House of Commons
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Prayers
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Speaker's statement
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
Before we start today’s business, I want to welcome Members back, albeit in sombre circumstances. On behalf of the whole House, I want to record our shock and sadness at the tragic incident in Keyham last Thursday. I know all Members will want to join me in sending our condolences and sympathies to all those who have been affected by that terrible incident.
I know that the House will also want to remember, on this day when we are here to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, all the service personnel of this country who have lost their lives or have been injured during this conflict. I know that there is no constituency that has not been touched, none more so than Chorley, which saw two serving personnel tragically lose their lives. We all have reason to be here.
I wish to remind the House that the provisions which allowed for hybrid participation in the Chamber are no longer in place. All contributions to proceedings will once again be made from within this Chamber. I remind Members that if they participate in a debate, they should be present throughout most if not all of that debate, and certainly at least for the opening speeches, the two speeches following their contributions and the winding-up speeches.
If the House divides today, Members should enter both Lobbies from the Members’ Lobby end of the Chamber. Doorkeepers will be on hand to assist Members participating in the Division. I will instruct that the doors be locked 10 minutes after the start of the Division.
I would also like to say thank you to all the staff of the House who have made today possible for giving up their time, breaking their holidays, to ensure that this important debate goes ahead.
Business without Debate
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Business of the House (Today)
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
I wish to inform the House that I have selected a manuscript amendment to the motion in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), which is as follows: at line 3, delete “2.30 pm” and insert “5 pm”. I call the Leader of the House to move the motion.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
I beg to move,
That, at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the Question necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of the Prime Minister relating to the situation in Afghanistan not later than 2.30 pm.
I am delighted to move the motion and to inform the House that Her Majesty’s Government are willing to accept the manuscript amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone).
Mr Speaker
Then we are completely in line with a Thursday sitting; I thank the Leader of the House for that.
Amendment made: (a), at line 3, delete “2.30 pm” and insert “5 pm”.—(Mr. Davis.)
Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That, at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the Question necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of the Prime Minister relating to the situation in Afghanistan not later than 5 pm.
Afghanistan
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the situation in Afghanistan.
May I begin by thanking you, Mr Speaker, and all the parliamentary staff for enabling us to meet this morning? Before I turn to today’s debate, I am sure the House will want to join you, Mr Speaker, and me in sending our condolences to the family and friends of those killed in the appalling shooting in Plymouth last week. Investigations are of course continuing, but we will learn every possible lesson from this tragedy.
I know that Members across the House share my concern about the situation in Afghanistan, the issues it raises for our own security and the fears of many remaining in that country, especially women and children. The sacrifice in Afghanistan is seared into our national consciousness, with 150,000 people serving there from across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, including a number of Members in all parts of the House, whose voices will be particularly important today. So it is absolutely right that we should come together for this debate.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
As someone who opposed this nation-building intervention, I believe that it now brings its responsibilities. Will the Prime Minister assure me that, in addition to getting our nationals out safely, and in offering a generous welcome to the many refugees, all necessary resources will be given to those Afghans and others who helped the British Council in its work, including the promotion of women’s rights? Many are in fear of their lives—of retribution from the Taliban. The Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme is slow-moving at the moment. Will he commit the necessary resource, because the window of opportunity is narrow and no one must be left behind.
Mr Speaker
We have got the point. May I remind Members that if you are going to intervene, you have got to be short. If you intervene more than twice, you will understand why you have gone down the list—if there was one. [Laughter.]
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend. I can assure him that, as I will be saying in just a few moments, we will be doing everything we can to support those who have helped the UK mission in Afghanistan and investing everything that we can to support the wider area around Afghanistan, and to do everything that we can to avert a humanitarian crisis.
It is almost 20 years since the United States suffered the most catastrophic attack on its people since the second world war, in which 67 British citizens also lost their lives, at the hands of murderous terrorist groups incubated in Afghanistan. In response, NATO invoked article 5 of its treaty for the first and only time in its history, and the United Kingdom, among others, joined America in going into Afghanistan on a mission to extirpate al-Qaeda in that country, and to do whatever we could to stabilise Afghanistan, in spite of all the difficulties and challenges we knew that we would face. And we succeeded in that core mission.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that we are ceding back the country to the very insurgency that we went in to defeat in the first place, and that the reputation of the west for support for democracies around the world has suffered? There are so many lessons to be learned from what happened over the last 20 years. Will he now agree to a formal independent inquiry into conduct in Afghanistan?
The Prime Minister
As I said in the House just a few weeks ago, there was an extensive defence review about the Afghan mission after the combat mission ended in 2014, and I believe that most of the key questions have already been extensively gone into. It is important that we in this House should today be able to scrutinise events as they unfold.
As I was saying, we succeeded in that core mission, and the training camps in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan were destroyed. Al-Qaeda plots against this country were foiled because our serving men and women were there, and no successful terrorist attacks against the west have been mounted from Afghan soil for two decades.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
May I take the Prime Minister back to his remarks in the House on 8 July, when he referred to the assessment that he had made? There has clearly been a catastrophic failure of our intelligence, or our assessment of the intelligence, because of the speed with which this has caught us unawares. Can he set out for the House how we may assure ourselves that in future years no terrorist attacks put together in Afghanistan take place here in the United Kingdom?
The Prime Minister
I think it would be fair to say that the events in Afghanistan have unfolded faster, and the collapse has been faster, than I think even the Taliban themselves predicted. What is not true is to say that the UK Government were unprepared or did not foresee this, because it was certainly part of our planning. The very difficult logistical operation for the withdrawal of UK nationals has been under preparation for many months, and I can tell the House that the decision to commission the emergency handling centre at the airport—the commissioning of that centre—took place two weeks ago.
Several hon. Members rose—
The Prime Minister
If I can just make a little more progress, I will certainly give way in a moment.
Alongside this core mission, we worked for a better future for the people of Afghanistan. The heroism and tireless work of our armed forces contributed to national elections as well as to the promotion and protection of human rights and equalities in a way that many in Afghanistan had not previously known. Whereas 20 years ago, almost no girls went to school and women were banned from positions of governance, now 3.6 million girls have been in school this year alone and women hold over a quarter of the seats in the Afghan Parliament. But we must be honest and accept that huge difficulties were encountered at each turn, and some of this progress is fragile.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to our ambassador and the diplomatic team in Kabul and our armed forces on the ground, who have been evacuating people in extraordinary circumstances. One of the consequences of the rapidity of the collapse of Kabul is that many people have been left trapped, unable to access the airport and unable to evacuate, including many of those who should be coming to this country who served us bravely in that country and many women who are particularly at risk. Many of us across the House will have experienced chaos in the last 24 to 48 hours in communicating information through to the ground to get some of those people out of the country. Can the Prime Minister give us some assurances about how we can get that information through so that we can get those brave people out of there, including many whose lives are at risk right now in Kabul?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman raises exactly the right question. I spoke this morning to Ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow as well as to Brigadier Dan Blanchford, who is handling the evacuation. It would be fair to say that the situation has stabilised since the weekend, but it remains precarious and the UK officials on the ground are doing everything that they can to expedite the movement of people—those who need to come out, whether from the ARAP scheme or the eligible persons—to get from Kabul to the airport. At the moment, it would be fair to say that the Taliban are allowing that evacuation to go ahead, but the most important thing is that we get this done in as expeditious a fashion as we can, and that is what we are doing. I am grateful not just to the UK forces who are now out there helping to stabilise the airport, but also to the US forces.
Several hon. Members rose—
The Prime Minister
Can I just make some progress? The combat phase of our mission ended in 2014, when we brought the vast majority of our troops home and handed over responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves, and we continued to support their efforts. Even at that stage, we should remember that conflict was continuous and that, in spite of the bravery and sacrifice of the Afghan army—we should never forget that 69,000 of those Afghan army troops gave their lives in this conflict—significant parts of the country remained contested or under Taliban control. So when, after two decades, the Americans prepared to take their long-predicted and well-trailed step of a final extraction of their forces, we looked at many options, including the potential for staying longer ourselves, finding new partners or even increasing our presence.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the Prime Minister share with the House what assessment UK intelligence services made of the relative fighting capacity currently of the Afghan army and the Taliban, and will he tell us what representations the UK Government made to our US allies with regards to their timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He asks for a commentary on the respective military potential for power of the Taliban and the Afghan forces. It is pretty clear from what has happened that the collapse of the Afghan forces has been much faster than expected. As for our NATO allies and allies around the world, when it came for us to look at the options that this country might have in view of the American decision to withdraw, we came up against this hard reality that since 2009, America has deployed 98% of all weapons released from NATO aircraft in Afghanistan and, at the peak of the operation, when there were 132,000 troops on the ground, 90,000 of them were American. The west could not continue this US-led mission—a mission conceived and executed in support and defence of America—without American logistics, without US air power and without American might.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I note the point that my right hon. Friend is making about the importance of American support for our efforts in Afghanistan and those of our allies, but will he please set out when he first spoke personally to Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO, to discuss with him the possibility of putting together an alliance of other forces in order to replace American support in Afghanistan?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I spoke to Secretary-General Stoltenberg only the other day about NATO’s continuing role in Afghanistan, but I really think that it is an illusion to believe that there is appetite among any of our partners for a continued military presence or for a military solution imposed by NATO in Afghanistan. That idea ended with the combat mission in 2014. I do not believe that today deploying tens of thousands of British troops to fight the Taliban is an option that, no matter how sincerely people may advocate it—and I appreciate their sincerity—would commend itself either to the British people or to this House. We must deal with the position as it now is, accepting what we have achieved and what we have not achieved.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
The Prime Minister seemed to be making an argument earlier that he had anticipated something similar to what went on, by having the rapid response force ready and waiting. Why, then, were he and the Foreign Secretary both on their holidays when this catastrophe happened?
The Prime Minister
The Government have been working around the clock to deal with the unfolding situation. We must deal with the world as it is, accepting what we have achieved and what we have not achieved. The UK will work with our international partners on a shared plan to support the people of Afghanistan and to contribute to regional stability. There will be five parts to this approach.
The Prime Minister
In just a minute.
First, our immediate focus must be on helping those to whom we have direct obligations, by evacuating UK nationals together with those Afghans who have assisted our efforts over the past 20 years. I know that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the bravery and commitment of our ambassador, Sir Laurie Bristow.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I thank the Prime Minister for giving way on that particular point. He will be aware that there are 228 missionaries in Afghanistan currently under sentence of death; those missionaries need to be taken out of Afghanistan. Of course, there are tens of thousands of others who are under sentence of death and fear for their lives. Will he assure the House that every effort will be made to bring back to safe haven people whose lives are under threat as a result of the catastrophe in foreign policy that has gone on in that country?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the very needy case that he does. I am sure that colleagues across the House—literally every Member, I imagine—have received messages from people who know someone who needs to get out of Afghanistan. I can tell him that we are doing everything we can to help out of that country those people to whom we owe a debt of obligation. On that point, I repeat my thanks not just to Laurie Bristow, but also to the commander on the ground, Brigadier Dan Blanchford and the entire British team in Kabul.
Several hon. Members rose—
The Prime Minister
I want to make some progress.
I can tell the House that we have so far secured the safe return of 306 UK nationals and 2,052 Afghan nationals as part of our resettlement programme, with a further 2,000 Afghan applications completed and many more being processed. UK officials are working round the clock to keep the exit door open in the most difficult circumstances and are actively seeking those who we believe are eligible but as yet unregistered.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Can the Prime Minister explain, then, how many people he thinks are eligible for relocation and are still to sign up? He says that the Government are doing “everything we can” to get these people out, so what does “everything we can” mean? How are they identifying these people and where they are, especially if they are already in hiding in fear of their lives?
The Prime Minister
That is why it is so important that we maintain a presence at Kabul airport and that is why we have been getting the message out that we want people to come through. As I said earlier, it is important for everybody to understand that in the days that we have ahead of us, which may be short, at the moment this is an environment in which the Taliban are permitting this evacuation to take place. These are interpreters, they are locally engaged staff and others who have risked their lives supporting our military efforts and seeking to secure new freedoms for their country. We are proud to bring these brave Afghans to our shores and we continue to appeal for more to come forward.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Home Secretary announced this morning that the UK will take 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan but that only 5,000 will be able to come this year. What are the 15,000 meant to do? Hang around and wait to be executed?
The Prime Minister
That is the 5,000 on whom—we are spending £200 million to bring a further 5,000 on top; I think it will be 10,000 altogether that we bring in under the ARAP and other programmes. We will increase that number over the coming years to 20,000, as I said, but the bulk of the effort of this country will be directed and should be directed at supporting people in Afghanistan and in the region to prevent a worse humanitarian crisis. I tell the House that in that conviction I am supported very strongly both by President Macron of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany.
We are also doing everything possible to accelerate the visas for the—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) cannot be like a drone in the Chamber, completely above everybody all the way through. I ask her to stand up and down please, and not just hover.
The Prime Minister
I was telling the House that we are making sure that we bring back the 35 brilliant Chevening scholars so that they can come and study in our great universities. We are deploying an additional 800 British troops to support this evacuation operation and I can assure the House that we will continue the operation for as long as conditions at the airport allow.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
As of last week, it was still Home Office policy that we would send people back to Kabul because we thought that it was safe. Will the Prime Minister also confirm that it is not just about people coming out of Afghanistan but about keeping people safe here, and that we will not send people back to this nightmare?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is entirely right that we will not be sending people back to Afghanistan; nor, by the way, will we allow people to come from Afghanistan to this country in an indiscriminate way. We want to be generous, but we must make sure that we look after our own security. Over the coming weeks, we will redouble our efforts, working with others to protect the UK homeland and all our citizens and interests from any threat that may emanate from a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, from terrorism to the narcotics trade.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must do everything we can to support those who have supported us, like Royal Marine Pen Farthing and his Nowzad charity’s veterinary staff and their immediate families, who now need safe passage back to the UK?
The Prime Minister
Like many of us, I have been lobbied extensively about the excellent work done by Mr Pen Farthing. I am well aware of his cause and all the wonderful things that he has done for animals in Afghanistan. I can tell my hon. Friend that we will do everything that we can to help Mr Pen Farthing and others who face particular difficulties, as he does—as I say, without in any way jeopardising our own national security. These are concerns shared across the international community, from the region itself to all of the NATO alliance and, indeed, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. I will chair a virtual meeting of the G7 in the coming days.
Thirdly, we have an enduring commitment to all the Afghan people. Now more than ever we must reaffirm that commitment. Our efforts must focus on supporting the Afghan people in the region, particularly those fleeing conflict or the threat of violence. We therefore call on the United Nations to lead a new humanitarian effort in the region.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I thank the Prime Minister for giving way, and I welcome his commitment to support in the region, and also the Government’s commitment to a resettlement programme. The Home Secretary announced in 2019 that the UK would continue a resettlement scheme of 5,000 refugees a year after the Syrian scheme closed. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the announcement today of an Afghan resettlement scheme is in addition to that existing 5,000 resettlement commitment, as opposed to simply being a refocusing or displacement of that existing 5,000-a-year resettlement programme?
The Prime Minister
I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady, because I think that she has asked a question that has formed in many people’s minds about the 5,000. Yes, indeed, the 5,000 extra in the resettlement scheme are additional to those already announced. We will support those people in coming to this country. We will also support the wider international community delivering humanitarian projects in the region by doubling the amount of humanitarian and development assistance that we had previously committed to Afghanistan this year with new funding—[Interruption]—wait for it—taking this up to £286 million with immediate effect. We call on others to work together on a shared humanitarian effort, focusing on helping the most vulnerable in what will be formidably difficult circumstances.
Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. Over the past 20 years, some 50 NATO and partner nations have been involved in Afghanistan. I welcome the measures that have been proposed by the UK and other countries such as the US, Canada, France, Germany and so on, but there are still many countries that have been involved in Afghanistan in recent years which have still yet to step up to the plate and recognise their responsibility in helping these people at this desperate time. Will the Prime Minister inform the House what is being done to encourage these other countries to take up their responsibility and help these people in Afghanistan?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and that is why the UK has chaired the UN Security Council, and asked with our French friends to put a motion together to get the world to focus on the humanitarian needs of Afghanistan. We will do the same thing in NATO, the G7 and other bodies in which we have a leadership role. We want all these countries to step up, as he rightly said, and focus on the most vulnerable in what will be formidably difficult circumstances.
Several hon. Members rose—
The Prime Minister
I have given way, I think you will agree, Mr Speaker, quite lot this morning. Thanks to your generosity and that of the House, there is now ample time for debate until later this afternoon, and I think that many Members will be able to get their points across. I therefore intend, with your leave, Mr Speaker, to make some progress.
Fourthly, while we must focus on the region itself, we will also create safe and legal routes for those Afghans most in need to come and settle here in the UK. In addition to those Afghans with whom we have worked directly, I can announce today that we are committing to relocating another 5,000 Afghans this year, with a new and bespoke resettlement scheme focusing on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. We will keep this under review for future years, with the potential of accommodating up to 20,000 over the long term. Taken together—
Several hon. Members rose—
The Prime Minister
I have been very generous with interventions—I think you will agree, Mr Speaker—and I have made my position clear.
Taken together, we are committing almost half a billion pounds of humanitarian funding to support the Afghan people.
Fifthly, we must also face the reality of a change of regime in Afghanistan. As president of the G7, the UK will work to unite the international community behind a clear plan for dealing with this regime in a unified and concerted way. Over the last three days, I have spoken with the NATO and UN secretaries-general and with President Biden, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron and Prime Minister Khan. We are clear, and we have agreed, that it would be a mistake for any country to recognise any new regime in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally. Instead, those countries that care about Afghanistan’s future should work towards common conditions about the conduct of the new regime before deciding together whether to recognise it, and on what terms.
We will judge this regime based on the choices it makes and by its actions rather than by its words—on its attitude to terrorism, crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian access and the right of girls to receive an education. Defending human rights will remain of the highest priority, and we will use every available political and diplomatic means to ensure that those human rights remain at the top of the international agenda.
Our United Kingdom has a roll-call of honour that bears the names of 457 servicemen and women who gave their lives in some of the world’s harshest terrain, and many others who bear injuries to this day, fighting in what had become the epicentre of global terrorism. Even amid the heart-wrenching scenes we see today, I believe they should be proud of their achievements, and we should be deeply proud of them, because they conferred benefits that are lasting and ineradicable on millions of people in one of the poorest countries on earth, and they provided vital protection for two decades to this country and the rest of the world. They gave their all for our safety, and we owe it to them to give our all to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a breeding ground for terrorism.
No matter how grim the lessons of past, the future is not yet written. At this bleak turning point, we must help the people of Afghanistan to choose the best of all their possible futures. In the UN, the G7 and NATO, with friends and partners around the world, that is the critical task on which this Government are now urgently engaged and will be engaged in the days to come.
Mr Speaker
I suggest to Back Benchers that we will be starting with a seven-minute limit. I call the Leader of the Opposition.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the staff for recalling Parliament for today’s debate.
Before I come to the urgent issue at hand, let me join you, Mr Speaker, and the Prime Minister in condemning the appalling shootings in Plymouth last week. We all send our condolences to the bereaved families. We must resolve to ensure that firearms do not get into the hands of dangerous people, and finally get to grips with the way that hate thrives on the internet.
Turning to Afghanistan, it has been a disastrous week—an unfolding tragedy. Twenty years ago, the Taliban were largely in control of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda were using the country as a training ground and a base for terror, including plotting the horrific 9/11 attack. There were widespread human rights abuses, girls were denied an education, women could not work and being gay was punishable by death—all imposed without democracy.
Since then, a fragile democracy emerged. It was by no means perfect, but no international terrorist attacks have been mounted from Afghanistan in that period. Women have gained liberty and won office, schools and clinics have been built, and Afghans have allowed themselves to dream of a better future. Those achievements were born of sacrifice—sacrifice by the Afghan people who bravely fought alongside their NATO allies, and British sacrifice.
More than 150,000 UK personnel have served in Afghanistan. They include Members from across this House, including the hon. and gallant Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), the hon. and gallant Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), and the hon. and gallant Members for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) and for Wells (James Heappey). They and the tens of thousands of others deployed in Afghanistan served in difficult and challenging circumstances, and the Labour party and—I am sure—everybody across this House thanks each and every one of them and of the 150,000. Many returned with life-changing injuries and, tragically, 457 did not return at all.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Later today, I will attend the service at RAF Lyneham, outside Royal Wootton Bassett, to commemorate the 10th anniversary, which falls today, of the last repatriation through Bassett. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the message to the people I will see today must be that those young lives were not wasted but played an absolutely essential role in deterring and destroying terrorism and carrying out so many other good works in Afghanistan?
Keir Starmer
I wholeheartedly agree with that point and will address it in one moment.
For many of those who returned from Afghanistan and other places around the world, mental health has been an all-too-familiar issue. It is raised by veterans time and again. The events of the past few days and weeks will have exacerbated the situation and reopened old wounds—everybody across this House will know of examples—so we must improve mental health services for our veterans.
On the point that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) just made, I wish to address directly all those who served in Afghanistan and their families—especially the families of those who were lost. Your sacrifice was not in vain—it was not in vain. You brought stability, reduced the terrorist threat and enabled progress. We are all proud of what you did. Your sacrifice deserves better than this, and so do the Afghan people.
There has been a major miscalculation of the resilience of the Afghan forces and staggering complacency from our Government about the Taliban threat. The result is that the Taliban are now back in control of Afghanistan. The gains made through 20 years of sacrifice hang precariously. Women and girls fear for their liberty. Afghan civilians are holding on to the undercarriage of NATO aircraft—literally clinging to departing hope. We face new threats to our security and an appalling humanitarian crisis.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
For all the reasons that the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned, does he not agree that President Biden is actually wrong when he talks about American sacrifices in a civil war? The Taliban are not at war with a regime; they are at war with the civilised values of justice, equality and tolerance, which all of us hold dear, and against which it respects no international boundaries.
Keir Starmer
I agree with the hon. Member and thank him for that intervention.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Keir Starmer
Let me make some progress and then I will give way.
The desperate situation requires leadership and for the Prime Minister to snap out of his complacency. The most urgent task is the protection of our diplomatic staff still working heroically in Kabul, and the evacuation of British nationals and Afghans who have risked their lives. Let me be clear: the Labour party fully supports the deployment of troops to that end. We want it to succeed just as quickly and safely as possible.
The Defence Secretary has said that some people who have worked with us will not get back—unconscionable. The Government must outline a plan: to work with our allies to do everything possible to ensure that that does not happen; to guarantee that our troops have the resources they need to carry out their mission as effectively and safely as possible; and to work to provide stable security at the airport in Kabul so that flights can depart and visas can be processed. We all know how difficult that is. We all know how hard everybody is working on the ground and we fully support them.
I raise an issue not by way of criticism, but just to get some reassurance: there are reports from non-governmental organisations that an evacuation plane left almost empty this morning because evacuees could not get to the airport to board that plane. As I say, we are not challenging the work on the ground—we know how difficult it is—but, if that is true, we would like to see that matter addressed at an appropriate moment.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
May I take the right hon. and learned Gentleman back to the statement that the President of the United States made the other day? Does he not agree that that took on the terms of a sort of shameful excuse? Given that the President had blamed the Afghan armed forces, who have lost nearly 70,000 troops in trying to defend Afghanistan, and given that corruption had stripped away much of the pay, money and support of those forces, the American decision to withdraw aircraft cover was almost certainly going to lead us to this situation. Does he not think that that is shameful?
Keir Starmer
The US is, of course, an important ally, but to overlook the fighting of the Afghan troops and forces, and the fact that they have been at the forefront of that fighting in recent years, is wrong. It is wrong for any of us to overlook that or the situation in which they now find themselves.
The urgent task is, of course, the evacuation. Equally urgent is the immediate refugee crisis.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Keir Starmer
I will make some progress and then I will give way.
Many Afghans have bravely sought to rebuild their country and they did so on a promise of democratic freedoms, the rule of law and liberty for the oppressed, including women and girls. They are our friends and that was our promise. They are now fearing for their lives. We do not turn our backs on friends at their time of need. We owe an obligation to the people of Afghanistan. There should be a resettlement scheme for people to rebuild their lives here, with safe and legal routes. It must be a resettlement scheme that meets the scale of the enormous challenge, but what the Government have announced this morning does not do that. It is vague and will support just 5,000 in the first year—a number without rationale. Was that based on a risk assessment of those most at need, or was it plucked out of the air? The offer to others is in the long term, but for those desperately needing our help now, there is no long term, just day-to-day survival.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that as well as marking the need for a much bolder and more ambitious resettlement programme, this disaster must mark a turning point for our failed asylum system, in particular by getting rid of the so-called hostile environment and the Nationality and Borders Bill, under which a women fleeing the Taliban with her children on a boat across the channel would be criminalised? Does he agree that that Bill must now be revised?
Keir Starmer
I will come on to the specifics of the system. Yet again, the Government seem ill-prepared and unwilling, just as they have been too slow to provide sanctuary to Afghans who have served alongside Britain. There have been too many reports of eligible Afghans facing bureaucratic hurdles, and too many are being unfairly excluded. Having known for months that the date of withdrawal was coming, the Home Office is not close to completing the process that it has already got up and running. The process was designed to help 7,000 people, yet Home Office figures this week showed that only 2,000 have been helped so far.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The point that I wanted to make to the Prime Minister was about the situation facing Afghan Sikhs. I know from my constituency casework that there are Afghan Sikhs in the system who are waiting for clearance from the Home Office; I call on the Government to process them as quickly as possible and not leave all those people in the system waiting any longer than they have to at the moment. They are terrified by the idea of being sent back home, and despite the reassurance given to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), I do not see any movement from the Home Office to give them the legal status that they need.
Keir Starmer
I am grateful for that intervention. Members on both sides of the House have given examples of individuals and groups who are very obviously at risk in Afghanistan and need to come out as quickly as possible. That is why the question arises as to what is behind the 5,000 number, and why others are having to wait so long.
The scale of the refugee crisis requires an international response, but we must lead it, and lead with a resettlement programme that meets the scale of the challenge. The scheme must be generous and welcoming. If it is not, we know the consequences now: violent reprisals in Afghanistan; people tragically fleeing into the arms of human traffickers—we know that that is what will happen—and more people risking and losing their lives on unsafe journeys, including across the English channel. We cannot betray our friends. We must lead.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The right hon. and learned Gentleman speaks of people fleeing, but we have yet to assess whether anyone outside Kabul is able to get to a place of safety. Does he agree that a safe corridor needs to be opened to an international border so that those who are not near Kabul can also get to safety via third countries?
Keir Starmer
There is huge concern, as all hon. Members will know, about our line of sight beyond Kabul at the moment. Again, that calls into question where the 5,000 number comes from, because at the moment we are not even in a position to assess the position outside Kabul. We cannot betray our friends. We must lead.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Were the Government of this kingdom to be overthrown by a wicked and brutal regime, I venture that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would want a leading role in the resistance. He would not be queuing at the airport, would he?
Keir Starmer
When I was Director of Public Prosecutions, some of my prosecutors in Afghanistan were at huge risk, working on counter-terrorism with other brave souls there, so I will not take that from the right hon. Gentleman or from anybody else.
Once the immediate challenges are addressed, we face an uncertain and difficult future. The Taliban are back in control and we cannot be naive about the consequences. We have lost our primary source of leverage in political discussions, and everything that we have achieved in the past 20 years is now under threat.
Several hon. Members rose—
Keir Starmer
I will make some progress and then give way.
The Prime Minister is right to say that we cannot allow Afghanistan to become a training ground for violent hate and terrorism, but that will be more difficult now that Afghanistan has descended into chaos. If preventing al-Qaeda camps is now the limit of our ambition, we are betraying 20 years of sacrifice by our armed forces and we are betraying the Afghan people, who cannot be left to the cruelty of the Taliban.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
My right hon. and learned Friend speaks about the lack of ambition and urgency, and that summarises everything about the Government’s approach to this crisis and many others. Is it not telling that when we had an Afghan Government whom we wanted to support, the UK Government cut the amount of overseas aid that we sent, but now that the Taliban are in charge, the Government are talking about increasing the amount of overseas aid?
Keir Starmer
I am grateful for that intervention. I will come to the question of aid in just a minute, because it is a very important point in the context of what has happened in recent weeks and months.
John Redwood
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Keir Starmer
I am going to make some progress and then I will give way.
We have to use every tool that remains at our disposal to protect human rights in Afghanistan. The Government are right not to recognise the Taliban as the official Government—the Prime Minister has made that clear—but that must be part of a wider strategy, developed with our UN security partners and our NATO allies, to apply pressure on the Taliban not only to stamp out a resurgence of terror groups, but to retain the liberties and human rights of Afghans. We must work with Afghans and neighbours to ensure that there is consistent pressure, and there must be a UN-backed plan to ensure that our aid budget is used to support humanitarian causes in Afghanistan, not to fund the Taliban.
This is a difficult task with no guarantee of success, so it should concern us all that the Prime Minister’s judgment on Afghanistan has been appalling. Nobody believes that Britain and our allies could have remained in Afghanistan indefinitely, or that Britain could have fought alone. NATO leaders were put in a difficult position after President Trump agreed with the Taliban that all US forces would withdraw by May 2021. But that agreement was made in February 2020—18 months ago. We have had 18 months to prepare and plan for the consequences of what followed—to plan and to prepare for the resettlement of refugees and those who have supported us; for supporting the Afghan Government in managing the withdrawal; and for securing international and regional pressure on the Taliban and support for the Afghan Government. The very problems we are confronting today have been known problems for the last 18 months, and there has been a failure of preparation.
The lack of planning is unforgivable, and the Prime Minister bears a heavy responsibility. He mutters today, but he was in a position to lead and he did not. Britain holds a seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are a key player in NATO. We are chair of the G7. Every one of those platforms could and should have been used to prepare for the withdrawal of forces, and to rally international support behind a plan to stabilise Afghanistan through the process and keep us safe.
Several hon. Members rose—
Keir Starmer
I will give way in a minute.
Did the Prime Minister use those platforms in those 18 months to prepare? No, he did not. What did he do instead? We debated this: he cut the development budget, which was key to the strength and resilience of democracy in Afghanistan. He makes a great deal today of the money he is putting in, but £292 million was spent in Afghanistan in 2019, and £155 million in 2021. That is short-sighted, small-minded and a threat to security.
Several hon. Members rose—
Keir Starmer
I will give way in a moment, but I am going to go through this list. The right hon. Gentleman failed to visit Afghanistan as Prime Minister, meaning that his last trip—as Foreign Secretary, in 2018—was not to learn or to push British interests, but to avoid a vote on Heathrow. Hundreds of thousands of British people have flown to Afghanistan to serve; the Prime Minister flew to avoid public service.
The list goes on. In March this year the Prime Minister published an integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy. It was a huge review. He boasted that the review would
“demonstrate to our allies, in Europe and beyond, that they can always count on the UK when it really matters.”
The Afghan Government were an ally, yet the integrated review made just two passing references to Afghanistan. The review did not even mention the Taliban. It did not mention NATO withdrawal or the consequences of the Doha agreement. It did cut the size of the Army—the very force that we are now relying on—and we criticised that at the time. Eye off the ball; astonishingly careless. The question is: why was the Prime Minister so careless? Why did he fail to lead? It comes down to complacency and poor judgment.
Several hon. Members rose—
Keir Starmer
I will give way in a moment; I am going to make this case.
There was a calculation that withdrawal would lead to military stalemate in Afghanistan and that that stalemate would accelerate political discussions. Seeing this in July, Members on both sides of this House warned the Government—read Hansard—that they may be underestimating the threat of the Taliban. That was ignored, and the Government’s preparation for withdrawal was based on a miscalculation of the resilience of the Afghan forces and a staggering complacency about the Taliban threat.
