Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Sajid Javid Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), who can always be relied on to make a thoughtful contribution.

In 1961, a young man, Abdul-Ghani, left his poverty-stricken village in Punjab, Pakistan, for England. He had heard that the mother country, as England was still known at that time, had plenty of jobs, so he decided to try his luck. Like many young Pakistanis arriving in Britain at that time, Abdul-Ghani planned to stay in England for only a few years—just long enough to earn enough money to send back to his siblings so that they could have the education that he never had. He also intended to return home because he loved his homeland. He remembered how, at the age of nine, he had been part of the largest population exchange in history, in which more than 15 million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs had tried to find safety in their newly born nation states. To this day, he will never forget the stench of death and the heart-wrenching human misery that he witnessed.

In the early 1960s, many young Pakistanis such as Abdul-Ghani still harboured huge hopes for their country. They believed in the vision of Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who wanted a democratic, secular, modern state. As the years passed, Abdul-Ghani, who was by then a very proud bus driver in Rochdale, sadly came to realise that he would not be going back to Pakistan because the country was moving backwards. He gave up on his dreams of returning home and decided that he and his future family would be wise to make their permanent home in England. It is because of that decision that I am able to stand before the House and contribute to this important debate.

By the 1960s, it was already clear that the ruling bargain in Pakistan had changed. Gone was the dream of a tolerant, democratic and secular nation. In sharp contrast to the situation in neighbouring India, the rules of the game in Pakistan were being set by the Pakistani army. The army allowed the pretence of civilian rule, but everyone knew that it called all the shots. Each year, the army granted itself nearly 25% of the national budget and justified its rule on the grounds that Pakistan needed to confront its real enemy—India. Despite the very real challenges of widespread poverty and illiteracy, with enlightened leadership Pakistan could have taken the path to greater prosperity. That is not just a dream: many Muslim-majority countries have achieved that, including Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia. Virtually every leader of Pakistan has failed his people, choosing self-interest over the national interest. They have all too often obscured their own incompetence and deceit by blaming every failure on an external, exaggerated threat. In much the same way, many Arab rulers love to blame Israel for all their problems.

I was saddened but not surprised that bin Laden was found to be living in Pakistan. Let us be clear. He was not just living in Pakistan: he was a stone’s throw away from the national military academy and just a two-hour drive from Islamabad. I have no doubt that it was just and strategically right for the US to kill bin Laden, and although I do not think that the Pakistani Government were involved in any way or were complicit as a whole, I find it very hard to believe that there were not elements of the Pakistani military intelligence services and some Government officials providing him with safe harbour. To suggest otherwise is frankly laughable. That is why there is no way that Britain’s relationship with Pakistan can remain the same.

When the Prime Minister visited Pakistan last year, he was right to say that Pakistan looked “both ways” when it came to terrorism. He was also right when he told the House very recently that we cannot afford to turn our back on Pakistan. If we did, the threat to Britain from the emergence of a nuclear-armed failed state in one of the world’s most volatile regions would be far too great. It is in neither Britain’s interest nor Pakistan’s for relations to become more adversarial, but Pakistan’s strategy of being both a friend and an adversary is no longer tenable. That is why we need to take a harder line on Pakistan and demand a lot more in return for our assistance, aid and friendship. The UK and the US should formally present to Pakistan’s leaders any information they have about Pakistani complicity in shielding bin Laden and should demand tough and immediate action. We should demand that Pakistan uproots insurgent sanctuaries, shuts down factories that produce bombs that kill our soldiers, and hunts down leading terrorists who are still at large.

We also need to start reducing our dependence on Pakistan. First, the international security assistance force should find an alternative to the supply lines that run through Pakistan to Afghanistan, and we should expand alternative supply routes through Azerbaijan and other countries in central Asia. Secondly, NATO and Afghanistan should reach agreement on a longer-term settlement allowing for a small but lasting military presence in Afghanistan. That capability could be indispensible in preventing some of the worst-case scenarios involving Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.

When it comes to helping Pakistan, our No. 1 focus should be on promoting commerce and education, as they are the only tools to help ordinary, long-suffering Pakistanis to climb out of poverty. Our message should not be that we are abandoning Pakistan, but that we will help Pakistan fight its true enemies—ignorance, illiteracy, corrupt elites and religious conflict. Although the killing of bin Laden was an important success, a greater achievement would be to transform UK-Pakistani relations into a true partnership that fights terrorism and helps ordinary Pakistanis.