UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn]

No, I am certainly not, and the hon. Gentleman is right in what he says. Minister after Minister has said, “We are going to tackle corruption; the corruption is impossible and we must do something about it.” When we ask them what we must do, nobody has the slightest idea. What we are doing, and what we are trying to do, is fight corruption with our sort of ethical corruption; we have taken corruption and bribery and put it on an industrial scale. The Americans are moving in with pallets piled high with bubble-wrapped stacks of $100 bills; our way of working in Afghanistan is based on our own variety of corruption.

Afghanistan is a country where there is not going to be a happy ending. We are never going to get the tribal groups to work together and we are not going to get the warlords to behave reasonably. These warlords have committed atrocities and they now have their members sitting in the Afghan Parliament. We went in with this idea that there was a simple solution, possibly a military one, but we know that that is not possible.

On the question raised by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), may I say that although we praise the bravery of the troops and weep for their sacrifices, especially in respect of those who receive little attention—those who have been maimed in battle and will suffer the wounds for the rest of their lives—that is no excuse for saying that as so many have been killed, more should be killed to justify those deaths? Those deaths were avoidable and the fact that this House did not oppose the expedition into Helmand province in 2006 is responsible for them; this is not down to anybody else. We should have said at that time that it was not plausible to suggest that we can go into Helmand—that is so for the very reasons that the Afghans say. They are fighting us because we are the ferengi: we are foreigners. Every generation of Afghans has fought against foreigners.

In 2001, a member of the Russian Duma slapped me on the back and said, “Oh, you Brits have succeeded in capturing Afghanistan, very clever. We did it in six days and we were there for 10 years. We spent billions and billions of roubles, we killed 1 million Afghans and we lost 16,000 of our soldiers. When we ran out, there were 300,000 mujaheddin in the hills ready to take over, just waiting their turn. It will happen to you.” It has happened throughout history; no army has gone into Afghanistan, conquered it and occupied it. The task is impossible.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Flynn]

No, I cannot, because I have given way twice.

If we want evidence that the Government are in denial, we should recall the attempt to stop the reading of the names at Prime Minister’s Question Time, when the House is well attended and the media attention is on us. This was shifted and the names were read twice, once on a Monday and once on a Thursday. When the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary visited Afghanistan to demonstrate our strength, they proved our weakness. When they came back to the Dispatch Box and gave their reports to the House, they did not mention the only important thing that happened on their mission, which was that they were unable to fulfil their engagements. They were supposed to visit three sites, but they were unable to visit the principal one because of the strength of the Taliban. However, to admit that, and thus to tell the truth at the Dispatch Box about the fact that their trip exposed our vulnerability and our inability to guarantee the safety of our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, would have been to admit that the situation is getting worse by the day. This has been going on for a long time, and to pretend otherwise is nonsense.

There is a welcome sense within this House—I am not making any point about a date on which to withdraw—that we know that we are going to withdraw. An exit strategy is in place and that changes the mindset. Nobody will talk any longer about continuing for 30 years, or about conquering the Taliban or the people of Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan know that we are getting out. The Parliaments in Holland and Canada debated this issue—they had the opportunity to do so and to vote on it before we did—and they decided to bring their troops out. The opinion of our nation is the same: 70% of the country wants to see the troops home by Christmas. That cannot happen, but we need to get them home in a way that is going to guarantee as much peace as possible for the Afghans in the future. We have to choose whether we have a Dien Bien Phu exit or a Saigon exit—that was an exit prompted by the disgust of the population at the body bags coming home. Such an exit would be carried out in panic and would leave the Afghans at the greatest possible peril. We may be able to reach some agreement with these various groups. They are not saints and it will be very difficult to get any stable set-up, but that must happen and we know that we are going to do it in the near future—

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

I will certainly pay tribute to the men and women of our Defence Medical Services, that is for sure. One thing I would say about the previous Government is that they promised a great deal to the Defence Medical Services, but in Selly Oak they failed to deliver what was necessary in a timely fashion. I am pleased that now, belatedly, we have seen the opening of the new hospital in Birmingham—precisely what the DMS was led to expect to believe that it was getting from the outset.

On a perhaps more light-hearted note, I am bound to observe that our greatest naval hero managed to command the fleet decisively on 21 October 1805 without the benefit of an arm and a leg—I am doing the man a disservice, I mean an arm and an eye; I am supposed to be speaking at a Trafalgar night dinner next month, and I had better get that right. The man was chronically sick for most of his career. I point that out simply as a cautionary note and to say in all candour that it is perfectly possible to be disabled and yet to participate in active service.

Equally, well-meaning commanding officers who offer reassurances at the bedsides of casualties with appalling injuries that will always be with them need to be very careful about promising them that they will always have a place in the battalion—to use the usual turn of phrase—when it is clearly not necessarily in the interests of that person, who might otherwise be retrained, I hope with a quality package, for life in civilian street, which might ultimately be more fulfilling and rewarding. Our language is very important.

We owe it to the injured to ensure that through the evolving Army recovery capability and personnel recovery centres and through a revamped medical boarding procedure that we balance our paramount need for fighting forces that are fit with the obligation to do what is right by those who have paid a heavy price for their service.

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and he is making a truly excellent speech. As a footnote to it, may I ask him to agree that it is very unfortunate that as a result of changes 10 years ago, which were made with good intent but were, in my view, wholly mistaken, this is the first time ever in our country’s history that the costs of dealing with the aftermath of war are borne by the defence budget?

[Dr Murrison]

That is a point that my hon. Friend has made before and he makes his views known in a very powerful way. I am sure that there is much truth in what he has to say and of course the blame must lie with the previous Administration and how they managed the defence budget in this country.

The charity Combat Stress received 1,257 new referrals in 2009, an increase in two thirds since 2004. It is important to put that in the context of the generally positive mental and physical legacy left by service in the armed forces. I would strongly avoid the hysterical language used by some elements of the media, and I suggest that saying that we face a “mental health time-bomb” is unfair and not supported by the evidence. However, we have a significant problem and since it has been caused directly by military service we have an obligation under any interpretation of the military covenant to go the extra mile in sorting it out.

The Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, and my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary hosted a mental health summit in the Commons in June last year and have ordered a review that I lead into how we can do more to promote the health of the service community. It is clear that we must do far more to be proactive in discovering in servicemen and women the mental health problems that they might be suffering—not just post traumatic stress disorder, I hasten to add. We must offer the means for casualties to accept help in a way that is amenable to them.

Four hundred years after Elizabeth I signed off the first expression of the state’s duty to its fighting men after her defensive wars, this Government, mindful of the sacrifices made in a very different theatre, intend to give it statutory definition. I support them in that aim and believe that it should command the approbation of all quarters of the House.