Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The Afghan constitution guarantees the rights of all Afghan citizens and we have to press the future Government of Afghanistan to ensure that the constitutional rights of all citizens are met. We also, of course, have a crucial lever in the Tokyo agreement, which provides that the substantial international aid support to Afghanistan over the years to come is specifically predicated on Afghan delivery on human rights, women’s rights and anti-corruption. By the way, this is not an agenda that we have to force on senior Afghans—all senior Afghan political players embrace it—but it is a deeply conservative country and they have to push this message down the line and make it work in practice across the provinces, towns and cities of Afghanistan. The conference in November will have a significant focus on how we ensure that the Tokyo commitments are delivered and that we work together with the Afghan Government to make that happen.

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

From his time as Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary will recall the argument that the hard-won gains in places such as Afghanistan could easily be reversed unless a strategic base or bridgehead area was established for the medium to long term in the region. Given what has happened in Iraq, where equally optimistic predictions about the long-term resilience of Iraqi forces were made, what would we expect to see in terms of a long or medium-term American presence if the status of forces agreement is eventually signed?

[Mr Hammond]

The US intention, subject to the bilateral security agreement being signed, is to have a continuing presence of US forces on the ground in Afghanistan, both for counter-terrorism activity and for the protection of US interests, but clearly I cannot speak for the US Government beyond the plans that they have already announced.

I just want to pick up my hon. Friend’s analogy, which many other people have sought to draw, between the Iraqi security forces and the Afghan national security forces. Afghanistan is a country of multiple ethnicity; yet we have not seen the kind of ethnic tensions in the Afghan national security forces that have clearly been present in the Iraqi security forces, and which are widely believed by western observers to have been instrumental in the failure of those forces to halt the ISIL advance earlier this year.