The Prime Minister is as guilty as anyone. This Sunday he said:
“We’ve known for a long time that this was the way things were going”.
That was not what he told the House in July, when he stood there and assured Members that
“there is no military path to victory for the Taliban”,
and went on to say:
“I do not think that the Taliban are capable of victory by military means”. —[Official Report, 8 July 2021; Vol. 698, c. 1108, 1112.]
The British Government were wrong and complacent, the Prime Minister was wrong and complacent and, when he was not rewriting history, the Prime Minister was displaying the same appalling judgment and complacency last week.
The British ambassador’s response to the Taliban arriving at the gates of Kabul was to personally process the paperwork for those who needed to flee. He is still there and we thank him and his staff. The Prime Minister’s response to the Taliban arriving at the gates of Kabul was to go on holiday—no sense of the gravity of the situation; no leadership to drive international efforts on the evacuation. The Foreign Secretary shakes his head. [Interruption.] What would I do differently? I would not stay on holiday while Kabul was falling. There are numerous examples of leaders on both sides of the House who have come back immediately in a time of crisis. [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary is shouting now, but he was silent—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The Prime Minister was heard and I want to hear the Leader of the Opposition. I do not want people to shout. You may disagree, but you may also wish to catch my eye. Do not ruin that chance.
Keir Starmer
The Foreign Secretary shouts now, but he stayed on holiday while our mission in Afghanistan was disintegrating. He did not even speak to ambassadors in the region as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Let that sink in. You cannot co-ordinate an international response from the beach. This was a dereliction of duty by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, and a Government totally unprepared for the scenario that they had 18 months to prepare for. It is one thing for people to lose trust in the Prime Minister at home, but when the trust in the word of our Prime Minister is questioned abroad, there are serious consequences for our safety and security at home.
Keir Starmer
In one moment.
Recent events in Afghanistan shame the west—and not just the scenes of chaos. What does our abandonment of the Afghan people say to those brave people around the world living under regimes that pay scant regard to human rights but resisting those regimes in pursuit of democracy, equality and individual freedom? What does this retreat from freedom signal to those who are prepared to stand up for it? What does this surrender to extremism mean for those prepared to face it down? What does it mean for those nations who support an international rules-based system when we hand over power to those who recognise no rules at all? That is the challenge of our time.
The British and Afghan people will have to live with the consequences of the Prime Minister’s failure. We have fought for 20 years to rid Afghanistan of terror—terror that threatens our security here in Britain and liberty in Afghanistan. The Taliban are back in control. The Prime Minister has no plan to handle the situation, just as he had no plan to prevent it. What we won through 20 years of sacrifice could all be lost. That is the cost of careless leadership.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I had the opportunity to visit Afghanistan twice, but I recognise that there are others across this House whose experience is more recent, more vivid, more practical, and longer and broader than mine. But when I was there, I was struck by the commitment and dedication of our armed forces serving there and of other British personnel. All were doing what they could to give hope to the people of Afghanistan—people who, thanks to our presence, were able to enjoy freedoms they had been denied under the Taliban.
Twenty years on, 457 British military personnel have died in Afghanistan, and many more have suffered life-changing injuries. Yes, many girls have been educated because of British aid, but it is not just that the freedoms once enjoyed will now be taken away; many, many Afghans—not just those who worked with British forces—are now in fear of their lives. It is right that we should open up a refugee scheme, but we must make absolutely certain that it is accessible to all those who need it.
Of course, the NATO presence was always going to end at some point in time, but the withdrawal, when it came, was due to be orderly, planned and on the basis of conditions. It has been none of those. What has been most shocking is the chaos and the speed of the takeover by the Taliban. In July of this year, both President Biden and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister indicated that they did not think that the Taliban were ready or able to take over control of the country. Was our intelligence really so poor? Was our understanding of the Afghan Government so weak? Was our knowledge of the position on the ground so inadequate? Did we really believe that, or did we just feel that we had to follow the United States and hope that, on a wing and a prayer, it would be all right on the night?
The reality is that as long as a time limit and dates were given for withdrawal, all the Taliban had to do was ensure that there were sufficient problems for the Afghan Government not to be able to have full control of the country, and then just sit and wait.
John Redwood
Does my right hon. Friend agree that President Biden decided unilaterally to withdraw without agreeing and negotiating a plan with either the Afghan Government or the NATO allies, and that the response of the UK Government in the circumstances has been fast, purposeful and extremely well guided to protect the interests of UK citizens?
Mrs May
What President Biden has done is to uphold a decision made by President Trump. It was a unilateral decision of President Trump to do a deal with the Taliban that led to this withdrawal.
What we have seen from the scenes in Afghanistan is that it has not been all right on the night. There are many in Afghanistan who not only fear that their lives will be irrevocably changed for the worse, but fear for their lives. Numbered among them will be women—women who embraced freedom and the right to education, to work and to participate in the political process.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right to make the education of girls a key aim of his Administration, but in Afghanistan that will now be swept away. Those girls who have been educated will have no opportunity to use that education. The Taliban proclaims that women will be allowed to work and girls will be allowed to go to school, but this will be under Islamic law—or rather, under its interpretation of Islamic law, and we have seen before what that means for the lives of women and girls.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Some of the women who have shown most courage are the 250 women who serve as judges under the attempt that was made to impose a decent, honest legal system on Afghanistan. There is a particular fear that they are targets. The Bar Council and the Law Society have asked the Government to take cognizance of the particular risks they run. Will my right hon. Friend support the call for them to be given priority in being brought to safety, since they put their lives on the line for their fellow women and for their whole country?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point. As has been said, there are many groups in Afghanistan who have put their lives on the line to support the Afghan Government, democracy and justice in Afghanistan, and it is right that we should do everything we can to support them in their time of need. However, as we know, under the Taliban regime the life of women and girls will sadly not be the same; they will not have the rights we believe they should have or the freedoms they should have.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
There are already reports from sources in Kabul that the Taliban is executing collaborators and homosexuals. Does the right hon. Lady agree that complacency is absolutely misplaced, and what does she suggest we do to protect those people who need to get out?
Mrs May
The Government are doing much to protect people in trying to ensure that people can access ways of leaving Afghanistan. A point was made earlier about not just expecting people to get to Kabul, and I hope that is something the Government will be able to look into and take up.
Apart from the impact on the lives of women and girls, we see a potential humanitarian crisis, at least in some parts of Afghanistan. We have cut our international aid budget, but I am pleased that the Foreign Secretary has told me that more funding will be made available to deal with this crisis.
It is not just the impact on the people of Afghanistan that must concern us, however; we must be deeply concerned about the possible impact here in the UK. The aim of our involvement in Afghanistan was to ensure that it could not be used as a haven for terrorists who could train, plot, and encourage attacks in the UK. Al-Qaeda has not gone away. Daesh may have lost ground in Syria, but those terrorist groups remain and have spawned others. We will not defeat them until we have defeated the ideology that feeds their extremism.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
One of the most concerning things that is happening is that several thousand al-Qaeda operatives have been freed from prisons in Bagram, Kabul and Kandahar. Is my right hon. Friend concerned that those people will go back to their old ways, or do we hope that they will somehow go into retirement? It seems to me that we are going to restart with a new round of international terrorism.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend has anticipated exactly the point I was about to make. The Taliban has said that it will not allow Afghanistan to become a haven for terrorists again. Yesterday, in the press conference, it said it would not allow anything to happen in Afghanistan that would lead to attacks elsewhere across the world. However, we must look at its actions, not its words, and, as he has just pointed out, its action has been to release thousands of high-value Taliban, al-Qaeda and Daesh fighters. Its actions are completely different from its words, and it is essential that we recognise the probability that Afghanistan will once again become a breeding ground for the terrorists who seek to destroy our way of life.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The right hon. Lady is making exactly the points that I hoped to hear from the Prime Minister and did not. The reasons that we went into Afghanistan in 2001 remain valid today. If the actions taken in recent weeks render a military solution to that problem impossible, we have to have a non-military solution. What does she see that non-military solution as being?
Mrs May
I will refer to that issue later. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the question of a military solution has not been there for some time, because our combat mission ended some years ago, but we have been trying to provide support to enable a democratic Government to take proper control of that country. I would be happy to talk to him sometime about my views. I think that we should possibly have reconsidered the idea of trying to impose a western example of democracy in a country that is geographically difficult and relies a lot on regional government when we were going down that route, but I will not go down that road any longer, despite his temptations.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am really concerned about the time for Back Benchers. I did suggest that it was seven minutes, and we are now heading to 10. I did not put a time limit on, but I will have to do so after this speech.
Mrs May
I am very grateful for your generosity to me, Mr Speaker.
Another important element of our work in Afghanistan was stopping drugs coming into the United Kingdom. Sadly, that has not been as successful as we would have liked, but we supported a drug crime-specific criminal justice system in Afghanistan, and I assume that will now come to a complete end. Once again, that is another area where withdrawal is not just about Afghanistan but has an impact on the streets of the UK.
What must also be a key concern to us is the message that this decision sends around the world to those who would do the west harm—the message that it sends about our capabilities and, most importantly, about our willingness to defend our values. What does it say about us as a country—what does it say about NATO?—if we are entirely dependent on a unilateral decision taken by the United States? We all understand the importance of American support, but despite the comments from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, I find it incomprehensible and worrying that the United Kingdom was not able to bring together not a military solution but an alternative alliance of countries to continue to provide the support necessary to sustain a Government in Afghanistan.
Surely one outcome of this decision must be a reassessment of how NATO operates. NATO is the bedrock of European security, but Russia will not be blind to the implications of this withdrawal decision and the manner in which it was taken. Neither will China and others have failed to notice the implications. In recent years, the west has appeared to be less willing to defend its values. That cannot continue. If it does, it will embolden those who do not share those values and wish to impose their way of life on others. I am afraid that this has been a major setback for British foreign policy. We boast about global Britain, but where is global Britain on the streets of Kabul? A successful foreign policy strategy will be judged by our deeds, not by our words.
I finally just say this: all our military personnel, all who served in Afghanistan, should hold their heads high and be proud of what they achieved in that country over 20 years, of the change of life that they brought to the people of Afghanistan and of the safety that they brought here to the UK. The politicians sent them there. The politicians decided to withdraw. The politicians must be responsible for the consequences.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for facilitating the recall of Parliament. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and I hope the Government will reflect very carefully on her words—particularly her remarks at the end of her contribution about the role of NATO in the light of the American decision to pull out of Afghanistan. These are very real issues about the capabilities within NATO. If I may say so, it is about not just the capability of NATO but how we make sure the United Nations has all the tools at its disposal to do what we expect of it. We will have to return to these matters in this House when we come back from recess.
I thank the Government for the briefings we have had over the course of the last few days, and in particular I commend the Defence Secretary for making himself available and for how he has conducted himself. Indeed, that is also true of Ministers in the Home Office—I think particularly of the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and, from the Foreign Office, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa. When we are talking about human lives being lost, it is important that we in this House work together where it is possible but—yes, of course—that we ask legitimate questions.
There can be little doubt that the chaos and crisis that has been inflicted on the Afghan people is the biggest foreign policy failure of modern times. The sheer scale of that political failure is matched only by the humanitarian emergency that it has now unleashed. As we gather here this morning, the future and fate of Afghanistan has never been more uncertain. Afghanistan, a country that has been through so much, is once again facing a period of darkness. Over the course of the past week we have watched those tragic images from afar. The scenes of Afghans seeking to jump on to moving planes to escape will haunt us for the rest of our lives. We have watched from afar, but we all have a deep sense of sorrow about just how closely the UK has been involved in what has unfolded. Geographical distance does not for a second diminish the moral responsibility that we need to feel for the west’s role in this crisis. Washing our hands of this crisis will not make it go away, and it definitely will not wash away our responsibility to the Afghan people. We all know that acting now will be too little, too late, but better little and late than nothing at all.
Today we have a choice: we can either offer meaningless words of sympathy and stand idly by, or we can start to do the right thing. We can take responsibility and act. The Home Secretary has today talked about evacuating more contacts of the UK Afghanistan operation from the existing resettlement scheme. Let me be clear: there should be no ifs or buts; everyone who has worked with UK forces and who by definition has a vulnerability, must be moved to a position of safety. No one can be left behind. That is our moral and ethical responsibility. All those who work with us are our responsibility. We do not, we cannot, walk away from them. Today I am asking the Government to make that commitment.
That action needs to begin with a co-ordinated domestic and international effort to offer safe passage, shelter and support to refugees fleeing this crisis is obvious. That action cannot wait. If we are to act, we must act with the same speed with which the situation in Afghanistan has developed. I am sad that the scheme announced last night by the UK Government, and today by the Prime Minister, does not go nearly far or fast enough. It can only be right that the number of refugees we welcome here reflects the share of the responsibility that the UK Government have for this foreign policy disaster. This scheme falls way short of that responsibility. The scheme must be far more ambitious, generous, and swift to help the Afghan citizens that it has abandoned and left at serious risk of persecution, and indeed death. The scale of the efforts must match the scale of the humanitarian emergency.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Considering that the Government promised in 2016 to save 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children from Calais, is the right hon. Gentleman concerned that the number who have actually been saved stands at around 380? If those promises can be broken, and among those children were many from Afghanistan, is he concerned that the promises made today may be as unrobust as those of the past?
Ian Blackford
I agree with the right hon. Lady that it is important the House has the opportunity to reflect on this and consider what mechanisms we need to put in place to protect people in Afghanistan.
The harsh reality is that 3 million people have already been displaced, and 80% of those fleeing their homes are women and children. These people are now crying out for our help.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that yesterday the Nobel laureate Nadia Murad said:
“I know what happens when the world loses sight of women and girls in crises. When it looks away, war is waged on women’s bodies.”
Sadly, she is correct. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if we do not act now and go so much further than the Government are proposing to protect women and girls, this political disaster will become a catastrophic moral failure?
Ian Blackford
I agree with my hon. Friend.
I just reflected on the fact that 3 million people have already been displaced. We need to show a generosity of spirit that recognises the scale of the challenge we face, so that women do not face the loss of their human rights, so that women do not face persecution and, yes, so that women do not face even worse, including death.
It is important to say that, if we are to support the Afghan people, this crisis needs to mark a point of fundamental change in this Government’s approach to refugees. In the past few months alone, this Government have introduced a hateful anti-refugee Bill that would rip up international conventions and criminalise those coming from Afghanistan in need of our refuge. The UK Government have spent a sizeable part of their summer making political play of turning away migrants and refugees in small boats who are desperately making their way across the channel.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Given that Glasgow is the only city and authority in Scotland to be part of the resettlement scheme up until now, will the SNP stick to their rhetoric and start putting forward other authority areas to be part of the resettlement scheme?
Ian Blackford
My goodness, my goodness, my goodness. I do not think the hon. Gentleman has been listening to anything we have been saying over the past few days. I will talk about this in more detail, because I have been asking for the resettlement scheme to work on the basis of the Syrian scheme that we had in the last decade. I tell the House that the Scottish Government stand ready to work with the UK Government—[Interruption.] We are talking about people who are facing extreme risk, and that is what we get from the Government Benches. They should be careful, because people in the United Kingdom, and perhaps people in Afghanistan, are listening. Perhaps a bit of dignity from the Government Benches would not go amiss.
I want to make sure that every local authority in Scotland has the opportunity to take refugees from Afghanistan, and that is precisely the position of the Government in Scotland, but is has to come with the Government in London and the devolved Administrations working together. There has to be a summit of the four nations to discuss exactly how this will work.
Alan Brown
Just to correct the record, my local authority, East Ayrshire Council, has resettled Syrian refugees.
Alan Brown
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) should correct the record.
Ian Blackford
My hon. Friend is correct, and my area of the highlands has refugees from Syria, too, and they were made most welcome by the community. In view of the hostile environment that we are seeing once again from the Conservative party, let us reflect on the fact that these are people who came here to receive sanctuary and who have gone on to make a contribution to our life. They were welcome, refugees are welcome and Afghans are certainly welcome in every part of Scotland.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Before the right hon. Gentleman was rerouted by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), he was making a powerful point about those who come across the channel in boats, and the Government’s proposals for them. Does he recognise that, according to organisations such as Safe Passage, 70% of the unaccompanied minors crossing the channel come from Afghanistan, and to criminalise them is a criminal act in itself?
Ian Blackford
Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The Government must reflect carefully on this over the course of the summer, and change their ways before we come back and debate these matters again.
Several hon. Members rose—
Ian Blackford
I will make some progress before giving way again.
We have just had it demonstrated that the hostile attitude and approach to refugees truly exists and extends to those from Afghanistan. Since the most recent conflict began, in 2001, the Home Office has rejected asylum for 32,000 Afghans, including 875 girls. The total number of Afghans in the system stands at 3,117, so if we are to have any confidence that this is a turning point, this UK Government need to rethink radically how they respond to the refugee crisis unfolding before our eyes.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
No one in this House can fail to be moved by the scenes from Afghanistan we are seeing on our television screens, and I am delighted to hear that the Scottish Government stand ready to do their part. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm how many refugees the Scottish Government are ready to resettle?
Ian Blackford
I will discuss that a little later on—[Interruption.] I have to say to Government Members that these are serious issues. I welcome the hon. Member’s intervention, and I will give the real-life example of what happened with Syria. Scotland took 15% of the refugees who came from Syria—
Ian Blackford
Twenty per cent.—so we have done our bit, and we stand ready to do our bit again. I commit myself as leader of the SNP here, and I commit my Government to work with the Government here in London—but they have to extend the hand of friendship to us.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Let us hope that refugees do not become a political football in this place. All of us—all of us—care desperately about giving these people safe haven. We welcome them in the highlands, we welcome them everywhere, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the proper finance to support our local authorities must be forthcoming from the UK Government and the Scottish Government, because without it our councils will struggle?
Ian Blackford
Yes, I agree, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because I know that he will associate himself with me in saying that we will extend 100,000 welcomes to those who wish to come to the highlands of Scotland.
We have called for a four-nations summit to integrate our efforts across the United Kingdom. I hope that the Prime Minister will respond positively and take the opportunity to meet the devolved Administrations to discuss this. Perhaps he will indicate now that he is happy to do that.
Ian Blackford
We have it on the record that the Prime Minister is happy to do that—that he is happy to have a four-nations summit. I am grateful.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
There has been much focus today on making sure we offer sanctuary for people from Afghanistan, but last night I was speaking to my Carmyle constituent Mohammad Asif, who is originally from Afghanistan. He wants to make sure that we also offer humanitarian protection to those who are already seeking asylum in the City of Glasgow. On the point made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), yes, the City of Glasgow has done its fair share to welcome refugees and we stand ready to do a lot more, but I have to say to him that 30 refugees per parliamentary constituency is a paltry number that he should be ashamed of.
Ian Blackford
At the end of the day, it is important that we all do what we can. I commend Glasgow City Council and Glasgow’s MPs and MSPs, but it is the people of Glasgow who have done so much to welcome asylum seekers to their city.
We believe that the resettlement scheme should emulate and exceed the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. It must also be enacted and deployed much more quickly than the Syrian scheme. Afghan refugees should not—and cannot—wait for up to five years for safety. They need safe passage and they need it now. The scheme should be open to Afghans who supported UK Government-funded programmes and who worked for the UK and other international organisations. It should have a minimum commitment to welcome at least 35,000 to 40,000 Afghan refugees in the UK, in line with the population share of refugees welcomed from Syria.
Three thousand of those Syrian refugees have made Scotland their new home. They have contributed to our economy and our communities. They were Syrians; they are now part of Scotland’s story. They are our friends and neighbours. It is only right that we offer the same warmth and welcome to Afghan refugees facing the same dangerous and desperate situation.
The crisis has thrown into sharp focus the disaster of the overseas development cuts, which were rammed through before the summer recess. When the Prime Minister talks about the increase in spending in Afghanistan, it still does not take us to the level of spending that was previously committed. The cuts to overseas aid were immoral and shameful before this humanitarian emergency. It is now a policy—
Ian Blackford
Do I not listen? I am afraid that the person who is not listening—maybe he is still on holiday—is the Foreign Secretary. You have not taken the spending back to the level where it was. [Interruption.] No, you are not doubling it.
Mr Speaker
Order. We do not use “you”, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows, because I do not take responsibility, and he would not expect me to.
Ian Blackford
You certainly do not want to take responsibility for a Foreign Secretary who cannot realise the facts of the matter. You have taken spending to below where it previously was. If you cannot accept that, you cannot even count.
Mr Speaker
Order. The right hon. Gentleman keeps using “you”. He must come through me. I am the Chair. The Foreign Secretary is not the Chair.
Ian Blackford
Indeed, Mr Speaker.
It is important that the cuts to overseas aid are reversed in their entirety. [Interruption.] I know that the Foreign Secretary is trying to wind me up. When the rest of us were doing what we could in the past few days, he was lying on a sunbed, so I will not take any lectures from someone like him. People are facing the worst situation imaginable and we have a Foreign Secretary who sits laughing and joking on the Government Front Bench. He should be ashamed of himself. He demonstrates that he has no dignity whatsoever. He can carry on saying that the amount has been doubled—
Mr Speaker
That is for me to decide and I have referred twice to both sides trying to antagonise each other, which is not a good idea. Whichever Front Bench it is, they should not be responding. I am sure that Mr Blackford is coming to the end of his speech. He did say that he would not take too long.
Ian Blackford
Mr Speaker, this is an important matter. Aid spending in Afghanistan is still below what it was meant to be and the Foreign Secretary does not have the decency to understand and accept that. It just shows that he is out of touch with what people want, in the House and across these islands. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary will get a chance to intervene later on, but continuing to chunter from a sedentary position shows, really, that he has no dignity. He ought to have some self-respect.
When it comes to aid, it is telling to reflect on the chasm between the amount invested in this conflict and the amount invested in development. Since 2001, the UK Government have spent around £27.7 billion on military operations in Afghanistan. Over the same period, they have spent approximately £3.8 billion in aid. That amounts to eight times as much spending on military action as on supporting communities or helping to rebuild the country. Those figures alone should make this House seriously reflect on all the priorities, policies and political decisions that have ultimately resulted in this failure, and the failure rests on the shoulders of the Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary. Billions have been invested to support these failed military decisions, and it is the Afghan people who are left paying the ultimate price.
I have concentrated my remarks on the here and now because we understand that the immediate priority must be to do everything that we can to protect lives. But in time there must also be a chance to review how the UK’s involvement in the region went so badly wrong. It is right to put on record today that there must be a future judge-led inquiry into the war in Afghanistan. We owe that to the brave men and women in our military who were sent there—many of them not returning; many of them making the ultimate sacrifice. Let me thank each and every one of those who have given so much to secure peace in Afghanistan.
As we exit Afghanistan, it is our forces that have to go back to facilitate our departure, putting themselves on the frontline once again. It is little wonder that so many of our service personnel and their families are asking what their involvement in Afghanistan was for. We have let Afghanistan down by the nature of our departure, but we have also let down our military. We should salute each and every one of them. They are right to be angry at the political failure. We owe that inquiry, too, to the many professionals and volunteers who were led to believe that they were there to support the Afghan people in building their nation; and we owe it to the future that such a massive foreign policy failure is never again repeated.
It is clear that Afghanistan did not go from relative stability to chaos overnight. The current situation is an acceleration of an existing state of affairs, of which the UK, the US and the Afghan Governments were seemingly unaware. The exit strategy was not properly planned, so it appears that the only people who were planning were the Taliban. There remain so many massive questions for the Prime Minister and his Government. How did the 300,000 men of the Afghan national defence and security forces seemingly vanish overnight? Why was so much trust placed in an Afghan Government that disintegrated the moment that foreign troops left? Why did the UK Government not push for a United Nations-led exit strategy, rather than silently sitting on the sidelines as the US made their decisions? Although history may well cast the final verdict on many of these questions and decisions, we also need the answers and accountability that only a judge-led inquiry can ultimately bring.
I began my remarks by saying that we are witnessing a humanitarian emergency from afar, but the sad reality is that this is by no means close to the first tragedy experienced by the Afghan nation. The story of Afghanistan is of a country and a people torn apart by tragedy time and time again. Over the years, great powers and vast armies have come and gone. It is the Afghan people who have always been left behind. There is, sadly, no evacuation and no escape for them from foreign policy failure. I am sure that many Afghan citizens simply see a cycle endlessly repeating itself. As an international community, we have collectively wronged these poor people for the best part of a century.
We asked the citizens of Afghanistan to work with us. We watched as girls were able to receive an education, as women were able to excel in so many fields, so that a light could be lit, pointing a path to a brighter future for so many to benefit from freedom of opportunity. That light has been extinguished. The future for so many women and girls is dark and forbidding. We have let them down. It is time to do the right thing. For those deserving and in need of our aid and our support, now is the moment to act; now is the moment for leadership.
Mr Speaker
I am now starting the seven-minute limit. I say to hon. Members: please think of others and try to see if you can shorten your speech, so we can get as many as possible in today.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
While the best still apply to join our Royal Navy, the Army, the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force, we can have hope for the future. We weep for the losses; we acknowledge mistakes; we will remember them. When I, like other MPs, have visited our armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands and the former Yugoslavia, I was with ordinary people, working together to achieve remarkable results, of significance to us and often of lifesaving importance to others.
Those who were here for the Saturday debate on the Falklands found, I think, a rather different style of debate, when people were united on what we ought to try to achieve. As Enoch Powell said, the reason to intervene in the Falklands was not that we were guaranteed to succeed, but that the mission was capable of success. That would not have been the case if we were trying to resist, say, China taking Hong Kong.
Our experience in Afghanistan in the 19th century, and in the 20 years’ conflict that has now come to an end, will make people think about whether what was aimed for in Afghanistan after the initial targets were achieved was going to have an end that could be happy or content. I do not think it was an example of trying to resist nationalism, because the forces within Afghanistan are multifarious and have their histories, which I will not go into now.
The second debate, which I have read up on a number of times during my parliamentary service, was the Norway debate, where again there were some speeches of most remarkable intelligence and experience, and others that, frankly, I think people should have been slightly ashamed of. We have to learn that what this Parliament can do is not to be Government but to try to question Government, support Government where appropriate, and get them to change at times.
On the question whether there should be an inquiry, it would be interesting to hear the views of the Chairmen of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees, either today or some other time, because I think that would be useful.
I do not want to spend too much time, because I want to make up some of the time that was used by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who when he said he was concentrating seems to have lost his concentration once or twice, and when he said he was being wound up, some of us thought ought to have been wound down. [Laughter.]
The key issues are obvious: what is happening now, what happens now and then what lessons can be learned. On what is happening now, the reports given by Ministers both in this House and to Members of Parliament across the Chamber are important and valuable; please can those continue? What can happen will be determined in large part by those who are presently in command in Afghanistan—whether they control Afghanistan is a separate issue—but people may look back and say that the speed of transition, in the end, might have been better than a prolonged start to a civil war. But that is in the future; we cannot judge that and I will not try to do that.
I end by saying this. If we decide that we are not going to get involved in world affairs, the world will be worse. If we decide that we are going to have the capability to work with others when we can, and occasionally on our own, that is fine. But as a Parliament, we ought to be aware that we probably made a mistake in backing Government over one of the Iraq wars. In my view we certainly made a mistake in not backing Government over Syria. If we look at the number of people who have died in Syria and the number of refugees around the world and make the comparison with Afghanistan, I think we probably should be ashamed of our vote over Syria.
I stop now, as an example to others.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow the Father of the House.
I strongly agree with what was said by the Leader of the Opposition and by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who speaks with the experience of having served as Prime Minister. I particularly agree with what she said about the threat of terrorism and the need fully to reinstate our aid budget, the issues for NATO and the proud legacy of our troops.
We have all looked on in horror as the events in Afghanistan have unfolded. I join everyone who is urging the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to do everything they can to help UK nationals, including my constituents, who are stranded and in hiding in Kabul, desperately needing to get back home to the UK. We urgently need to evacuate those who worked with us, who thereby feel that they are vulnerable and to whom we have a moral obligation. The Government are setting up a refugee resettlement programme. I urge them to make a realistic and generous assessment of the scale of the need and to work with all local authorities that want to play their part in giving a warm welcome to those who are fleeing. The Government also need to work, of course, with NATO countries and more widely on an international resettlement programme.
We need to think about those who cannot or do not want to leave, particularly women and girls. When the Taliban were last in control, there were literally no girls in school. Now—at least, up until the Taliban took over again—40% of schoolchildren are girls; over the last 20 years, there has been a whole generation of girls who have been educated, and a whole cohort of young women who have been able to work and want to continue to do so.
When the Taliban were last in control, there were no women in public life—no women to speak up for other women. Women were silenced. Now there are 69 women Afghan MPs. Indeed, three years ago, one of them—Elay Ershad—came to this Chamber to speak from the Front Bench while participating in our Women MPs of the World conference, and was welcomed by the former Prime Minister to No. 10 Downing Street. The President has fled but Elay is staying in Kabul with her daughters, in solidarity, she says, with her people. What courage. The Afghan army has retreated, but so many Afghan women are standing their ground. All those women politicians and activists are determined not to let the progress of the last two decades be crushed. They now face great jeopardy. I know that the whole House, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary will express publicly our solidarity with and admiration for Afghan women MPs, who, as parliamentary pioneers—having stepped forward into public life to make a reality of democracy for that half of the population of Afghanistan who are women and girls—are now, in the face of such an uncertain future, determined to protect and defend those rights.
As to what we can do, I would say: do not just listen to the male leaders about what we need to do for women. I say to the Foreign Secretary, do not just speak to the men; pick up the phone to those women Afghan MPs, ask them what we can do to support women and girls in Afghanistan, and then do it.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Like many veterans, this last week has seen me struggle through anger, grief and rage—through the feeling of abandonment of not just a country, but the sacrifice that my friends made. I have been to funerals from Poole to Dunblane. I have watched good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of us. This week has torn open some of those wounds, has left them raw and left us all hurting. And I know it is not just soldiers; I know aid workers and diplomats who feel the same. I know journalists who have been witnesses to our country in its heroic effort to save people from the most horrific fates. I know that we have all been struggling. If this recall has done one thing, it has achieved one thing already. I have spoken to the Health Secretary, who has already made a commitment to do more for veterans’ mental health. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
This is not just about us. The mission in Afghanistan was not a British mission—it was a NATO mission. It was a recognition that globalisation has changed us all. The phone calls that I am still receiving, the text messages that I have been answering as I have been waiting, putting people in touch with our people in Afghanistan, remind us that we are connected still today, and Afghanistan is not a far country about which we know little. It is part of the main. That connection links us also to our European partners, to our European neighbours and to our international friends, so it is with great sadness that I now criticise one of them, because I was never prouder than when I was decorated by the 82nd Airborne after the capture of Musa Qala. It was a huge privilege to be recognised by such an extraordinary unit in combat. To see their commander-in-chief call into question the courage of men I fought with, to claim that they ran, is shameful. Those who have never fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
What we have done in these last few days is demonstrate that it is not armies that win wars. Armies can get tactical victories and operational victories that can hold the line; they can just about make room for peace—make room for people like us to talk, to compromise, to listen. It is nations that make war; nations endure; nations mobilise and muster; nations determine and have patience. Here we have demonstrated, sadly, that we—the west, the United Kingdom—do not.
This is a harsh lesson for all of us, and if we are not careful, it could be a very, very difficult lesson for our allies, but it does not need to be. We can set out a vision, clearly articulated, for reinvigorating our European NATO partners, to make sure that we are not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader, but that we can work together—with Japan and Australia, with France and Germany, with partners large and small—and make sure that we hold the line together. Because we know that patience wins. We know it because we have achieved it; we know it because we have delivered it. The cold war was won with patience; Cyprus is at peace, with patience; South Korea, with more than 10 times the number of troops that America had in Afghanistan, is prosperous through patience. So let us stop talking about forever wars. Let us recognise that forever peace is bought, not cheaply, but hard, through determination and the will to endure. The tragedy of Afghanistan is that we are swapping that patient achievement for a second fire and a second war.
