UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

We have had a very interesting debate. Members of all parties have spoken with a great deal of conviction and insight based on their own experiences, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart).

I cannot speak from personal experience of having visited Afghanistan or served with our troops, but many of my constituents are serving there. Before I make some general remarks about the conflict itself, let me pay tribute to the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who are based at Shorncliffe barracks in my constituency and are currently on a tour of duty in Afghanistan from which they are due to return in November. They have made a number of tours, and the current one may not be their last. Like most regiments, they have sustained casualties, not least in the attack within the British base at Nahri Sarraj in July which led to the deaths of three servicemen and injuries to four further Gurkhas.

Shortly after that attack I visited Cheriton primary school in my constituency, where a number of Gurkha families send their children. Many of their fathers were on duty in Afghanistan at the time of my visit. In the school library is a memorial wall explaining the conflict, on which the children are invited to post their own comments. There is even a school mascot, and the children regularly receive photographs of it from Gurkhas serving in Helmand.

Anyone who has direct access to the families of servicemen, or even lives alongside them, will be aware of the strain that is placed on them, especially when they are in an active zone and casualties are being sustained there. I make that comment for a simple reason: after nine years of conflict we have a series of obligations in addition to the strategic imperative behind the conflict in Afghanistan. We have an obligation to those who have served, and particularly to those who have lost family members in Afghanistan.

I also believe that, after nine years, we have obligations to the Afghan people. What those obligations are has been discussed in the debate. We obviously have an obligation to ourselves and to protect our security, but I believe that after nine years we also have an obligation to those who have benefited from the slightly more liberal regime they live under now than the earlier Taliban regime, in particular women who are in education and work and men who have enlisted in the Afghan police or army. What recriminations and reprisals might they experience as, effectively, “collaborators” with the new regime should that country collapse back into chaos? I am not saying that we can stay in Afghanistan indefinitely—we cannot, of course—but I believe that we have obligations to the people of Afghanistan and that that should be part of our thinking too.

Sun Tzu said that wars are lost in the temples of the rulers before they are ever fought. That is an interesting observation in respect of the war in Afghanistan and our debate today. There has been criticism that the west has almost accepted defeat—that we are in the process of merely managing retreat to some end point when we are ultimately defeated and we leave. The Taliban take comfort from that criticism. I do not believe that that criticism is true at all, but I believe others seek to draw that conclusion from the debates and exchanges we have.

There is a political war to be won, just as there is a military campaign to be executed. The heart of that political war must be that we have the resolution and desire to give our armed forces the support they need to complete the strategy we have set out for them and that we are determined to see that through—that even though there are very difficult periods in the conflict we are not weakened in our desire to pursue that strategy.

In respect of the operations in Afghanistan, there is a temptation to believe that, because we have been there for nine years, we are continuing to pursue the same strategy in the same way, and that not much has changed and we are now hoping that something different will come along simply because we have been there for a long time, but in fact the nature of the conflict has changed dramatically. The troop surge has changed it too, and I urge Members to show some patience so that we give General Petraeus and leaders in Afghanistan the chance to see the current stage of the strategy through.

The situation has changed since 2008, when there were, perhaps, 30,000 American servicemen in Afghanistan and a much smaller number of international troops. We now have more than 130,000 or 140,000 men there, and an ever-growing Afghan police and armed forces presence as well. We must take that into consideration.

There is often too little talk in the British media—and perhaps in some of our exchanges in Parliament too—of what the counter-insurgency operations are doing and the successes they are achieving. There was an article in The Times a couple of weeks ago, written by an officer who had served in Sangin, looking at what the British have achieved there. That town was a Taliban hot spot, but the officer writes that now 150 small businesses are thriving, and there is a regular weekly market and a sense of normality and life returning. We should be proud of the work our troops have done in Sangin to make that possible. The article also talked about the importance of our men undertaking foot patrols so that they are on a level with the Afghan people and are seen to take risks with them, instead of hiding behind barracks.

On the question raised earlier in the debate about a potential change in strategy, I do not claim to be a military expert but I do have a theory. If we retreated to barracks or safe points in camps, would that give us much of an ability to engage with the Afghan people and to be an effective counter-insurgent or peaceful operative in the country?

I am interested to read and hear news about what successes there have been since the launch of Operation Moshtarak, particularly in respect of the Americans going into Marjah. We are not operating alone; we are part of an international force and strategy. The success of that strategy is part of our success too, therefore. There have been reports in the American media that the US Marines can now go into Marjah, a town that was once a centre of Taliban control and so dangerous that ISAF troops were told not even to fly over it. They may not have total control of that town or the surrounding area, but they are exerting considerable influence. Again, we are looking here at the time scale. It is believed that it might take up to 18 months or so for Marjah to be secured. There is some evidence to suggest that the difficult, complex and uncertain work of counter-insurgency is, with the greater resources being put behind that strategy, starting to bear some fruit. We must exercise a degree of patience in allowing that to happen.

We cannot cut and run from Afghanistan. I do not believe that any Member of any party has truly advocated that today. We have obligations to the Afghan people and to the situation in Afghanistan to see through our strategic objectives—not to create Hampshire in Helmand, as some people have written and said, as we will never achieve that, but to create a country where the Afghans can, in time, take over security operations and the governance of their own country. There may well be a need for considerable reform in how the Afghan Government work, and for them to build up their own trust with their own people. We can play a role in that: we cannot do all of that for Afghanistan, but we have set our course and I believe that we should stick by our strategy, and that now is not the time to be considering a withdrawal.