Lord Garden: My Lords, despite it being only a fortnight since we discussed many of these issues after the gracious Speech, things have happened internationally in the mean time, and the contributions that we have heard throughout the debate today have all been important and have added to the information that we had before.

The central issues are not surprising. We have talked predominantly about Israel-Palestine, Israel-Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan and how we can develop the relationships with Iran and Syria. The noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, brought an important dimension to the debate that had not been picked up elsewhere—the question of Turkey. From these Benches, I support every word that he said. It surprised me that there has been no mention of the possibility of conflict in Iran, of the possibility of either US or Israeli action against Iran, or of the way in which Saudi-Iranian relations are going.

Most noble Lords made the point that all the problems are interconnected. Although the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, chose to separate them, I think that at the end he put them back together again. Certainly there is an interconnection between these problems, which cover a large geographical area. It is also an area full of natural resources, although we have not spoken a great deal about the wealth that is available but is so unevenly distributed. As King Abdullah of Jordan told us on 7 November, we do not have much time. He talked about there being a matter of months left in which to make progress. There is a real problem, in that the international community does not seem to be able to focus on more than one crisis at a time, yet things are moving in all these areas, as we have heard.

Like other noble Lords, I shall start with Iraq, particularly because it is an area in which we have a significant commitment. We also, as many noble Lords have said, have a deep responsibility there because we had a hand in causing the current situation and because of the levels of deaths and violence, the exodus of people and the lack of a clear strategy. We heard from the Minister today that things are relatively calm in all but four areas. We heard a similarly complacent introduction from the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, on 20 November. The problems in Iraq are extraordinary. The bucolic pictures of progress that we hear from Ministers are impossible to reconcile with the reality. There were reports in a newspaper this weekend of a policy of murdering patients in hospitals if they belonged to the wrong group.

My noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby referred to the problems of reconstruction. We know that electricity is still available only for a few hours a day in much of the country. We know of the fleeing of tens of thousands of professionals out of the country. The Minister told us the figures for how many people had gone back into Afghanistan; he did not tell us the figures for how many people are leaving Iraq. We have asked repeatedly over the past three years for objective data to be published on a regular basis so that we can see where there is progress and where there is a lack of progress, so that we can put the resources in the right place. There is no hope of a successful political development in Iraq if the Iraqi Government cannot, in the end, deliver any improvements in the day-to-day lives of their people.

I would love to have the time to debate with the noble Lord, Lord Soley, the appropriate ways in which interventions should be carried out. It is a complex issue, two aspects of which relate to how many allies you have with you and what chance you have of a successful outcome. I would say to those who supported the intervention into Iraq, which includes my noble friend Lord Jacobs, that they should do what I do and look every morning at the website www.dailywarnews.blogspot.com. This website collates media reports from Iraq of events over the past 24 hours. It is always sombre reading. The Saturday report included 91 killed and 43 injured in a triple car bomb attack in central Baghdad; an American soldier killed in Anbar province; three killed and seven wounded at a police checkpoint at a west Baghdad hospital; an interior ministry official gunned down in the east of the capital; two killed by a Katyusha rocket attack; and a soft drinks delivery driver and his colleague shot—and that is only the Baghdad section. It finishes with just one sentence:

• “Police said they found 44 bodies in different parts of Baghdad”.

Lest noble Lords should think that I picked a particularly bad day, I rechecked the website this morning. Yesterday’s report has a similar sentence stating that the figure for yesterday was 50 bodies in Baghdad. I shall not weary your Lordships with the continuing litany of death and destruction for the other provinces, although the website gives the figures province by province, not only for the four provinces. I added it up to 196 dead reported in the Iraqi media in that 24-hour period. There were hardly any reports, of course, in our own media. We have grown bored of reading about the terror that we have brought to the Iraqi people.
We have heard many views today on what to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, reminded us, we hang on expecting Baker-Hamilton to pull a rabbit out of the hat tomorrow. We have also learnt

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that on 6 November Mr Rumsfeld was writing his memo of 21 proposals of how to cut and run without appearing to do so. Despite the Minister’s protestations, we know that the British Government have no influence on this US debate on strategy and as usual we must wait to find out what the US intends to do. I trust that we in this country will not have to wait too long to have a full investigation into the way we have handled Iraq. There are lessons to be learnt at every stage—from when we went in, to how we conducted the war, to what has happened subsequently. Those are lessons that we may need to apply if we come back to other interventions later.
Noble Lords have agreed that partition would be bad for Iraq, yet the endgame has not yet been played out. We have taken comfort from the apparent stability in the Kurdish northern region, yet there are worrying reports of growing tensions even there. Perhaps the Minister in his winding-up speech could share with us his assessment of developments in the north of Iraq. The battle for the central region including Baghdad seems to be being lost if the level of violence is the indicator. Even in the south, which is of direct interest to us in the UK as our forces are there, divisions are appearing between the Shia groups, and the role of Iran is of great concern. Add to all that this talk of Saudi Arabia readying itself to take side against Iranian-backed Shias in Iraq and we have a picture of great instability. As many speakers have said, we need to talk with Iran and Syria. I welcome the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, gave us and what he said about the region having to have a real stake in, not just a single conference on, the way forward.

Then we turn to Afghanistan, the other country in which this nation has a direct military commitment. I spoke about reconstruction in our debate on 10 October, and we have had a series of opportunities to speak on NATO and Afghanistan in the past two months. As noble Lords will know, I do not accept the criticisms that have been generally voiced about NATO’s performance. We owe NATO quite a lot for the progress that has been made in Afghanistan.