Now we need to turn our attention to those who are in desperate need, supporting the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Programme and so many other organisations that can do so much for people in the region. Yes, of course I support refugees, although I am not going to get into the political auction of numbers. We just need to get people out.
I leave the House with one image. In the year that I was privileged to be the adviser to the governor of Helmand, we opened girls’ schools. The joy it gave parents to see their little girls going to school was extraordinary. I did not understand it until I took my own daughter to school about a year ago. There was a lot of crying when she first went in—but I got over it—[Laughter]—and it went okay. I would love to see that continue, but there is a second image that I must leave the House with. It is a harder one, but I am afraid it is one that we must all remember.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
I wonder whether my hon. Friend could say a bit more about that second image.
Tom Tugendhat
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who was watching the clock more than me.
The second image is one that the forever war that has just reignited could lead to. It is the image of a man whose name I never knew, carrying a child who had died hours earlier into our firebase and begging for help. There was nothing we could do. It was over. That is what defeat looks like; it is when you no longer have the choice of how to help. This does not need to be defeat, but at the moment it damn well feels like it. [Applause.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Please, this is a very serious debate, and that was a very emotive and very important speech. We must recognise that we have to get through.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
It is a genuine honour to follow the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). I thank him, on behalf of the whole House and the whole country, not just for his powerful speech today but for his service and the service of men and women in our armed forces who showed his courage in Afghanistan. I agree with him wholeheartedly that if we are going to look forward, we need to work with our international partners in Europe and across the world. We need to forge new relationships and not be over-dependent on one ally, however important and powerful that ally is. The failure to do that—indeed, the backward steps that this Government have taken in that regard in recent years—is one of the reasons our nation is weaker today, and it has been for far too long.
We are deeply proud of our armed forces, our diplomats and our aid workers who have done so much in Afghanistan, so it has been heartbreaking in the last few days to listen to the families, particularly of the 457 British soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, asking the question “What was it all for?” and to listen to veterans remembering their comrades. Captain James Kayll, who made two tours of duty in Afghanistan, said on Sunday:
“After years and years of incredibly hard work from remarkable armed services in the country, I don’t know how I could ever, ever look the parents of fallen soldiers in the eye and say that what they did was worth it.”
Will the Prime Minister look our injured veterans and the families of the fallen in the eye and tell them it was worth it, after his foreign policy catastrophe?
The American decision to withdraw was not just a mistake; it was an avoidable mistake, from President Trump’s flawed deal with the Taliban to President Biden’s decision to proceed—and to proceed in such a disastrous way. The human impact on the lives of millions of Afghans, especially women and refugees, is the most obvious and alarming consequence, but the impact on global politics and on Britain’s national security will be so negative that I fear this mistake will affect the lives of millions around the world for years to come.
Coalition forces were in Afghanistan for the protection and security of American and British people just as much as for Afghans. For well over seven years, coalition forces have not been doing the vast bulk of the fighting; the Afghan army has. Like others, when I heard President Biden blame Afghans for not fighting for their country, I could not believe it. He showed no awareness that more than 69,000 members of the Afghan forces have been killed.
I cannot hold President Biden to account in this House, but I can hold our own Government to account. Our Prime Minister and his Cabinet cannot escape their culpability for this disaster—for both the mistaken decision to withdraw, and how the withdrawal has turned into such a catastrophe. From the Prime Minister’s self-evident lack of influence and clout in Washington, to his negligent inability, yet again, to master his brief and plan properly for the withdrawal, today’s occupant of No. 10 has become a national liability.
If the Prime Minister wants to dispel that growing view of him, let him answer the following questions. What role did the British Government play in the negotiations with the Taliban that led to President Trump’s flawed deal with them? Did the Prime Minister raise any concerns with President Biden about the wisdom of withdrawal from Afghanistan? If he did, what impact did he have in changing anything about President Biden’s policy? Either the Prime Minister has a close relationship with the US but failed to exploit it, or he has no close relationship and nothing to put in its place. Frankly, his foreign policy is a total disaster.
On Britain’s withdrawal planning, will the Prime Minister explain why he so misjudged the situation in Afghanistan that he told the House back on 8 July:
“I do not think that the Taliban are capable of victory by military means”?—[Official Report, 8 July 2021; Vol. 698, c. 1112.]
The Prime Minister appears to have had no understanding of the security and defence situation in Afghanistan as recently as last month. Despite being warned in this House and elsewhere that the Taliban would move rapidly on Kabul, his failures, along with President Biden’s, have led directly to the crisis that is unfolding before our eyes.
Afghans who have risked everything to help our soldiers and aid workers are now desperate for our help to escape. Refugees are fleeing in fear of their lives. Women and girls are seeing their futures stolen. Last night’s announcement that the Government are willing to take only 5,000 refugees in the next year utterly fails to respond to this crisis or to meet our obligations to so many Afghans.
Finally, there is the frightening failure to achieve the aim of the whole mission: to keep British people safe from international terrorists trained in Taliban Afghanistan. Where is the worked-through strategy, internationally agreed, to prevent Afghanistan from returning to the vector of terrorism that it once was? There isn’t one. Despite the Government’s having 18 months to prepare, they have not prepared a counter-terrorism strategy with our allies. I guess that that is why this Prime Minister will not ever be able to look the families of the fallen in the eye.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I do not often mention my brother Jonathan, who was killed by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Bali in 2002. That prompted my personal interest in Afghanistan, a distant country that I visited a dozen times over the past two decades to better understand what we were doing to help to rebuild that troubled country. I pay tribute to our armed forces for what they did, and to what the Secretary of State for Defence and the armed forces are doing today in the evacuation.
It is with utter disbelief that I see us make such an operational and strategic blunder by retreating at this time. The decision is already triggering a humanitarian disaster, a migrant crisis not seen since the second world war and a cultural change in the rights of women, and it is once again turning Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terrorism. I am sorry that there will be no vote today because I believe the Government would not have the support of the House.
The Prime Minister is not in the Chamber, but he says that the future of Afghanistan is not written. Well, its future is very much more unpredictable because of our actions. I do not believe for a second that there will be a peaceful transition to the Taliban. They are not universally liked in the country. The Uzbek and Tajik warlords are regrouping as we speak. The Northern Alliance will reform once again and a bloody, terrible civil war will unfold.
John Redwood
Does my right hon. Friend have any advice for the Government on how they could take action to try to prevent the recurrence of a terrorist threat under Taliban control?
Mr Ellwood
My fear is that there will be an attack on the lines of 9/11 to bookend what happened 20 years ago, to show the futility of 20 years. We should never have left—I will come to that in a second—because after 20 years of effort, this is a humiliating strategic defeat for the west. The Taliban control more territory today than they did before 9/11.
I was born in the United States; I am a proud dual national and passionate about the transatlantic security alliance. Prior to him declaring his candidacy, I worked directly with President Biden on veterans’ mental health issues. He was the keynote speaker at a veterans reception here in the House of Commons, as my guest, so it gives me no joy to criticise the President and say that the decision to withdraw, which he inherited, but then chose to endorse, was absolutely the wrong call. Yes, two decades is a long time. It has been a testing chapter for Afghanistan, so the US election promise to return troops was obviously a popular one, but it was a false narrative.
First, the notion that we gave the Afghans every opportunity over 20 years to progress, and that the country cannot be helped forever so it is time to come home, glosses over the hurdles—the own goals—that we created after the invasion. We denied the Taliban a seat at the table back in 2001. They asked to attend the Bonn talks but Donald Rumsfeld said no, so they crossed the Pakistan border to rearm, regroup and retrain. How different the last few decades would have been had they been included. Secondly, we did not start training the Afghan forces until 2005, by which time the Taliban were already on the advance. Finally, we imposed a western model of governance, which was completely inappropriate for Afghanistan, with all the power in Kabul. That was completely wrong for a country where loyalty is on a tribal and local level. That is not to dismiss the mass corruption, cronyism and elitism that is rife across Afghanistan, but those schoolboy errors in stabilisation hampered progress and made our mission harder.
There is also the notion that we cannot fight a war forever. We have not been fighting for the last three years. The US and the UK have not lost a single soldier, but we had a minimalist force there—enough assistance to give the Afghan forces the ability to contain the Taliban and, by extension, give legitimacy to the Afghan Government. The US has more personnel based in its embassy here than it had troops in Afghanistan before retreating. Both the US and the UK have long-term commitments across the world, which we forget about. Japan, Germany and Korea have been mentioned. There is Djibouti, Niger, Jordan and Iraq, and ourselves in Cyprus and Kenya, for example, and the Falklands, too. It is the endurance that counts. Success is not rated on when we return troops home. Such presence offers assurance, represents commitment, bolsters regional stability, and assists with building and strengthening the armed forces. That is exactly what we were doing in Afghanistan.
Last year, the Taliban were finally at the negotiation table in Doha, but in a rush to get a result, Trump struck a deal with the Taliban—by the way, without the inclusion of the Afghan Government—and committed to a timetable for drawdown. All the Taliban had to do was wait. The final question is about whether the UK can lead or participate in a coalition without the US. Where is our foreign policy determined—here or in Washington? Our Government should have more confidence in themselves.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman makes perfectly reasonable and justified criticisms of the way the American Government came to a decision to leave in such haste, but like a number of other right hon. and hon. Members, the implication of his speech is that we somehow could have had an independent Afghan policy without the Americans. Can he explain how?
Mr Ellwood
First, the Americans are not leaving Afghanistan. This is a complete myth. The CIA will remain there, as will special forces and the drone oversight. Why? Because they will be haunted by another terrorist attack. It is the political inclination and the leadership that is disappearing—because of an American president, or two American presidents—and we could have stepped forward and filled the vacuum, but we did not. We need to have more confidence as a Government in ourselves, as we did in the last century. I thought that this was in our DNA. We have the means, the hard power and the connections to lead. What we require is the backbone, the courage and the leadership to step forward, yet when our moment comes, such as now, we are found wanting. There are serious questions to ask about our place in the world, what global Britain really means and what our foreign policy is all about.
We must raise our game. Why? Step back. We seem to be in denial about where the world is going. As I have said in the House many times, threats are increasing. Democracy across the globe is under threat and authoritarianism is on the rise, yet here we are, complicit in allowing another dictatorship to form as we become more isolationist. What was the G7 summit all about? The western reset to tackle growing instability, not least given China, Russia and Iran. Take a look at a map. Where does Afghanistan sit? Right between all three. Strategically, it is a useful country to stay close to, but now we have abandoned it and the Afghan people as well. Shame on us.
I hope that the Government think long and hard about our place in a fast-changing world. Bigger challenges and threats loom over the horizon. We are woefully unprepared and uncommitted. We—the UK and the west—have so many lessons to learn. I repeat my call for an independent inquiry. We must learn these lessons quickly. The west is today a little weaker in a world that is a little more dangerous because we gave up on Afghanistan.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
First, I pay my respects to all those military personnel who lost their lives, all those who still have mental health trauma, all those who still suffer from life-long injuries, and all those diplomats, journalists and 69,000 Afghani soldiers who lost their lives during the last 20 years.
In 2001, we went into Afghanistan to say to the people that we would get rid of the military, medieval regime and bring them up to speed as regards what we believed their living standards, education and living systems and style should be. We promised all those women that they could move forward—that they could be judges, politicians and teachers—and that they could learn. We said they could do what we could do—they could do everything that they wanted to do. That was right, because they should be able to do that.
Now, will all those women, and all those judges who wanted to put the system right in Afghanistan, be able to do that? The Taliban are saying, “We will treat everyone fairly, but under Islamic jurisprudence.” Does anybody understand what Islamic jurisprudence is? It is applied by individuals—the people who are in charge in that place. It is applied by those who sit in judgment. Their jurisprudence can be different from that of anybody else in that area. We can say that we have been given these guarantees, but we need to look at what those guarantees will mean to those women and how they will be treated.
Over the past 12 years, we have taken no real action in Afghanistan. The Obama Government dithered over what they wanted to do. The Trump Government did not know what they were doing; they tried to do, and did, backdoor deals with the Taliban. The Biden Government have just come in and, without looking at what is happening on the ground, have taken a unilateral decision, throwing us and everybody else to the fire. They have decided to withdraw in a manner that no military person of any rank would perceive as fit for the arena in which they serve.
What did we do wrong during that period? As the right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said, we did not understand government there—we did not understand how it worked. Kabul has never been Afghanistan’s only entity. The people who ran the Government we placed there were totally corrupt, with hardly any mandate, and there for themselves. As we have seen, the current President has run away, leaving all those brave women to stay and believe in what they believe in. That was the Government we supported. Had we looked at the regional possibilities, the regional government that was in place and what the regional warlords were playing at, we would have understood the force of the Taliban, their training and how many people had been gathering in their ranks. We did not do that, and that is why we are suffering the consequences.
President Biden has decided to pull out because he does not believe that there is now a direct threat to the US. I do not know where he has got that intelligence from, but let us see how that goes. He needs to understand that this is about not just terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan, but the economic war going on in the region. By vacating Afghanistan and not speaking to its neighbour Pakistan, he will now provide a clear corridor for China and Russia to come through. It is not about a 20-year war, but about the current situation, the economy and the area’s geographical position. I hoped that he would understand that but, unfortunately, I do not think that he has managed to.
We need to ensure that we address the refugees fleeing into Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of people are crossing the border, but the Prime Minister did not once mention what relationship he has with Pakistan, what work he is doing with it, what support he will give it, or how he will speak to it about what to do. If we do not support those refugees and we do not understand what is going on, they will be left to the people traffickers who want to exploit them. Children will lose their lives in the seas and God knows where else.
We need co-ordination. We know enough to move forward and not make mistakes that we have already made. We need to work this properly, look to the region, support the people at source and resolve these issues, not leave it all until the very end.
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)
I want to make three broad points about what has gone on over the past week. I want to talk about this place’s responsibility towards those who serve, and our Afghan friends and partners. I also want to speak, if I can, for veterans of the conflict to whom I have spoken over the past week.
When it comes to responsibility, I urge Ministers to be very careful about talking exclusively about the Americans. We are very clear, and it is well understood, that the US is, or was, the framework nation in Afghanistan, but people who join the military from council estates in Plymouth, Newcastle, Stoke or Birmingham do not serve the American flag; they serve the British flag. They are proud to do so, and they do it at the behest of Ministers in this place. It dishonours their service simply to say, “The Americans have left—we are leaving.” We do not spend £40 billion a year on a tier 1 military for it to be unable to go out the door without the Americans, and the taxpayer does not expect that. I urge Ministers to take responsibility for the decisions that they make, particularly when talking with the families.
I wish to talk about our Afghan friends and partners. I am pleased with the announcement today on refugees; it is a good start. People can talk numbers; they can say that they want more or that they want fewer, but the reality is—this is basic maths—that we will not get out of Afghanistan all those whom we promised to get out. We can say that we want more, or that we want fewer, but that is the reality. The truth is as well that we have to be honest in this place. For many, many years, people have campaigned against this relocation scheme and the previous intimidation scheme and said that it was not good enough. Decisions made by Ministers in this House have made this situation harder, so, although I welcome this change today and our onward progression, let us not kid ourselves about what has happened in the past and let us treat with a little more respect those who, with no self-interest, campaign for these people.
Finally, I want to speak to veterans and for veterans. Over the past few days, it has become clear to me that we are dealing with new feelings—Help for Heroes put out something on this yesterday. We are not trained to lose and we are not trained to deal with the way that Ministers are choosing to be defeated by the Taliban. Was it all for nothing? Of course, it was not for nothing, and we must get away from that narrative. Whether we like this or not it is a fact that, for a period of time, Afghans—the average age in Afghanistan is 18 years old—will have experienced the freedom and privileges that we enjoy here, and no one will ever take that away from them, which is incredibly important. What are we here to do if it is not to be good, honourable people, to fight for the oppressed, to keep our families safe and to live to a higher calling? Our veterans did this over many years in some of the hardest conditions and against as dark an enemy as this nation has ever faced. We often look to our forefathers for inspiration. They emulated them. They did them proud, not in scale but in the same amphitheatre, They can be forever proud of what they did when the nation called. I say to them, “You played your role, but you cannot control what is happening now—remember that. What folk like me saw you do—the courage, the sacrifice and the humanity—will never die and it has defined us as human beings. You did that and nobody will ever take that away. I will never forget you. Every day the sun comes up, I will make sure that this place and this country do not forget you and your sacrifice on the altar of this nation’s continuing freedom.”
The Government must now step up and support this group of bereaved families and veterans. We will see a bow wave of mental health challenges. We are not trained to cope with the feelings that we have now. I have done everything that I possibly could to support all the brilliant staff at the Ministry of Defence, the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, and the NHS, which works tirelessly supporting veterans up and down this country, but I must say to the House with a heavy heart that the Prime Minister has consistently failed to honour what he said that he would do when he was trying to become Prime Minister. He must not wriggle out of his commitments on this issue. He knows that the Office for Veterans’ Affairs is nothing like it was designed to be: the paltry £5 million funding was slashed after less than a year, there was a lack of staff, and there was not even an office from which to work. Even today, the brilliant staff at the Office for Veterans’ Affairs simply cannot cope with the scale of the demand. While his predecessors may get away with a certain degree of ignorance in this space, I am afraid that the Prime Minister has no excuse on this issue; it is a political choice. The ambivalence needs to end, and he needs to step up and listen to the charities and to the veterans, not to those whom he chooses to employ around him who do not believe veterans’ issues are worth the political capital required. The nation cares, and we will make this Government care. The scale of the challenge of dealing with this Afghan generation is only just beginning. I pay tribute to everybody who has spoken up in this debate, but particularly to those who do not have a vested interest in Afghanistan and can see the inherent injustice of what is happening now. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for recalling the House today.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), as it is the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). They all spoke with great eloquence.
Like many hon. Members, I am wracked with a profound sadness at the catastrophe that has unfolded in Afghanistan. Above all, it is an unspeakable tragedy for the people of that country, who, after generations of conflict, now live under a terrible cloud of fear and repression. Who could fail to be moved by the agonising scenes from Kabul airport just this week? How desperate must someone have to be to want to cling on to the side of a moving aircraft? These past 20 years have been a struggle for peace. We tried to break the cycle of war, and to give hope to women and girls. We tried to give the Afghans a different life—one of hope and opportunity—but the catastrophic failure of international political leadership and the brutality of the Taliban have snatched all of that away from them. The new Administration in Kabul should know that they will be judged not by their words, but by their actions. The world is watching.
I want to reflect on the service and sacrifice of our brave servicemen and women, who have showed outstanding professionalism and courage throughout. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View said just a moment ago, recent developments have hit them hard, and they are grappling with the question of whether all the effort and sacrifice was really worth it. They are again grieving for fallen comrades who did not come home. Whatever the outcome in Afghanistan, those men and women, and their families, should be proud of their service, and we must be proud of them.
Many of us who served in Afghanistan have a deep bond of affection for the Afghan people, and I had the honour of serving alongside them in Helmand. We trained together, fought together and, in some cases, died together. They were our brothers in arms. I shudder to think where those men are now. Many will be dead, and I know others now consider themselves to be dead men walking. Where were we in their hour of need? We were nowhere. That is shameful, and it will have a very long-lasting impact on Britain’s reputation right around the world.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman—a fellow litigant—is absolutely right in his description of the Afghan armed forces. Will he add that many of them are more heroic and better soldiers than they are given credit for around the world?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, as always, and I completely agree with the point he made. It was particularly distasteful and dishonouring of President Biden to make reference to the lack of courage and commitment from those Afghan soldiers, who have served with such bravery and distinction.
We have to be pragmatic, and at this difficult point we must think about what our next move will be. We should understand that the character of our country is defined, for better or for worse, by moments such as this. We should also understand that we face a moral and humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions, and the response from the international community and the British Government needs to meet the magnitude of the moment. We must step up the statecraft and engage with international allies and alliances, and with regional partners. Although it is a particularly bitter pill to have to swallow, we must engage diplomatically with the new regime in Kabul. It is in our cold-headed national interest to do so, because right now our armed forces are deployed on an operation to recover UK nationals and other entitled personnel. It is in their interests that we engage to try to ensure the safe passage of those who want to leave.
We also know that many, many more will want to get out, and with our allies we need to work to establish safe routes to get them to safety. We must show compassion and genuine generosity to refugees, while accelerating and expanding the ARAP scheme to support those who supported us.
We also need to defend the hard-won progress of the past 20 years or so—girls in school and women in Parliament and the judiciary. We must ensure that Afghanistan does not slide back to where it was pre-9/11. Then, when the dust settles, we need to look at what went wrong and learn the lessons of this failure: why, despite all the effort, could we not build an Afghan state free of corruption, with the legitimacy and competence to balance the competing forces in that country, and what does that now mean for our foreign and defence policy in this country?
Regardless of all that, we must remain engaged; we must show leadership; we must use whatever influence we have to try to make things better. That is in our own national interest, it is in line with our values, and it is the right thing to do. We owe it to the people of Afghanistan and we owe it to ourselves.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
It has been said that there are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades pass. What we are seeing in Afghanistan this week is decades, and they will shape the rest of my lifetime and that of many in this Chamber. This was a wholly preventable tragedy, and I and many colleagues around me are so very, very angry.
Our Government called for NATO allies to help us build a new coalition in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban recapturing it, and we were let down. Only Turkey was willing to stand alongside us because they know what a failed state looks like. They have seen the refugees they support; they have seen the terrorists on their doorstep; they have seen the conflict and the suffering. It is bitterly disappointing and there is much we must learn from this. The UK could not have saved all those lives on our own. Multilateral collective responsibility should mean something, but I believe that too often today, it does not.
I have spent the last few days listening to our veterans, many of whom live in Rutland and Melton. I say to them now: many of us in this place will never truly understand the scars you carry, and we will never understand all you encountered, but all of you left me with one request—get the people out. That is what I, along with so many of my colleagues in this place, have been fighting for over the last few days: the veterans, the interpreters who supported families, those who identified IEDs, the female journalists fighting for their lives who have already had mines blow up their stations, and those who negotiated for their fellow Afghans against the Taliban. I must thank the Defence Secretary because he has been constant in his support, every hour over the weekend, to help me to get those people out. I thank him for his time.
Getting people out must be our priority. I welcome the Prime Minister’s G7-led multilateral refugee programme. We have to get non-combatant evacuations proceeding at pace, but we are operating only with the consent of the Taliban—most certainly at the airport—and that can be withdrawn at any time, so my primary concern is those safe routes to the airport. The air bridge must be operational at all times and we must negotiate departures, and not just from Kabul. Land convoys must be considered humanitarian corridors.
Once we get those people out, we must ensure that refugee families are welcome to our country so that they can build the lives they never asked for. The kindness of the British people is great, and Melton Borough Council and Harborough District Council have both already stepped up to the plate and said that they would like to take as many refugees as they can. The MOD is working with me to identify MOD housing stock in Rutland and across the constituency of Rutland and Melton, but I call on the Government to consider creating an initiative that allows British nationals to open their homes, their spare bedrooms and their second homes to those Afghans, similar to the private sponsorship route that already exists, because the British people want to step up and help.
Beyond the immediate life-saving operations, there is much that we must talk about. First, the British Government and the international community must recognise that the withdrawal is emblematic of a changing American posture. The comments that we have seen over the last few days have rattled me to my core, and yes, we are not meant to speak ill of our friends and allies, but in this case, we have no alternative but to call out the comments against our Afghan allies.
Secondly, the views of European allies such as the UK may no longer hold the same sway in Washington under this presidency. That means that we must take greater responsibility for our defence around the world. Global Britain means that we must act autonomously, but through multilaterals on the world stage with other partners, and we must convince our NATO allies that we can all stand together without the Americans. Yes, they bring the kit; yes, they bring the money; yes, they bring the numbers, but this is something that we can and must do. We must shift from the model of being over-reliant on the US.
Thirdly, we must fix our broken international system because it is not saving lives. The UN has failed to enable a political solution. There is no meaningful method or tactics to prevent the worst excesses of the Taliban, and the system is being undermined by hostile money flooding fragile states. There are hostile states sitting on the human rights and women’s councils of all the organisations of the multilateral world. It is the UK’s duty to fix the international system, because we can do it. I have sat at the negotiating tables, and it is the UK that brings countries together behind the scenes and provides the bureaucracy and systems that allow coalitions to be effective. We must recognise our unique expertise and step up.
We must also look hard at our strategic goals in south Asia, because China is most certainly doing that. Its goals are securing influence against Pakistan, stripping minerals and creating an alternative, superior democratic track. Its plunder diplomacy is well under way, and it is already using the situation to threaten Taiwan. It is saying, “Look what the Americans will do. They will leave you.” By recognising the Taliban, China has taken the first step towards creating an alternative international mechanism. The gravitational shift is towards it, and we must stand strong against that.
I also urge caution about our posture towards the Taliban. I must confess that I see what is being laid before the international community as simply platitudes—little more than a tactic to allow the Taliban to consolidate its control, avoid sanctions, keep the aid money rolling in, root out all those on its hit list and avoid UN Security Council measures. Perhaps I am wrong, but Pashtunwali tells us that Taliban intent includes justice or revenge as one of the core tenets of its society and way of life. We must also adequately monitor al-Qaeda.
The human cost of this withdrawal is monumental, but the strategic consequences risk being so much greater if we do not learn the lessons of the past few decades. We must properly focus on atrocity prevention. The new conflict centre, which I fought for, must lead our way in deciding how we become more strategic. We cannot be everywhere in this world and we cannot rescue every mission, but we can work on two core principles. The first is to protect our nation, our people and our prosperity. We must be single-minded in our focus on that and incredibly strategic. The second is that we must live up to our promises so that we can look in the eye those to whom we and our veterans have made promises, and stand squarely behind them. We cannot go wrong if that guides our foreign policy.
Finally, I thank our armed forces, our border staff, our Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office staff and Sir Laurie Bristow for the heroic work they are doing to get people out. I have worked in a crisis centre and I know the hours they are working. We are grateful for all they are doing. They are putting their lives at risk for the duty and responsibilities of this House.
We speak today in a changed world. I have no doubt that we will open our hearts to the people of Afghanistan. Together, we in this House must mourn those who are left behind and those who will not make it. Our singular purpose must be atrocity prevention in the future. We must recognise where the threats to this country lie and ensure that we are single-minded in our focus on challenging them and protecting our people. We must ensure that, in a world that has become darker and more uncertain this week, at least we know the light that we will follow.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
We in this House and our constituents have all seen the chaos and speed of the Taliban takeover. One of the questions that we have to address today and in the days to come is: how did it happen and what lessons are to be learned?
The points that I want to make this afternoon are about the people we, the British people, cannot let down. First, we cannot let down the British veterans who, over 20 years, fought in Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand—one of the most dangerous provinces to fight in. I can do no better than quote Jack Cummings, who has been quoted in recent days.
He is a former British soldier who lost both legs on 14 August 2010 while searching for improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. They are a few simple sentences, but they are worth repeating. He said:
“Was it worth it, probably not. Did I lose my legs for nothing, looks like it. Did my mates die in vain. Yep.”
We as a House of Commons and as a Parliament should not and cannot let down Jack Cummings and those 457 British soldiers who died in Afghanistan. As a Parliament, we will have to continue this debate to understand the lessons to be learned from what is happening to Afghanistan at the present time.
The other people we cannot let down are the people of Afghanistan. We know how many of them have died. We know that even as we speak, there are women and girls in their homes, in hiding or running away who are frightened for their future, their prospects and their lives under this Taliban regime. In the political solution, the debate and the discussion with NATO allies we must have the future of those Afghan women and girls at the centre of everything we are talking about and trying to do.
In the past 20 years, it is not just that 457 British soldiers died—although that is tragic, which is why I mentioned it—it is that we gave those women and girls hope. We gave them hope of a better future and of the prospects that women and girls all over the world, including here in Britain, have. We cannot just sit back and have them see that hope snatched away. We cannot let down the people of Afghanistan and we cannot let down those women and girls.
Finally, we cannot let down the refugees who we know will be pouring out of Afghanistan. The debate on refugees in the British Parliament is sometimes a little complex and difficult, and sometimes people have more to say about the burden of refugees than about our moral responsibility to them, but, speaking as someone who was in this House 20 years ago when we voted on an Adjournment for this military intervention, we have an extraordinary moral responsibility to these refugees. We have a responsibility to towns and cities all over this country, including in Scotland, that may well need more support and finance from Government, but we cannot let down those refugees. Our political and moral responsibility is too great.
It has been tragic to see the chaos of the Taliban takeover, but, if we do the right thing by our veterans, the Afghan people and refugees, we can at least know as a country that we have followed on from the initiative we took 20 years ago to intervene in that region to bear down on terrorism and disorder. I did not vote for the intervention in Afghanistan 20 years ago; I am afraid it was foreseeable that it would end like this. However, it is not inevitable that we as a country and this as a Parliament will not do the right thing. I urge colleagues on both sides of the House to address the important issue being raised today, so that we can go forward in pride and confidence in our own understanding of our moral responsibilities.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In his speech of self-justification after the collapse of Kabul, President Biden reduced a complex military issue to only two stark alternatives. It was a gross over-simplification for him to pose a devil’s dilemma between either a massive troop surge on a never-ending basis or a ruthless, chaotic and dishonourable departure. It is ruthless because people who trusted NATO will pay a terrible price; chaotic because of a lack of foresight to plan an orderly and properly protected departure; and dishonourable because even if our open-ended, nation-building, micromanagement strategy was wrong, as I think it was, in 20 years we created expectations and obligations which those who relied on us had a right to expect us to fulfil, as the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has just said.
It has been pointed out correctly that for 20 years, NATO operations in Afghanistan succeeded in preventing further al-Qaeda attacks on the west from being launched under Taliban protection. That was indeed the key outcome, but unless we choose a better future strategy, the threat of its reversal is all too real. Not only may sanctuary on Afghan soil again be offered to lethal international terrorists, but other Islamist states may also decide to follow suit. How, then, should we have handled a country like Afghanistan when it served as a base and a launchpad for al-Qaeda, and how should we deal with such situations in the future?
These are my personal views on a defence issue unrelated to the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee. For the past 10 years, I have argued both inside and outside this Chamber, very often to the dismay of my parliamentary colleagues, that a form of containment rather than counter-insurgency is the only practical answer to international terrorist movements sheltered and sponsored by rogue regimes like the Taliban. Containment, as older colleagues will remember, was the policy that held the Soviet Union in check throughout the cold war until its empire imploded and its ideology was discredited. Islamist extremism has a subversive reach similar to that of revolutionary communism, and our task is to keep it at bay until it collapses completely or evolves into tolerant, or at least tolerable, alternative doctrines.
In Afghanistan, the task of overthrowing the Taliban and driving al-Qaeda into exile was quickly accomplished in 2001, and at that point NATO arrived at a fork in the road. The option selected was, as we know, an open-ended commitment to impose a western version of democracy and protect it indefinitely in a country that had a strong sense of its own political and social culture and which was known to be politically allergic to foreign intervention.
