Afghanistan

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The important point to make is that the political and military roads, as the hon. Gentleman calls them, go necessarily together; there would not be much of a political road without the military pressure. He has called for a political solution and he can gather from everything I am saying that we want a political settlement in Afghanistan; we want a political process that leads to that. But we will get that only from an effective military campaign, from intensifying the pressure on the insurgency and from doing all the work that we are doing to build up the capacity of the Afghan Government. If we and our allies were to withdraw now, all that work would come to an end and there would be another round of great bloodshed, including among the civilian population, and not a political solution. I ask him to see those things as going necessarily together.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

What is the Foreign Secretary’s assessment of the potential to maintain a full and fair democratic process in the long term?

[Mr Hague]

It is another of those challenges that I speak about. Clearly, democratic processes are now taking place. A parliamentary election has just taken place in Afghanistan with far fewer incidents, although there was still a lot of fraud. From an international viewpoint, this election was conducted in a more respectable way than aspects of the presidential election, given some of the accusations made about that. Progress has clearly been made. The role of independent members of election commissions is being more widely respected and understood, and I think that democratic principles are making inroads into Afghanistan. This will take time and it is something on which we need to have patient effort and persistence. It is a huge challenge, but some progress is being made.