Combat Troop Withdrawal (Afghanistan)

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

Yes, I do, but I know from a report from the United States that only 7% of them are capable of acting alone. One third desert every year. We have given them the job of guarding prisoners, but in one incident 500 prisoners escaped. Many soldiers and policemen use the drugs that we are there to eliminate. The police are hated in many parts of Afghanistan not only because they are endemically corrupt and always have been, but because, unlike the Taliban, they practise bacha bazi—a perverted abuse of young boys that has always been part of the Afghan police’s tradition. Does the hon. Gentleman really believe that the Afghan army and police will behave like British bobbies or British soldiers? That will not happen. They will revert to the cruel practices of the past. Afghanistan is a country of massacres and inter-tribal bloodshed between the Hazaris, the Baluchis and so on. The idea that we can impose our will by passing an Act in Parliament is a myth.

Whenever such issues come up on television and a new death is announced, BBC News 24 and Sky News bring in the same old regular half a dozen people—someone from the Royal United Services Institute, or a leader of our soldiers in Afghanistan—to say the same soothing words. Rarely do we hear the voices of my hon. Friends and those of us who opposed this bloody war for the past 11 years. We are rarely heard.

There is a new fiction, being used—astonishingly—by the new Secretary of State for International Development. She took me to task when I said that the result of this war is that we have lost 437 UK lives and uncounted Afghan lives, and 2,000 of our troops have come home broken in body and mind. Eight Afghans were killed in one day in September. August was the worst month for Afghan civilian deaths in the whole 11-year period, but the Government wanted to conceal that. There was no event to mark the 11th anniversary of the start of the war, but there were celebrations for the anniversary of James Bond on that same weekend. We try to hide the deaths by diverting coffins from Royal Wootton Basset and taking them around back lanes. The Government have twice tried to stop the naming of the dead at Prime Minister’s questions. It was moved to Monday, and then to Tuesday. Only because Back Benchers were angry and wanted it back where it belonged, so that it received the attention of Parliament and the press, was it moved back.

We now have a new and breathtaking fiction that we will hear about this weekend. I told the Secretary of State for International Development that 2,000 of our soldiers had come back broken in body and mind, and that if the pattern of the Falklands war and the Vietnam war continues, more of our soldiers will take their lives in the years to come than died in combat during the war.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I must again knock down that myth, which keeps being repeated. I know that the Minister agrees with me on this. The claim that more Falklands veterans committed suicide than died in the war is just not true.

[Paul Flynn]

Okay, we will have this out. If my hon. Friend does not believe that of the Falklands war, he should believe it of the Vietnam war. The figures come from America—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend will have his chance to speak.

Let us see what the Government’s thinking is. This weekend, there will be worthy celebrations of an Afghan veteran who achieved a Paralympic medal. The Secretary of State for International Development told me that I was being pessimistic about the war in saying that 2,000 soldiers were broken in mind and body, when about half a dozen came back from Afghanistan and earned Paralympic medals. We are all delighted to see the success of the Paralympians—not only the victims of war, but others who have been cheated by life or nature and have achieved an eminence that we all celebrate quite rightly. However, was the right hon. Lady trying to say that the deaths of British troops, the terrible injuries, and the suicides that I mentioned are somehow justified by that? Was it somehow ennobling that 16 million people died, as the Prime Minister seemed to be saying? The man quoted by the Prime Minister did not acquire immortality; he acquired oblivion. His name was forgotten; it was not even mentioned. His life was stolen from him by the lies of politicians and the military.

We are in the same position that we were in at the end of the first world war, in which my father fought. He was shot on 10 April 1918. He was taken prisoner and his life was saved by a German patrol, but he lived to curse the military that he believed in when he was a boy of 15 who went to war, as a patriot, to protect the small nations of the planet. He could never again do what he called a man’s job, and in 1935 his pension was changed. It was a tiny pension, paid to him because his wrecked physical condition was attributable to his war wounds, but a cost-cutting Government changed the word “attributable” to “aggravated”. He went in as a perfectly fit 15-year-old, but later they halved his pension. For understandable reasons, he was bitter about those who on Armistice day stood erect, with a tear in their eye, mourning our brave boys. Quite rightly, the word that came to him was “hypocrites”.

