Chair – Andrew Neil
Correlli Barnett proposed the motion and lamented that America’s ‘panic and rage’ had precipitated the war after 9/11. Accepting the consequences of retreat would be bolder than propping up the ‘posturing clown’ Hamid Karzai. We should leave by September. Rapid evacuations were achievable, he said, and cited Britain’s short-order withdrawals from Palestine and India in the late 1940s. As we leave we might spin the headlines in our favour by advertising the present surge in Helmand as ‘a victory for the Afghan forces’.
Former army boss Lord Guthrie examined the consequences of cut-and-run. It would weaken Nato, embolden jihadis around the world and deliver a damaging blow to Western values. Recent polls showed Afghans hardening against the Taleban and feeling optimistic. Afghanistan is ‘a noble but difficult task’. We must stay and build robust institutions.
Simon Jenkins made three succinct arguments. Afghanistan isn’t our country and we have no duty to rebuild it. Occupation doesn’t protect Britain because highly mobile terror networks can’t be defeated by ‘seizing land’. And the campaign isn’t working. When he visited Afghanistan in 2006 he drove to Kandahar: unthinkable now. There is no such thing as victory in Afghanistan.
Andrew Roberts departed from his speech and laid into Jenkins’s argument that terrorists don’t need a failed state to launch their operations. Roberts quoted a British intelligence chief suggesting the opposite. Caves aren’t enough. Terror needs infrastructure. While the Taleban controlled Afghanistan, al-Qa’eda ran an office at Kabul airport pumping out top-quality fake passports. Roberts trashed the myth that Afghanistan was ‘the graveyard of empires’. It was more a ‘revolving door’ which had been subdued over the centuries by numerous invaders, including the British. ‘When?’ shouted a heckler. ‘Second Afghan War, 1878-1880,’ said Roberts. ‘I’m a historian. I know the dates.’
Then the floor debate. A speaker asked Correlli Barnett if Britain’s bloody evacuations from Palestine and India were an ‘optimistic template for departure’. ‘Why not?’ said Barnett. ‘we have to think of our interest not other people’s.’
An army officer articulated the forces’ commitment to victory but wondered if the British people supported the mission. Simon Jenkins warned against overestimating the military’s good faith. It amounted to no more than a natural reluctance to believe their actions are worthless.
A UN aid worker begged us not to quit. Two thirds of the insurgents were ‘ten-dollar-a-day Taleban’, he said, who could be pacified with investment in apprenticeships and jobs. His plea chimed with the mood of the room. Before the debate, the motion was supported by just 179 with a majority of 265 against and 150 undecided. Afterwards, the majority had surged to 326 with only 236 against and 4 still undecided. The motion was defeated. As for the Taleban, we’ll see.