Yet there was another option available to western strategists in response to the 9/11 attacks. Having achieved our immediate objectives of putting al-Qaeda to flight and punishing the Taliban, we should have announced that we were completely removing our forces but would promptly return by land and air to repeat the process if international terrorist groups were again detected in Afghanistan. When the Taliban regain full territorial control, they will lose their shield of invisibility. If they then choose to pose or facilitate a renewed threat—a terrorist threat—to western security, they should expect both their leadership and their military capability to be hit hard by our mobile land and air forces. That cycle would be repeated until the threat was removed, but we should not and would not allow our forces to be sucked in again.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making some very important points. Has the game not changed slightly, though, with the immediate recognition of the Taliban Government by China and Russia? As they are permanent members of the Security Council, it will be very difficult to get any UN-led action in the way he describes.
Dr Lewis
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right but, of course, this was a NATO intervention, and it is to NATO that we have to look when there are serious threats to international security, particularly those affecting western interests.
The point is that it has to be flexible, because al-Qaeda itself is very flexible. An active containment policy of this sort can track and match the flexibility of the terrorists. Such a policy depends on the maintenance of integrated and highly mobile land forces, positioned in regional strategic base and bridgehead areas.
Mr Mark Harper
My right hon. Friend is Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and for this strategy to be successful it requires excellent intelligence with good analysis so that Ministers can make sound decisions. In this case, I fear that has not been the case. Does his Committee have any plans to investigate the intelligence failures in this case so that we can deliver the strategy he is so excellently setting out?
Dr Lewis
I am glad that my right hon. Friend approves of the strategy, but I said earlier that this speech on defence is, if anything, in my capacity as a former Chairman of the Defence Committee. I am not in a position at this stage to say anything publicly about what the ISC might or might not agree to do, but obviously his suggestion is pertinent.
The point about strategic base and bridgehead areas is that they contain integrated forces that are ready to strike and then withdraw, and then to strike again whenever and wherever needed––in Afghanistan or in any other susceptible state that becomes what our Defence Secretary and now our Prime Minister have rightly described as “breeding grounds” for al-Qaeda or similar international terrorist groups. Proportionate military initiatives could be taken, and interventions made, without undue logistical complexity and without getting sucked into full scale counter-insurgency campaigning while the terrorists redirect their efforts to neighbouring countries, leaving us mired in the original countries from which they operated.
Active containment is the hard-headed solution to an otherwise intractable dilemma: whether to allow terrorists to attack us with impunity or whether to shoulder the unending burden of indefinitely occupying every reckless rogue state that shelters and supports them. It is okay for people to say, “This is over. There is no way we are going back into Afghanistan.” However, I do not want to be here, in the years or months to come, after another spectacular al-Qaeda type attack on a western country, with people looking around once again for a strategy because we are in a situation, as it seems we are, where the President of the United States can see only total withdrawal on one side or endless commitment on the other.
There is a flexible middle way, and it is an adaptation of the way in which we successfully saw off our cold war confrontation. It worked then, in a very different context, and it would work now in this context, too.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
There are, obviously, a great many colleagues trying to catch my eye. After the next contribution, I will have to reduce the time limit to five minutes.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
Today, as we look on at the situation in Afghanistan, we think first and foremost of the plight of the people of that beleaguered country. It is my view that today is not a day for political point scoring. It is a day for this House to reflect on what we need to do, as a Parliament and a Government, to respond to this crisis. While people have made valid points in this debate, and while I respect that, I think that the people in Afghanistan—the desperate people at Kabul airport—do not want to hear our point scoring. They want to know what we are going to do to help them, and that is what we must turn our mind to.
I also want to pay tribute today, as have other right hon. and hon. Members, to our brave servicemen and women and others who have served our countries, in particular those who have sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan. I want to recall in particular the nine service personnel from Northern Ireland who gave their lives in Afghanistan during operations there. I am going to name those individuals, because I think it is worthy that we remember who these people and their families are at this time: Channing Day, a young woman from Comber in County Down who was killed in action; David Dalzell, 20 years old, from Bangor in County Down; Aaron McCormick, 22 years old, from Macosquin in County Londonderry; Stephen McKee, 27 years old, from Banbridge in County Down; Nigel Moffett, 29 years old, from Belfast; David Patton, 38, from Aghadowey in County Antrim; Neal Turkington, 26, from Craigavon in County Armagh; and in my own constituency, Stephen Walker, from Lisburn, 42 years old, and Captain Mark Hale, 42 years old, from Dromara in County Down.
Almost all the counties in Northern Ireland—indeed, probably all of them—are represented by that roll call. We are very proud of our armed forces and the fact that during the campaign in Afghanistan more reserve forces were deployed from our region than from any other part of the United Kingdom. The willingness of our men and women to give up their time to volunteer to serve in our armed forces needs also to be recognised, and we support them. I certainly do not adhere to the view that their sacrifice was in vain. We applaud what they have done, even though now we look upon political failure in Afghanistan.
We need to learn the lessons from that. We need to understand what has gone wrong, but first and foremost we must look to the humanitarian assistance that is now urgently required, especially for those men and women who supported our armed forces in Afghanistan. I, like many in this House, have been contacted by veterans who know interpreters and civilian staff who worked in Camp Bastion and other military bases occupied by the British armed forces. They are desperate to know what we are going to do to help those men and women, who now face—well, goodness knows what plight they may suffer at the hands of the Taliban. We need to step up now. As they stepped up for us during the war in Afghanistan, we now must step up for them and offer sanctuary to these courageous people and their families.
We need also to consider the plight of religious minorities, to which my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) referred earlier, including Christians, who now face massive persecution in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is ranked second only to North Korea in terms of religious persecution against Christians and others. We must not lose sight of that in the midst of all this.
Then of course there is the threat of international terrorism—the reason why we entered Afghanistan in the first place. The Prime Minister is right: we must now take all reasonable steps to ensure that Afghanistan does not once again become a location for the training of extremist terrorists—a base from which to launch attacks on the western world. We must ensure that our intelligence capacity is enhanced. I look on with trepidation when I consider some of the intelligence failures that we have witnessed in recent times. We must do more to resource our intelligence services to ensure that we know and understand what is happening in Afghanistan, particularly in relation to the Taliban and their links to extremist Islam, and the potential for international terrorism now having a safe haven from which to operate.
My final point is on overseas aid. I am not going to point score, but I simply make say that we cannot seriously at this time contemplate cutting our international aid budget when people are in absolute desperation. It is a mark of this country that it is strong in its humanity and its desire to help others, and we must do that now. Stepping up to the mark does not mean just in military terms. It does not mean just in defence or political terms; it means with our heart as well. We must reach out to those in need and ensure that they have the support and resources they require. Yes, there will be time to look at what went wrong, and a time perhaps for political recrimination. But now is the time for this country to stand tall, step up, and do what is necessary to help the people in Afghanistan, especially those who helped us during the war.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
The visions on television sets the other day very much were redolent of 1975. No matter what Secretary of State Blinken said, the parallels with the Americans’ departure from Saigon were shocking, but also very true. My point is that the way we withdraw matters almost as much as the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan—I will return to that in a moment. The chaotic, ghastly departure, the way that people were falling off aircraft in their determination to get away, and the helicopters shipping people out, say terrible things about the values that we hold and those we wish to protect. This is a shame on all of us, not just America, but also the whole of NATO and here for us in this House.
We know that US support for the military in Afghanistan had evaporated and there was pressure to leave, but there was a better way. The US non-partisan Afghanistan study group came forward and said that over the past 18 months the US had suffered no casualties at all. It had withdrawn directly from the frontline, and the same for the UK. We were giving support, help and aid to those on the frontline, including the 70,000 members of the Afghan forces who died and of whom we should be incredibly proud today.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
The Prime Minister reminded the House that the Afghans lost 70,000 men whom we helped to train and whom we fought alongside, even though some of them were not paid for many months because of endemic corruption in Kabul. Does my right hon. Friend agree that to imply, as some have, that they basically ran away, when for 10 years and more they had done precisely the opposite, is shameful?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
There is no question but that is an infamous statement to make. Those men and women lost their lives trying to uphold what we had brought to Afghanistan, and we should be proud of them. I say to the American President—the Government and even the Opposition leadership are perhaps reluctant to say this—that he has no right to use excuses and base them on people who have lost their lives, and done so bravely. The withdrawal of air support was critical at that moment. The moment that went, the Taliban got a green light and knew they were going to go in and that the Afghan forces could not be supported. That was a critical decision. It was done in a hurry, and it was wrong.
As I said earlier, the Afghanistan study group said that there was no need for this precipitative departure by America. It could have kept a number of forces there at a much lower cost, supporting those on the frontline, and we could have supported it in doing that. I ask my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, did we at any stage demand that the US Government review their decision? Did we say to them that this was wrong, or that we must find a way to support what we have started in Afghanistan? I am proud of what our troops achieved and I know they will feel deserted at this point. I did not serve in Afghanistan, but I served in Northern Ireland and I know what the feeling is. However, I say that today those who died rise in glory because they gave something to the Afghans—hope. We must find a way of ensuring that it is not dashed.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
On the point about hope, I think of the 45-year-old woman in Kabul on Sunday who spent 20 years being oppressed and having access to education reduced, then spent 20 years with good fortune, raising a family with women and girls, and now faces all that being taken away. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to offer her hope as well?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
We do. The problem is that we and the Americans have pulled out. We now have to find a way to support people. Those who need to come here must come, the doors must be open and we must do what we have to do.
The west, upholding democracy, the rule of law and human rights, is in retreat. We have now opened the door to the Chinese and the Russians, who by the way kept their embassies open, fully staffed, throughout the whole of this, with permission from the Taliban. The Chinese have recognised the Taliban and we see the Chinese Foreign Minister meeting them. What are we dealing with here? Let me read what the Global Times, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Government, said yesterday about Taiwan:
“From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and US military won’t come to help.”
That will have gone out according to President Xi’s directive. The Chinese know what they are dealing with. They now believe that we will not stand up for freedom and democracy. We have encouraged totalitarian and terrible, oppressive states to believe that we are in full retreat.
After Saigon, America left the global stage for a decade and there were terrible consequences, including in Iran. We cannot allow that to happen again. I criticised America for what has happened, but I also know that they are our greatest and best allies, and the best hope of freedom. We need to bring them back. The British Government’s job is to bring the Americans back to realise their commitment. All those years ago, John Kennedy said:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
That should enshrine our purpose.
Democracy and human rights are delicate flowers. They are not the natural state of being unless they are defended, and we must defend them wherever they are. Yes, there are costs and there is a better way in Afghanistan, but in the chaotic rush and despicable retreat from Kabul, we have heartened and emboldened those who would bring democracy down.
When pressed about the matter, President Reagan said:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction… It has to be fought for”.
I hope the US listens to that quote. We in this House take liberties for granted. We must speak out. America must come back and we must send a signal immediately that we will not give way, that the totalitarian states of China and Russia cannot win in the end and that Islamic extremism cannot find a bolthole. Yes, we want to say that the Taliban must step up, but what will we do about it? We must put means behind words. The House must make that happen.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
We have heard many sobering words in this debate already. I pay particular tribute to the words from our colleagues who have themselves served in Afghanistan, to all their colleagues over many years and to all those in our armed forces, particularly those who have lost their lives, including two brave soldiers from Castleford, Rifleman James Backhouse and Bombardier Craig Hopson. I also pay tribute to those who have worked in our aid agencies and for partner organisations to support development and education projects and to try to rebuild a future for Afghanistan, and to all those who have rightly worked so hard and made it possible for families to live in some semblance of security and for girls—children—to be able to go to school for many years.
That is what makes it so disturbing, shameful and distressing to watch the events in Afghanistan right now: people who worked with us and helped us now hiding, their lives at risk; women and girls forced to hide in their homes simply because they are women and girls; hard-line extremists and terrorists back in charge, creating a security risk across the globe; and no evident strategy from the US, the UK and our allies, but what instead looks like just a chaotic retreat. We have a responsibility to respond, so I want to focus particularly on some of the practical things that should and can be done now to address the humanitarian crisis that we face.
First, I turn to those who have put their lives at risk by working with us. I welcome the Afghan relocation and assistance policy, but it is too narrow. It refers to directly employed staff. For the last 20 years, much of the work of the UK Government, including aid work and nation rebuilding work, has been through contracts with UK agencies and organisations. The Taliban do not recognise the complexities of a contracting-out process, so many of those lives are also at risk.
Some organisations have been in touch with their staff and former employees. One has told me that a woman who worked on the UK aid programme for three years and is now in hiding in Kabul has said this weekend:
“only 3 weeks ago one of my neighbours told me that when they come he would tell them who I am and who my family is. A couple of days ago, a strange man told me in the streets, ‘I know where you work and who you are.’
I fear seeing my kids tortured in front of my eyes or having my skin peeled off while I am alive. We remain locked inside, fearful of even looking out of the window—every time the door knocks fear goes through my whole body and I fear they are coming for me.”
Another, who provided secure accommodation for UK embassy staff and British aid workers, has said:
“Taliban fighters arrived at my father’s home this week asking for me by name. I just left my home city three days before and my father told the Taliban I had gone abroad for medical treatment. The fighters still forced their way into the house and searched every room.”
We have obligations to these people.
Emma Hardy
I am sure that my right hon. Friend, along with many other Members across the House, have been contacted by people desperately worried about loved ones in Afghanistan. One of my constituents has contacted me, saying that his pregnant wife is in Afghanistan now. The Taliban have taken out the communication signals, so he is unable to contact her. He did not put in an application for her to come to this country because of the English language requirement on the application form. Surely now is the time to relax that rule temporarily to allow these people to come to our country.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. This is the kind of flexibility that the UK Government could adopt right now. We need such measures for those who have families at risk, but we also need urgently to review and broaden the scope of the relocation scheme. The Home Secretary said in interviews this morning that those who have worked for NGOs that delivered UK aid programmes would also be included. I say to the Foreign Secretary that that is not happening on the ground right now; it is not reflected in the guidance that the Government are operating at the moment or in the application process, and people are being turned down as we speak. People have been turned down this weekend, even though they are at risk and have worked on UK-funded programmes. I urge the Government urgently to look at the relocation scheme. People cannot wait for the resettlement scheme to be in place.
Let me say something about that too. I welcome the Government’s commitment to a resettlement scheme. The Prime Minister confirmed to me earlier that the pledge to help 5,000 people this year is in addition to the commitment made in 2019 to resettle 5,000 people a year from across the world, not instead of it. That existing resettlement scheme is not fully reinstated after covid and it urgently needs to be, but the fact that that infrastructure, those systems and that funding is in place should make it possible for us very urgently to put in place an Afghan relocation scheme, and to accelerate and be more ambitious than the announcement that the Home Secretary made this morning. Again, I urge the Government to work urgently with the agencies on the ground, which can identify straightaway the people who are at most at risk, and to recognise the position of those who are currently here, whose applications for asylum may have been turned down before circumstances escalated. Please can those cases be urgently reviewed rather than refused on out-of-date grounds? Finally, I urge the Government to do more to support refugees in the region, because we know more people will flee.
We have a responsibility not to turn our backs. The situation may be bleak and the circumstances difficult, but we have a duty not to disengage.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
Above my desk in my constituency office there is a picture of Sir Winston Churchill, under which are the words:
“We are all of us defending…a cause…the cause of freedom and of justice, of the weak against the strong, of law against violence, of mercy and tolerance against brutality and ironbound tyranny.”
Sir Winston Churchill was speaking in 1942, but in many ways his words speak of Afghanistan throughout the centuries, and certainly in the 21st century.
When we think of Afghanistan, we think of our heroes—of the soldiers who went to serve and who did not return, or who were injured, their lives changed forever. We think of heroes such as Flight Lieutenant Alan Scott, a former Loughborough University student, or Guardsman Jack Davies of Loughborough, who was only 23 at the time of his death. We think of the Royal Anglian Regiment, whose members were awarded the freedom to enter the borough of Charnwood in 2006, in recognition of their service to our country and our town.
Sadly, I remember 9/11 very well and can understand the need at the time to, as the President of the USA said, “degrade the terrorist threat” and to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base from which attacks against the United States could continue. Given that no more terrorist attacks on that scale have been launched from Afghanistan in the last 20 years, it is clear that the intervention achieved its aims. However, the President also justified the fast-paced withdrawal of military personnel by claiming that the USA
“did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build.”
Despite that being the case, the USA, with the support of NATO and the UK, has moved the nation forward. That is demonstrated by the fact that today millions of girls in Afghanistan go to school and women hold more than a quarter of the seats in Afghanistan’s parliament, in stark contrast with the situation under the previous Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in which no girls attended school and women were excluded from governance. We absolutely must not sit back and allow that progress to be undermined.
I do not advocate the imposition of our western society on any other society—countries should of course be free to do as their people wish—but I do advocate democracy and the people of every country being afforded their basic human rights, including free will and the choice to determine how they live and the environment in which their children grow up. As such, the UK Government continue to play a role as we transition to a new phase of international support for Afghanistan. We must be clear with the Taliban that if they continue to abuse domestic human rights, they cannot expect to enjoy any legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people or the international community. A small number of my constituents have relatives in Afghanistan, and I would like their applications for refugee status, or discretionary right to remain in the case of spouses, to be dealt with swiftly and positively.
For 20 years, the work of our armed forces has protected the Afghan people and denied terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks against the UK. Those same forces have enabled development to take place that has improved the lives of millions and transformed Afghan society. I thank our armed forces for their huge sacrifice and the contribution that each has made, and I ask that those who helped our armed forces to deliver that help and support in Afghanistan also be helped and supported here in the UK.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
Four hundred and fifty-seven UK service personnel, in excess of 3,000 coalition forces, nearly 70,000 Afghan Government troops and police, aid workers, journalists, humanitarians and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed over the past two decades. Many, many thousands more have been injured or brutalised. I hope—it is only hope—that all that pain and suffering was not in vain, but I fear greatly when I see the current scenes at Kabul airport.
Before I start properly, I wish to make an observation. The right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) both mentioned intelligence. I do not know whether there was a failure of intelligence or of intelligence assessment, whether those who had the facts had the access or the confidence to speak truth to power, or whether the Ministers who were in receipt of those assessments understood them or ignored them, but when the autopsy on this situation is complete, we need to know whether there was in any way an intelligence failure.
Let me put the Afghan situation into a slightly broader regional context. On 2 August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. On 16 January 1991, 700,000 troops, including from the UK, launched Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Sabre and destroyed Iraq’s air defences, communications, Government buildings, weapons plants, oil refineries, bridges and roads. Iraqi resistance collapsed on 28 February, but Saddam Hussein was left in power, and uprisings by the Kurds and the Shi’ites in the south were brutally suppressed.
On 20 March 2003, the Iraq war started when allied forces, including UK forces, launched an attack on Iraq. Although the fighting was mainly over by 1 May, it would be six more years until UK combat operations came to an end. The war would cost at least $1 trillion dollars—some say between $3 trillion and $6 trillion—and perhaps a million people would lose their lives. It would see the rise of ISIL—Islamic State—which at one point would control a third of the territory of Iraq. By the time that conflict was ending, Libya had a revolution, or a civil war or, more accurately, a NATO-backed insurrection. A second civil war followed and there were at least 10,000 dead people and two competing Governments. Of course, I could add that the UK and others are supporting rebel forces in the ongoing tragedy that is Syria.
Within a decade of the start of the first Gulf war, we had 9/11. There were four planes: one went into the north tower of the World Trade Centre and one into the south tower; one went into the Pentagon; and one went into a field in southern Pennsylvania. In the World Trade Centre, 2,600 died; 125 died in the Pentagon; and 256 died on the planes. The US death toll was bigger than that at Pearl Harbour.
On 7 October 2001, the bombing of al-Qaeda and Taliban positions by US and UK forces started, with conventional ground forces going in 12 days later. That action was completely justified. By November 2001, the Taliban were in retreat. By 5 December there was an interim Government and by 9 December the Taliban had collapsed. One would have thought we were coming towards the endgame.
It took more than another 10 years for combat missions to stop. We then did not heed the warnings as province after province fell and the Taliban began to control more and more territory. We did not heed the warnings in 2018, when 115 died in suicide attacks in Kabul. We should have heeded the warnings and seen what was going to come next and the rapid way in which the Taliban took over almost the whole of Afghanistan.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Is that not why it is so important that the UK Government maintain and increase their aid commitment? No matter what the Foreign Secretary says about doubling aid, the reality is that less aid money will go into Afghanistan this year than was previously planned—a direct result of the unfortunate decision to cut aid from 0.7% to 0.5%.
Stewart Hosie
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the aid budgets must at the very least be maintained at their previous level, and probably increased. I also agree with all the calls today that it is not simply UK citizens and those who work directly for us who are at risk; it is many, many of us whose lives are at risk from the Taliban, and we, the west, must do everything that we can to evacuate all—all—of those who put their faith and trust in us and whose lives are now in jeopardy.
I have a question, which I know many members of the public have. Why is there always the political will and the funding to go to war, but rarely the foresight to work out what the consequences for ordinary people will be, although those consequences are always the same; and why are there never the resources to rebuild and reconstruct, and never a plan to win the peace?
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
We have all in Parliament been horrified by recent developments, from the harrowing scenes at Kabul airport to the reports of retribution from the Taliban, the shambles of an exit strategy and the failure of the international community at this critical point. It is self-evident that our mistaken intervention now brings its responsibilities, and whatever the strategic long-term lessons, the first priority now must be to save lives. So I welcome what the Government are doing to get our nationals out, but I urge them, as many hon. Members have done today, to be generous in our welcome of the many refugees who are fleeing in fear of their lives.
I do worry about arbitrary figures—an extra 5,000—at this point, because we simply do not know the scale of the humanitarian disaster. I urge the Government to keep an open mind on that. We have to be generous. If other nations will not do their fair share, we have to go beyond our fair share in ensuring that we live up to those obligations and responsibilities. That is a product of our 20-year intervention.
I would also urge the Foreign Secretary, please, to do what he can to help all those who have assisted the UK in Afghanistan—not just the military. As he knows, I chair the all-party group on the British Council, and we are particularly concerned about the slow progress of the ARAP scheme, which seems to be creating a backlog. There is a narrow window of opportunity here and I urge the Foreign Secretary to reinforce what the Prime Minister assured me from the Dispatch Box today, that sufficient resources are committed to ensure that no one is left behind who wishes to leave.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Of course we are grateful to the Government for making the commitment to welcoming new refugees to the UK, but does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that, alongside the UNHCR definition of what is required to be a refugee, the UK Government have introduced additional requirements, which will make the process far more complex and make it far more difficult to prove that these refugees are genuine?
Mr Baron
I can assure the hon. Member that many, if not all, on the Government side, and no doubt on both sides, of the House will press the Government as best they can to ensure that our welcome of refugees is nothing short of very generous, given the circumstances of the case. We owe it to those people; we need to stand by them. Of course the usual terrorist screening and so on must take place, but I have got the message across, I have had a response from the Prime Minister, I know that the Foreign Secretary is a man of his word and I, as chair of the all-party group, have made this representation very strongly in the House today and fully expect that the Government will honour it. There are too many people trapped, at the moment, in the bureaucratic mess in Kabul airport, despite the wonderful work that our ambassador is doing there—in the airport—and we need to commit sufficient resources. I think I have made that point strongly enough, and if the hon. Lady does not mind, I shall quickly move on and make a couple of other points.
I would argue that this has proved to be yet another mistaken intervention, which will sit alongside Iraq, Libya and Syria. The fundamental error that we made here—it has been alluded to in one or two very good speeches—is that we allowed the initial, limited and very successful mission of expelling al-Qaeda in 2001 to morph into a much wider intervention of nation building, which meant fighting the Taliban. That was unnecessary, given that the 2001 intervention had proved that we could achieve our goals of combating terrorism through limited interventions.
As one of the few Conservative MPs at the time to oppose the wider intervention and to vote against it, I suggest that the mission was born of ignorance, was over-ambitious and, from the very start, was thoroughly under-resourced. If we are not prepared to put in the resource to see this through to the end, we should not be surprised at the sort of exit shambles that we have recently seen. The policy was defended by too many—for too long—who should have known better, whatever their purposes, including a few in this place. I pay honour to our service personnel. They did their job in buying time—it is up to the politicians to come up with the solutions—and they achieved their missions. They can be proud, and we can be proud of them.
While the priority now is to save lives, the scale of the error is such that, I believe, the many bereaved families and service personnel who are still paying the price of this intervention, including those of the eight fusiliers killed from my regiment, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and the 30 or so wounded from the regiment who are living with life-changing injuries, deserve an apology from the Prime Minister on behalf of previous Governments, even though the exit strategy was not of No. 10’s making. I think that that is the very least we can do. They can be proud, we can be proud of them, but I think that an apology is certainly due.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I was elected to the House in 2001, which was the year of the NATO intervention in Afghanistan. I recall very clearly that the objective clearly stated by the then Government was to stop Afghanistan being a safe haven for terrorists. In the short term, we were successful in that objective, but it was clear early on that there was a crying need to work with the Afghan people to change the nature of the country, to create a democratic system in which women had equality and real opportunities, and where the rule of law held firm. Only then would the country never again be a safe haven for terrorists. That was the argument that was clearly made and which was accepted in the House.
I wish to pay tribute to the armed forces, some from my constituency, many of whom lost their life or suffered life-changing injuries. In particular, I refer to Sergeant-Major Michael Williams of my home village of Bedwas, who lost his life in combat with the Taliban. We are proud of them all. There is, I believe, a widespread consensus emerging in the House that it was a huge mistake to leave Afghanistan in the way we did and in the time we did. The question now is what did our Prime Minister say to President Biden to try to dissuade him from this catastrophic course? The House deserves a clear answer to that fundamental question.
Today, the danger is that Afghanistan may once again become a safe haven for international terrorists we have seen in action in the past. Let us not forget that one of the first actions of the Taliban was to release thousands of prisoners, many of whom were terrorists. Once a terrorist, it is quite possible that someone will be a terrorist again. The Taliban leaders say they have changed their colours, but I have to say that is unlikely. Certainly their public relations have improved, but I doubt fundamentally whether they have changed. I say that because already we can see widespread atrocities in Afghanistan outside Kabul, we can see thousands of Afghans who understand what the Taliban are all about desperate to leave their country, and we must recognise that the Taliban are a diverse group; many of them outside Kabul are very different from the PR-slick Taliban leaders we see on our television screens.
Of course we are most concerned about the situation at Kabul airport. British citizens need to be brought out as quickly as possible, and I pay tribute to the soldiers who are helping to facilitate that and to our British ambassador. We also need to bring out as quickly as possible those who have worked with us; we need desperately to stand by them. We must recognise that the Afghanis who are vulnerable must be given support and sanctuary in our own country and many others. Indeed, we must be generous in our support. That is our responsibility as a nation.
In addition, we must be prepared for the refugee crisis that is, unfortunately, likely to emerge. That crisis will be global in character, but it will particularly affect the nation states around Afghanistan—Iran and Pakistan in particular—and we must re-examine the cuts to our aid budget to give maximum support. In essence, it is vital that this House collectively sends a message to the people of Afghanistan and, indeed, to the world that we will stand by the people of Afghanistan in this, their hour of need.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow so many distinguished hon. Members who themselves fought on the frontline in Afghanistan.
President Biden said this week that his
“only vital national interest in Afghanistan”
was to prevent a terrorist attack. Even if that is the case, both he and President Trump should be deeply ashamed—I say this with great sadness—because their actions have returned to Afghanistan to the very Government that harboured the 9/11 bombers.
The truth is that 457 British servicemen and women did not lose their lives simply to reduce the terrorist threat, although they succeeded in that with great distinction. They paid their price in defence of a set of values—values that said that girls should be entitled to the same education as boys, that courts should be independent of clerics, that journalists should not be imprisoned if they speak truth to power. If President Biden believes in those values, it is time the world heard it—and it is time we heard the same from the British Government, too.
Although it is not possible to stay in Afghanistan without US support, we are the second power in a western alliance. For all the failures of this week, and not just in Afghanistan, but in Iraq and even Vietnam, that western alliance has delivered more freedom, more prosperity, more respect for human rights across the globe than at any time in human history. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) just said, those gains are now at risk, not just because of what happened this week but because of the rise of an authoritarian and wealthy China that actively opposes the open societies we believe in.
Daniel Kawczynski
As a former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend is right to scrutinise our American allies, but will he acknowledge that the lack of support, commensurate to their sizes, from European NATO partners has also led to the situation we are facing today?
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that. It is not sustainable to ask America to spend 4% of its GDP on defence when the entirety of Europe spends no more than just over 2%.
The threat we face is a threat that all of us face. For 15 consecutive years, the number of free countries in the world has been in decline. Since 2013, according to Reporters Without Borders, press freedom has been in decline. This decade, for the first time in any of our lifetimes, the largest economy in the world will not be a democracy, when China overtakes the United States.
We are proud of our country not just because of what we have achieved and not just because of our wealth, but because of what we stand for. When those values are under threat, and when the Atlantic partnership appears to be fraying, we should be stopping at nothing to rebuild them. That means investing in our armed forces, reversing the aid cut, developing our own technology and rebuilding our global alliances. There is something we can do right now: cut through bureaucracy and ensure that we look after every single Afghani who took risks for themselves and their families because they believed in a better future and trusted us to deliver it.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Jeremy Hunt
I am just coming to my conclusion.
We cannot reverse what happened this week, but we can limit the damage and learn from what went wrong. That means not just grieving silently at the actions of a close ally, but recognising the threats we face and roaring defiantly in defence of the values we share.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Watching the scenes at Kabul airport this week left me and many others with feelings of overwhelming grief and anger: grief for the millions of Afghan women and girls in particular who were promised a brighter future and the opportunity to learn, work and pursue their dreams; and anger that the many pledges made to the Afghan people over the past 20 years have been broken as they were abandoned to their fate.
The stories being told by terrified Afghans are heart-rending. There are the women students who are now hiding their diplomas and certificates for fear of punishment, and in the belief that in any case their qualifications will be useless as they will not be allowed to use them. There is the female mayor who says that she is now waiting for the Taliban to come for people like her and kill them. There is the Afghan journalist, now in hiding with his family, who said:
“There was a lot of promise, a lot of assurance. A lot of talk about values, a lot of talk about progress, about rights, about women’s rights, about freedom, about democracy. That all turned out to be hollow.”
That journalist is in danger of being proved right.
We have to do whatever we can now to honour our commitments to the people of Afghanistan. That starts with fixing our failed refugee and asylum-seeking system. For all the hand wringing of Government Ministers in the last few days, the reality is that their actions over the past few months have left thousands of ordinary Afghans in terrible danger. Interpreters and contractors who worked side by side with UK forces have been refused resettlement on the grounds that they were technically subcontractors. That is shameful.
I fear for the thousands of ordinary Afghans who supported the UK in delivering aid and supporting other projects, often in the interests of our foreign policy objectives. They are now at real risk of being seen as collaborators working against the Taliban’s interest. The NGOs they worked with are now powerless to help them, but the UK Government are not, yet we have heard very little about what the Government are doing to persuade and support them. Many are not covered by the Afghan relocation and assistance programme because they worked for UK organisations other than the Government—for NGOs and other civil society organisations, even though they were paid by UK aid. They are in extreme danger, so that ARAP programme must be expanded to encompass them, too. The scheme was far too late to get off the ground and only started in April when Taliban advances and atrocities were already all too apparent, and it has been drawn all too narrowly. It must be amended to allow visas for the family of people who would have been eligible but who have died, and for people who have fled Afghanistan but would have been eligible had they remained in country.
The resettlement scheme announced by the Government last night is welcome, but it is not enough. Places must be based on need, not on numbers. There should be no artificial cap. When the Government are already failing to achieve their existing target of settling 5,000 refugees a year, we need to hear an awful lot more about how Ministers are planning to deliver for Afghan refugees and guarantees that local government will be properly funded to work with them.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it is vital for local councils that have been willing for some time to take on additional refugees, such as mine in St Albans, to be given additional finance? For local government to support those refugees, it needs funding to help with finding furniture, relocation and connecting with utilities. All that support is needed so that the council itself can support refugees.