I believe that we should mark the war and the consequences of it not in the heroic terms of Rupert Brooke and others who suffered in war. We must see the reality of what we have done and the consequences. We should bring our troops home from an unwinnable war. Rather than the picture presented of a worthy war and the half-a-dozen deserving Paralympic medallists, we should see war for what it is and in terms of the description of death in war by Wilfred Owen:

“Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. In the week leading up to Remembrance Sunday, it is important to remember those who have lost their lives in the service of their country, not just in Afghanistan but in all the wars. This is also a fitting time to think about the members of our armed forces who are deployed in Afghanistan at the moment. I pay tribute to the men and women of all three services who are working on our behalf and to their families back at home. I also pay tribute to those people who are not mentioned very often—the civil servants and civilian contractors who make that deployment possible. We should thank them for their contribution to our nation’s security.

I welcome the debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on securing it. Hindsight in politics is a great thing. If we had it earlier, the world would be a great and different place. I think it would make politics rather boring, not just in this country but internationally. However, I need to address some of the points that my hon. Friend raised and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made, because there is a tendency in these debates to make statements as though they are facts, but without questioning them.

I think that we should start by considering the reasons why we are in Afghanistan. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion says that the Green party was against the invasion of Afghanistan. That is fine if people live in a great, perfect world, but I certainly do not think that we do. There is an idea that somehow we can put a bubble around the UK and insulate ourselves from world events. I would have asked what the Green party’s alternatives were to what happened in 2001. It is easy to say; it is more difficult to do in reality when we are facing the threat that we were facing in 2001 and that continues to be—

[Caroline Lucas]

I will ask the hon. Gentleman whether he thinks that the situation in Afghanistan is better today than it was before we invaded.

[Mr Jones]

Yes, I do, and I will tell the hon. Lady why from personal experience, but I will also challenge her again to say what the solution would have been in 2001. It is easy to sit and criticise; it is more difficult when people are having to take real decisions about this nation’s security. The hon. Lady is in a privileged position as a member of a party that will never have to make those decisions. That is a luxury that many people do not have.

[Caroline Lucas]

I do not have time now to go through a full explanation of what the Green party would have done, but I would love to have a meeting with the hon. Gentleman outside these four walls to explain what we would have suggested should be done. At the very least, not doing harm is quite a good start. There was no justification for the invasion of Afghanistan as a response to the terrible atrocities in New York.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but the hon. Lady cannot have it both ways. We are in Afghanistan because of a United Nations resolution—resolution 1386. I remember her and some people on the left arguing in relation to the invasion of Iraq that we should have had a United Nations resolution. We cannot have it all ways. That is why we were in Afghanistan, and our time there has been extended by other UN resolutions.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am sorry to keep intervening, but the hon. Gentleman is being deliberately provocative. Those of us who were against the invasion of Iraq did not think that it was any better once the Government managed to get a UN sanction—the stamp of approval. A resolution certainly did not make our decision on Iraq right, and the absence of one was not the reason we were against it.

[Mr Jones]

I wait with interest to see what the solution is to security problems around the world. Having an academic discussion as if we are in a common room is not the answer when the country faces the threats it does.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West said that our reasons for invading Afghanistan were similar to those of the Soviet Union. No, they were not. I totally disagree with his view that the situation would have been different had Obama been elected in 2001. People should not be selective in how they interpret history. There was no instant response from the Americans after 9/11. In the period before the invasion of Afghanistan, there was a window of opportunity. I accept that there was a window of opportunity for the Taliban to give up bin Laden, but did they? No, they did not. Afghanistan gave him and other terrorist groups a safe haven, and now that it is no longer a safe haven and he is no longer here, the world is a safer place.

My hon. Friend also raised the idea that there is somehow a Christian campaign against the Muslim world.

[Graham Stringer]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, I wish to say that I do not agree with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Getting bin Laden was a completely justifiable objective, but was the mission not over and finished in December 2001 when he escaped through the mountains at Tora Bora? There has been a huge mission drift since then.

