Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

I WATCHED Politics Show Wales today in sheer disbelief at the words coming out of Dai Harvard’s mouth on Afghanistan. I think I paraphrase when he said something like “It’s not a war. It’s about talking, and sorting things out”. So why send so many troops there if it’s all about negotiation and conversation?

My parents call Mr Harvard the Member for Helmand, as he always seems to appear in the local press decked out in army gear and visiting British troops out in Afghanistan. I wouldn’t mind so much if he talked sense about the situation, but being an embedded politician with British troops, I hardly think he’s going to get an unbiased viewpoint of the situation.

But the reason for this blog was not to concentrate on Dai Harvard’s political career. It was motivated by what I have been reading of late about the Iraq inquiry. There is excitement, fear, a sense of anxiety, and some anger ahead of Tony Blair’s evidence to the Chilcot inquiry this Friday. Families of victims are threatening to protest, some refuse to turn up, and news sources report that the elevated terrorist risk to the UK is partly due to Blair’s evidence session. But whatever the emotions associated with Blair’s turn in giving evidence, nobody is quite so sure what his fate will be, or whether he will be tested fully.

Now, I think you know my initial thoughts on an inquiry as spearheaded by the executive, and my worries that nothing will come of it. But it’s clear that the evidence so far has done nothing to help the Labour party’s reputation in the run up to the General Election. Lord Goldsmith is set to give evidence this week, so too is Sir Michael Wood, former chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office who, according to legal sources, advised ‘throughout’ the run-up to war that invasion would breach international law, unless there was a new United Nations resolution. All of this public scrutiny has motivated Gordon Brown also to declare that he will give evidence before the General Election. How noble of you, I hear you cry.

But coming to my point, the issue for me is that whatever is said, whatever evidence is given, whatever conclusion Chilcot and his team come to, will there be a sense of everyone taking a sigh of relief, brushing it under the carpet, and moving on? How possibly can this be done with the spectre of Afghanistan hanging over the current government?  Some 250 British soldiers have now died in a ‘war’ that one Labour MP does not even deem to be a war. There are arguments that troops don’t have the machinery they need, that they are not fully supported when they return to the UK. Is the Government not learning any lessons from Iraq’s mistakes? Is it asking for a future inquiry into the Afghan war? It is certainly going the right way about it.

There are lives at stake here, so ministers cannot afford to make mistakes. Of course, I don’t think we should be there anyway, just as I did not believe that military action in Iraq was justified. If these two wars have taught us anything (and yes, Dai, Afghanistan is a war) it is that it is better – and cheaper – to build an economy of opportunity and prosperity, along with basic pubic services and amenities, than it is to waste billions on defence spend.

But the lesson goes deeper. What we should all know realise is that we shouldn’t meddle in the affairs of other countries, particularly if we need to use guns to do it.