Caroline Lucas
I absolutely support the hon. Lady’s comments. Such support is vital.
I call on the Home Secretary today to abandon the resettlement-only plans set out in the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would criminalise, or deny full refugee status to, those who make their own journeys to seek asylum in the UK. I call on her to grant immediate asylum to Afghans already waiting for status in the UK, release all Afghan nationals from detention, and urgently expand the family reunion route so that Afghans can be joined by other members of their family, including siblings and their parents. I was contacted by a constituent who used to work for the EU delegation in Kabul and whose siblings all worked for allied forces. He has asylum here in the UK and his siblings have asylum elsewhere, but his mother is left alone, desperate and very much a target. We absolutely need to widen the family reunion rules.
We also need not just to properly restore aid, but to increase it. The Foreign Secretary said that it is being doubled; I welcome that, but it is still less than the 2019 figure. We need to recognise that the need today is so much greater than it was even in 2019.
There are many lessons to be learned from this disaster. It looks as if our intelligence might well have been inadequate, our promises to the Afghan people worthless and our duty of care to ordinary Afghans who worked with us patchy and unreliable. More than that, this Afghan tragedy should be the catalyst that finally forces us to rethink how the so-called war on terror is fought. The debacle in Afghanistan, with the loss of almost a quarter of a million lives, is just one of four failed conflicts in the past 20 years. Western military action in Libya and Iraq and the air war against ISIS in Syria have all failed to achieve their objectives: ISIS is still active in Iraq and Syria, ISIS and al-Qaeda are active across the Sahel and eastern Africa, and there are still links with Afghanistan.
We urgently need to learn the lessons of failed wars of intervention and take an honest look at the objectives behind our foreign policy. For too long, protecting British interests has been about stability and safety through access to oil, maintaining the current balance of power and a very inconsistent approach—to put it mildly—to human rights and democracy. When we ally ourselves with countries such as Saudi Arabia, our moral credibility to speak about human rights is fundamentally undermined. We need a longer-term approach, including stopping arms sales to oppressive regimes that do not abide by international law, and a more consistent approach to democracy across the world.
The Government like to boast of our country being global Britain. If that is to mean anything, it surely has to be an opportunity to finally develop the ethical foreign policy that we have spoken about for so long, focused on seeking to build international consensus with co-operation, security and human rights at its heart.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Afghanistan today is a tragedy backlit by defeat—even the name of Operation Enduring Freedom has already exuded a sense of irony—but lest we rewrite history, let us remember why we went. We did not go to Afghanistan out of a sense of philanthropy towards the Afghan people; we went out of a hard-headed sense of protection of our own national security. Were we successful? Yes, we were: we were able to take down al-Qaeda networks in the region and beyond, and we did not see a repeat of 9/11. We owe an immeasurable debt to our armed forces. Those who say that their sacrifices were in vain utterly misunderstand the sacrifices that were made.
Are we safer than we were a week ago? Probably not. Under the Taliban, 5,000 of our most committed, vicious and determined enemies are out there once again, and they will seek their moment. We also need to understand that the strategic weakness of our alliance will have been noted not just in Kabul, but in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Islamabad.
Did we know that the Afghan Government would fall so swiftly? No, we did not. Many people today claim to have predicted it when they absolutely did not. The removal of 2,500 American troops, along with 8,000 coalition troops and 18,000 of those in support, brought about a catastrophic drop in morale among both the Afghan forces and the Afghan Government. It has been mentioned many times today that 70,000 Afghan police and armed forces died in the struggle to protect their own country. For anyone to say that they would not fight is a slight that is not worthy of any politician in a free country. But the question we must ask is: why, oh why, would anyone choose to remove their troops—even if they had decided to do so—during the fighting season, when the Taliban were at their greatest strength? The answer is that it was not a decision made for foreign policy or security reasons; it was done to suit a domestic political timetable. When security decisions are taken for political reasons, there is likely to be a detrimental outcome, and we would all do well to remember that lesson.
Although we did not go primarily for philanthropic reasons, rebuilding Afghanistan and giving its people a real chance of all the benefits that we take for granted became the main case used to maintain domestic public support for the mission in Afghanistan, and it was the main reason given to justify the continued sacrifices of our armed forces. They brought prosperity, political stability, human rights and the rule of law to the people of Afghanistan. It was an immense achievement, even on that timescale.
As one of the Defence Secretaries during the Afghan conflict, who had to send handwritten letters to the loved ones of those who died in action and visited many of the severely injured in hospital, including friends, I understand how raw the anger may be at the events of recent days. As several Members have said, those veterans will require extra support. For their sake and for its own sake, we must do all we can in concert with our allies to give support and sanctuary to all those who remain vulnerable in Afghanistan. Time is of the essence: the Taliban are already going door to door with their lists looking for victims. We must do everything we can as quickly as we can.
In Europe in recent days, there has been a lot of talk about how it is vulnerable to American decisions and has to ride on American coat-tails. The irony seems to be completely lost on those who refuse to build up their own security capacity that, in the end, they will actually become more dependent on American foreign policy, rather than less. Listening to our NATO allies who talk about why they should be spending—high-spending, big states in Europe—while American taxpayers carry the burden of security, one would think that they might have learned their lesson by now.
Finally, we can ultimately win the war in Afghanistan or against any similar oppressors only by winning the war of ideas, and we have to begin by believing that what we offer as a society is not just different from theirs, but better. We need to believe that democratic government is better than totalitarianism, that an impartial rule of law is better than theocracy, and that freedom and human rights are better than oppression and prejudice. Freedom will not come for free. There is a political and financial cost to be paid for it. If we are unwilling to pay for it, we have to accept the consequences.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. There are still enormous numbers of colleagues trying to catch my eye so, after the next contribution, I will have to reduce the time limit to four minutes.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
In this sombre and very serious debate, there are two fundamental points I want to make. First, we have all been inundated overnight and in the past couple of days with emails from constituents and many others who are very worried about the plight of those who are trying to get out of Afghanistan, the numbers of people who ought to be supported and the approach that the British Government have taken. Members will have seen letters from the National Union of Journalists concerning journalists and their safety, from the University College Union concerning their students in this country and their fears, and from many, many others, including people representing trade unions in Afghanistan.
As well as that, I ask the Government clearly what their strategy is for allowing people to come to this country, because it is clear that all those who have worked for the British Army or any other organisation in Afghanistan should be allowed to come here. That is the case, likewise, for non-governmental organisations, but I would add to that those who have worked for contractors that have been contracted to the British or American services. They will be just as vulnerable in the future.
If we are serious about ensuring that all those refugees who wish to come here are able to get in, the Government have to do two things. First, they should respond to the very generous offers made by a lot of local authorities—I saw a letter last night from the leaders of Labour London borough councils—of doing everything they can to support refugees coming to this country. However, they need financial support to be able to house those people, accommodate them and ensure that they can be integrated into our society. There must also be a change in the Government’s rhetoric about refugees in general. We cannot hold out a hand and say that we are going to welcome all the Afghan refugees here—I hope we do—when, at the same time, we are passing legislation that will criminalise those who save the lives at sea of people trying to get to this country, a place of safety. If we are an open society that welcomes refugees, we should mean that wherever refugees come from—not just Afghanistan. I hope the Government will bear that in mind and give us a clear outline of how people will get out of Afghanistan, how they will get here and how they will be processed when they get here.
Too many of us represent constituencies where refugees who do not have enough support are living. They are begging, homeless and street-sleeping while their applications are endlessly processed. That is not the sign of a society or a Government who are holding out a hand of friendship towards refuges.
The war has cost the United States $1 trillion and this country tens of billions of pounds. It has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan people. It has driven many of them into asylum or refugee status in all the neighbouring countries. It has taken the lives of American soldiers, and soldiers of almost every other nationality that got involved, including 457 British soldiers. At the end of it, the trauma of those who served there and were injured there, and the mental health issues that pertain for soldiers coming out of service, are huge and likely to be exacerbated by what has happened over the past few days. We need to ensure there is proper support for those who have served and suffered in Afghanistan, and we also need a serious appraisal of how we got there in the first place.
Any examination of the longer-term history of Afghanistan will show that wars there fail. There were three in the 19th century and a number later. The great game of the 19th century was about preventing Russia from getting control of Afghanistan. Later, the cold war took over and the Americans supported the opposition to the Soviet Union, thus forming the mujaheddin, which morphed into the Taliban and so much else. There are some serious historical lessons to be learned about how we take major foreign policy decisions. It is beyond disappointing that the Prime Minister’s response this morning appeared to be that he is not prepared to countenance a serious inquiry into all this.
I can hear my friend, the late Paul Flynn, speaking about the number of soldiers who died in Helmand. I can hear all those who spoke up against the intervention, not because they supported the Taliban and not because they were not serious about human rights, but because they were serious about a long-term peace in a world that recognises the historical position that we have got ourselves into. Now surely is the time for a sober reflection on the disaster that has happened in Afghanistan.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
Like others, I have been to Afghanistan—not as a solder, but as a 16-year-old teenager in 1978. It was in the last days of President Daoud’s regime. A couple of days after he returned from Islamabad, where my father was working, Daoud was overthrown, executed and strung up. Afghanistan has been a failed state since, which is tragic because it is a beautiful country. I remember it as vibrant and developing fast.
Much has been made and will be made in this debate about the tremendous sacrifice of our armed forces in Afghanistan. I know that many soldiers who served cared passionately about the Afghan people, and the job they were trying to do to bring about peace and security. We should not forget that our involvement in Afghanistan secured 20 years of freedom for its people. I can only hope that, from the ruins, some sense of how that feels will remain, and it will not totally revert back to extremist Islamic rule under the new Government.
The past 20 years have not been wasted. We have seen 40% of girls in education—9 million girls where there were none—with literacy rates of 56% and 70,000 female teachers. Four thousand midwives have been trained, up from 400 in 2001, and female MPs make up 28% of Parliament—we only make up 34% here, so they were doing incredibly well. That is what has been achieved, and that is what our brave men and women have died for, but, like many in this House, I am a realist and hope is not much of a safeguard. The chance of any sort of progressive shift by the Taliban, now in complete control, seems remote. As co-chair of the all-party group on women, peace and security, I have spoken in this House several times in the past few months expressing my concern about the future of women in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of NATO troops. The premise of my concern has always been the encroachment of the Taliban, which has been going on for many years, and no one should have been surprised by its entry into Kabul. In the face of Taliban rule, my concern now has turned to deep anger and frustration that women and girls may again face subjugation in Afghanistan, despite the words of the Taliban leaders.
John Howell
Will my hon. Friend join me in the work to try to ensure the protection of the Afghan women’s orchestra, which came to this country in 2019 and made a big impression on the UK, and is now seriously under threat?
Mrs Drummond
Absolutely. There are many women’s organisations that have come to the fore over the past 20 years, and it would be very sad if they disappeared.
Those brave women who joined the Afghan army now fear beheading. Girls face having their education taken away from them and women their rights to go and do as they please. There is the fear of sexual violence. There will be no women teachers, no women police officers and no women in political life. Women face being wiped from the face of Afghanistan unless they are prepared to subject themselves to Taliban rule. There are already signs that Afghan women have no faith whatsoever in any lessening of the Taliban grip. In Kabul, there are reports of nail shops blackening out their windows, music shops, destroying stock and women not going to work or walking alone. These mundane, simple, everyday things that all women in the world should have the right to do are all at grave risk. Although the feeling of impotence in this place is palpable, there is no reason to give in or to give up on Afghanistan and its people. We must do all we can to engage with the new regime and any country that has influence with it, and I am particularly focused on what Pakistan can do as a country that harboured Taliban leaders, plus any Gulf backers that have been supporting this group.
Afghanistan will need aid. Delivering it must come with stringent conditions on honouring women’s rights, human rights and those of the ethnic minorities as well. This will need global consensus, and I hope that the Government are working extremely hard in this regard right now to ensure that the Taliban has the international community breathing down its neck from day one.
My one final thought is how lucky I am to stand here in the House of Commons able to say what I think, and, in honour of those brave Afghan women fearing the very worst right now, I will not forget it.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
My involvement in Afghanistan is through my co-worker and friend Marzia Babakarkhail. Marzia was an Afghan judge who had to flee her home in Afghanistan as the Taliban tried to assassinate her. Her crime was that she had set up schools for women and girls. Marzia does not want our sympathy; she wants our action. She wants to help the thousands of women activists and others who have supported us over the past 20 years. Many of these women face not just the obliteration of their rights, but potential genocide.
Despite the warm words of the Taliban, which too many have been willing just to accept, there have been reports of women being sent home from their jobs and told to send their male relatives instead, girls as young as 10 being sold off to Taliban fighters, mothers having their eyes gouged out in front of their children, and reprisals being carried out against those who work for Afghan authorities. As others have said, we need deeds not words. If the Taliban has changed and it wants to engage with the international community, it needs to demonstrate exactly what this means. As a start, it means that those who want to leave and have a place of refuge get safe passage, and that applies to where they are in Afghanistan now, not when they are on a plane. There are numerous reports of roadblocks and people being beaten as they try to get through those roadblocks on their approach to the airport.
In addition to Ambassador Bristow, I want to thank Ministers, especially Lord Tariq Ahmad who has been working around the clock helping me with a particularly devastating case, and other officials as well. Time is running out. There was pandemonium on Monday and I am getting messages literally by the minute. People are having to move literally every couple of hours, and one woman I am helping has moved 11 times since Monday.
I am pleased that the Government are finally increasing the number of refugee places, but we need more information about the speed, detail and follow through. I am also reminded of the child refugee pledges that were not kept.
In the short term, the role of Pakistan will be absolutely key. Pakistan already has 3 million Afghan refugees. The situation is going to get much worse in the coming weeks and months, at a time when the UK is cutting aid. I would be grateful if the Foreign Secretary would say that aid will be restored, particularly in relation to this issue. Pakistan also has a potential role to play in moderating the influence of the Taliban. This is a challenge and an opportunity for Pakistan. It is very keen about human rights across Kashmir, as it should be, but we need to make sure that that applies and see whether it can have an impact on the region as a whole and in particular on the Taliban.
Finally, Pakistan has been clear that it needs help from the international community in managing the 1,600-mile Durand line, keeping the region terrorist free. That is something that we could do collectively. That porous border poses a threat not just to Pakistan but to us all. In the long term, global Britain must work with its allies to restore not just our reputation but our role in facilitating a law and rules-based system and human rights across the world.
Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)
I rise to speak in this Chamber for the first time since my wife’s suicide in June last year. I would like to personally thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and many other right hon. and hon. Members from right around the House for the tremendous messages of support and condolence that you have sent me.
It is with no great pleasure that I stand to speak at the time of the UK’s biggest humiliation since Suez and of the US’s biggest humiliation since Saigon. The mood of the House is so different. I remember when the Taliban were evicted. The Labour Government went in with all-party support—apart from some very prescient comments by people such as the late Sir Peter Tapsell, the then Member for Louth and Horncastle—because we believed in nation building and in keeping terrorists at arm’s length and a very long way away from our streets after 9/11. There was then a period of very intense military activity, but we ended up with a muddled, messy Afghanisation in recent years.
The Afghan army has fought incredibly bravely—70,000 of them died—supported by us and the Americans technically from the air. President Biden drew a completely false choice. The choice was not between total immersion of American forces and the loss of American lives, which was going to do damage in the mid-terms, and pulling out. He could have carried on with 4,500 American troops and sophisticated air support. That would have sent a message to every Afghan army unit that if they were in trouble, they could call for American support. When it was announced that they were going, that sent a real message to the Taliban: “You’re safe, boys. Take every village and take every town, because the American air force is not coming after you.”
It is frankly shameful that the President of the United States—the leader of the free world—cannot face questions from his own hostile press corps but attacks the Afghan army for cowardice. We are now in a mess. China, Russia and Iran are hostile. What are we going to say to citizens in Taiwan, India, Pakistan and western Ukraine? They will all be worried.
The UK has a real role to play. Our recent review was worthless. We now have to cope with a weak American President, and, as the Prime Minister said this morning, the UK, leading the G7, has to step up. We have to review the review. We have to consider how we handle this.
In the short time I have left, I pay tribute to our armed forces. I am very proud to represent the 1 Royal Irish Regiment, based in Tern Hill in my constituency. I also saw them when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) mentioned those funerals—I was there for three of them. Those veterans are very proud of what they did, and we should remember what they did: they brought women’s rights, and a concrete building in southern Afghanistan was turned from an ammunition dump into a girls’ school. We should remember them and we should remember the pressures they are under now.
These images will be shocking for those veterans. Combat Stress has had a doubling of applications for help in the last few days—it already looks after 15,000 to 16,000. We can all help: the Government can help through the NHS, the MOD contributes 25% of its funds, and every one of us—every constituent—can help Combat Stress now.
This is in our hands. I entirely endorse the comments about interpreters and getting other people out, but these are our citizens. Every time they look at the screen, the horrors of their experience in Afghanistan will come back. We owe it to those veterans now to go out and look after them.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure I speak on behalf of everyone in passing on condolences to the Member who has just spoken.
What we are dealing with here is a failure of leadership, not of the military that served that leadership—we should never confuse the two. Both western and Afghan forces have served with great courage and are responsible for the successes achieved in the 20 years. It is a failure to understand Afghanistan and how the Taliban capitalised on UK and US forces’ counter-insurgency approaches, and the corruption of tribal leadership.
The Pashtun saying, “You have all the watches, we have all the time” reflects the speed with which the Taliban have acted. They took their first city just 12 days ago and now they have Kabul. But just as this was not inevitable, or indeed unexpected, so it is not inevitable that all we can do is despair.
The Taliban said on Monday that those who worked with foreign forces have nothing to fear as long as they show remorse. Do not tell them that they are cowards or that they should stay; help them get out. The bureaucracy that our interpreters, support staff and their families face must not be the reason why they lose their lives. I urge the Government to talk to the current and former servicemen and women who know those people, rather than asking people about paperwork, bureaucracy and biometric tests, because that it what is keeping people in Kabul airport right now.
Yes, the airport matters, but people have to get through the checkpoints to get to Kabul, so we need an extraction plan for everyone. We need to be clear on whom we owe a duty to: not just the interpreters, but the women who set up schools and the people who stood up when we asked them to work in the embassies and NGOs. The resettlement scheme is very welcome, but resettling from where, and how? Wars and persecution do not work to a timetable for paperwork.
Like many, in Walthamstow I have families who are desperate. There is an interpreter for the UK, whose dad did the same job for the Americans, and the Taliban are looking for them both. Another is here but his disabled family members in Kabul are at risk because he helped the MOD. Are we comfortable that mum or dad or brother or sister is fair game for the Taliban as punishment? Of course we need family reunion to be part of the settlement scheme. Or there is the family who walked for four hours to get to the embassy but have an Afghan mother. Are we really going to separate them? Or there is the man who has been trying to get his wife out since 2018 but, because of covid, her visa was delayed.
Numbers matter less than need. We need to reject this artificial distinction between resettlement and asylum. I am pleased to hear the Prime Minister commit not to send people back, but I hope the Home Secretary was listening, because the same Ministers who proudly boast about stopping boats forget to tell us that it is Afghans on those boats—people who have been fleeing this situation.
Instead of posturing, we need to challenge Macron and our European partners, and work with them, to ensure that everybody does their fair share to help. We need to get ahead of this crisis because at the moment we are always playing catch-up. President Biden may not have spoken to other world leaders since the fall of Kabul, so I am pleased to hear that the Prime Minister is, because we need to get agreement, via the UN and NATO, that if the Taliban provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda or ISIS, we will not stand for it. We need assurances from our counterparts in China and Russia that they will not veto action at the Security Council either.
Yes, this is a humanitarian disaster, but it is also a human rights one. Equality is not just being able to leave the house alone. Those Afghan women who are doctors, judges and politicians need us to do more than wring our hands. We have already heard that girls are being banned from school and forced into marriages. As the quote goes, “The Taliban talk nice during the day and disappear people at night.”
We must also say that this is not Islam. Islam is not the reason why people are clinging to planes to save their lives—that is brutalism and terrorism. We must not let people divide us here or overseas in the fight for those values. There may have been a failure of leadership so far, but it does not have to continue if we work together.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I thank the Government for proposing a bespoke refugee scheme focusing on the most vulnerable in Afghanistan. I am glad that, as the Home Secretary said today, it will include persecuted minorities—those who are persecuted simply on account of their religion or belief. That is absolutely in accord with our Government’s commitment to promoting and defending freedom of religion or belief for all as a key human rights priority.
As the Prime Minister’s special envoy on FORB, I welcome that, but I offer a word of caution. We have heard that the scheme will be similar to the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, but for some minority groups who were targeted for their beliefs, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi’as, that scheme was not as effective as was intended. Those groups were disproportionately under-represented in refugee referrals to the UK—indeed, substantially so. One reason was that the scheme outsourced the selection of refugees to the UNHCR, whose vulnerability criteria did not include people who were being targeted for their faith. Another factor was that many, particularly Christians, were too afraid to enter the refugee camps where selection took place because they feared that within those camps, they would face the very persecution that they had experienced outside. I hope that we can learn from that.
Persecution in Afghanistan is extreme. As the US Commission on International Religious Freedom reports, groups such as Hindus, Christians and Sikhs remain endangered minorities. Many have fled the country, and many of their community leaders who remained have been killed. Yesterday, I spoke virtually with an Afghan Christian, and he confirmed that the Taliban are already knocking on doors in Kabul, requiring people to go to worship in the mosques and identifying those who refuse. Those so identified fear the worst for their lives. That is particularly true of publicly known faith leaders and house church leaders in local neighbourhoods. Their neighbours know them, and I am told that they fear being outed by their own neighbours.
It is vital that there is urgent international co-ordination to help the religious minorities in Afghanistan who face persecution. The UK should not have to tackle this alone, but nor does it need to. Offers of help with international co-ordination are available, as I heard yesterday from an international NGO with which I spoke. I thank the Home Secretary and her staff for how, even overnight, they are actively engaging with me on this issue. She has said:
“I want to ensure that as a nation we do everything possible to provide support to the most vulnerable”,
and:
“The UK is…doing all it can to encourage other countries to help…we want to lead by example”.
That is right, which is why I have welcomed plans for the G7 virtual meeting next week. It is also why I have welcomed all that our Foreign Secretary has done, not only to initiate this but more widely to show international leadership on FORB. In May this year in London, at the Foreign and Development Ministers’ meeting, a communiqué was issued—I can only quote a fraction—confirming:
“We commit to co-ordinated action…and targeted support…to defend freedom of religion or belief for all…and combatting all forms of hatred and discrimination…the G7 will enhance efforts toward the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief globally.”
This is the moment to translate those words into action, and I am confident that under our presidency of the G7, our Foreign Secretary will have freedom of religion or belief at the forefront of his mind next week. It is also our opportunity to show the world the reality of the words in chapter 2 of our new immigration plan—to ensure support for those, such as persecuted Christians, who need emergency resettlement.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I have three issues that I want to raise today. First, as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I am concerned about what events in Afghanistan will mean for UK national security. With President Biden forging ahead with President Trump’s deal with the Taliban, we risk Afghanistan returning to its pre-9/11 position and presenting a global terror threat, an ally for despots and a base for jihadi terrorists and crime networks, including the drug warlords who flood the streets of our country with heroin. President Biden, who told us very recently, “The USA is back!” says that
“there was never a good time to withdraw US forces”,
but I fear he may now learn the hard way that there is never a good time to allow an illegitimate terror regime to take power. A false binary choice has been made between full-on military engagement and a rushed, chaotic withdrawal. There were, and are, other options.
Worse still, our holidaying Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary allowed this catastrophe to unfold with barely a whisper. The UK currently heads the G7, we hold a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and we are founder members of NATO, but where is the international leadership from our Prime Minister? So much for global Britain, with our shrunken influence and reputation. The Prime Minister declares that Afghanistan must not become a “breeding ground” for terrorists, and I agree, but wishing these ends does not render the means to fulfil them. What is he going to do? We must now ask whether the assessment of our security needs in the integrated review, published only in March, needs an early update.
Secondly, we have sleepwalked into opening up a new front in the global refugee crisis, which our Home Office has already struggled to cope with. With our allies in the EU and Commonwealth, we must ensure that aid reaches those in need—and this is after the Government cut the UK contribution to the Afghanistan humanitarian response plan by 76%. We now have the added task of avoiding aid’s falling into the hands of the Taliban. I can only urge the Government that we must do our fair share in providing safe havens, sanctuary and support for all those left with nothing.
Thirdly, as the chair of the all-party parliamentary human rights group, I am appalled at the prospect of a new dark age descending on Afghans. As Hillary Clinton said,
“human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights”.
After all the sacrifices, 20 years of human rights progress for women and girls will be swept away with the return of a perverted, medieval theocracy. Women will be erased from public life, the right to education will be severely limited and violence, rape and forced child marriage will be routine weapons of oppression.
Brave female politicians, teachers, medics, scientists, journalists and judges will be targeted by the Taliban. Those who worked with the coalition forces are already being subjected to brutal reprisals from the Taliban, as are those dedicated to protecting fundamental human rights such as the right to education, healthcare, freedom of expression and freedom of association. Members of ethnic and religious minorities, not least Christians, are now at greater risk in Afghanistan.
Those now in mortal danger deserve more than vacuous slogans about solidarity. The Government’s integrated review also had a section on defending human rights, promoting gender equality and much else. That sounds utterly empty now.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
The summary of the NATO 2021 Brussels summit confirmed the end of NATO’s military operations in Afghanistan, while restating the pillars of NATO’s new relationship with and support for Afghanistan: ongoing training and financial support for the Afghan national army, ongoing diplomatic engagement, transitional funding to ensure the continuing functioning of Kabul airport, dialogue on Afghanistan with relevant international and regional partners, and support for the ongoing peace process. Clearly, there is no support to be offered to the Afghan national army any more, and the peace process lies in tatters. What has unfolded in the past month goes down as one of NATO’s great failures. However, within that communiqué lie some important points. An ongoing diplomatic engagement is an important way forward. Kabul airport will probably function through support from the Russians and the Chinese, and we must recognise that the ongoing diplomatic engagement will make for some uncomfortable partners that we will have to deal with.
The reality is that the original NATO operation to remove the al-Qaeda threat from those terrorist camps was successful. The time spent over the past 20 years to stabilise the country and push out the al-Qaeda camps has led to a situation where the Taliban now say they would not allow terrorist organisations to set up camp again in Afghanistan. That must be part of the focus of diplomatic work. It is now a diplomatic mission to hold them to account.
The reality is that not a single serviceman’s life was lost in vain, as so much has been achieved. Although each civilian life lost is a tragedy, everything was done by NATO to prevent civilian casualties. That is why I believe there is not huge support for the Taliban, and it shows there is an important mission to come.
One of the important countries we must deal with is Pakistan. Imran Khan, the Prime Minister, rightly spoke of his frustration that the Americans come to Pakistan only when they want Pakistan to sweep up the mess they have left behind. I understand that frustration, but Pakistan is an important nation that we need to work with to try to hold the Taliban to some of their Qatar commitments. Ultimately, we need to deal with the situation as it sits today. We need to make sure those gains are not lost. Equally, as has been said many times in the House today, we must try to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe for human rights and women’s rights if the clock is turned back. That will all require diplomatic effort and it will require financial input and financial sanctions when the time comes. One of the real tests will be whether we and our NATO allies reopen our embassies, which will be an important step towards the Taliban showing they are willing to stand by their Qatar agreements and whether we can work with them. Whether sanctions have to be put on the state will be part of that.
The Taliban have declared that the war is over, so I leave the House with a thought that many have heard before: at the end of war-war, we have to engage in jaw-jaw.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
The actions of our armed forces, those of the United States and other allies, and the Afghan forces themselves have made a big difference to the lives of people in Afghanistan over the past 20 years. We have heard a lot today about the importance of education for millions of girls, about the value of the freedom that allowed women to work, about the political representation, the elections and the diversity of representation that would have been unthinkable under the Taliban, and much more. To suggest that the last 20 years were a mistake, that none of it should have happened, is to dismiss the importance of those fundamental gains. It is to dismiss the importance of one of the biggest movements of refugees back into a country in living memory.
I visited the Pul-i-Charkhi refugee processing centre many years ago, shortly after the Taliban had fallen. I spoke to people there and asked them why they had come home. They answered, “Because there is hope for our country.” The measure of what has been gained will now be seen in what is lost. It can be seen in the desperation of people clinging to the undercarriage of planes leaving the country. It can be seen in the palpable fear of those who feel their freedom and safety are now under threat.
All these gains were made possible only because of the commitment we made, and because of the 457 members of our armed forces who never came home. Members on both sides of the House served alongside them. All those soldiers made a huge and positive difference to the lives of the Afghan people. There was not peace in the whole country, and violence still killed many, but undoubtedly great gains were made.
Let us be clear that the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan today, not because we intervened in 2001 but because we abandoned it in 2021. The defence of the position that has been adopted is that we cannot go on forever, but our role had radically changed. Far fewer troops, less frontline fighting and more of a support role. The question has to be: was this withdrawal necessary now? Was this outcome inevitable?
Many times in this House we have debated intervention. It is a difficult choice and when it happens, we know that ownership of the consequences follows. But be in no doubt: the events of recent weeks show that not intervening has consequences too, and those consequences are just as real for the Afghan people. Are we going to pretend that they matter less because we do not feel we own them? What is our message to oppressed people around the world after this? Are we going to console ourselves with tweets of solidarity which offer them nothing? That is not a foreign policy, it is not a moral stand; it is just a pose, and the oppressed people around the country—around the world—deserve better than that.
So where do we stand in the world now? What does rhetoric about global Britain mean in the face of what has happened in the past few weeks? Where do we stand with the United States, when the limitations of our ability to act have been so brutally exposed? This is the question that will be asked of the west now. It is about trust in our word and trust in our faith, and recent weeks have been a major setback to both.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
May I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support that I get from the RAMP—Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy—project? I would also like to pay tribute to the Army Air Corps, based in my constituency, which over the last 20 years has played such a significant role in Afghanistan, and to gallant Members across the House who have personalised the story in their contributions today.
I start by commending my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for the scheme that he is putting in place to ensure that we can prioritise women and girls and bring them to safety. He and I do not always see eye to eye, but this scheme absolutely is the bespoke one that I have been calling for over the last few days. But time is of the essence and detail is missing, and that is my big worry. How are we going to bring those people to safety in the time that we have to do it? For 18 months, I lived the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, and I know the complexities and the difficulties with, on occasion, pettifogging bureaucracy. I know how hard it is to get the referrals and make sure that people have the right vulnerabilities identified, and how difficult it is to work on the ground when people are in camps, all in one place.
The women of Afghanistan are not in one place; they are in hiding. They do not necessarily have the documentation that they need to find their routes to safety. What are those routes to safety? We need to know as a matter of urgency. My concern is that the women of Afghanistan do not have the six years that we are talking about with the VPR scheme or, actually, six months. They did not even have six days before they were forced back into burqas and turned away from their university places, or before the bank tellers were told that they had to go home because their jobs were to be taken by men. They were told it would all be okay so long as they live under Islamic law, but what is the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law? What will it actually look like for them?
My email inbox has had a number of comments from people telling me that I have to have trust in the Taliban and that they are not as bad as they once were. I will judge them by their actions, not their words. I saw the terrible scenes at Kabul airport, where Afghan nationals had no confidence in their words and were clinging desperately to the underside of planes to escape. In particular, what of the women teachers who were giving education to girls? What of the civic leaders whom we encouraged to stand as mayors and take up roles in civic society? What of the doctors and the medics, or the midwives we heard about earlier? They are the ones most likely to suffer reprisals.