[Mr Jones]

No, it was not. Let us remember: in Afghanistan we were also dealing with a failed state that had been in chaos, with warlords and fighting since the fall of the Communist Government. In terms of the safe havens it would have given, it was right to try to bring stability and benefit to the Afghan people.

The hon. Member for Newport West refers to some kind of Christian campaign. He should remember that Muslim nations are fighting alongside our forces in Afghanistan, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and, one of the largest Muslim countries, Malaysia.

[Paul Flynn]

The hon. Gentleman is disgracefully fictionalising what I said and attacking an absurdity of his own creation. Does he not agree that the main question we have to deal with is why we behave as the poodle to America, in a way that Harold Wilson did not. We believe that we have to go wider and wider still; that we have to punch above our weight, which always means dying beyond our responsibilities. Why did we go into Helmand?

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman talked about conspiracy theorists, and I have to say that he makes a very good one; perhaps he ought to take it up as a career. Muslim nations are fighting alongside ISAF. To describe Afghanistan as some kind of Christian crusade is complete nonsense.

[Paul Flynn]

Mr Crausby, what the hon. Gentleman is saying is outrageous. It is an outrageous speech.

[Mr David Crausby (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Kevan Jones.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman did say it—

[Paul Flynn]

Read what I said.

[Mr Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman does not like what he says being challenged, I am sorry—

[Paul Flynn]

The facts are in a letter that I wrote in 2003 to Tony Blair. It is there, it exists and I stand by that letter. By going into Iraq and Helmand, we increased the terrorist threat. Answer that.

[Mr Jones]

I will move on to the point the hon. Gentleman made about Daniel Collins and the individuals who lost their lives in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and other places.

I accept that people have come back from Afghanistan and Iraq with mental health problems, their bodies broken and their lives transformed for ever. Something that has come through the debate is the idea that politicians and Ministers take decisions easily. They do not. The Minister will back me up on this point: one of the hardest parts of being a Defence Minister is getting the phone call, sometimes late at night, reporting that someone has lost their life in Afghanistan. A memorable weekend for me was in 2009, when I was duty Minister, and we lost eight individuals. Ministers do think about those people. It is not easy to divorce our emotions from such situations. Like me, the Minister will have met many families after such events and spoken to them, and he knows it is not easy. It is not the case that we take decisions with no thought of such events. Of the work that I did in the Ministry of Defence, I am most proud of putting in the Army recovery capability to assist those injured in the service of our country. It is a credit to the Minister that he continued that work when he was veterans Minister.

It is easy to say that nothing has improved in Afghanistan. I first went there in 2003, with you, Mr Crausby, and I have been six times since. It is very different now from the place it was in 2003: six provinces have transitioned to Afghan security control and Kabul, which was under curfew and blacked out with little activity on the streets, is today a bustling and different city. Is the security threat still there? Yes, it is. Is that only in Kabul? No, it is not; it is throughout Afghanistan.

People sometimes give the impression that Helmand has not improved. I first went to Lashkar Gah—with you, I think, Mr Crausby—in 2004. The only place that we could go was the provincial reconstruction team’s office. In the town itself, there was no market, no activity, no schools, no functioning public works or any local government. When I went back three years ago, I went to central Lashkar Gah to see the governor, and it is a very different place. Progress has been made.

I hope that I do not misquote my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West again, but I would like to touch on the point he made about education and girls. One of the most moving things I have seen was at a girls’ schools in Kabul in 2003—you were with me, Mr Crausby. We met a courageous lady who described how she taught 3,000 girls in a school; she had to do so in shifts, because a lot of the older girls had missed out on education—I do not accept that the Taliban allowed girls to be educated. I said to that lady, “What did you do when the Taliban were in power?” She said, movingly, that she and other teachers taught girls privately in their homes. I said that that must have been a brave act, and she said, “No, that wasn’t brave. My deputy head, who was executed, was brave.” Her only crime was bringing education to girls—such was her dedication to education. It is not the case that we are not making progress in girls’ education and so on.

With regards to the combat role, the Opposition have put it on record that we will support the Government on the deadline for combat missions to end in 2014. What my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West said about ending the combat role is interesting. He gave the impression that somehow we will continue our training role with the Afghanistan security service—I apologise if I am misquoting him again.

