Dai Havard

Labour Party | Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney

The Valleys of Merthyr and Afghanistan

As other MPs were voting on a limit of 90 or 25 days maximum detention for suspected terrorists in the UK I was in Afghanistan in a British Army uniform. I would have supported a 90 days maximum - but with the agreement of the Government Whips I was in Sherbegan in North Western Afghanistan, meeting the Local Commanders of the Afghan Warlord General Dostrum, pressing them to peacefully disarm their illegally armed groups. Their guns are used to coerce local farmers and protect the drug runners of Afghanistan, who cause direct causalities on the streets of our Valley’s everyday.

This was part of my second visit to Afghanistan in 15 months with the British Army. This time I traveled back and forth to Kabul in a huge C17 kipping down with the cargo. Canvas seats and no trolley service on these trips! My visit was as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme for which I volunteer. The Scheme not only gives me access to the work of the Army but supports my broader work as a member of the House of Commons Defence Committee and I hope to visit Afghanistan again in June next year to see our troops who by then will be in  large numbers in Helmund Province in the South.

I met another ‘Valley Boy’ whilst in the North of the country. Sgt Dave Crimmins from Ystrad Mynach who was working as part of the Quick Reaction Force at the Forward Support Base in Mazar e Sharif. Minus 2 degrees C in the tents but great grub! Dave was doing his bit in Afghanistan between working as a trainer at Sandhurst and becoming RSM of the Royal Welch Fusiliers at their Wrexham Barracks next year.

I managed to visit a large part of the North of the country and even made a short stop at Kandaha the base of our Special Forces activity and the US led coalition chasing terrorists in the East and South. It is here that we have our RAF Harrier GR7’s and it will become more important to us when we send thousands more of our troops South into Helmund province next spring.

With a NATO International Security and Assistance Force, under a UN mandate, taking on more of the country from the US next year, there are big changes coming for British Forces. The US will change their contribution bringing most of it under NATO - British led command - from May next year. There will still be a separate Counter Terrorism Coalition that will involve the US the British and other nations.

Whilst there will be many changes to the military activities in the country there were other changes already visible. Some changes were positive as I could see many building and structure developments in and around Kabul and in Mazar e Sahrif but they are slow and there is little or no infrastructure outside the towns and even within large parts of them. One positive is the education of girls and women, as well as boys and young men. The resources though are not enough. I visited a school in Kabul which has over 9,500 thousand girls and boys up to 10 years old attending it in 3 shifts a day. There is no glass in the windows of the Russian built school and they use tents in the yard. The Director is a brave woman who attended Kabul University before the terror of wars with Russia and the Taliban regime. The school is streamed on ability so young women of 22 years of age attend classes with 7 year olds, as these young women were not allowed to go to school under the Taliban. The British Army has built them a Netball Court and we presented the girls with some netballs and jerseys. We joked about them being the Afghan Women’s Netball Team at the London Olympics in 2012 and why not!

A negative and worrying change in the 15 months since my last visit is that drugs are not  just be being grown in Afghanistan but also being processed there, making them more profitable and easier to export. I noted also a growing local drug user problem with NATO forces now conducting an education drive to stop it. The drugs are also now not only being exported through neighbouring Iran but the countries to the North. Once into the neighbouring ‘Stans’ and in the hands of the Russian ‘mafia’ style gangs they move more easily across Europe.

British troops are trying to help create a stable and secure Afghanistan and despite the recent death of a British soldier on a road in Mazar e Sharif I was still able to visit and walk the road and talk to local people and meet again with local shop keepers like Rafiq. I had some US Dollars with me this time!

Our troops in Mazar who had just lost one of their mates and seen others seriously injured were hurting but were still very clear that they are working not just for the local people but for strategic reasons that affect us all at home as well. A few days later I attended a Remembrance Service in the British Cemetery in Kabul and was pleased to wear the enamelled Remembrance Poppy Badge given to me by British Legion members in Aberfan just a week earlier. I went on patrol again with the Kabul Patrol Group and it was clear that whilst there are terrorists using the local people to stir up insurgency, most local people were still content to see British patrols but it is undeniably still a dangerous place for all.

Afghanistan desperately needs an infrastructure and a justice system to help them build a democratic civic society as there is no military-only solution that will help them, or stop the drug casualties on our streets. It is these aspects that are too slow in developing.

I took part in a live firing exercise with the Afghan Army and the British led NCO Training Team. Whilst there is much to do to build the Afghan Army, many of them are fighting and dying to re-build their country, but again they need more help to become fully self-sufficient. The building of both the Police Service and Justice System are making particularly slow progress and the challenge for us is to see all these aspects are speeded up and joined up. Afghanistan must not be allowed to fall into a narcotics dominated state but the British Armed Forces can not do it all.

The future of NATO is being tested by the USA. Ending its Operation Enduring Freedom and making it part of a NATO led force will, I hope, help change some of the worst aspects of the US policy and behaviours in Afghanistan but it also challenges the European nations in NATO to do their bit. I witnessed again first hand how, like their colleagues in in Mezar e Sahrif, our troops in Kabul do much with little and often more than they know. We owe it to them, to ordinary Afghans and our own communities to see that problems in other parts of the Greater Middle East do not make Afghanistan seem like the ‘forgotten war’.