Afghanistan

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. This debate is due to end at 4 o’clock. We expect a Division at 4 o’clock. I will expect to start calling the Front Benchers at 20 to 4. I am sure, Paul Flynn, that you will be mindful of that in your remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

This is where the nonsense comes in—where the political line that was taken and the party politics of that line cause confusion. The problem we had was that there was disagreement between the service chiefs at the time on different strategies. If politicians ask the military whether it is possible to do something, there is an in-built response of “Yes, we can,” but I am saying that there has to be a grown-up relationship. When Ministers ask for advice, they must sometimes be told by the military, “No, that cannot be done.” [Interruption.] The hon. Gentlemanhas asked me to give an example. At the tail end of the last Government, certain senior generals acted completely outside their remit by being political, which was not a helpful stance and did not ensure that they were above the party political debate. That was unfortunate.

I return to Helmand and the deployment south, about which the hon. Member for Broadland raised an important issue. Corporate knowledge in an organisation is important, and, like the hon. Gentleman, I fear that we are losing a lot of that. In addition, in our approach to deployment we must not look solely at the military kinetic effects. We should consider, for example, employing anthropologists to inform the debate about what will happen when we deploy somewhere, to ensure that when people are deployed, they have the fullest possible knowledge about the situation.

I have to disagree with what the hon. Member for Reigate said about Iran. I accept his point about the Iranians being against the Taliban, although I think that that was mainly to do with the Taliban murdering Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. It was a maligned force in Basra and, in the latter days, in Herat in Afghanistan, where it was used in the proxy war against the United States and ourselves. Should we actually engage with them in negotiations? Yes, I think we could.

Finally, one major strategic failing in Afghanistan was the issue of Pakistan. All the emphasis was on rebuilding, and on occasion we treated Afghanistan in isolation, but the real problem was related to Pakistan. When the history books are written, they will say that the Musharraf Government, by speaking both ways, made our job much more difficult in Afghanistan.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I encourage the shadow Minister to bring his remarks to a close so that the Minister can respond.

[Mr Jones]

I was just about to sit down; I have had my 10 minutes.

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[Paul Flynn]

On a point of order, Mr Pritchard. The Minister has just informed us that he is going to deal with the very serious issues raised in this debate. He is not doing it, and there are only three and a half minutes left.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

You have made your point. We are running out of time, and I know that you will want to hear the Minister.

[Mr Francois]

I was talking about the medical lessons that we have learned from Afghanistan, which flow back into our national health service. To drive my point home, a number of medical helicopters flying in Britain now carry plasma and blood, which is a lesson we learned directly from our experience in Afghanistan. We routinely sought to learn lessons from operational incidents and to adapt our equipment, tactics, training and procedures accordingly. That included, for instance, procuring new equipment quickly through the urgent operational requirement process to address emergent threats. We are considering how the lessons of the UOR process can inform our procurement of equipment more generally.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) mentioned 77 Brigade, which will have the old Chindits badge, and we will consider how we can use capabilities within that brigade more effectively in future, again building on lessons that we have learned about the importance of influence operations in Afghanistan. I hope to be able to visit the brigade in his constituency when it is fully stood up.

The redeployment of equipment also presented a massive challenge in terms of both scale and complexity, which my hon. Friend also mentioned. Camp Bastion alone covered an area approximately the size of Reading, and much of the matériel returned from Afghanistan had to be redeployed via a 900 km-long land route. We brought back 3,600 vehicles and 4,700 20-foot ISO container-equivalents of matériel. That was a massive logistical achievement, and we have learned lessons from that, too.

The time I have does not fully allow me to pay tribute to the 453 personnel who died in the service of their country. We will never forget them. The Camp Bastion memorial wall will be established at the national memorial arboretum close to the armed forces memorial. The wall was carefully dismantled and flown back to the UK from Afghanistan, and it is currently being reconstructed so that the families of the soldiers named on it can visit to pay their respects. We hope that the completion of that memorial will be achieved by the summer of this year.

I have two minutes to conclude my speech. We should be proud of what we have achieved in Afghanistan. In 2001, the country was used as a launch pad by international terrorists. Since then, through our actions and the actions of the international coalition, the terror threat to the United Kingdom from the region has substantially reduced. Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for terrorists. We have helped to build effective Afghan national security forces capable of taking the fight to the enemy and of sustaining progress made in the removal of the terrorist threat. The Afghans are now securing their country’s future. They have defended their election and elected a Government of national unity.

Of course, we want to consider broader lessons that can be learned from the campaign, but our recent focus has been on a successful drawdown from the ISAF combat mission and the transition to the NATO resolute support mission. In making a decision on how to learn lessons, the Government want to think through how best to do it in a way that enables us to implement those lessons quickly and practically so that they have a real impact. Several members of the Defence Committee have been here today, and they are undertaking an inquiry into decision making in defence policy. The Secretary of State for Defence gave evidence to that inquiry earlier this month.

There will be challenges ahead for the Afghan people, and there are no guarantees of their future success, but as we continue to support the people of Afghanistan, we should be proud of what we have achieved and confident that we have given that country the best possible chance of a stable future. I believe it was worth while and that we were right to do it.