On this occasion, I will deal briefly with only two aspects. The first is opium production. The Minister in his beautiful way said that the increase is “disappointing”. As my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby gave us the area statistics for increase of production, let me give another statistic. This is from the Washington Post of 2 December, which reported that the 2006 production of the crop has broken all previous records. In addition to a 26 per cent production increase over the past year, coming to a total of 5,644 metric tonnes, the area of land being cultivated grew by 61 per cent. In the areas that we are interested in—the two main production provinces of Helmand in the south-west and Uruzgan in central Afghanistan—production was up by 132 per cent. Does the Minister recognise these figures? Are these the ones that are disappointing? If so, what does it mean for our strategy?

We on these Benches support the analysis that Afghanistan is a direct security threat to the UK in two different ways: because the training of terrorists that al-Qaeda carried out in the past could be re-established; and because the country is a provider of heroin on the streets of Britain. But if we are losing the battle on that second half of the dual threat, what changes of policy do the British Government envisage? We have had some ideas from noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, highlighted the importance of alternative livelihoods, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, gave us a picture of the economic challenges and the way in which the economy might be developed.
The second question that I would like to draw to your Lordships’ attention is more difficult—whether we have adopted the most appropriate military strategy for stabilising the south and east of Afghanistan. The noble Lord, Lord Blaker, spoke about the Canadian approach, but noble Lords might be interested in a very thoughtful report in the Toronto Globe and Mail this Saturday, which looked at techniques used by the Dutch in the very challenging Uruzgan province. The Dutch did a concerted hearts and minds operation with 1,400 troops. The commander described his approach as follows:

• “It’s a strategy focused on supporting the local government rather than killing its supposed enemies, talking with the Taliban instead of fighting them, and treading carefully with an understanding of how little any foreigner knows about this untamed country”.

The Canadian reporter contrasted that with the more gung-ho—but certainly less successful in terms of casualties—approach adopted by the Canadians in the next-door province of Kandahar. There are lessons for our own approach here. As I have said before, the other Europeans have made progress over the last five years in Afghanistan because they have worked with the people at a slow pace—a pace that we could go at with the number of troops that we have. There are no easy military-style solutions.
I was very taken by the point that my noble friend Lady Williams made on the continuity of commanders. These are lessons that you learn on the ground. If by the time you have learnt them you get posted and someone else from another nation has to relearn them, there is no continuity in approach, which gives rise to dangers for us.

Before I leave the subject of Iraq and Afghanistan, I must comment on the special problem that the two very challenging operations give the British Armed Forces. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, the noble Baroness, Lady Park, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, spoke on this subject. I spoke about it in the Queen’s Speech debate as well. We all know that the defence planning assumptions have been exceeded not on a routine but on a continuous basis for the past seven years. Either those defence planning assumptions must be changed, which will involve additional resource costs because that is what they generate, or we reduce the tasks. We cannot carry on doing it in this way or we will end up with broken forces.

I would have liked to have spent some time on the situation in Iran, but I expect that we will be coming back to that as things develop. My noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire spoke wisely on how we should be handling Iran. I trust that we will not see any precipitate pre-emptive military action taking place there. But we also have to think of the implications for Iran and hence for Saudi Arabia if Iraq fragments, which may also lead to the possibility of conflict.

I turn finally to the Middle East peace process, Israel and its problems. We have had a rich debate on this, to which many noble Lords contributed. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester spoke about the effect of checkpoints. Those of us who have worked in the West Bank and Gaza very rapidly came to understand how they generate anger. If that can happen in a short time, I do not know what it must like to be there all the time. The right reverend Prelate’s description of the situation around Rachel’s Tomb was important in terms of understanding the problems. The noble Lords, Lord Wright of Richmond and Lord Judd, and my noble friends Lady Tonge and Lord Jacobs all spoke with passion from different perspectives. It is important that we have those different perspectives.

We have a very fragile peace at the moment. Indeed, it is a measure of how parlous the situation is that we take comfort from the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel and the UN-monitored ceasefire between Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel. Neither situation is stable or likely to be long-lasting unless progress is made in finding a way for this small but volatile region to live at peace. As King Abdullah told us, we are running out of time. As many noble Lords have said, Israel has managed by its actions to produce an elected Hamas Government as well as Hezbollah’s increasing power within Lebanon. Given the current scene, it looks set to get worse.

My noble friend Lord Wallace reminded us that reports over the weekend suggest that Saudi Arabia is ready to take a lead in brokering an Arab-Israeli peace deal based on the initiative of four years ago. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on that.

We have talked about the engagement of Syria and Iran. I was struck by the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Hylton. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, made clear the importance of engaging these nations. It appears that President Bush has no great interest in doing much more. He did not bother to do anything while he was in Jordan. We have to advance this, if necessary without America, until America is ready to help. The Oslo agreement was done without America kick-starting the process.
In an article in today’s Financial Times, Zbigniew Brzezinski says:

• “The destructive war in Iraq, the hypocritical indifference to the human dimensions of the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian relations, the lack of diplomatic initiative in dealing with Iran and the frequent use of Islamophobic rhetoric are setting in motion forces that threaten to push America out of the Middle East, with dire consequences for itself and its friends in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia”.
That quote is equally true of the UK in its role as the unquestioning ally of the US.

Wherever we have looked across the Middle East and Afghanistan, it is clear that the long-term imposition of security by military means is impossible. The military, by making the rule of law possible, must be the facilitators of the more important political and economic development, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq or Afghanistan. Too often the military operation becomes the central focus of attention, and quick military solutions lead to long and deep resentment which compounds the problems and makes peace more difficult. If the international community fails, we have the prospect of civil wars in Lebanon and Iraq, and perhaps conflict within and between other parts of the region. That must not happen. I agree with the Minister’s caution in his opening speech: a failed strategy in the region will come back to haunt us in the United Kingdom.