Gisela Stuart MPWorking hard for Bartley Green, Edgbaston, Harborne and Quinton

Commons debate on Afghanistan and Pakistan // July 17th, 2009 // Speeches, Articles and Interviews

Gisela took part in the Commons debate on Afghanistan and Pakistan on Thursday 16 July.  The following is a transcript of her speech.  To read the full debate, please follow the link to the Hansard record here.

Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), and I wish to congratulate him on his Committee’s report. When it comes to equipment it always becomes very difficult for those not closely involved, because there are always several sides to the story. Helicopters have been discussed, and one thing that struck me when we flew down in them on our visit to the area was how much they were resented by the local population-helicopters fly over their houses, so they find them incredibly intrusive. So people will have to go on the ground and we need to be realistic.

I wish to say a little about what the end game is likely to be, because one of a number of important comments made today related to the inclusion of Afghanistan and Pakistan in this. The Secretary of State indicated that greater co-operation is clearly taking place on the border, certainly on the one with Baluchestan. What is happening in Helmand reflects what is happening on the Pakistani side to make the border more secure. This will also be about the build-up of the Afghan national police and army. It is clear that we have been much more successful with the army than with the police, but we should be careful about the words we use. When we were in Afghanistan it was clear that people there referred to their policemen as soldiers and they referred to their soldiers as warriors. This is not the kind of police force that we are used to-it is much tougher, and at the moment it is still being recruited along tribal lines. Until there is a police force in Afghanistan that does not follow tribal lines, we will continue to have the sort of problems that have been described.

Afghan warfare is very different. The history of the country shows that no outside force has ever succeeded in conquering it. What is different this time is that foreign troops are there with the consent of the Government. Their writ may not travel far beyond the capital, but it is the beginning of a settlement. It will have to be seen in two distinct phases. We need to be careful when we talk about the Taliban: there are Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and central Asian Taliban, and then there is al-Qaeda, and we are not entirely sure where they are from. There are also small pockets of 100 or so insurgents, so we need to be careful about language. Even in Helmand, when they talk about foreign Taliban, they may mean Afghan Taliban from a different province.

We need a military presence that the Taliban-the insurgents, whoever they are-know will stay and fight, not pack its bags and leave. Then will come the point at which we have to bring those people into the political process. The Afghan way of warfare does not mean winning on the battlefield, but by defection. What years of history have taught Afghans is to wait and see which is the winning side-and that is the side to join. That is how we have brought warlords into the process, and that is what the long-term strategy for our military presence should be.

We have to be very forceful on the military end, but negotiate to bring people into the process. The elections in the summer will be important in that, but we should be careful about thinking that the elections mean democracy per se. The voter registration and other processes will set the scene, but there is deep corruption in the country, and we should be honest about that. The corruption starts at the top, and the aid that comes in gets sliced all the way through. However, that is better than the alternative, and one of the most encouraging changes in terms of Government policy-I have visited three times in the past five years, and things have changed-was the DFID White Paper, which made the clear commitment that the Foreign Office and the MOD would work much more closely together when it came to international aid. Certainly, with the role of the senior representative in Helmand, Hugh Powell, who pulls together the international effort with our Departments’ efforts, we are moving in the right direction.

We must not give up. We must not say, “It’s so awful, there’s nothing we can do.” We owe it to our troops to pursue our strategy. These are the most crucial, and potentially most damaging, stages of the operation, and we have to ensure that the casualties were sustained for a reason worth fighting for.

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