I want to talk briefly about the experience of my constituents, Monica and Sonila, who are still waiting after two years for a decision on their asylum claim. Now is the time to grant all those claims, because they cannot be returned to Afghanistan. They are educated women who have been active in society and are journalists. They would be at risk, but what of their mother and their younger sister, who are still in Afghanistan? I argued at the Dispatch Box for refugee family reunion to allow teenage girls who are over 18 to be allowed to come here. Our children do not suddenly become independent because they pass a day over their 18th birthday, so refugee family reunion in this instance has to ensure that those girls are able to come here. Would we leave our daughters in Afghanistan, with 12 year-old girls taken from their homes? I will not use the term “forced into marriage”; they are abducted and raped by men old enough to be their grandfathers.
We have to do more and we have to do it quickly. The scheme that the Government are putting in place is a good start, but it is just a start. This needs to be the fastest resettlement that we have seen since Uganda or the Kindertransport, so that we can continue to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that we have a proud history of being a safe haven for resettlement.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
The situation unfolding in Afghanistan is of deep concern for the whole international community, and the potential for a tragic humanitarian crisis is clear. Many thousands will now be attempting to flee the Taliban, who have swiftly seized power after the withdrawal of US troops. The message is clear: the international community, including the UK, has failed the people of Afghanistan. Twenty years of armed intervention, and the commitment of more than 100,000 British service personnel, has not prevented the return of the Taliban, and has left many Afghan people in a dire situation.
In every respect, our interventions in Afghanistan have been an abject failure, resulting in a powder keg that threatens regional stability. That must signal loud and clear that a change in direction is needed. Military action has failed and cost the lives of countless Afghan civilians and British service personnel. We must now set out to work alongside the international community to find solutions that prioritise the safeguarding and wellbeing of Afghan people, and that particularly set out to protect women and girls. As such, it is imperative that the UK Government provide a safe haven for those fleeing that country. In that, we must not fail the Afghan people and those seeking asylum here must be given a safe passage and allowed to rebuild their lives. We must not cherry-pick who to save and who to turn away. Instead, we must put compassion at the forefront of our response. Given the UK’s role in what is now happening in Afghanistan, that is the least we can do if we care at all about justice.
Afghanistan is now a powder keg that threatens regional stability in an area where conflict between major nuclear powers is already a terrifying possibility. Real tensions already exist between India, Pakistan, Iran and China, and the worsening situation in Afghanistan will only add to them. Given its long and prominent role in facilitating and exacerbating conflict in the region, if the UK is to redeem itself, it must fully commit to working alongside the international community to find ways of de-escalating regional tensions. We must use our relationships with powers in the region to push for a peaceful solution to outstanding conflicts, including the ongoing Indian occupation of Kashmir. Just over two years ago, article 370 of the Indian constitution was revoked, and if we look at the atrocities and abuses that are happening, we cannot talk about Afghanistan in isolation and completely ignore conflicts in the rest of the region. If regional powers set aside their differences and work together, I believe we will be able to avoid further bloodshed.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
This is a difficult and upsetting debate, and I am not quite sure why. It may be because some of the people I knew are now dead and because I do not think that some of the things that are being said are true. I want to set the record straight and, in the short time I have, correct some of the false assumptions that are being made and also make a few observations. I pay tribute to the many hon. Members who have made excellent speeches, especially the Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee and the Chairman of the Defence Committee, whose speeches were incredibly good.
What has happened is an appalling and unnecessary self-inflicted wound. We are being presented with a choice: invest more blood and treasure or walk away. No: we had a steady state, give or take, in Afghanistan for the last few years, and the mission was a train, equip and mentor one. It was large, but for between 5,000 and 20,000 troops, contractors, special forces and so on who were there, it was smaller than many NATO/US bases and missions around the world. We have chosen to withdraw politically; we have not been forced to do so on security grounds. I think we will regret that decision for many years.
The collapse happened because a truly dreadful US President, Donald Trump, who was probably in hock to the Russians, dealt with the Taliban behind the Afghan Government’s back—a shocking betrayal. Joe Biden, who admires Kennedy—we had some great quotes from Kennedy earlier—could have changed things. He has chosen not to and has opened the United States, Europe, India and many allies throughout the world to considerable terrorist risks from the 2,500 to 4,000 jihadi nut jobs—pardon my French—who are currently being released from Bagram, Kandahar and Kabul. When they have stopped slaughtering our friends and beheading a few key women journalists, they will turn their attention to us. We have walked away from a successful anti-terrorist operation after 20 years. Sooner or later, we will reap the rewards.
Many people have said that the Afghans did not fight. I was in Afghanistan four times over seven months, not on long tours—four months, two months and a few weeks. In my experience, many Afghans fought very hard. At first, yes, there was an uneven flow of recruits to the police, but I had the privilege of patrolling in Nad-e-Ali north with a small team. Those people were remarkable. When we went into a village, they would tell us from where the Taliban were watching us—which haystack, which bund line. They would tell us that the motor cycle repair man had to work for the Taliban because his wife and children were under threat. They also told us that they would happily take their daughters to school, but asked why they should when there was not enough security to prevent them from being raped and abducted on the way home. Sometimes it was difficult to give them an answer that reassured.
In many ways, those people were a model of courageous integrity. They were effective and efficient, they loved their country and they knew right from wrong. They are probably dead. If they were not killed a year ago, they will be finished off as we speak, and I find that upsetting.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
My hon. Friend from the Foreign Affairs Committee makes an excellent point, which has been made by a few others. He always looks at these things with a keen eye. Given what he has just said, is it not offensive that those people’s contribution has been swept away, particularly by the President in the past few days?
Bob Seely
Yes, absolutely. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. To dismiss the 70,000 people who have died is absolutely wrong. People were uneven at times, especially in the beginning, but there were many brave male and female soldiers, journalists and people who engaged in civil society. They will now be shut down. They will not all be murdered. The Taliban are clever: they will carry out some high-profile assassinations to silence others, but the direction of travel is clear.
The Secretary of State for Defence, who is in his place, is one of the few people who has emerged from this with any credit because he can see the bigger picture. He has understood the geopolitics, the rationale, but also the emotions of many troops who have served in Afghanistan. He has shared that and I thank him very much for it.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, Russia and China are happier today and Taiwan and Ukraine are considerably more nervous. We are weaker. As several hon. Members have said, Europe has been as bad as the United States in not stepping up to the mark. A weak and divided west is not a recipe for a caring future for anybody. It is a recipe for global instability and greater global threat.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Diolch yn fawr, Madam Ddirprwy Lefarydd. First, I would like to pay tribute to our service personnel who are putting their lives on the line in Kabul to evacuate our citizens safely, and to those who have served in Afghanistan these last 20 years.
The west failed in its mission and the UK Government bear their share of responsibility, but now is not the time to question how we got here nor how our allies have behaved. It remains the case that the UK Government have a practical and moral responsibility to thousands upon thousands of people in Afghanistan. We must ensure the swift and safe evacuation of UK nationals, UK personnel and Afghan nationals linked to the British NATO mission and to charitable and non-military efforts. I urge the Government to expand their Afghan relocation and assistance policy to all locally engaged staff and their families, regardless of whether they served in exposed, enabling roles or not. We must help too those people who dared to share our cherished values, especially journalists and women in senior civil society roles, those who worked with UK-affiliated charities and NGOs, and women in the judiciary, in the Government and in education.
Wales, of course, has a long and proud history of providing sanctuary to those fleeing persecution. Communities across Wales and the rest of the UK are ready to show the same compassion today. I must refer to the counties of Gwynedd and Ceredigion, whose intentions have been declared as well, but to whom the funding is critical to the numbers that they can accept.
The announcement of the resettlement scheme is a positive step. None the less, the 5,000 cap this year is arbitrary and insufficient. It is vital that the Government provide safe routes for Afghan refugees and end—this is clear now, as we have heard from others—the deportation of those already here. We must expedite procedures. There is a question about whether being an Afghan citizen is now sufficient, in terms of resettlement, to qualify as being in “well-founded fear of persecution”. We must look at the opportunity in the here and now, and not put up barriers and use the routes that we would conventionally use. We must look at how we can address the present situation as best we can. The Government must also consider whether the Nationality and Borders Bill is in keeping with these new circumstances and with the UK’s clear duty of responsibility to the Afghan people.
I would like to question the Government on another point, to which I would like a response when they wind up the debate. Reports are emerging that there is now only a 72-hour window before the US pulls out of Kabul airport. We are indeed in that 72-hour window now. This will endanger the UK’s and other allies’ efforts to evacuate citizens and eligible local nationals. We must make every effort to secure the time to do the right thing. Will the Government today guarantee that the evacuation operation from Kabul airport will continue until 31 August, which was the declared timetable of both the US and UK Governments? Will the Government still be there, with representatives able to send people out of Kabul airport, to the end of this month?
Finally, it is clear that our greatest and only success after 20 years in Afghanistan has been the rights of women and girls. Will the Government commit today to do everything in their power to encourage the Taliban to protect those advancements and the lives, livelihoods, freedoms and rights of Afghan women and girls?
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
As a former soldier, I have watched the scenes of chaos with great sadness—sadness for the 457 men and women of our own armed forces who died doing their duty and for the scores of others with life-changing injuries. Was it all for nothing? I hope that they do not think so, because their courage and sacrifice lit a torch in a dark place that the Taliban, however hard they try, will find impossible to totally extinguish. As we have heard, they also prevented any terrorist attack on the west for 20 years from Afghanistan. I also pay tribute to all those brave Afghans who have helped us over the past 20 years. I hope that we can evacuate all those who need to get out. We must never ever forget the men and women, our allies and friends, without whom we could not have borne our share of the burden over all these years.
Although I know that the Government are doing all that they can to bring some semblance of order to the withdrawal, it is a fact that not all will escape the vengeance of the Taliban, despite the current amnesty, in which I have no confidence. My concern now, as has been expressed by many in the House, is that this rushed withdrawal will create—perhaps I should say, is creating—a vacuum. From now, we face a resurgent fundamentalism in Afghanistan, the prospect of the country once more harbouring those who would do us harm, and significant growth in the drug trade from which the Taliban will get their funds. While the Taliban want only to export their heroin, others will use the ungoverned space to foment and spread their extremist ideology. We have only to look at why we went into Afghanistan almost exactly 20 years ago to see what that means. Countries such as Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are already circling like sharks, and I shudder to think what the future holds, not only for the Afghans but for the west. We must not be naive and accept without evidence that the Taliban will soften their stance, as many honourable colleagues have said. That will have to be proven.
I would like to end—I am referring to my phone, which I do not like to do—with a comment from a very distinguished general. The Defence Secretary is the Chamber and, as a former soldier, I feel that I have a duty to read what the general says, as he served in Afghanistan on many occasions:
“I hope someone will ask what price the Defence Review? The Defence Secretary’s filleting of the army means it could not sustain an operation in Afghanistan or elsewhere. If the last few days show anything, it is that you have to be able to sustain an operation over decades. Strategic patience”—
a word used by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) in his excellent speech—
“is all. The cut of 10,000 troops from the army removes that capability.”
To sum up, in the short time I have left, he ends by saying:
“I guess the strategic point is this. Afghanistan is a disaster of strategic proportions, with implications for our foreign policy, defence policy, for NATO, and for our relationship with the US itself. And what is our response? To cut our army by 10,000. Some signal of our intent, some signal to our allies.”
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I want to try to get as many people in as possible—not everyone will get in, in my view—so after the next speaker, I will reduce the time limit to three minutes. I call Hilary Benn.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The events of the past few days have caused a great deal of sadness and fear: the sadness, as we have heard, of the members of our armed forces and their families, as the memories come flooding back; and fear on the part of the people of Afghanistan that all the gains that have been made will disappear. Perhaps the best answer to those who ask, “Was it worth it?” is to be found in the desperation of those who are trying to flee the country. They know better than any of us what was achieved, what it meant, and why they fear it will now be lost. For each of them, it was not for nothing.
We need to ask ourselves some hard questions. Why did it come as a surprise that the Government and the forces that we had supported, funded, trained and sought to build up over many years at the last appeared to be made of sand as the Taliban advance took city after city. Was it right of the Americans to announce such a precipitate withdrawal? I think that the mood of the House is no, it was not right, because the speed of their retreat undermined confidence and destroyed hope.
It is essential that we learn the lessons, and I hope that the Government will change their mind about the need for an inquiry—not to be wise after the event, not to find scapegoats, not to point out failures, but to understand what happened. That is for tomorrow, however. Today, the question is how will the Taliban choose to behave? We have all watched the interviews, and it is quite clear that many people in Afghanistan do not choose to believe what they have been told by their new leaders. We know the record—they know the record—of human rights abuses. We must remember that there was no democracy then, and the Taliban have no mandate now; they have the power that comes out of the barrels of their guns.
On the central question of the rights of women and girls, it is, as we have heard, the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia law that then means the subjugation of women. That is what it is about: the subjugation of women. Only time will tell us whether the women of Afghanistan will continue to be able to play a full and equal part in the country’s future.
There has been in the debate a large measure of agreement on the tasks that face us immediately to get people out. Will Ministers please brief Members of Parliament on how the system is working and what we can do when constituents contact us to make sure that their information is passed on? Will Ministers also reassure us that no bureaucracy is getting in the way? My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) made the point that paperwork is all very well, but how do people get the paperwork when they are hiding in a basement because the Taliban are patrolling the street above?
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is making an excellent speech. Our local council, Leeds, has already said that it stands ready to take people from Afghanistan into temporary accommodation, but we need safe routes across the land borders. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government need to ensure that the borders are open and there is safe passage from third countries to the UK?
Hilary Benn
I agree completely. The people of Leeds and the city of Leeds have always had a big heart and we will play our part. There will be a refugee crisis, and we know from the past that the vast majority of people end up in the neighbouring countries. They will need financial support from us and some will come to this country. I welcome the scheme announced, but the test of that scheme is not the numbers promised but the numbers who are able to make it here. Under the Nationality and Borders Bill, an Afghan who finally makes it to the northern coast of France, gets in a boat and knowingly enters the United Kingdom without permission could face a prison sentence of up to four years. I hope that Ministers will explain that they do not intend to apply that provision to those who are fleeing persecution.
The Taliban may now be back in power but, as many have said, we will judge them on what they do, not on what they say. As has been said, we will need brave journalists to bear witness to what now happens in Afghanistan, so that the truth can be told. They will be judged, and we will be judged, above all by the people of Afghanistan, for what we do now in response to the tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
Other speakers in this debate have had far more direct experience and have spoken movingly of what this tragedy means to them and their colleagues—former soldiers and airmen. I was able to visit Afghanistan before the end of the combat mission seven years ago, and on each occasion I was enormously impressed by the commitment and dedication of our armed forces, working alongside allies from many other countries and members of the Afghan defence force in seeking to provide security for the Afghan people.
In most contributions today from both sides of the House it has been notable how the service and sacrifice of our armed forces have been appreciated and recognised for keeping us safe by preventing further international terror attacks from Afghanistan. We are proud of their heroism and must support veterans at this difficult time. Their efforts came at great cost in terms of lives lost, injuries sustained and money spent. But, as others have said, much was achieved: Afghanistan ceased to be a safe haven for terrorist groups; the lives of women and girls, particularly in the cities, were transformed; as we have heard, millions of girls have been to school to receive an education that cannot be unlearned; and women were able to work and to take part in government at regional and national levels. There is no hiding from the fact that all that has now come to a humiliating end. Despite yesterday’s statements of good intent from the Taliban spokesman, we all recall with trepidation their dark-ages ideology of violence and repression.
When I was in Camp Bastion, I was struck by the commitment of the medics who worked in the field hospital and treated those who had been injured on both sides of the conflict. In some cases, Taliban fighters and British soldiers were in adjacent wards. I hope that such magnanimous humanitarian generosity will be remembered by those who have now taken control of the country. Today is not the time for hand-wringing and apportioning blame; that is yet to come. As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said, now is the time to take urgent action to maintain the security cordon around the military side of Kabul airport. I am delighted that the Defence Secretary is in his place and will be able to reassure colleagues that the efforts of the British armed forces currently there are focused entirely on that effort.
The Prime Minister’s announcement today of a bespoke resettlement scheme for Afghan citizens and their families who helped our armed forces is welcome, but there is an urgent need for it to cover others who have helped British soft power working in the country, including the British Council, charities, contractors and aid agencies.
Daniel Kawczynski
As a Salopian MP and my neighbour, will my right hon. Friend take part of the time left to him to pay tribute to all those Salopians who served in Afghanistan, both in DFID and the armed forces?
Philip Dunne
I am grateful to my neighbour for drawing attention to the fact that, like every Member of this House, all of us with constituencies in Shropshire have constituents who have served in the last 20 years, with many suffering injuries and some, tragically, death.
We have to ask ourselves how the intelligence analysis of the situation failed us so badly. We have known from some time, thanks to experienced voices such as that of General Petraeus, about the criticality of US contractors to maintain the US and Afghan air forces, which were vital to resupply. Once the 18,000 contractors had been withdrawn, the troops on the ground knew that there was no hope of resupply or reinforcement from the air, which was critical to maintain their morale.
Finally, I urge the Foreign Secretary in his winding-up speech to reflect on the impact of this humiliation on the integrated review.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I point out gently, again, that if people waiting to speak intervene, they are preventing others from getting in and they should not be surprised if they are moved down any list that may exist. I call Seema Malhotra.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
To leave the Afghan forces to fight the advancing Taliban on their own was a grave mistake. The gross miscalculation by the US was compounded by the failure of our and other Governments to step up. We are watching the takeover of a nation that, over 20 years, has made great progress, particularly for millions of women and girls—progress that came through sacrifices by many brave members of the Afghan forces and our own, as well as those who served in civil ranks. We lost a good friend seven years ago, when Del Singh was killed in a horrific attack by the Taliban at a restaurant in Kabul; he was one of many thousands who have made the ultimate sacrifice to help to bring about peace, stability and nationhood—I repeat: nationhood, which was also part of our responsibility as an international community.
Afghan families in Britain who have suffered tragedy are living a new nightmare and feel betrayed, with many loved ones back home now at risk as the Taliban take over the police and the state. I thank many for getting in touch with me and my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), including Khalsa Diwan Afghanistan, Guru Nanak Darbar, the All Afghans Protections Organisation, students and NGOs.
As the Taliban take over cities, they move fast to ensure that no one can fight back. They are hunting out and killing young men, and seeking girls as prizes and brides for Taliban fighters. Why do young men cling to the side of a US plane in the hope of escape and fall to their death? It is because they know that otherwise the Taliban will come for them. A terrifying situation faces women at the forefront of progress for women and girls. I have heard directly from a relative of a 16-year-old girl in Kabul who last week was waiting for the results of her equivalent of GCSEs and about a possible scholarship. Her words yesterday were, “If the Taliban come for me, I’m ready to hang myself.”
We must also ensure the evacuation of minority communities, including Sikhs and Hindus, from Afghanistan. I know, and the Government know, that they are at risk and they must be a priority for evacuation. Those in our system must be allowed to stay. We must ensure the safety of Afghans working for the UN and UK aid programmes, particularly women. Those not eligible for UK visas via ARAP, because they are not directly employed, must be allowed to come to the UK. Suppliers of equipment or services to the UK forces in Afghanistan are also being sought out.
Speed is of the essence. Women and girls are burning their employment papers and education certificates before the Taliban come to their homes. Administration must not be delayed. Resources need to be found and applications processed urgently. Finally, there should be safety for those who have no means to flee; they must not be forgotten.
We must stand with the Afghan people. We have a responsibility to lead, and the Afghan people need to hear our voice. We have choices that we, as a nation, can make. If ever there was a time to prove what global Britain means, it is now.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the next speaker, may I just say I think it is quite important that people listen to other contributions? There is quite a lot of chatting going on, which is quite distracting to people.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is rather a shock to be called so early in the debate.
As we sit here talking today, thousands of men and women are frightened for their lives and those of their families—thousands of men and women who believed us, and indeed the entire west, when, in October 2001, in the dark shadow of that awful day in the previous month, we were engaging in Afghanistan, in the words of President George W. Bush, to defeat al-Qaeda, to remove the Taliban from power and so that
“the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies.”
They believed the words of our own Prime Minister, Tony Blair, when he told the US Congress in 2003:
“We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind, black or white, Christian or not, left, right or a million different—to be free, free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear”.
We have done great things over the past 20 years and our veterans can be incredibly proud of the good that they achieved in Afghanistan, but these words must sound very hollow to the men, women and children huddled in the airport in Kabul at this moment. Just about every MP in this place is, I am sure, in some way involved in trying to get people out of that country. Among them is a man whose name I will not share, for obvious reasons—a man who worked for the British Government, who has certificates and commendations from the Coldstream Guards and the Royal Air Force and a certificate thanking him for his service in the year of Her Majesty’s the Queen’s diamond jubilee. He believed in us—in us and the American mission. He believed in our mission to rebuild Afghanistan after half a century of bloodshed.
Right now, that man is sitting with his entire family in the airport in Kabul—he, his wife and four children and his 73-year-old mother. His wife, his kids and he were offered safe passage out of the country, but he was told that his elderly and vulnerable mother would not be allowed to travel with them. Late on Monday night he had to make a choice—to leave with his wife and children and leave his ageing and vulnerable mother behind to whatever fate might befall her, or stay behind. He took the terribly difficult decision to stay. The last I heard was that he was still assisting British troops at the airport and, with the help of the charity that his brother works for, was reapplying for ARAP status for his entire family. This man was only in the airport because he was assisting British nationals to evacuate the country. I have the highest admiration for our amazing men and women in the FCDO and the MOD. These have been incredibly trying times. They have all the details of that case and I know that they are working hard to get that family out. But I will not stop trying to assist that man, as I know many Members of Parliament are doing for many others.
In the last few days belief in the west has been shaken, but it has not died. In America, and here in the UK, not least in our excellent Secretary of State for Defence and all his staff, we have seen examples of people who still believe in the good that we in the west can do. We should never forget that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Twenty years of presence in Afghanistan and I, like many, have known young men and women who gave their youth, their time and their lives to Afghanistan. My friend from university is still there, in the EU mission, trying to sort things out. Another friend, who I had drinks with only last weekend, flew out straight afterwards to help with the chaos. Our minds, of course, are with many of those people, and we hope for their safe return. So I will say nothing that undermines their and many others’ hard work and sacrifice, and all the comments that we have heard today in this place.
We will see how bad the Taliban come to be. I am not hopeful and, more importantly, neither are those thousands of people trying to flee. Those images will be scarred on our minds for a long time. But this is our failure to plan, and it should lead us to hang our heads in shame. Even today, my local university’s Chevening scholars say that they have not been given their final award letter, so despite reassurances from the Government, they too are unable to get out because they do not have the right paperwork. Others report similar bureaucratic hurdles, with requirements such as biometric passports or paperwork that is just impossible to facilitate in such a short time, meaning that families cannot escape.
The UK will be judged by our actions, not our words—and our actions, I am afraid, are too slow. I just do not understand why we cannot airlift masses of people out, whether that be to Cyprus or to other military bases, and process the paperwork there. Let us get people out and sort out the paperwork and bureaucracy afterwards. Failure to do so may cost people’s lives.
The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister say that they do not want informal and irregular routes out for Afghanis, but without a decent legal system and with such bureaucratic hurdles, requiring people to take only formal routes out might either cost their lives or, as the Home Secretary seems to be suggesting, criminalise them for travelling over informally through the channel or other routes. That is a shameful position for the Government that must surely be reversed, as must the Nationality and Borders Bill.
In 20 years, much might have improved, but let us be clear: our nation building failed. We propped up one of the most corrupt Governments and one of the least free countries in the world, according to corruption indices. Although things might get much worse, we must not celebrate our actions, because they were strategically a failure.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I pay tribute to all the British troops, people from the Department for International Development, the teachers, the doctors and the technicians from Britain who have so courageously worked in Afghanistan, but I disagree with some of the criticism of the Government that I have heard during this debate. Our country found itself in an impossible situation as the second largest contributor in terms of boots on the ground and resources in Afghanistan. When America decided to pull out, I would argue that for us to remain there when so many of our European NATO partners were not prepared to put in adequate resources on the ground was made untenable.
We have to ask ourselves a critical question: of the European countries that are part of the exclusive club of 30 NATO partners, why have so many failed to support the Americans and the British in the extremely important theatre of operations in Afghanistan? There are one or two exceptions that have sent a lot of troops—the country of my birth, Poland, is one—but I will be asking parliamentary questions about why so many European NATO countries did not put adequate resources into that theatre. We heard from the Prime Minister that 98% of all the equipment on the ground in Afghanistan came from the United States of America. It is not surprising that American patience is running out when so many European allies have refused to give the support required.
We also need to ask questions about the role of Russia and Pakistan and the allegations that they have been supporting the Taliban. Most concerning of all is Pakistan, a country to which we send a great deal of British taxpayers’ money in international aid. There are serious questions to be asked about the role of Pakistan and her security forces.
Lastly, I am very proud that the United Kingdom will be taking large numbers of Afghan refugees, but we should also be very proud of the role that we played in helping Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. Britain spent more money than any other European country on providing a safe haven for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan and in the neighbourhood so that those people could one day return to their country. It is so important to work with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other reasonably stable countries in the region to ensure that Afghans are given protection in their neighbourhood.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate. I pay tribute to all those who have served our country in Afghanistan, and I am especially thinking of those I know from my constituency in the Wirral. I also thank all those who have written to me in recent days.
Many in this House have spoken about the horrendous human rights abuses in Afghanistan, and I will not repeat what they said. I believe that these events are a huge test of our values, and it is that that I want to talk about.
I accept that in this debate there are Members who do not share the simple principle, as explained by the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), that Afghanistan is a piece of the main. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) spoke about that. A view is held that the protection of the basic rights of those in other countries, absent a direct threat to us, is not worth any increased risk to western armed forces personnel. That view underpins the events that we now see.
But there are many of us in this House who think that we live in one moral universe, and that the question is not whether a moral duty to protect innocent Afghans exists but rather whether it can be practically fulfilled. For those of us who think that Donne was right to say that any person’s death diminishes us all, the question is: how do we now respond when the current events in Afghanistan are straightforwardly a denial of the moral duty to protect? One answer has been provided by those on the Government Front Bench—they are not currently here—who, facing this grave moral trauma, went on holiday. A very different answer in the long term is to fix the fundamental flaws in the FCDO that got us here. What is more, we can reverse the loss of the Department for International Development and the aid cuts, and listen when the likes of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Early Warning Project shows red flags for atrocities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The responsibility to protect still exists.
Finally, on refugees, putting atrocity prevention aside, there is a clear moral duty for the UK Government to act now. Many Members have said what that should look like—it includes expanding family reunion. I regret very deeply the focus on numbers when the focus should be on time. Get people out quickly, and once they are here do not make them wait to restart their lives. The worst conversations I had during covid were with Syrian doctors who were desperate to serve our country. Let us give people their lives back quickly.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Make no mistake: the British people are shocked at what they are seeing in Afghanistan today. After 20 years of British and American involvement, this is not the outcome we expected. Our presence in Afghanistan may not have continued indefinitely, but it needed to be handled in the right way. It has not been, and President Biden must be held to account for his actions.
My thoughts and prayers are with the British servicemen who lost their lives attempting to bring freedom and democracy to the Afghan people and all those who have been left with life-changing injuries. Their sacrifices must not be in vain. I also weep for the people of Afghanistan, who now face the brutal regime of the Taliban, which has shown no regard for human rights. Many innocent people will now undoubtedly be murdered, with many more suffering unimaginable treatment at the hands of that regime. This is indeed a sad day for humanity.
I visited Afghanistan in 2010 with the Foreign Affairs Committee, and met our troops and visited political leaders in Kabul and Lashkar Gah, including the then President Karzai. I was struck by how much progress was being made to turn that country into a better place as the people were given the opportunity, for once, to live in a free society. My heart goes out to all the good people of that country, who deserve better than the cruel ideology of the Taliban.
We must remember why we entered this conflict after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The original mission was to defeat al-Qaeda, and that was achieved. The terrorist bin Laden and his criminal gang were obliterated, and rightly so. Today we must honour Her Majesty’s armed forces who fought to make the world safer by going to Afghanistan and achieving that objective, but I believe that the UK now has a moral duty to provide refuge and safety for those who are fleeing for their lives. We must assist them swiftly in leaving Afghanistan, and give safe passage to all those who are at risk because of their work with the British and allied forces. We must do everything we can, even as a staging post before they can be settled in third countries. All countries must play their part in helping to accommodate Afghans who cannot return to Afghanistan. Britain must fulfil its moral duty, but the global community must do so as well.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The Prime Minister said that the fall of the Afghan regime to the Taliban was inevitable. The Foreign Secretary said that he was shocked by the speed at which it occurred. If the Foreign Secretary is correct, I agree with the right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) that a huge, spectacular failure in intelligence needs to be examined.
The shambolic collapse we have seen, predicted by the Prime Minister, was not inevitable, but I do agree with the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who said that that when we withdrew air, logistic and intelligence support, it was inevitable. I raised this with the Prime Minister on 8 July, when he said:
“It is not open…to the Taliban to enforce a military solution, but neither is it open to us”.—[Official Report, 8 July 2021; Vol. 698, c. 1117.]
How wrong he was.
The Government talk in rhetoric and slogans. Global Britain has been shown to be the hollow slogan that it is.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman talks about the statement on 8 July. Does he accept that this Government’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was not opposed in that debate by the Scottish National party or the Opposition? Indeed, it was welcomed by the shadow Foreign Secretary. Is it not right to put that on record? This was effectively a decision of the majority of the House.
Mr Jones
Yes, but the hon. Gentleman’s party is in government. It is the Government who take decisions, and the categorical decision to take air power out was a fundamental mistake.
We also need to say loud and clear that we are in a country that is proud of our tradition of allowing sanctuary for those fleeing violence and persecution. It is vital that we step up to the mark and give sanctuary to all those who have helped us throughout our time in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan now faces an uncertain future and a humanitarian crisis. As the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, there is a potential security crisis for us if terrorism is not thwarted there in the future. The clear question to be asked is, was it all worth it? I first visited Afghanistan in 2003, and up until 2010 I visited on six occasions. I went right up the north into Mazar-i-Sharif and right down to Garmsir on the fishhook near the Pakistan border. I saw real progress. Girls’ education has been talked about, but there was education for boys as well. There were schools, hospitals and economic development.
Did we make mistakes? Yes, we did. Corruption was endemic. I know that it was raised each of the three times I met President Karzai, and he just batted it aside. It was endemic and toxic for that regime.
Where do we go now? The Foreign Secretary is saying that the options are sanctions on the Taliban or restricting overseas aid. I am sorry, but that is naive and stupid. We need to engage with regional powers. I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said about Pakistan. We need to engage with Pakistan, but we also need to be ruthless, because it has been a harbourer of the Taliban for the past 20 years. Will we have to take unpalatable decisions and speak to people we have not spoken to before? Yes, we will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) said.
I would like to finish by saying this. I was a Minister in the Ministry of Defence. I had the privilege of working with some great and fantastic people who died in Afghanistan, and with others who were maimed in Afghanistan. They are the finest people we have in this country. We cannot change the past, but we can dictate the future, and that future has to be one that ensures that the people of Afghanistan have a future. That is the debt we have to them. It is also the debt we have to those who lost their lives and those who sacrificed so much on our behalf.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
We are leaving Afghanistan. We can debate why we are leaving, and indeed whether we should be, but for now I want to focus on the here and now—what we need to be doing right now.
