Martin Docherty-Hughes
Main Page: Martin Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party - West Dunbartonshire)Department Debates - View all Martin Docherty-Hughes's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(3 years, 7 months ago)
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James Heappey
I suspect that I have answered that question a few times over the last hour. This is simply the end of military operations in Afghanistan; it is not the end of the UK’s commitment to that country. Everybody is clear on that. So, too, are our partners and allies around NATO and beyond. The international effort to deliver peace and security within Afghanistan continues; it is just no longer appropriate to seek to achieve that through military means.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) [V]
There are many who would say that the Taliban control a huge swathe of Afghanistan, and that this decision will mean that the Afghan security forces could be overrun. Will the Minister advise us, as an Afghan veteran? I pay tribute to that service, as I do to all the other veterans, including my own brother, Ronnie, who served two tours in Afghanistan. Can the Minister answer the question that many of them will be asking today: why oh why were they there in the first place, if we have not achieved what we intended to?
James Heappey
I do not accept that we have not achieved what we were there to do in the first place. We went into Afghanistan as a direct consequence of what happened on 11 September 2001. Article 5 was invoked because an attack on one was an attack on us all, and that attack originated in Afghanistan. Since then, there has been no international terrorist attack launched from Afghanistan on the UK, the US or, indeed, any other NATO ally, so in that sense the mission was achieved.
Actually, the mission has gone far further, as we have explored in our exchanges on the urgent question: in the 20 years that we have been there, we have given the opportunity for the Afghan Government to establish and strengthen and for an Afghan civil society to flourish. I truly believe that we have set the conditions within which a political process now has the best chances of success.