UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Winnick]

Obviously no one in the House wants a bloodbath. As for whether Afghanistan would be left to the Taliban if we went, we just do not know, but it should be borne in mind that at no stage did the Taliban have unanimous support as such. Before our military intervention, there was already constant military engagement against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Winnick]

Not for the moment. I want to make some progress.

Members on both sides of the House have said that there is no question of an outright military victory. Those, such as the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who have more or less suggested that we should stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, must ask themselves, “How long?”

It has already been admitted that a military victory is not going to happen. General David Richards, chief of the British Army and, as we all know, soon to be Chief of the Defence Staff, said only three months ago that it was his personal belief that talking to the Taliban should happen pretty soon. That has happened in other counter-insurgency campaigns, he said. There is no doubt about it: the chief of the British Army has conceded that military victory, in the sense of the victories in the first and second world wars, is not going to happen. It is not on the agenda. At some stage, talks will take place; the question for the House is when.

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[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[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.

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

Everybody wants protection from terrorism. Everybody wants protection from insecurity. My point is that our presence—the presence of British troops—in Afghanistan, and formerly in Iraq, has not made the streets of this country safer. The anti-terror legislation is often seen as intrusive. We should use the criminal law against people who commit criminal acts, rather than promoting large amounts of special legislation.

The effects of the war have been serious in many ways. We have seen the detention of—in some cases, completely innocent—civilians at Bagram air base; extraordinary rendition flights; Guantanamo bay, and the resulting legal minefield; and, as I have already said, the anti-terror laws in our country.

The growth of the Taliban and of particular organisations in Afghanistan is a product of the cold war. We have only to look at the record of what went on after the Soviet Union went in to support the then Afghan Government. The US supported the Mujahedeen, which morphed into the Taliban. They were trained by the US and the CIA. We are still paying the price for the cold war. Indeed, the bin Laden family enjoyed quite a close relationship with the Bush family for some time. The battles are not hermetically sealed.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I shall not give way, as I have only two minutes left for my speech.

Afghanistan is a country of desperate poverty. Drug production has gone up. Corruption has got worse. Deals have been done by the British forces and others with warlords and corrupt elements. We have spent billions and billions of pounds in Afghanistan, but poverty levels are worse than ever. I have met asylum seekers from Afghanistan who have travelled to the UK overland by a series of trucks. They have entered illegally to try to find a place of safety. They are not particularly pro-Taliban or particularly pro-anybody; they simply want to survive and they see the US and Britain as an occupying force in their country.

Recent opinion polls show that only 7% of the British public think we are winning the war in Afghanistan and that 72% want the troops to come out. The public are fed up with the losses and fed up with the costs. They feel that we should do something different. Many people believe that some of the reasons for going into Afghanistan were strategic, and they may have been. I am interested in those ideas. The US has developed bases all over former Soviet central Asia. The war has clearly already spread into Pakistan and is in danger of spreading to other countries too. There are undeveloped and largely unexplored mineral resources in Afghanistan, and one wonders what the long-term intentions are for them.

We are spending money on forces, security services and agencies to try to maintain our presence in Afghanistan. It is time we rethought our whole foreign policy strategy and started to look to a world where we work within international law rather than by occupation. We should recognise the failure of the whole mission in Afghanistan. It has done us harm. It has harmed our country and our lives, and brought death to a lot of wholly innocent people in Afghanistan. Is it not time to rethink, to come out and start a different, more peaceful strategy in the world?

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[Simon Reevell (Dewsbury) (Con)]

I support the continued deployment of our armed forces in Afghanistan, but I meet people who do not. That is because no one took the time to explain the reasons at the time of deployment—or, indeed, for years afterwards.

We went into Afghanistan because there were people there who wanted to kill us. They wanted to kill our families—indeed, they wanted to kill our way of life—and the Government of that country were not interested in stopping them doing it. We went in because, although we are an island race, we do not live in a bunker and we are vulnerable to terror. We went in because the poisonous propaganda emanating from the training camps of Afghanistan was absolutely toxic. Indeed, it is so pervasive that it has seeped into the minds of young people as far away from Afghanistan as here in the UK, including in my constituency, resulting in a young man bringing a suicide bomb to London.

For many, the deployment of UK armed forces in Afghanistan was also the end of a regime of brutality and terror that blighted the lives of ordinary, decent Afghan people, and we should be proud of that. Those young Afghans who travel to join the Afghan national army and go into combat alongside British soldiers do so because they remember the terror that defined the regime introduced by the Taliban in those areas of Afghanistan that they occupied—the same areas where the al-Qaeda training camps thrived.

Because it has not been explained properly, people make comparisons between our deployment and that of the Russians, but we are not there to conquer the Afghan people. We are not there to impose a regime. Afghan nationals did not form up and fight alongside the Russians, as they come to train and fight with NATO and British forces.

[Rehman Chishti]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we cannot make the mistake that was made in 1989, when the international community left Afghanistan, creating a vacuum for al-Qaeda and the Taliban? We have to stay in Afghanistan to finish the end-job, which means creating institutions and stability by working with the Afghan army and police force.

[Simon Reevell]

I do agree with that, but I shall come to that point in a moment, if I may.

It is the Taliban who seek to occupy Afghanistan, not the British Army. Another myth that causes some to doubt the role of our forces is based on the suggestion that the Taliban will simply play the long game—“You have the watches, we have the time.” However, that is to ignore completely the Afghan national army. I am privileged in that I have been able to spend a considerable amount of time with the private soldiers, NCOs, warrant officers and junior officers who have been on the front line in Afghanistan. Indeed, some whom I was privileged to spend time with are there today. What they described, in a matter-of-fact, “job done” way, is brave to the point of being almost beyond contemplation.

Significantly, those troops speak well of the Afghan national army, whose courage is not an issue. In fact, the task of our training teams and our soldiers is to instil a sense of discipline to temper their courage and to instil an understanding that there is no shame in something other than a full-frontal assault. Often, ANA recruits learn quite literally on the job. They arrive with a rifle and no training. That means that they are wholly inexperienced on day one, but as all their training is gained in combat conditions, they fast become battle hardened. They will increasingly step forward as NATO forces withdraw. They are determined to protect their country and ensure that it does not fall back into a world of imposed brutality.

In addition, we remain in Afghanistan because in the summer of last year, the Taliban were less than 80 miles from Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Pakistan has attracted criticism for its role in relation to the NATO operation in Afghanistan, but in fact more than 3,000 members of the Pakistani armed forces have been killed fighting the Taliban. Those in the Swat valley who are currently the victims of floods were terrified to leave their homes last year as the invading Taliban sought to impose a culture of terror. We did not enter Afghanistan to help Pakistan, but the reality is that Pakistan cannot be allowed to fail.

In my experience, people accept these reasons for our presence in Afghanistan, especially now that individual soldiers have the kit that they need. It is an appalling state of affairs that that was ever an issue. Whatever the state of our finances, it must never be an issue again. All the discussions about defence spending are designed to ensure that the troops on the front line have boots and bullets, and no one should lose sight of that. The kit is now there, and the young men I speak to are convinced that they are doing a worthwhile job.

The motion supports the continued deployment of our armed forces in Afghanistan, and we should also not fall shy of remembering that our presence represents a statement of commitment to those who have turned away from Taliban and al-Qaeda extremism and reached out, albeit tentatively, to the west. We have a coherent and sensible strategy, and we are training the Afghan national army to do what every country requires of its armed forces—namely, to protect the perimeter and ensure the safety of those who live within its borders. In doing that, it will ensure that there will be no room for those who would export death to us and ours. Until the ANA can take on that task, however, our troops should remain there.