On Sunday 12 July Andrew Marr interviewed Tom King, former Conservative Defence Secretary
Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
The former Defence Secretary Lord King calls for more troops and helicopters - and says serious political mistakes have been made.
ANDREW MARR:
Tom King, former Conservative Defence Secretary
Well, as we heard in the news, the rising death in Afghanistan is stimulating a more open debate about the British military mission there.
Its strategy, resources and likely duration are now being questioned. Lord King, Tom King, was Northern Ireland Defence Secretary during the last Conservative government and I spoke to him a little earlier, beginning by asking him whether the criticisms of equipment provided for British soldiers were valid.
LORD KING:
I think certainly some of the equipment is getting a tremendous bashing out there. And we saw it today, in the papers, a very brave act by one sergeant when his Land Rover broke down and the gearbox collapsed.
But where there really is a shortage, a really critical shortage, is helicopters, and the degree to which they need to be on the roads, the need to which they need to have the supply convoys, whether some could be done by helicopter.
Which is what we did in Northern Ireland in my time. When the roads became too dangerous we switched to helicopters, and there appears to be a serious shortage at the present time.
ANDREW MARR:
And is it simply too few helicopters or are they not good enough helicopters?
LORD KING:
Far too few. If you look at the number of helicopters that the new American troops are taking with them into Helmand. I did a quick calculation. They have eight times as many helicopters for the number of troops that they have out there, and there are stories in the papers today that particular requests for helicopters for our special forces were turned down by the Treasury.
ANDREW MARR:
Because if they're, if they're therefore forced to travel by road, that suggests that people are actually dying - British soldiers are being killed because of the lack of helicopters.
LORD KING:
Well that … Each incident is different in these cases, but certainly serious worries and quite clearly they're borrowing helicopters from the Americans. But what matters now is that this is the crunch time. We are in this critical offensive at the present time, which I think will determine the outcome of the Afghan situation and the whole Afghanistan campaign. It's us, it's the Americans, and it's critically also the Pakistan Army and what they can do the other side of the border - putting this total squeeze on the Taliban, hopefully picking up with Osama bin Laden, maybe Mullah Omar as well. But this is the critical time and they must have the resources to do the job.
ANDREW MARR:
Gordon Brown is reportedly preparing for a British troop surge in Afghanistan and the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, saying well they can have all the equipment they want, there's no problem there. Do you think that's how it's seen by the soldiers and their leaders themselves.
LORD KING:
Well I got the impression from what Alistair Darling said that he's talking more about personal equipment and maybe vehicles and that side. I think there's no question that while people are saying they've got wonderful equipment, at the same time you get this continual chorus about the problem of the shortage of helicopters. And if it's true that Gordon Brown is now considering sending more troops, I mean I think it's widely known that the Chief of General Staff, General Dannatt, asked for more troops. He was rejected. I don't know whether he was rejected on some alternative military strategy or whether it was simply a Treasury refusal to put up the money. If it was the latter, that's absolutely outrageous.
ANDREW MARR:
But we must have those troops, in your view?
LORD KING:
Because the whole problem in some of the difficulties we're in at the moment is we've never had enough troops to do the job. You remember that I was involved in the first Gulf War. We had 45,000 troops as part of an allied force that in the end added up to three quarters of a million troops and all the surpluses - Navy and Air Force as well - who combined together, and that was the much more limited objective of clearing Saddam Hussein out of a country he shouldn't have been in, namely Kuwait. This job, this task is vastly more difficult and all the way through we've been trying to do it with too few troops. And the tragedy of Afghanistan was Iraq. We did … You remember Mission Accomplished, you remember the story that we - and it was a very significant victory, the first defeat of the Taliban, the expulsion of al-Qaeda - and then we walked away. Then we went off to Iraq and thought all was good, and we allowed everybody to regroup and that's why we face so many of the problems we've got at the present time.
ANDREW MARR:
A lot of people looking at the number of deaths being sustained by the British Army in Afghanistan must be asking themselves what's the exit strategy, what's it really all about, is this a war that we can win? What would your message be to them?
LORD KING:
What … My message to that is that that's why I say this campaign now, this particular phase of the campaign is absolutely critical. We have to have a real shock and defeat of the Taliban in that area, that no-man's land where they've existed across the border into Pakistan and into Helmand. And then we have to have this crash increase in the amount of Afghan Army and if possible Afghan police and some real reconstruction programme, some real sign that the Kabul government is going to make some real difference to the people in the various provinces - including, in particular, Helmand. Because the idea that we can stay there for years and years and years is quite unreal. There's definitely a time limit, and some certainly in Afghanistan would obviously feel that we've been there too long. And the position of any foreign forces in Afghanistan gets progressively more difficult as the years go by, and every lesson of history tells you that.
ANDREW MARR:
And as a former Northern Ireland Secretary, do you accept that there is a danger that the more people, more Afghan civilians being killed and driven out of their homes, actually the more pro-Taliban, anti-Western sentiment is being built up there?
LORD KING:
Of course, because the more they're there and the more military activities are taking place …I mean I think we may be in certain areas in the Allied Forces pretty unpopular. The next most unpopular people undoubtedly would be al-Qaeda and the foreign mercenaries and Islamic fundamentalists who've come in who have no connection with the country at all, have no connection with the local tribes and Taliban who are also, I believe, extremely unwelcome at the moment. What we have to do is to establish a rapid improvement in the situation and then get an understanding that if peace is to return, that under no circumstances will they allow al-Qaeda back again to have their training groups and training camps there again once more.
ANDREW MARR:
You of course talk to senior military people still. Would you say that the message, to sum up, would be more helicopters, more troops, and, if necessary, more money?
LORD KING:
You've got to do it. We're in a very difficult position. Some serious political mistakes have been made and the duty of the politicians responsible for them is to make everything available now, so that the problems that have arisen can be overcome and so that the courage and wonderful commitment of our forces there in very difficult circumstances isn't let down. That is absolutely essential and it's urgent.
ANDREW MARR:
And it's urgent. This has to be sorted, in your view, settled within the next few months?
LORD KING:
I believe so. I mean the winter, of course everything shuts down in the winter, so we need to an extent … So what we need to do is get the action quickly now and really get the momentum going, so that people can see also and the local people can see that the allied anti-Taliban campaign is working. If the local people lose confidence as well, then you have a real problem.
ANDREW MARR:
And do you look at this and any part of you thinks well there is a serious danger that we could become embroiled for years and years ahead; that it could be the classic quagmire we can't get out of?
LORD KING:
Well you remember Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was our Ambassador there, said we've got to be prepared to stay there for a very long time. I never thought that was a real possibility. It's interesting that Bob Gates, who's now the US Defence Secretary and was both under George Bush and now under President Obama, wrote a very interesting book about the Soviet occupation and the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. And the last line of triumph in the book is the line: 'At last the land was free of the foreign invader'. So he certainly, for one, knows the dangers of staying too long.
ANDREW MARR:
Lord King, thank you very much.
INTERVIEW ENDS
Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.
Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy
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