road. The option selected was, as we know, an open-ended commitment to impose a western version of democracy and protect it indefinitely in a country that had a strong sense of its own political and social culture and which was known to be politically allergic to foreign intervention.

Yet there was another option available to western strategists in response to the 9/11 attacks. Having achieved our immediate objectives of putting al-Qaeda to flight and punishing the Taliban, we should have announced that we were completely removing our forces but would promptly return by land and air to repeat the process if international terrorist groups were again detected in Afghanistan. When the Taliban regain full territorial control, they will lose their shield of invisibility. If they then choose to pose or facilitate a renewed threat—a terrorist threat—to western security, they should expect both their leadership and their military capability to be hit hard by our mobile land and air forces. That cycle would be repeated until the threat was removed, but we should not and would not allow our forces to be sucked in again.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making some very important points. Has the game not changed slightly, though, with the immediate recognition of the Taliban Government by China and Russia? As they are permanent members of the Security Council, it will be very difficult to get any UN-led action in the way he describes.

[Dr Lewis]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right but, of course, this was a NATO intervention, and it is to NATO that we have to look when there are serious threats to international security, particularly those affecting western interests.

The point is that it has to be flexible, because al-Qaeda itself is very flexible. An active containment policy of this sort can track and match the flexibility of the terrorists. Such a policy depends on the maintenance of integrated and highly mobile land forces, positioned in regional strategic base and bridgehead areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

The summary of the NATO 2021 Brussels summit confirmed the end of NATO’s military operations in Afghanistan, while restating the pillars of NATO’s new relationship with and support for Afghanistan: ongoing training and financial support for the Afghan national army, ongoing diplomatic engagement, transitional funding to ensure the continuing functioning of Kabul airport, dialogue on Afghanistan with relevant international and regional partners, and support for the ongoing peace process. Clearly, there is no support to be offered to the Afghan national army any more, and the peace process lies in tatters. What has unfolded in the past month goes down as one of NATO’s great failures. However, within that communiqué lie some important points. An ongoing diplomatic engagement is an important way forward. Kabul airport will probably function through support from the Russians and the Chinese, and we must recognise that the ongoing diplomatic engagement will make for some uncomfortable partners that we will have to deal with.

The reality is that the original NATO operation to remove the al-Qaeda threat from those terrorist camps was successful. The time spent over the past 20 years to stabilise the country and push out the al-Qaeda camps has led to a situation where the Taliban now say they would not allow terrorist organisations to set up camp again in Afghanistan. That must be part of the focus of diplomatic work. It is now a diplomatic mission to hold them to account.

The reality is that not a single serviceman’s life was lost in vain, as so much has been achieved. Although each civilian life lost is a tragedy, everything was done by NATO to prevent civilian casualties. That is why I believe there is not huge support for the Taliban, and it shows there is an important mission to come.

One of the important countries we must deal with is Pakistan. Imran Khan, the Prime Minister, rightly spoke of his frustration that the Americans come to Pakistan only when they want Pakistan to sweep up the mess they have left behind. I understand that frustration, but Pakistan is an important nation that we need to work with to try to hold the Taliban to some of their Qatar commitments. Ultimately, we need to deal with the situation as it sits today. We need to make sure those gains are not lost. Equally, as has been said many times in the House today, we must try to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe for human rights and women’s rights if the clock is turned back. That will all require diplomatic effort and it will require financial input and financial sanctions when the time comes. One of the real tests will be whether we and our NATO allies reopen our embassies, which will be an important step towards the Taliban showing they are willing to stand by their Qatar agreements and whether we can work with them. Whether sanctions have to be put on the state will be part of that.

The Taliban have declared that the war is over, so I leave the House with a thought that many have heard before: at the end of war-war, we have to engage in jaw-jaw.