First up, we need to secure Kabul airfield. We need to prevent those scenes that we saw at the weekend of civilians falling from aircraft undercarriages. We need to allow for the orderly and, hopefully, safe evacuation of UK nationals, Afghan interpreters and Afghans whose support roles have put them in danger. I thank the Defence Secretary for his quick action on that in deploying 900 British troops who, alongside US troops, have helped to secure the airfield and allow for that orderly evacuation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) highlighted, we also need to evacuate the team from the Nowzad dogs charity, which was created by Pen Farthing, a former Royal Marines commando.
We also need to put in place a resettlement plan to help women and girls, and those who face immediate danger from the Taliban. Again, the Government have taken quick action on that, and I welcome the announcement this morning by the Home Secretary that we will be resettling 20,000 Afghans back to the UK. We need to put pressure on the Taliban to retain the freedoms of all the people of Afghanistan, but especially women and girls. As the Prime Minister said at the start of the debate, we will judge the Taliban on their actions, not just their words. I had an email overnight from a constituent who has family over in Afghanistan, in a place called Herat. They are in hiding, and they have just been told that this Friday, in Herat sports centre, the Taliban will be chopping off the hands of some local people. We must watch the actions of the Taliban and not just listen to their words.
Finally, as a former RAF serviceman who served not in Afghanistan, but on the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, I know that we need to reassure our veterans—those who bear the physical and mental scars—and the families of those who died in Afghanistan that we care and that their achievements were not in vain.
Our forces fundamentally weakened the terrorist threat. There has been education in Afghanistan for 20 years. That most definitely sowed the seeds for a better future for Afghanistan, but it came at huge cost. I lost in my constituency Private Thomas Wroe, Lance Corporal Graham Shaw, Captain Lisa Head from Huddersfield, Corporal Jake Hartley, Private Anthony Frampton and Private Daniel Wilford. Those families and our veterans have heard us loud and clear today. We do care, and we care for Afghanistan.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)
We have all seen the footage—the shocking images of Afghan cities that now look like the wild west, with huge guns slung casually over every shoulder, shots ringing out in warning and an unmistakeable exploding threat. As we watch on in disbelief, our sense of helplessness and impotence grows by the hour. The situation in Afghanistan is one that very few in this House can really imagine, but the few among us who have served there have told us exactly what is going on in several incredibly moving speeches.
It is fundamentally our duty to exhaust every possible avenue, make every possible effort and do all in our power to help those in need. We are all they have. We are safe and free, and we must offer that safety and freedom to those at risk of losing theirs. So what should we do? What are the people of Britain, as well as those experienced NGOs and current and former service personnel, telling us to do? The message is loud and clear: we must offer safe routes out, and we must offer asylum—no ifs or buts.
It is deeply disturbing that the rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls are under serious threat. Just over a quarter of the democratically elected MPs in Afghanistan’s House of the People were women, but it appears that no women at all are now represented by the new all-male regime. Men with guns promising that women may still be allowed to work and access education, with many caveats, will undoubtedly set off alarm bells for the women journalists, teachers, business owners, NGO workers, doctors, artists, politicians and judges who all face much uncertainty in the coming months.
Many women here are angry, extremely worried and determined to fight for the rights of our Afghan sisters. I have been inundated with messages and emails from people who want to help. The Government must listen and assure all of them and all of us that they are carrying out the will of the majority of the British people. In my constituency, our excellent Kent Refugee Action Network, as part of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, has laid out what is needed. They are asking questions that they need urgent answers to relating to family reunion and the mental health of young people from Afghanistan, which has already been severely impacted. What happens to those who are in the UK who have been previously refused asylum because Kabul was considered safe? Can their cases now be considered urgently? Will local authorities, especially those in Kent, receive sufficient financial support to house asylum seekers in suitable accommodation?
I make one final plea to the Government: listen to our constituents, to our NGOs, to feminist activists such as Sophie Walker and her change.org petition, which has now reached 200,000 people signing—
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
I am proud to represent South West Hertfordshire, which has Northwood NATO base in its constituency borders. Like many colleagues here today, I have been shocked to see the speed with which the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan in the last week. It is absolutely the right decision that we return to Parliament today to debate the events taking place there.
Many colleagues have spoken in remembrance of those who lost their lives, including the 457 UK military personnel over the last two decades, and I echo their comments and pay tribute to all our military personnel who have served this country bravely and selflessly throughout the conflict. I have met and worked with several Afghan veterans and my thoughts are with them today. I hope they are proud of the work that they have done to improve the lives of many people in Afghanistan, particularly vulnerable women and girls.
The fall of the Afghan Government to the Taliban is not what anyone had hoped would happen once the time came for NATO troops to return from Afghanistan, but that absolutely does not mean that the last two decades have gone to waste. UK military personnel have worked hard to support the new governance structures and institutions that will be crucial to building a more democratic society in Afghanistan and we should be proud of that record. We have provided over £3.3 billion of aid since 2001, with notable improvements in the participation of girls in education and political representation for women. It is essential that that progress is maintained, and I fully support the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary that we should use all the policy tools at our disposal to ensure that the Taliban do not undo that progress. I can only hope that the Taliban stand by their comments made in yesterday’s video conference that they will allow women and girls to continue to receive both basic and higher education, even if their previous record gives little room for optimism on that. Education is a human right and no one should be denied an education based on their gender.
We must also make sure that we stand by all those who have helped us throughout this conflict, and I commend the Government for their comments that a new settlement scheme for those most at need, especially women and girls, will be introduced. The Home Office is working hard with international partners on getting as many of these people as it can out safely, and I was glad to hear, as of Monday evening, that over 3,300 Afghan staff and their families have already been evacuated. This needs to be balanced with the requirement of ensuring that we do not import those who do not share our values, and we must keep UK residents safe.
I will leave it at that, Mr Deputy Speaker; thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
If I am honest, I feel ashamed today—more ashamed than I can remember in any foreign policy debate in my 20 years in this House. We have seen the most sudden and catastrophic collapse of a foreign and military policy objective of this United Kingdom since Suez, and arguably further back than that. We have managed to humiliate ourselves. We have shamed our politics and our way of doing business. We have trailed the British flag and, frankly, our own honour in the dirt and the mud. Global Britain has been exposed as a meaningless slogan—a boast without a strategy behind it.
I am ashamed, too, by how we have treated many of our armed forces over these 20 years. It is shocking to me that there are still soldiers who were diagnosed with PTSD when they actually had a brain injury due to an explosion. We are one of the few countries that still does not test any of our armed forces automatically after an explosion for a brain injury, and that may be one of the reasons why many of them later suffer from dementia and depression.
I am ashamed that we never said to the United States of America last year or this year, “Hang on. Stop, think, wait, and put in place a proper plan before you go ahead with this.” I am ashamed that our silence basically endorsed Trump’s plan last year and that our silence now, apart from one notable exception in the form of the Secretary of State for Defence, has effectively enabled Biden to get away with some of the most shameful comments ever from an American President. We should never be just a sidekick to the United States of America in our foreign policy or military policy.
I am fearful, of course, for the women and children, but also, particularly out of a personal interest, for the gay men in Afghanistan. It has not exactly been a walk in the park for them over the past 20 years, but now they know that they will be exterminated. Sharia judges are already saying what they will do. There are two ways of dealing with a homosexual man in Afghanistan: one is stoning, and the other is putting them behind a wall that is then toppled on top of them and kills them.
I am fearful for the children who will grow up in violence or in a refugee camp, fearful for all the thousands who will do whatever they possibly can to get to a place of safety, and fearful that we will not have a proper programme in place in this country to greet people and that some of them will end up going to jail because we are introducing laws that will make things even more difficult for them. To be honest, I am angry with the Government. I am angry in particular with the Prime Minister. I just do not think that he has paid enough attention to this issue. I do not think that he was courageous enough in what he said to the American President either last year or this year, and he should be ashamed of himself.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
I pay tribute to the armed forces, especially those who reside in my constituency of Wealden. I also want to take a moment to pay tribute to all those Afghan men and women who were brutalised for 17 years under the Taliban, did everything that they could to rebuild their country, and once again will have to face a Taliban without us by their side.
There are many who have served in Afghanistan on these Benches. I had a very brief moment in Kabul. For 17 years under the Taliban, no female voice was heard in the Afghan Parliament, the Loya Jirga. I worked for the BBC World Service and we rounded up some very brave women to make sure that female voices were heard for the first time in the Loya Jirga. We did that under the threat of the Taliban, but I had a British passport, and I knew that I could come home and be safe. I was naively optimistic in thinking that these women’s lives would be improved for the better. I am now receiving phone calls telling me that it is game over.
It has taken 20 years to have 69 female MPs and they will watch us speak here today knowing what will happen if we cannot get them out, and soon. They cannot wait for five years. It is not just them, but their families, everyone who has worked with them, and everyone in an NGO who has worked to un-Talibanise the laws and processes in Afghanistan who are now targeted. It means that, after 20 years, we will have to start all over again. This has been catastrophic, cack-handed, cruel and humiliating. This is the watershed moment of the west’s failure.
I want to say two very quick things, hopefully to try to be constructive. I need to understand how our intelligence has failed, how the imagination of those providing the intelligence has failed, and, if we are relying on this intelligence now going forward, how we can be assured that they know to do the right thing, whether it is in relation to our regional partners, the Taliban or any further security issue. I would like to have a better understanding of where our parameters are when it comes to dealing with the Taliban, of what leverage we have to ensure safe passage, and of whether any aid funding will reach the people whom it needs to get to.
My final point is about the radicalisation that is going to emerge from Afghanistan. There will be not just the extremism that the Taliban will promote, but a fight in the middle east and Asia about who represents Islam. Members may not agree with me, but some countries have been trying to become more liberal since 9/11 to take away the taint around Islam. Will they now have to become even more conservative and brutal to compete with the Taliban? That will bring forward a new version of extremism where we cannot rely on any safety and security for women in the middle east or in any Islamic state.
Finally, may I ask anybody listening—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Sorry, but more than half the people are not going to get in—I do apologise. I call Layla Moran.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The appalling scenes that we have witnessed over the last few days will certainly outlive us all, but equally moving are the accounts on the ground that I am sure we have all heard. The brother of my neighbour, Assad, is a Hazara, one of the most persecuted minority communities in Afghanistan. He has not left the house in weeks, not because of covid, but because of fear—already—of being killed, and he is one of millions. We must not be fooled. Despite what the Taliban say, they do not mean it. My good friend Nemat, an Afghan academic who is luckily now in Australia, said to me, “The Taliban are professional liars”. Behind their empty promises and their weasel words lies a devastating reality, and shame on us for believing them twice.
This Government must do all they can to ensure that people have an escape route. The airport in Kabul seems to be working, but what of those who cannot get there? What about those who cannot get to Kabul itself at all? That is why the Liberal Democrats have been calling for a safe corridor. We must utilise every diplomatic tool available. I note that in his opening remarks, the Prime Minister said that he had spoken to Prime Minister Khan. Did he raise this? We know that the Inter-Services Intelligence has been providing support for the Taliban for some time. We have leverage with Pakistan, and Pakistan has leverage with them. Was that even broached?
On the refugees that we are to take in, 20,000 sounds good, but we have had 20 years of involvement. If we take the 5,000 and break it down by constituency, that is seven per constituency. For 20,000, it is 30 per constituency. Surely we can do better than that? That should be a starting point, not a target. When they come, we need to recognise that councils need to be well funded in providing services such as housing, education, language provision, and mental health support—all that must be part of what is provided.
For my very final remarks, on women and girls, I hand my voice to a woman on the ground. She said:
“Like every other woman I have been staying home and am afraid to go out. Women are not allowed to leave their homes without a government official... Their safety, hopes, dreams have to be locked once again, we just live to exist, nothing else.”
Imagine what that must be like. Imagine the pictures of young girls being posted on social media as spoils of war, to be married off to the fighters.
Daisy Cooper
In times of crisis, the voices of women are often missing. Does my hon. Friend agree that whatever the UK Government and the international community do next, the protection of the rights of Afghan women and girls must be put front and centre?
Layla Moran
I thank my hon. Friend and agree with her wholeheartedly. As well as those who are facing imminent death, anyone whose life is put at risk—particularly if they have helped us in our aid projects, our military and our civil society efforts—must be protected.
Trump may have loaded this particular gun, and Biden may well have pulled the trigger, but our Prime Minister stood by and watched while they did it, powerless and weak. He is complicit by his impotence. This Government must live up to that failure, make good on their former promises, and allow all those who need refuge into our country.
Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)
I will keep my comments brief as I am aware that many Members wish to have their voices heard on this topic.
Over the past few days, I have been contacted by many of my constituents regarding the current atrocities unfolding in Afghanistan. They have shared with me their growing worries and concerns for the people of Afghanistan, many of which I share—issues such as the lives of ordinary citizens, the future of women and girls, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), among others, and the recent UNICEF report on violence against children.
I am saddened by the ongoing reports coming from Afghanistan, and I would like assurances from the Government that we will do all we can to help both British citizens in Afghanistan and Afghan nationals. Yesterday, I was contacted by a constituent who is rightly concerned about their family who live in Kabul. Like so many others, they are looking for assurances. Broxtowe’s own 170 (Infrastructure Support) Engineer Group, based at Chetwynd barracks, has a small team that has already contributed hugely to the ongoing effort in Afghanistan, and I send them my heartfelt thanks for what they are doing.
It is my belief that the situation must be addressed with an international effort as soon as possible. My constituents and I ask the Government to lay out urgently their plans to work with other world leaders to assist the citizens of Afghanistan.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The recurring feature of the organisations and terror groups we have been battling for more than 20 years, apart from their obvious barbarity, is their attitude to women. It is not about religion or cultural difference, but about human rights. I believe we have been right to oppose them and to fight for people’s human rights, but we have paid a high price; I will not forget my visits to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Selly Oak and meeting so many of our troops who were treated there. Their bravery, and the hope they brought, should never be forgotten.
It has not been at all easy, but until last week Afghanistan was a place where girls went to school and where women were in government, the civil service and the judiciary. The outcome was probably inevitable from the moment President Trump promised he could end the war. I am not surprised that the Taliban outmanoeuvred him and played him for the fool he was, but, like many in our country, I am astonished that our Government apparently did not see it coming.
There are those who will say, “It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t our fight.” It was worth it to all those women who enjoyed the freedom and opportunities that our intervention brought them. It is always worth it to stand against evil. Afghanistan’s fate is once again in the hands of the Taliban, but we can redeem ourselves slightly by doing right by those who have helped our troops and by assisting obviously genuine refugees. It is time to honour our obligations to those to whom we owe this debt.
Earlier, I heard about a family, with constituency connections to Selly Oak, whose police officer father was killed in Badakhshan, which I think is the furthest north-eastern province. They are asking, “How do we get his four girls and their aunt out?” Birmingham is a city with a proud history of helping refugees, and we stand ready to play our part again. We cannot have any backsliding or sleight of hand from the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary on that commitment.
I hope we will learn one further simple truth from this: we cannot do deals with extremists. Our Foreign Secretary would do well to remember that as he considers future demands from Iran.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The US surrender of its wardship of a problem child is a monumental failure of statecraft, geopolitical confidence and strategic patience that has been made all the worse by the fact that it spans two Administrations. The US is diminished by this, but so are all of us in the free world. The winners are those who are lined up against us and against our values. The losers, from Taiwan to the Caucasus, are those who will see their champions as having feet of clay.
We are left with a looming sense of foreboding at this ignominious end of the fourth Afghan war. It seems very likely that murderous civil war and the mother of all refugee crises will ensue, and it seems to many of us that the geopolitical plates are shifting—and they are shifting against us.
But the past 20 years have not been for nothing. Shout it from the rooftops! Four hundred and fifty-seven men and women demand it; their families demand it; and hundreds and thousands of our countrymen and countrywomen who are damaged in mind and body demand it. Twenty years of fundamentalist terror has been denied a power base, degrading its exportability to our streets. Twenty years of progress in Afghanistan cannot be erased by the brutes now in charge. They are 20 years in which the Taliban and its associates have not destabilised a fragile neighbourhood, and in which the export of opiates has been cut, to the benefit of our streets, and 20 years of Afghan dreams of a better life that will not be undreamt.
What now? What mitigation? Who will step up where the US has stepped back? Who will lead? Who will be the convener? Who will hold the pen? It must be Britain. Four hundred and fifty-seven British dead demand it. The Prime Minister has taken an early lead. I would expect nothing else, and this House must get behind him.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Today is a tragic and shameful day for western Governments. But I also think that it is a day on which we have seen Parliament at its best. We have heard some wonderful speeches and the debate has been illuminated in particular by those who have served. I will long remember the speeches by the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). Their evidence is particularly powerful because of the lives they have led and the experiences they have had.
As others have said, we must learn the lessons from the last 20 years, but that does not mean that we should never intervene or seek to make things better. The truth is that our intervention did make us safer and it also improved the lives and prospects of many in Afghanistan. I fear that we may learn the wrong lessons. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) spoke powerfully about the many benefits that the people of Afghanistan gained as a result of our intervention, but she then said that she voted against it 20 years ago because she thought that this is where we would end up. Even with my fury at the actions of President Biden, of President Trump before him and of the British Government, I do not believe that we should say that the previous 20 years were wasted as a result of where we are today.
Others have said that the Taliban will be judged not on what they say but on what they do, but given our current circumstances, in what way will we judge them? They see that we have walked away, so for us to stand here in this place and say that we will judge them on the basis of their actions seems like weasel words, I am afraid. It is disgraceful that the Foreign Secretary chose to go on holiday as the Taliban marched into Afghanistan and towards the gates of Kabul. I fear that the west’s withdrawal will not save us money in the end and will not make us safer. I fear that we will look back on this day in a few months and say that we were in a position to continue to support Afghanistan, with a very small presence, on its road to a better future.
Almost 70 years on, there are still 28,000 American soldiers in Korea. People say that 20 years on we should not still need to be in Afghanistan, but sometimes a small presence can make a huge difference. Although we absolutely should thank every single person who has served in Afghanistan, we should also recognise that their contribution and the people they fought alongside played a huge part in making us safer and Afghanistan better.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
In 2007, the then Labour Government sent a small cross-party group of Members of Parliament to Afghanistan, and I was one of them. We were in Lashkar Gah when a group of our soldiers came back, having lost one of their number, and we could see that the psychological stress on those soldiers was immense. I say to the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), who is on the Front Bench today, “Please, do all you can to support our veterans at what is bound to be a really difficult time for them.”
We need to look at the short term and the long term in Afghanistan. In the short term, we need to get all the western people with passports out, we need to get out all whose lives are put at risk by their association with the British and the Americans, and we need to facilitate the resettlement of any refugees as quickly as possible.
In the medium and longer term, the British need to play a real part. We need a big diplomatic effort. The Prime Minister’s announcement today that he will lead a G7 meeting is of primary importance, but it is also important that we become realigned with our closest and largest ally, the United States, so that we again operate from the same page. We need to look at the UN and see what we can do on the Security Council to try to persuade the Chinese and the Russians not to use Afghanistan for their own narrow sectoral interests. We need to look at the frontline states—at countries such as Pakistan—to see how they have dealt with harbouring the Taliban and how they will move forward in dealing with refugees, perhaps through their onward transmission to further safe havens.
This is a dark day for Afghanistan. We will look at the Taliban and judge them by their actions, but I say to the British Government, “Please, start talking to the Taliban to see where there is interest so that we can influence those people and their behaviour.” Otherwise, if the Taliban start doing extremist things in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, which we went in largely to help, will re-emerge and a vicious civil war will break out in Afghanistan. That will make the whole thing far worse.
Where Britain does not lead with its values of democracy, tolerance, a good judicial system and a free press, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere, the world is a poorer and nastier place. We owe it to the Afghans to redouble our diplomatic efforts in the weeks, months and years ahead to see what we can do to salvage a more sustainable future for Afghanistan.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The humanitarian disaster unfolding in front of our eyes is a political failure rather than a military one, and I think it is important that this House recognises that. The work of our armed forces who were sent into Afghanistan to achieve what many believed at the time was a near-impossible, and certainly dangerously idealistic, ambition prevailed in military terms. I was working in the MOD in 2001 just before military operations in Afghanistan got under way. At a meeting of the MOD and industry in Yeovil, I recall clearly the universal incredulity at the idea that this intervention in a theatre that had previously humbled both the British and the Soviet Union could ever conceivably end well—and so it has come to pass.
The media reported last week the unbelievable pace with which the Taliban advanced across the country, but why was that such a shock? Perhaps the Government can explain why they were so ill prepared. Many observers, myself included, do not think for one minute that there was a failure of military intelligence; rather, we think that there was a failure of Ministers to act on it. This House and the public at large need to know whether civilian officials and intelligence analysts are at liberty to convey difficult and unwelcome messages to senior Ministers in this Government, and that those same Ministers will act in the national interest rather than on any more expedient or transient priority.
Can the Government tell the veterans and their families in Angus and across these islands what this was all for—not the intention or the ambition of the dedicated and successful military operations, but the outcome and the consequences? What is the legacy of those people’s bravery, sacrifice and loss? I want to highlight to the Defence Secretary the correspondence I have received from my constituent, a former company commander in 2011 in Operation Herrick. He shares the chilling email he got from his former translator—with whom he keeps in touch, such are the bonds forged in combat—and his Afghan friend’s plight in trying to exit the country through the UK embassy with his family. I will send on the details to the Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary, who I am sure will both give them dedicated support. Then there are the civilians and NGOs, who endured no small measure of risk and hardship to apply their skills and expertise in the service of Afghanistan and her people. What of their work to build order and systems of just administration, and challenge endemic corruption? What remains of those hard fought gains and of civil society—those brave Afghan souls, many of them women, who stepped into the space that we created for them and took up roles supporting the UK and its allies?
Mr Perkins
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have put in place a three-minute time limit. Every time Members from certain parties get to the end of their speeches, they add on another minute by taking an intervention. Is it not a huge discourtesy to everyone on your list who is going to miss out for them to add on a minute every time they do not think the time limit is long enough?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
There are a lot of people who are not going to get in—we know that—but under current procedures people can take up to two interventions. Yes, people should take on board the fact that they are possibly doing some of their colleagues out of a turn if that happens, so I hope that the position will not be abused.
Gavin Newlands
I should point out to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) that we are six hours into the debate and this is the second SNP Back-Bench speech on this important issue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) mentioned women and girls. The Taliban have said that they are committed to the rights of women. Does he agree with me that these misogynist thugs see women as third-class people and chattels only there to serve men, and that this House cannot believe a word the Taliban say about the rights of women?
Dave Doogan
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. As many hon. and right hon. Members have observed this afternoon, the Taliban need to be judged on their actions, not on their words.
Against this new reality, it is beyond credibility that the Foreign Secretary has publicly claimed that the UK will hold the Taliban to account. What does that mean? By what means and to what end would this be done? It would suit the Foreign Secretary better to fully restore the foreign aid budget, rather than issuing abstract and random threats to a regime that has just shown the UK the door. Five thousand refugees this year is not commensurate with the scenes in Kabul of people literally running for their lives and clinging to aircraft, and a hazy figure of 20,000, over what period we are not certain, is insubstantial to say the least, given the circumstances.
In closing, I urge the Government and the Prime Minister to review and expedite this element of the UK’s response, including through a cogent plan to extricate brave Afghans who are not already in Kabul. The UK was front and centre at the genesis of this political catastrophe. It should be similarly positioned for the clear-up.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
I would like to start by thanking the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) in particular and all other colleagues for the generous remarks they have made today about those of us who had the honour of serving on operations in Afghanistan. I served on Op Herrick 9 in the autumn and winter of 2008-09. My time with 3 Commando Brigade was one of the great privileges of my life. As we discuss the awful situation in Afghanistan and its possible future today, we are also rightly honouring the sacrifice of the 457 of our servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice and the more than 600 who continue to live with life-changing injuries.
To those who say that it was not worth it or has not been a success—thankfully it is a tiny number in the House today—may I gently remind people that the original objective, which was to destroy al-Qaeda on the ground, deprive it of a base from which to mount terrorist attacks throughout the rest of the world, defeat the Taliban and try to keep our own streets safe, was achieved. Our people, the Americans, our allies, and the Afghan army and police force achieved those objectives with honour and courage.
I commend the work done by Defence Equipment and Support at MOD Abbey Wood in my constituency, which provided the logistical support, the equipment, the air bridge and the welfare throughout the entire Afghan operation and continues to do that job on a daily basis for our troops deployed throughout the world, and for the MOD in particular.
Like most of the House, I feel ashamed, angry and devastated by what I have seen happening in Afghanistan in recent days and weeks. I cannot help but keep remembering the ordinary people of Afghanistan and the locally employed civilians who not only risked their lives but, by helping NATO forces, risked the lives of their families, friends and villages to Taliban reprisals. I was delighted and relieved beyond measure when the Prime Minister announced today the resettlement and evacuation programme for refugees, which is a fantastic thing.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who said that we have been let down by our American friends. There was no binary choice between ramping up the operation back to a war-fighting pitch, with the numbers and expense, and abandoning the country. There were other options, and I am amazed by President Biden, who was vice-president when the Americans rushed out of Iraq the first time and saw the consequences when we had to redeploy—we still have British troops in Kurdistan mentoring and training Kurdish forces. There may well be a time when we have to redeploy again.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I pay tribute to all those who lost their lives serving their country, and to those who have served, especially colleagues on both sides of the House.
I was struck by the words of my first cousin Mark, who served in Afghanistan 18 years ago. Like many of us, he found the scenes unfolding in Afghanistan difficult. His post on social media resonates with many veterans:
“Those poor souls, so fearful of what lay ahead for them that they would rather cling to a jet and fall to their deaths than face the future in their homeland. It’s hard to even comprehend their desperation and fear. 18 years ago I was there: believing in what we were part of; believing that we would make a difference; believing that their futures would be brighter and lives more secure for their loved ones; believing that if I had to make the ultimate sacrifice it would have been worth it; believing it would be alright in the end; believing that Afghan nationals would not succumb to corruption and would realise that they needed to come together and stand strong for what they believed in.”
My cousin has never felt as totally confused as he does now, which concerns me. Some of his colleagues made the ultimate sacrifice, and more so their surviving families back home. His Afghan medals mean nothing to him any more. He does not feel proud; he feels totally repulsed. He cannot think of a worse Government than the present one. He feels they have failed miserably, not just on the covid-19 pandemic but on how they have let the situation get to where it is. His words:
“My medal is now a memento of a failed mission.”
I would like to say that I am very proud of my cousin for his service, and so are his sisters, his wife, his daughters and his cousins like me.
The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) paid tribute to the veterans who served by saying that it is the politicians and the foreign policy that have let them down. I have to agree. For my cousin Mark, and for all those who served, we now need to know how the Government and the Prime Minister will address the despair and hopelessness felt by so many veterans. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the leader of the Labour party, said today, recent events in Afghanistan shame the west.
Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)
In preparation for today’s debate, I put out an all-stations call to my constituents to establish their opinions. By Jove, they have many questions about what has happened.
Today, we need to focus on what we do next. We must do all we can to assist those Afghan people who supported the British effort and who are now at risk of retribution, namely the thousands of interpreters still waiting to leave. It would be optimistic to assume that the air bridge will remain open much longer. I urge the Government, as others have, to ramp up the substantial efforts already being made to maximise this brief window of opportunity. I, too, commend the Secretary of State for Defence for his tireless work over the past few days. However, despite the need for expedience, we must ensure that our national and border security is upheld and prepare for an influx of refugees. These are areas of concern to my constituents.
The Defence Committee has just undertaken an inquiry into the experiences of women in the military and of female veterans. It saddens me immensely that we will now see the re-emergence of the oppression of Afghan women, nowhere more so than the oppression of women upholding democracy in the military, media and Parliament. I urge the Government to consider them with preference in the citizens’ resettlement scheme. I have been talking to many fellow veterans, as we all have, and unilaterally they hold a deep and fresh grief for the loss of service lives in Afghanistan. I want to reassure them that for those who served and made that sacrifice, that meant that terrorists were denied the ability to launch attacks on and in Britain, and for that we are eternally grateful.
Of the 457 service personnel who were killed, 32 were from Wales, including Guardsman Shadrake from Wrexham—the anniversary of his death was yesterday. Two thousand, two hundred were physically wounded, and countless are left with mental scars. We must do all that we can as a society and as a Parliament to support those people. Finally, I would like to name the four service personnel from my old corps, the Intelligence Corps, who made the ultimate sacrifice: Sarah Bryant, James Brynin, Jabron Hashmi and Oliver Thomas.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton). I echo her tribute to her four colleagues and, indeed, I will pay my own tribute to armed forces personnel later in my speech.
I appreciate that time is brief, so I want to address the key points and raise three issues. First, I thank colleagues across the House for the generous and sensible way in which we have debated these important matters with one another, and I associate myself with the remarks by the Leader of the Opposition, by the former Prime Minister, and by the Chairs of the Select Committees on Defence and on Foreign Affairs and, indeed, by colleagues across the House who served in Afghanistan.
First, I pay tribute to the forces; secondly, I want to highlight some key outstanding humanitarian issues, as other colleagues have done; and, thirdly, I will touch briefly on some of the possible lessons, although we are in the early stages of assessing those. Paying tribute to those who served, I want to make it clear that from my perspective—I believe that this is felt across the House and the country—those who gave their life and paid the ultimate price did not do so in vain. We have had 20 years in which terrorism in Afghanistan has been kept under control. The threat of spectacular attacks on the west such as the twin towers attack has been removed from that country. We now face a new situation that we must address, and I will come on to that.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is talking about the threat of terrorism now that the Taliban are back in power. Does he share my concern about the fact that the Taliban are the world’s biggest drug cartel, producing 85% of the world’s heroin, which is something that will have an impact on our communities, as production is set to soar under their control?
Matt Rodda
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point, and I agree with her concern, which I share deeply.
On the benefits of the 20 years of intervention, it is important to recognise—this has been recognised across the House—the significant benefits in Afghanistan of our commitment to that country, and to consider and reflect on that, as well as the huge achievements that were made in that time. We should not lose sight of that. It is vital that we support our veterans, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and many other speakers have said. It is crucial that we support them as we go through the next, very difficult phase.
I am grateful for the time I have for this speech, and I shall quickly address the other points I wish to make. Turning to the humanitarian crisis, we were all deeply shocked by the scenes at the airport. I am pleased that the Government have made further commitments today. I would like further detail, and I hope that there will not be any backsliding. It is really important that we live up to our international obligations. As many colleagues have said, we need to find ways of smoothing out and removing unnecessary bureaucracy so that we can live up to our obligations to people who have served this country and key members of civil society who are highly likely targets of the Taliban regime.
Finally, let me turn briefly to the lessons. It is far too early to address them in any detail whatever, but I would like to raise some poignant questions that I hope we can all reflect on. The strategy quite clearly needs to be re-examined, as many other people have mentioned. That is an international matter, but it is also a matter for the British Government as the key ally of the US. We also need to consider the immediate period running up to this crisis and reflect on the management of key Government Departments, and, indeed, the role of Prime Minister at that time.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
This has not been the orderly withdrawal that any of us would have wanted. The rapid collapse of the Afghan Government and their armed forces, and the takeover by the Taliban have been more an implosion than a transition. This is not our finest hour. But nor is it our worst humiliation since Suez, for let us not forget that we went in with a UN mandate as NATO and we stopped fighting seven years ago, since when we have been giving support and training to the elected Afghan Government. Our exit is not of our making, but the US Government’s. None of those things was true of Suez.
