We need clarity on our vision for Afghanistan.

Written by David Heath MP and published in Western Gazette on Fri 13th Nov 2009

I spotted the first on the lapel of a government minister in the second week of October this year. Within a week every minister and most government ministers, not to mention every reporter and newsreader on the television, was sporting a poppy. I'm afraid I stick to what I have always considered the proper period for the wearing of Remembrance Day poppies, which starts on 1st November and ends the day after the 11th. And I refuse to accept that wearing a poppy earlier, or for that matter wearing a larger poppy, mean that you "care even more".

Having said that, it was obvious to me, attending as I usually do at Bruton, Wincanton and Frome during the day, that far from dwindling as the wartime generation passes on, in a year when the last survivors of the first world war died and many of those actively involved in the second are no longer with us, the number of people observing and participating in Remembrance Day parades and services is increasing, and many involved are of a younger generation who perhaps are more mindful of what is happening to their own generation, to the deaths and casualties of Iraq and, now, Afghanistan.

To link the proper respect we show for those who have made such sacrifices in conflict on their country's behalf with a political message about current government policy would be crude and inappropriate, and I hope my further comments will not be read as such. But it is impossible to divorce entirely one's thoughts at such a time from the difficult decisions that now have to be made about Britain's current military entanglements, and it is inevitable when the names of recently killed servicemen are read out in sombre tones at war memorials across the country that we examine the reasons we are at war, and the future.

I called for a full debate in Parliament last week on, not just the military, but as importantly the foreign policy aspects of the Afghanistan conflict. In doing so, I was only reflecting the discussions that have been going on across the country for some time, and yet Parliament has never had the opportunity to endorse or otherwise our involvement in Afghanistan, and barring the listing of the week's dead at Prime Ministers Questions has had no recent opportunity to debate the issue. And yet the clear illegitimacy of President Karzai's administration in Kabul, on the back of massive electoral fraud and in the absence of any popular mandate from the bulk of the Afghan people, raises very complex questions of what exactly we and our allies are trying to achieve.

The arguments for going in to Afghanistan originally were at least clear. Al Quaeda was using a supportive Taliban regime to establish training bases which threatened the safety of the United Kingdom and other western countries. Then attention was diverted, unforgivably in my opinion, towards Iraq and a conflict that had nothing to do with combating terrorism. As a result, the job in Afghanistan was unfinished. Al Quaeda remains a threat, but is now ensconced in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and elements of the Taliban are fighting to re-establish themselves in areas of Afghanistan which history shows are almost impossible for a foreign occupying power to hold indefinitely. Read the accounts of the exploits of the Somerset Light Infantry in the Afghan wars of the Victorian era if you don't believe me.

And so our young men and women are put at huge risk. However bravely and professionally they act, they are prey to the sniping, bombs and the booby traps of an implacable enemy. And they are propping up a ramshackle Afghan state military and police which are years away from providing a credible security force. Meanwhile, many of our allies in NATO refuse to send substantial forces or insist they must not fight in exposed positions. This is not a sustainable position.

Yet the consequences of pulling out are just as unpalatable. Quite apart from the impression given of a hard-won defeat, not dissimilar to the position of US forces after Vietnam, it is clear that Afghanistan will return to internal conflict and, probably, return of Taliban rule. Far worse for our security, however, is the possibility in that scenario of Pakistan collapsing, which would not only free Al Quaeda from restraint, but also mean that a fundamentalist failed state would have been created with access to nuclear armaments.

The alternative may be to strengthen the forces available in Afghanistan by insisting that allies step up to the mark. There is also an arguable case for switching from a strategy of winning and holding land to a tactic of search and destroy of enemy operatives. At the same time, this country needs to take the conflict a lot more seriously, with the formation of a war cabinet, and sufficient resources to ensure that never again shall our troops go into action under-protected or over-exposed. Then we might avoid the unedifying spectacle of the training of Territorial Army units being summarily cut and then re-instated in a U-turn as a result of political pressure rather than proper planning. Most importantly a clear and consistent objective of the mission needs to be set out and kept to by government, including a programme for eventual withdrawal.

None of these are particularly attractive options. Much will depend on the position, eventually, of President Obama's decision on troop numbers. But to simply carry on with such little sense of direction is an insult and a clear and present danger to the forces we deploy. It also makes a mockery of all the pious hopes expressed over the last week.

ENDS