UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I have taken great offence over the past week at comments by Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Manning of US Marine battalion command in Afghanistan. He claimed the British did not pursue the Taliban and said, “We’ll go after them,” implying that our troops had stayed safely hidden in their bases. Not content with traducing the bravery and commitment of our British soldiers, Colonel Manning went on to criticise British reconstruction efforts by the Department for International Development. That is dangerous talk at a time when the British public are wearied by the mounting death toll, mounting financial costs and the perceived lack of progress in the war. I therefore welcome today’s debate, because it is time to put the record straight. It is time to take stock of why we are still in Afghanistan nine years later, and to look at what has gone wrong, how we move forward and what we need to get right before we can leave.

We need to remember that in the beginning it was US finances that helped Pakistan to create the Taliban, along with other Islamic fundamentalist groups, which were developed as a tool to fight against India in Kashmir and the Russians in Afghanistan. It was the Taliban who welcomed and supported al-Qaeda. When war was declared in Afghanistan, the US continued to fund the Pakistan military, which in turn continued to fund the Taliban, providing a safe haven for both them and al-Qaeda. America has been fighting a war against al-Qaeda. Destroying al-Qaeda has been its priority, not freeing and reconstructing Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military has been fighting an ongoing war against India, using its fundamentalist forces to maintain instability in Kashmir and using the Taliban to ensure a pliable neighbour, not a democratically independent Afghanistan.

The Bush regime made the Defence Department, not the State Department, responsible for the major decisions made in Afghanistan, including in reconstruction. The failure, right from the start, to put in the great amounts of money, effort and commitment needed to reconstruct a strong central state in Afghanistan was a major factor in allowing the Taliban to regroup. Too many decisions were based on hunting for al-Qaeda, rather than on reconstructing and improving ordinary people’s lives, and rebuilding the state. That, followed by the change of military and financial focus to Iraq, allowed the Taliban to regroup, occupy the south and build the heroin trade, ready for the new offensive.

When British troops moved into southern Afghanistan, they encountered problems because there had been virtually no US intelligence or satellite monitoring in the south. The Taliban had been allowed to grow, to develop their drugs trade, and to use that trade to fund their insurgency. We are still there because Afghanistan has been a proxy setting for other wars. Money poured into the hands of war lords and their militias, not into building a viable state, into focusing on reconstruction, or into building a police and justice system and an independent army. British troops have also been fighting against the loss of moral authority of western forces following the US promotion of torture, rendition, disappearance and secret jails, all of which have aided the growth of Islamic extremism.

We sent troops into Afghanistan to fight terrorism and a vicious fundamentalist regime, and we have ended up fighting terrorism funded by drugs. This brings me to a grave concern about the future direction of the war. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, has said that we must apply our learning in Colombia to places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is not the path to take. I spent a week in Colombia taking evidence from people whose family members had been assassinated by the state. I saw how the military in Colombia had been used to “disappear” people in an attempt to create an impression that the drugs lords were being tackled. We do not want to go down that route in Afghanistan. We do not want to find mass graves that have been created by the Afghan army in the fight against drugs. To avoid going down that route, we must not hand power over to paramilitaries or to local defence forces in our desire to leave Afghanistan. It is the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police force that must take on those roles.

Reconstruction and redevelopment must be better organised and targeted. Aid must be controlled by the Department for International Development, by civilian groups and by non-governmental organisations. The military must be there to provide the security, but it is the civil society that must build the civil structure of the future Afghanistan.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Moon]

No, I do not have enough time.

Cornel West has said that

“peace is the presence of justice”.

The absence of justice has become one of the primary recruiting tools for the Taliban. That is why I believe that building an effective police and justice system is essential for the future Afghanistan. An article in September’s Prospect magazine states:

“The repression of women and the assault on certain freedoms was a small price to pay”

if the rise of the Taliban stopped the wholesale rape and slaughter in Afghanistan. I do not see a world in which women have their noses cut off for running away from violent and abusive husbands, in which they are denied education and the right to medical help, and in which they are stoned to death for alleged infidelity as a “small price to pay”.

We need to be in Afghanistan to build and create a better society, and we must be aware that to fail would be to risk instability throughout the region. Our troops will be fighting wars for many years to come if we do not stay and fight until the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Winnick]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is very eager to intervene, but I am limited by time.

Those who take a different point of view from those of us who are very critical should accept that General Richards knows what he is talking about. No Minister, and indeed none of my Front-Bench colleagues, has challenged what General Richards said. No Front Bencher on either side has said that he was talking nonsense.

[Mrs Moon]

It should be recognised that our troops are not there to impose education and new human rights standards on Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a constitution, which it put in place, guaranteeing women access to education and personal rights. Our troops are there to support the Afghanistan constitution and the legitimate Government of Afghanistan.

[Mr Winnick]

My hon. Friend does not answer the point I was making, however: how long will we be there for, bearing in mind that we have already been there for almost nine years?

In order for us to wage such a war, it is necessary to have strong public support in the United Kingdom. Everyone rightly pays tribute to the troops—as I have done—but every expression of public opinion clearly shows that support in Britain for the military engagement in Afghanistan is slipping, and slipping fast. I want to make it clear, as I have on previous occasions, that my views are not influenced by opinion polls. If I felt strongly that we should continue in Afghanistan for a long period but that was a minority opinion, I would not change my view. No Member of Parliament should debate or vote on issues on the basis of opinion polls, but we should recognise that among the British public at large there is decreasing support for our engagement in Afghanistan, and I believe it will decrease still more. That is because the question arises—constituents have asked me this on numerous occasions—of how much longer we are going to be there for, for what purpose and how many more people will die there in what many people, including me, believe is an unwinnable war.

I do not accept the argument that has often been put that we either fight in Afghanistan or we fight on the streets of Britain. That argument was put by my party colleagues when we were in government and they no doubt still hold to it, and it is certainly the Conservative Front-Bench view as well, supported by many Back-Bench Tory colleagues. If we were to win in Afghanistan—if the Taliban were to be defeated—does anyone really believe that our security in our country would be so improved that we would not find it necessary to continue to take the measures we currently take to protect our country and people? The international terrorist network does not necessarily need Afghanistan. It was welcomed in the country in the past, and that was very much to its advantage, but I do not accept for one moment that if it did not have Afghanistan, the terrorist threat to Britain would be that much less.

I also want to refer to a report published this week by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. It is not a controversial body, and as far as I know it is not a particularly left-wing body. It argues, however, that the basis of NATO military policy in Afghanistan is simply wrong. Apart from other factors, it believes that our involvement—NATO’s involvement—fuels the insurgency rather than undermines it.

I do not accept that we can have victory in Afghanistan. When have foreign forces ever succeeded in that country? I take the view that. however desirable some of the policies carried out in Afghanistan arising from military intervention have been seen in that country bearing in mind what the Taliban did, NATO forces are looked upon by many people in Afghanistan who are far removed from the Taliban as foreign forces—as infidel forces, and certainly not Islamic in any way whatever. I find it difficult to believe that they look upon NATO forces as firm allies, rather than as intruders in their country.

I conclude simply by expressing the hope that, regardless of whether there is a vote today, we come to the view that we have been in Afghanistan long enough. The time has surely come for us to agree that our military engagement in that country should soon come to an end.