[Paul Flynn]

We can take troops out of harm’s way as we did in Iraq. We are waiting in the departure lounge there to bring the troops out. There must be a way. When we left Aden, we put the equipment together and bombed it. We have an enormously costly task, and it will take at least three years to bring out the equipment. We are handing over £1 billion of equipment to the Afghan police. What does the hon. Gentleman think £1 billion of equipment will be used for?

[Mr Jones]

All I was going to say was that the hon. Gentleman is therefore not in favour of continuing to train the Afghan security services.

[Paul Flynn]

I did not say that.

[Mr Jones]

Well, is he or is he not? If he is in favour of continuing a training role, it is not without risk. In Iraq, we had embedded teams in the Iraqi armed forces, and that was not without risk. It is not the case that somehow after 2014 we will be able to avoid all casualties.

[Paul Flynn]

Let me make it clear. In corresponding with Ministers, I have said that one of the things that we should stop is instructing our soldiers to dismantle improvised explosive devices. There is no point in finding out who made the IEDs, because if the makers were put in prison, they would be allowed to escape. There is no point in going on many of the patrols that the Americans are currently doing. People go on fruitless patrols and are killed. We have to withdraw from that combat role because it will disappear. There are other tasks that must be done before we can pull out.

[Mr Jones]

I understand that point. All I am saying is that that is not without risk. In 2014, even in a training role, our armed forces will not be out of harm’s way. As for the way forward, building up the Afghan security forces will be the key element, and progress is being made on that, but I actually agree with my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that what we need to achieve from the process is a political solution. That is about engaging not only with the Afghan people but with Afghanistan’s neighbours.

I completely disagree with the conspiracy theory nonsense that there is a military-industrial complex and that people actually want war to ensure that they can sell weapons. The idea that senior military individuals get some pleasure out of war is wrong. The military that I have worked with in the Ministry of Defence feel every single loss as hard as anyone else, and they certainly do not want to put people in harm’s way if they can avoid it.

Finally, let me touch on drones—unmanned aerial vehicles. A common impression is given—the hon. Lady did it again this morning—that these weapons are under no control and are firing at will at any targets. May I suggest that she ask the MOD for a briefing on targeting policy? She might be surprised to learn that there is a legal mandate before any target is chosen. Lawyers sit in—

[Caroline Lucas]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Jones]

Lawyers are involved. The hon. Lady can laugh, but she is only showing her ignorance of the subject.

[Caroline Lucas]

That does not give me any confidence.

[Mr Jones]

Perhaps it does not, but that is the fact of the matter. The hon. Lady mentioned the fact that there are occasions when missions are aborted if harm is going to be brought elsewhere, but there are strict protocols about the way in which the UK Government target sites in Afghanistan, as in Iraq.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Aberporth is one of the areas where the drones are being tested. The northern part of my constituency, between Aberporth and Epynt, is on the flight path for such tests. The psychological impact on the people of Pakistan where the drones are being used is huge. The drones are buzzing around all the time, and people do not know when weapons are going to be fired. Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the problem is not just the hits from the drones, but the impact on the population of the drones flying around all the time? It affects my constituents and they are not being bombed.

[Mr Jones]

I find that difficult to believe. The fact of the matter is that they are put in some places as a deterrent, without firing at anything, because the sight of them apparently discourages insurgents. Harrier jets and Apache helicopters have been used in Afghanistan without firing their weapons; just their presence seems to stop action. It is wrong to suggest that there is no law governing the use of these drones or that somehow there is some trigger-happy pilot sitting in a base in Nevada. In certain cases—I know this for a fact—high-profile attacks require ministerial approval as well. The hon. Lady needs to have confidence that there is a process in place.

[Paul Flynn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jones]

I will not, because I need to give the Minister time to reply. In conclusion, people talk about winning wars, but it is not about that in Afghanistan. I never liked the expression “the war on terror”, because this is an ongoing struggle with Islamic terrorism not just in Afghanistan, but in the rest of the world for many generations to come. I pay tribute to our armed forces, and hope that we all think not just of those who have lost their lives and have been injured but of those who are on service today in Afghanistan.