thetorydiary

David Cameron and Liam Fox flew out to Afghanistan yesterday to meet troops and see for themselves what is happening on the ground right now in Helmand province.

We carried this BBC footage of the visit on the site last night.

But today the headline announcement coming from Mr Cameron is that an incoming Conservative Government would double from  £2,400 to £4,800 the allowance to soldiers returning from a six-month tour in Afghanistan.

He is also re-iterating previously announced plans to appoint a national security adviser, set up a war cabinet, and make Ministry of Defence service personnel wear uniforms not suits.

After meeting troops at the Lashkar Gah base yesterday, the Tory leader said that he was "not interested in cutting and running" from Afghanistan:

"I am not interested in trying to set out some sort of timetable and convince people in that way. What I am interested in doing is helping you, whether in opposition or in government, to succeed in what we are doing here and then to come home. The faster we succeed, the faster we can come home."

"I think following President Obama's speech and the increase in US forces and the increase in British forces, we have a chance now. It is probably our last chance to get it right but we do have a chance."

Today he is scheduled to meet President Karzai.

Update: In a Today Programme interview, Mr Cameron underlined that it was "pretty unlikely" that any British troops would come home from Afghanistan next year, saying, "I don't want to raise false hopes". If and when the audio appears on the BBC website, I will link to it. It's the 08.10 interview.

Jonathan Isaby

Last night President Obama announced his much-delayed strategy for Afghanistan.

Conservative MP and former army officer, Patrick Mercer, has issued this statement to ConservativeHome, questioning the President's indication that troops will start to withdraw in 2011:

"One of the great military maxims is that surprise must be achieved whenever possible.  Yet, President Obama's surge in Afghanistan of around 30,000 troops is one of the most highly publicised punches ever to be delivered.  There is no doubt in my mind that it is necessary, that it will be welcomed by the Afghan people and the Afghan government and that it will provide a new dimension in which the war can be prosecuted.  But I believe that mistakes have been made presentationally.

When announcing 500 extra British troops our Prime Minister spoke about a "timetable" for withdrawal.  Now President Obama has suggested that US forces will start to drawdown in 2011.  Gordon Brown's comments were immediately greeted with rapture on jihadi websites claiming this was the start of the breakdown in the alliance and for President Obama to give a date like this also plays into our enemies hands.  I understand the need for the domestic audience to be pacified in America, but I would suggest that both leaders ought to have talked in more detail about a graduated series of achievements or goals rather than time lines.  To give time lines allows our enemies to pause or to concentrate in their offensives in order to achieve maximum effect both militarily and in terms of publicity.  Clearly, that is deeply undesirable."

Mr Mercer and Alex Deane are right but leading American hawk, Bill Kristol, is also right to welcome Barack Obama's embrace of military power - an embrace that has enraged much of the base of his own party. Kristol for the Washington Post:

"By mid-2010, Obama will have more than doubled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he became president; he will have empowered his general, Stanley McChrystal, to fight the war pretty much as he thinks necessary to in order to win; and he will have retroactively, as it were, acknowledged that he and his party were wrong about the Iraq surge in 2007 -- after all, the rationale for this surge is identical to Bush’s, and the hope is for a similar success. He will also have embraced the use of military force as a key instrument of national power."

Tim Montgomerie

The Times reports this morning that Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox will deliver a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies today in which he will set out the three main responsibilities that the Government has in Afghanistan:

• clearly to define the strategy and the objectives;
• to resource the campaign properly;
• to maintain political resilience by taking the public into its confidence.

The paper reports that Dr Fox will accuse the Labour Government of failing on all three counts:

“The sooner we get the Afghan security forces trained and on the front line the faster we can bring our own troops home,” he will say. He will also suggest the forming of local “auxiliary forces” to help with security in Helmand.

Dr Fox will accuse the Government of failing to explain to the public what winning in Afghanistan will entail.

“Public dissent for the mission in Afghanistan exists in the UK because the Government has found it difficult to express what we mean by winning in Afghanistan,” he will say.

“Success in Afghanistan will be achieved when we have a stable-enough Afghanistan, able to manage its own internal and external security to a degree that stops interference from outside powers and allow the country to resist the establishment of terror bases and the training camps that were there before.”

> Dr Fox wrote exclusively for ConservativeHome earlier in the month about how Afghanistan would be the "top military priority" of a Conservative government.

Jonathan Isaby

William Hague has written a strong piece for the Daily Mail in which he has expanded upon his intervention of yesterday in which he has warned against international acceptance of a corrupt election result in Afghanistan.

The alleged corruption is certainly widespread.  William Hague:

"Votes from 447 polling stations  -  amounting to some 200,000 ballots  -  have already been invalidated 'because of fraud', and there are reports of ghost polling stations, too. The EU's election monitors have confirmed 'large-scale ballot stuffing' at polling stations, including 'hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes accepted at the tally centre and included among the preliminary official results'."

The Shadow Foreign Secretary fears that coalition troops will lose all moral authority in Afghanistan if they are associated with a "rubber stamp [for] disputed election results which disenfranchise sections of the population."  He calls for the Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission to complete its work and for elections to be re-run in parts of the country, if the Commission advises.

The Conservative leadership is well aware that the problem of Afghanistan will be one of the biggest issues in the overflowing Downing Street in-box that it is likely to inherit.  The anti-corruption position taken by William Hague and David Cameron in the last 24 hours signals a new toughness.  It will be interesting to see how they respond to the huge pressure that President Obama is likely to place on Britain for committing more troops.  At the weekend David Davis said we had eighteen months to rescue Afghanistan and every available soldier should be deployed there during that window.

Tim Montgomerie