It is important that we recognise that in order to support the great present and future work that will be done by organisations such as NATO’s Gloucestershire-headquartered Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, and the individual men and women of armed forces units such as 1 Rifles, which is also based in Gloucestershire, and their families. They did so much to prevent international terrorism coming out of Afghanistan for two decades. Now we have to focus on the immediate priorities of getting our own citizens out of Afghanistan safely, helping to get out as many of the most vulnerable of those who helped us while we were there and then organising a generous resettlement programme, about which we have heard very good news from the Prime Minister today. The longer term debate about how we work with different partners across the world, how we work with Islamic states and how we project our values peacefully through organisations such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy must come another day.
In the short term, in order to achieve those three objectives we are going to have to work, however much it grates, with those who are now in power in Afghanistan. Just as we know from recent events that we did not always predict what was going to happen accurately, we should not assume that we know exactly how things will pan out from now. We do not have complete control of the situation, and I believe that we owe to all those at Kabul airport, our diplomats and our armed forces good fortune in managing to extricate ourselves with some honour from this incredibly difficult situation. The future will see a debate that all of us will want to play a part in, but for now let us wish them all good fortune in executing the mission.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Watching events over the past few days has been like watching a slow motion horror movie, seeing innocent people fleeing for their lives, the scenes of utter desperation at Kabul airport, and women and girls being airbrushed out, their future uncertain. But this is real life and those scenes will stay with me. I cannot imagine how our armed forces personnel and their families must feel, as well as those who have served in Afghanistan, including many Members here, and the many families who have lost loved ones.
I am horrified: horrified that this Government have not stepped in earlier to do something to prevent this; horrified that they have sat back and watched this situation unfold; and horrified that the Foreign Secretary could sit on a beach in Crete on the day that Kabul fell. This has been a catastrophic failure of western leaders and now we simply get a debate in the House of Commons—no vote and no binding resolution on the Government. We can be in no doubt about this House’s views on the Government’s actions.
As the Taliban continue to increase their dominance, violence and forced displacement continue to rise. Assurances from the Taliban leadership are not enough; they are words we have heard before. We know they will target those they have always targeted: women and girls, religious minorities, political opponents, journalists and human rights activists. Jihadist groups are celebrating. That is all we need to know.
We should feel ashamed: we are betraying those we promised we would help and leaving people who relied on us at the mercy of their enemy. We must help to provide safe and legal routes and sanctuary for all those in danger, not simply those who were directly employed by the UK Government. Twenty thousand refugees over five years is simply not good enough. I am proud that our Welsh Labour Government have made clear their warm welcome to any refugees and are working with the Home Office to be a nation of sanctuary.
The words “global Britain” are hollow in the face of what we are witnessing. I urge the Government to work with our international partners to face up to our moral duty to offer support and to do something for the women and girls over there who throw away their certificates—their education—because they are scared. Enough smoke and mirrors: now is the time for real action.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
This is a shameful episode and a shameful dereliction of policy by the western alliance. There is no getting around that. I pay tribute, as have others, to those who served out there and made a sacrifice—sometimes the ultimate sacrifice. Constituents of mine who served have been in touch with me and are as dismayed at the outcome as I am and so many other Members are.
It is not the prime responsibility of Her Majesty’s Government that this situation has come about—the principal responsibility lies, of course, with the dereliction of two United States Administrations—but, sadly, we are tainted by it. That must cause us to think again about how in future we construct a special relationship that seems to me to be, on a number of issues, lopsided to say the least. What was the level of consultation before the disastrous decision was taken by the Trump Administration? What was the level of communication between us and the Biden Administration to try, at least, to desist?
The Secretary of State for Defence deserves credit for all his efforts, but as we go forward we have to think about rebuilding a fresh approach to the NATO alliance that is less dependent on a United States that, sadly, has clearly set itself upon becoming protectionist and isolationist for the foreseeable future. To do that, we must rebalance NATO, which must involve our building bridges and restoring links with our European allies in NATO. In particular, we must include in that France, the other power with significant forward capability to mount operations elsewhere in the world.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Robert Neill
Time presses and it would be unfair on others if I did so. I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
We must also work with our allies in the Commonwealth that have capacity—countries such as Canada have a long track record in these matters. We must rebalance our strategic approach. We cannot simply be the Little Sir Echo of the United States. The US will always be an important ally for us, but the truth is that it is not Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill any more and we have to adjust to that reality.
The other thing we must do is to protect those who helped us in Afghanistan. I referred earlier to women judges; since then I have had emails from other judges’ families as well. Judges, lawyers and prosecutors—part of the attempt to build a civilised society—were already being targeted for assassination even before the Taliban swept into power. They and their families now have to be in hiding. We have to help them.
We took 27,000 people from Uganda when Idi Amin’s dictatorship expelled them, and I am proud that it was a Conservative Government under Edward Heath who did that. The key thing is that we did not set an arbitrary number; we took them on the basis of need and they enriched and enhanced this country. In the same way, we should be as generous in our spirit to those in Afghanistan. I am sure that if the Government reflect on it, they will understand the importance of that, because that is in the British tradition.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I supported the war in Afghanistan; I supported the war in Iraq. In politics, it is important to learn from your mistakes, but it is often other people who pay for them. Today, this Chamber should debate what has happened in Afghanistan with genuine humility.
There is no point in criticising the Government’s strategy; there has not been one. When President Trump announced his decision to withdraw troops last year, our Government should have prepared to relocate all those Afghan families to whom we owed a debt of honour: the interpreters, the medics, the aid workers. They should have; they did not. They should have fast-tracked all the outstanding settlement applications from British citizens wanting to bring their children and partners from Afghanistan. They should have; they did not.
Two days ago, my office phoned the Home Office hotline for MPs to ask what emergency procedures are now in place. My constituent and his three British children are in Kabul, waiting to bring their mother—his wife—to safety in the UK. The Home Office officer said that there was no such procedure and that she must apply “in the normal way”. There is no normal way! There is nowhere to sit the English language test and nowhere to submit biometric data. That was two days ago. Yesterday, we phoned again and she said, “There is something, but it’s for internal use only.” Eighteen months on, the Home Secretary has put out one internal memo.
One constituent has three sisters there. I dare not name them: they were key figures in the nation-building programme. They are in hiding, with no man to accompany them to an airport. They should have had information from our Foreign Office weeks ago about how the relocation scheme would operate to keep them safe and bring them to the UK—how we would fulfil our debt of honour to them and to all the interpreters, doctors, journalists and others now in danger. No such information came. That debt of honour has not been fulfilled.
The Afghanistan that we hoped to build 20 years ago may be lost for now, but our Government need a plan and a vision for the sort of world that we want to build. Afghanistan will be how we are judged in future. Are we to be trusted? Do we keep our word? Do we have the will to support the values that we preach? Do we have the foresight to prepare against the things that we fear will happen? Any dispassionate observer of this Government would have to answer no, but this is not just a political failure. It is a moral failure of which the price is now being paid by others: British citizens with family members trapped in Afghanistan, those who fought and served alongside our own valiant troops, the women, the religious minorities and all those who now face a well-founded fear of persecution.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
Afghanistan has dominated much of my working life, so I am grateful to have been called to speak this afternoon. The situation there is galling, and one can only imagine the horrors that are unfolding in that most challenging part of the world. Were all the blood, sweat, tears and lives lost worth it? Well, now is not the time for an introspective look at how we got where we are today, as our priority is the here and now, but I will raise three quick points, if I may.
First, the fall of Kabul will reopen wounds for our service personnel, our veterans and their families. Huge sacrifices were made by so many, so I express my deepest sympathy to all those who lost loved ones and those with ongoing mental and physical scars. I also pay particular tribute to the 3,487 allied service personnel who lost their lives, including 457 British men and women, many of whom I served with.
There are no winners in war—it is a horrible, dirty business—but I believe that the MOD and the FCDO acted in good faith throughout the conflict. There were significant successes: schools, education, women’s rights, markets, jobs, town centres. People were given hope, and no terrorist acts in the west were orchestrated from Afghanistan’s soil. It may just be that some wars cannot be won, that strategic aims may be too ambitious and that some parts of the world are simply ungovernable.
As for the here and now, the non-combatant evacuation operation is in full flow, but I want to see an enhanced FCDO presence on the ground to ensure that we get it right. We must secure the airhead. We also need to take advantage of the relatively permissive environment—for now—to extend the lines of communication and ensure safe passage for UK nationals and entitled personnel to the airhead. In tactical terms, we need to go ugly early.
In addition, we need to be honest with ourselves. The FCDO must be realistic about the task at hand, not least in its messaging, by not writing cheques that cannot be cashed in terms of offering a safe haven for the non-entitled. I regret that we need to accept the harsh reality of what is happening in Afghanistan. Whether we like it or not, the overriding imperatives are UK nationals, foreign nationals with whom we have an arrangement and those entitled Afghan personnel we can lift.
Finally, we need to be honest about our place in the world and our global ambitions. The fall of Kabul, like Suez, has shown that the UK may not be able to operate autonomously without US involvement. It may be that our foreign policy is decided as much in Washington as it is in London. I am being provocative, but with so much being spent on defence and with global Britain at the forefront of our foreign policy, just how independent are we?
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
First, I put it on record that I have had many emails and messages from my constituents, expressing their distress at the events in Afghanistan, not least in respect of women, girls and LGBT people, as well as their wish that Britain plays a full part in evacuating not just British citizens and Afghans who supported our work, but other Afghan refugees who trusted the promise by western nations to make the Taliban part of their past, not their future. Bristol is a city of sanctuary and we stand ready to assist.
Many urgent and worthy issues have been debated today, but I want to focus on just one point. I fear that events in Afghanistan could be the symbolic end of the period when the UK has been able to exert influence in securing a cohesive western approach in the world. The way in which the withdrawal from Afghanistan took place represented a United States primarily concerned about its own situation, failing to step up and play an important role in the world as a torchbearer of democracy, pursuant to its status as a democratic superpower. It represented a NATO that was hamstrung by the position of the United States, and European nations, including ours, incapable of changing course. Perhaps most important for our purposes in a post-Brexit world, where the UK-US special relationship is at the heart of our assumed projection of power and influence, I am left wondering what power and influence Britain alone actually has.
For the many champions of democracy around the world, including in Taiwan, events have already created a sense of unease about the willingness of the world’s democracies to support each other when our way of life is challenged and put at risk. The Taliban have been celebrating their victory over the militarily superior nations with China and Russia, which maintain their position in Afghanistan and form relationships with the Taliban—collaborative and celebratory relationships between authoritarian nations against the free and liberal democracies of the world.
My heart goes out to the Afghan people. As a Member of this House, I feel deeply sorry for the events that have unfolded. I, too, pay tribute to the many servicemen and women who have served. We all expect Ministers to put significant energy into our efforts in Afghanistan on evacuation, asylum, aid and international diplomacy. I also expect Ministers, not least our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, to wake up to Britain’s quickly declining influence in the world and the risk that that poses to our country. That can be turned around, but it will require renewed effort and statesmanslike leadership that befits Britain’s historical status in the world. I sincerely hope that the Government have it in them.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Winston Churchill said:
“Wars are not won by evacuations.”—[Official Report, 4 June 1940; Vol. 361, c. 791.]
The debacle we have sadly just witnessed in Afghanistan was more akin to the fall of Saigon than the miracle of Dunkirk. There is no hiding from the fact that we have just suffered a most grievous defeat. Our 150,000 veterans fought bravely in the noble cause of a better life for the ordinary people of Afghanistan. It is not their fault. We now have 457 compelling reasons for learning from this. I support the call from the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Chairman of the Defence Committee for a Franks-style inquiry to learn what went wrong.
Another war leader, Napoleon Bonaparte once said:
“The moral is to the physical as three is to one”.
When NATO needlessly withdrew key enablers on which the Afghan army still relied for protection, their morale rapidly collapsed. This was a NATO mission, which began as an article 5 request when the United States suffered a terrorist Pearl Harbor on 9/11. They asked for our help and we gave it.
Twenty years on, whether we blame President Trump for a bad deal with the Taliban or President Biden, who, remember, on 8 July told the American people,
“There’s going to be no circumstances where you see people being lifted off the roof of the embassy of the United States from Afghanistan”,
the buck stops with him—oh yes, it does. But we are not blameless in Britain either. Our own National Security Council was caught completely flatfooted, although the Defence Secretary, to his eternal credit, did, perhaps with a soldier’s instincts, appreciate what was going to happen and sought desperately to assemble a coalition of the willing among European nations, only to discover they were anything but willing to prevent what happened next.
What do these events mean not just for Afghanistan but for the security of the strait of Hormuz, the Baltic states, Ukraine or even Taiwan? NATO has been the cornerstone of our security for more than 70 years, and it has just suffered a strategic defeat for the first time in its history. I am terribly sorry, as an Atlanticist all my life, that President Biden’s deeply isolationist speech on Monday was extremely worrying. If the midterm results in the United States are more important than the security and freedom of the free world, we had better work out pretty quickly what global Britain means, because it seems that global America just fell off its horse and died.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
We speak about our surprise at the collapse of the Afghan Government and the takeover by the Taliban, but the reality is that the 2020 Doha agreement and the withdrawal of troops gave the Taliban a timeframe to plan around. It also saw 500 Taliban prisoners released to help in the coup, and now the Taliban have taken over, we have seen terrorists let out of jail to wreak havoc.
This year alone, the increased violence and fighting displaced 550,000 people and caused the UK Government to expedite the interpreter relocation scheme, and by July the Taliban had recaptured a quarter of districts from the Afghan Government. That means that there were serious intelligence failures or huge political misjudgments in joining the dots, as there was no contingency exit planning. Was any intelligence picked up about the Taliban working with local officials and security forces to persuade them to swap sides?
We have seen the US spend a staggering $1 trillion over 20 years to achieve the collapse of the regime rather than the reconstruction of Afghanistan. It seems that that money sustained corruption, rather than tackled it. The reality is that it is 20 years of foreign policy failure, with 457 British soldiers killed and a quarter of a million deaths overall, including more than 70,000 civilians. Then we have the wounded, the impoverished and the millions of refugees. It is truly tragic.
There was hope with the return of women’s rights, women working, women politicians and more children at school, but what does the future hold for them? We have heard that, in relative terms, the Taliban are saying the right things about not being as strict as before, but they still want sharia law, and many of the old faces feature in the new regime. When the Taliban reclaim provincial districts, reports suggest that, as well as violence, women are already being made to wear the hijab and are required to have a male companion to go out in public.
While a Taliban spokesperson yesterday was doing a charm offensive to CNN, a reporter was told to stand aside, as a woman, and was told that compulsory burqa wearing will return. Those are clear warning signs for the future, including the reprisal killings that have already happened and the veiled threats that people will only be safe if they show remorse.
A previous study found that 65% of children had encountered displacement or acts of violence, or had witnessed beatings, deaths or the mutilation of bodies. That in itself might explain the fragility of the security forces. It certainly explains the widespread fear of the many civilians trying to flee Kabul.
After the final collapse, while we are pulling out, the Foreign Secretary tells us that the UK will hold the Taliban to account. Are we really to believe that? They have been planning for years while we have ignored our so-called allies aiding and abetting—historically, it was Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and now the United Arab Emirates is reportedly turning a blind eye to Taliban drug money being laundered in Dubai. With so many political failures in the past 20 years, we need a judge-led inquiry to get to the bottom of this and learn lessons for the future.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I have never been in the military and I have never visited Afghanistan, but I represent a constituency, and actually live in a village, where large numbers are and have. RAF Benson has provided helicopters to Afghanistan. Its Pumas have served in Afghanistan since 2015. How do I represent to them that what they have achieved has been a success? Yes, they have been involved in anti-terrorism, but they have also been involved in the process of state building. They are an exceptional team who have served well. They have been based at Kabul airport and have provided vital airborne transport. Look at the statistics of what they have achieved. They have done 12,800 flying hours. They have carried 126,000 passengers. They have also carried 660,000 kg of freight. We will offer our congratulations to them, I am sure, right across the House, for giving so much to that mission.
I also want to raise the status of a number of girls in Kabul who are active musicians. The young women and girls of the Afghan women’s orchestra and their peers at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music were special guests of the UK Government, and of an orchestra in my constituency, for performances in the UK in 2019. Promoting girls’ education and reducing the impact of conflict on women and girls used to be key priorities for the Foreign Office in Afghanistan. The achievements of the Afghan women’s orchestra embody the values at the core of those priorities, and for those reasons the Foreign Office was proud to be playing a role in the orchestra’s visit to the UK.
On Sunday night we received a text message from some of the orchestra. It said:
“Today I went to school. I wanted to practise. After a few minutes our teacher said go home because the situation and security is not good…It’s really dangerous because the Taliban even can’t hear the sound of music…I have no hope for the future of music development in Afghanistan.”
I feel great sympathy for those girls, and I ask Ministers to do what they can to make sure that those girls are released from that captivity and brought safely to the UK.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I have felt sick to my stomach this week for Afghan friends, for our veterans and their families, for those fleeing in terror, and at scenes of bodies falling from planes in the sky. I find it hard to comprehend, as I think many others have throughout this House and in my constituency in these last few days.
I pay tribute to all of our forces, to all who have served—in this House, in my own family, among my constituents—to those 457 who never came back, to those injured physically and mentally, to those Department for International Development staff and non-governmental organisations that I was proud to work alongside, to human rights defenders, especially those working with women and girls, to our media and journalists, especially our BBC World Service and language services, and to those Afghan soldiers. Thousands of them died for their country and freedoms; to suggest otherwise is completely wrong.
For the sacrifices of all of them were not in vain, as the Leader of the Opposition and so many others have said in today’s debate. They did succeed in making a difference to communities, in countering terrorism and in making a difference to individuals. I saw that for myself in places like Musa Qala and elsewhere. The failures that we shamefully now see are not theirs; they are at the political and strategic level.
I recall, in Helmand, in Lashkar Gah, after meeting the governor, being told by somebody, “You are willing to expend the blood and treasure, but the Taliban strategy is to run down the clock and to see if you have the patience.” Well, they certainly figured that out. We now risk another failure if we accept the slick Taliban PR spin that we have heard over the past few days, while they execute, make lists, shoot civilians in the street and caveat everything with talk about rights within their system of justice, especially for women. Let’s not be fooled.
Over the past few days we have seen remarkable work on the ground by our troops and our ambassador, but frankly they have been let down by a Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary asleep at the wheel. They were already warned of the failures in supporting translators and others who supported our troops and our civilians, but they were caught unawares by the chaos at the airport. We need to ensure that every safe route is used and that we can get people safely to the airport and out by other routes if possible, and we need to base that on need, not arbitrary numbers, using every plane and resource.
Let us not forget that the Government have been cutting aid to Afghanistan, so we need urgent clarity on this new announcement, not least when we see such great needs elsewhere in the world, including Tigray and, in recent days, Haiti. Is it new money or is it being diverted? How will it be delivered? Will we follow a Zimbabwe-type model, where we ensure that it does not go through a despotic Government? Will it go through the UN or through NGOs? How will the plans that we had in place be delivered?
Finally, I agree with the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) that there were not simple binary choices here; there were other options, and this has been wrong at every level. We have to be aware of the consequences for our own security and that of our allies, for civilians, democracy, development and human rights in the world if we carry on down this path of diminishing retreat.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I was able to visit Afghanistan in November 2011 as a member of the valuable armed forces parliamentary scheme. We went into Bastion, and at the outset we were reminded why we were there in the first place—to prevent Afghan territory from being used by al-Qaeda as a base from which to attack the UK and its allies. In that we have succeeded, but the question for the House today has been whether what has happened over the past week makes that more or less likely. I think the answer is that it makes an event of that nature more likely than previously, and that is a matter of great concern.
In the week of our visit, three UK servicemen lost their lives, and we now know that 457 lives were lost. It is important to consider the thoughts of their comrades and families now. Again, the question for the House has been whether the sacrifice was worth it in relation to what was achieved. I am reassured by the remarks of Members who have served that those sacrifices were not in vain.
On my visit, we learned about the threat of IEDs to personnel, and many servicemen have had life-changing injuries. I heard only the other day from one of them, for whom current events brought memories flooding back. It is good to hear that there will be adequate support for mental health, and it has been good to hear Members’ passionate demands for that.
We also saw some of the kit that our armed forces had. It was horrifying to see TV pictures the other day of Taliban wearing some of the protective wear and with the vehicles. How much of that equipment is now with the Taliban, and what use might they make of it?
We had lunch in a mocked-up Afghan village on the base, with the soldiers and local Afghan workers who were on the base. I think about those people that I met. Where are they now? These are the people to whom we have a duty. We need to get them out. Once we have secured the safety and departure of UK nationals, these people must be looked after. It is to the Government’s credit that we have created the Afghan relocations and assistance policy to get more people out. There will be much more to do in coming weeks.
Back in 2011, the objective was to start the transfer of authority to the Afghan army and police force. That was starting to happen, with our troops remaining in a non-combat role. Only now do we understand how important that was. In 2011 there was great confidence that Afghan forces would be able to take over once we had left. How misplaced that confidence looks now.
In my concluding remarks in an article for the local newspaper, I noted how I came away in 2011 with a sense of our role at that time, and that I would have a better understanding of the issues involved. However, it appears that we have not learned the lessons, and there will be a great deal more to find out about the final few weeks.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
Today, nearly 20 years since Tony Blair dutifully followed George W. Bush to war in Afghanistan, this House has an obligation to learn its lessons and to ensure that its mistakes are never repeated. I want to start by stating a hard but clear truth that some in this House do not want to hear: the 20-year war on Afghanistan was a mistake of catastrophic proportions, causing untold human tragedy, with 240,000 people killed—men, women and children—including tens of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians and 457 British personnel. This House must never again send British service personnel to die in futile wars.
Rather than repeating the mistakes of the past, we must learn that lesson for the future. The west cannot build liberal democracies with bombs and bullets. That dangerous fantasy, cooked up by neo-conservative fanatics in Washington and championed by their faithful followers in London, has brought untold death and destruction to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and many other places, in wars that have made us all unsafe. Today, we must rid ourselves of the delusion that the answer to failed intervention is yet more intervention and dispense with the belief that freedom abroad and safety at home can be won through wars and regime change.
After all this bloodshed, we have a special duty to the people of Afghanistan. Today, as Afghans flee for their lives—with heartbreaking images of people desperately clinging on to planes, hoping that the sky is safer than the land—the Afghan asylum seekers who are already here must be provided with an unconditional amnesty. On that issue, I want to raise again with the Government the case of my constituent Jamal and his father. Jamal was a translator for the British Army for six years and his father worked as a gardener in a British base. While Jamal made it safely to Coventry, a proud city of sanctuary, his father has been denied relocation and is still in Afghanistan in grave danger. I have written to the Secretary of State, but I have not received a reply, so today I urge the Government to act immediately and provide safe passage for Jamal’s father and all Afghans who face that threat from the Taliban.
The war on Afghanistan was the first war on terror. I was just seven years old when British air strikes hit the country. A few years later, the now Prime Minister wrote, “We are in Afghanistan to teach them the value of democracy.” Today, after 20 years of bloodshed, it is incumbent on us to learn that democracy cannot be bombed into existence and that American military might is no friend of freedom, and to ensure that this first war on terror is Britain’s last war of aggression.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I apologise to more than 80 Members who did not get in, but the final contribution before the wind-ups is from Antony Higginbotham. Please do not take interventions because we will not add any time on.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
Thank you very much for fitting me in, Mr Deputy Speaker.
When the Taliban were removed all those years ago, the people of Afghanistan were given hope—hope that life could be better, that opportunities would open up, that they could go to school and university, and that they could finally decide their own future at the ballot box. That is why the scenes we have seen this week have been so heartbreaking. That hope came because of the hard work and sacrifices of our armed forces, our allies and the thousands and thousands of Afghans—in their armed forces, as well as the interpreters—who worked with us. Tens of thousands of UK personnel all have their own memories of the conflict, good and bad, and our message to them all should be that we are incredibly proud of what they did. We should be incredibly proud of what the Afghans did too. They provided security for us here at home, dismantling terrorist training camps, and not just provided hope for ordinary Afghans but delivered, too. Our message to our veterans is that if they need our help now it is there for them.
When combat operations ended, the mission changed. Our forces were then there to train. They were building the confidence of and offering reassurance to the Afghan armed forces, the Afghan Government and civic society. Confidence building and reassurance is not quick and easy. It is complex, difficult and enduring. There is no clear end. I think that the Government recognise that. It is weaved into the integrated review, and I commend them for the work that the Secretary of State for Defence did to try to rebuild a coalition, but it has highlighted a weakness of NATO and coalitions—over-reliance on a single partner, and a single partner who can act unilaterally. We need to learn those lessons and ensure that when we enter into operations with NATO and others we do it as true partners.
Our task now is to preserve the security gains that have been made, to support our veterans, to get our people and Afghans out as quickly as possible and to make sure that those lessons never need to be learned again.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Some moments in this debate were among the most harrowing I can remember in 11 years in Parliament. I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) and for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), and in particular to the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). They make me proud to be a Member of this House. No matter how painful and difficult it has been for them to speak up over recent weeks, they have done it. They have done the veterans of Afghanistan proud and they have shown themselves to be true friends to the Afghan people. They have refused to despair, even at the darkest moments, because they know better than most of us that despair is a luxury that Afghans, and the world, simply cannot afford.
Those hon. Members have given voice to something that tens of thousands of families in Britain are feeling—our friends, neighbours and constituents who served, lost loved ones or suffered life-changing injuries, and are wondering now what it was all for. They should not accept that this is the end of two decades of sacrifice, or that the degradation of terrorists, the hard-won progress for women and girls, the landmine clearance programme, the access to healthcare, the clean water and the emergence of fragile democracy can be allowed to unravel in just a few days while the world looks away. Like so many of us who have spoken in this debate, they find it impossible to reconcile where we are now, and how it could possibly have come to this.
We recognise that the decision by the United States to withdraw its military presence created an impossible situation for the United Kingdom. As the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, NATO’s intention was always to withdraw, but it was to withdraw in a planned and orderly way, linked to conditions. This has failed all those tests. Some 18 months after the decision was made to withdraw at Doha and four months after the timetable was established, the airport is overwhelmed, paperwork cannot be processed, and Ministers openly admit that people will be left behind and that some of them will die.
This is an unparalleled moment of shame for this Government. Security at the airport is now in the gift of the Taliban, and it appears that the Government have no agreement beyond 31 August, in just 12 days’ time. Is it correct that we are wholly reliant on a fragile agreement between the United States and the Taliban, a deal that offers no guarantees that UK evacuations can continue if the US withdrawal is completed before that date and ours is not? Is it correct that no conversations have taken place between the UK and Taliban leaders about that access? Does the Foreign Secretary realise that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said, his own Department is still advising British nationals remaining in Afghanistan to shelter in place unless further flight options become available, and to keep an eye on Twitter for updates?
The tragedy of all this is that even those people the Government recognise, such as the Chevening scholars who the Prime Minister made a personal promise to this week and this morning, have told us they cannot get through the Taliban roadblocks to the airport and they will be abandoned. This has so much significance for those young Afghans. They represent a generation of promising leaders who are watching the future that they worked and hoped for unravel in front of their eyes.
People—especially women—have burned documents that link them to the UK for their own safety, and so are being turned away at airport perimeters. A British national has been sheltering in a park in Kabul with her young children in recent days because her house was burned down and local people are too scared to offer them shelter. Their MP was promised a phone call from the Foreign Secretary’s private office two days ago. It has not come. What use are promises that are never kept?
The Prime Minister made promises this morning that practically, at this time, he knows the Government cannot fulfil. The Foreign Secretary must address that today. As many hon. Members have said, one of the consequences of the chaos that Ministers have allowed to engulf us is that people will not trust us again. What can he tell them today that will start to put that right?
He will have heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) talk about the number of people who helped us but who the Government still refuse to recognise. How have we become this country that drags its feet on saving the lives of those who supported us and stands by while the refugee crisis unfolds? The Prime Minister said last night that we would take 20,000 refugees, but how can anyone believe him? He has made promises before. He promised he would protect the Alf Dubs scheme and give sanctuary to child refugees, and then he closed it. We are better than this.
The Government have given us a press release when what we need is a plan. What is the scale of the refugee crisis that the Government anticipate? What efforts have they made through the United Nations to co-ordinate a global response that is based on a clear assessment of the needs of Afghans, not on numbers plucked out of thin air with no plan for implementation? If I were in the Prime Minister’s shoes, I would be moving heaven and earth to ensure that we live up to our obligations and show the world that we can be relied on—not least by the women and girls who we encouraged and supported to take on positions of authority but who now find themselves the targets of Taliban brutality. Where is the message from the United Kingdom that they are not alone?
When the Prime Minister took office two years ago, we led the world in development assistance, but even now, after the Taliban have taken control, there is no urgency or seriousness about addressing the humanitarian crisis that confronts us. Can we be honest? It is not honest to claim to be doubling aid to Afghanistan when just a few months ago it was cut by half. The Prime Minister should remember that, given that the only statement he made to the House on Afghanistan was when he came to tell us he was cutting the aid budget. I wonder if, after this debate is over, he will reveal that the refugee programme the Government unveiled this morning will be paid for by raiding the aid budget.
Alicia Kearns
You raise how many times the Prime Minister has spoken on Afghanistan in the Chamber—[Hon. Members: “You!”] Sorry: the shadow Foreign Secretary mentions the number of times the Prime Minister has spoken about Afghanistan in this House. Will she remind us how many times she has mentioned Afghanistan in this place since coming to the Front Bench?
Mr Speaker
Order. It is not my responsibility. Please try not to use “you”, because I am not the example.
Lisa Nandy
I am glad the hon. Lady raises that point, Mr Speaker, because it is a sign of an increasingly desperate Government that they launch that sort of attack. Let me tell her what we have been doing in recent months. In April, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) told the Defence Secretary:
“Now, with the full withdrawal of NATO troops, it is hard to see a future without bloodier conflict, wider Taliban control, and greater jeopardy for those Afghanis who worked with the west and for the women now in political, judicial, academic and business roles.” —[Official Report, 20 April 2021; Vol. 692, c. 853.]
Last month, my right hon. Friend the shadow First Secretary of State said that if we simply wash our hands and walk away—[Interruption.] The Government do not want to hear it because they have been warned and warned and warned about the consequences by Members on both sides of the House, but they have ignored us and their own Back Benchers. They have abandoned the people of Afghanistan. It is a moment of shame and they should apologise.
It is dishonest to claim to be doubling aid to Afghanistan when it was previously halved. I wonder if we will find out after this debate is over that the refugee programme the Government unveiled this morning will be paid for by raiding the aid budget. The Foreign Secretary says that we cannot just hand over funds to the Taliban. He is right, but that means we have to work harder and smarter. Has he mapped the capacity across Afghanistan to deliver aid? Has he spoken to the United Nations, which intends to provide a presence on the ground? When did he talk to the UN and what has it agreed? Has he spoken to the international NGOs that have been there for years? Why has he not yet agreed a common approach with the American Government, who I spoke to last night?
Forgive me, but no one will be reassured by the Prime Minister’s remarks this morning. There was no serious plan to deal with the reality of Taliban rule or the threat to the UK. We went into Afghanistan to degrade the capability of al-Qaeda—[Interruption.] A bit of humility from the Defence Secretary might be in order, given what is unfolding before our eyes at Kabul airport. We went into Afghanistan after 67 British citizens were murdered in the 9/11 attacks, and thanks to the success of our armed forces, no terrorist attack has been launched from Afghanistan for 20 years. But now we have been chased from the country by the Taliban, giving encouragement to those who wish us harm, and our counter-terror operation appears to have collapsed.
What can the Foreign Secretary tell us that he is doing to build up the intelligence picture beyond Kabul and share intelligence with international partners? He needs to outline a strategy today for dealing with the new reality in which we find ourselves. What leverage do the Government think, in practical terms, we can exert over the brutal Taliban regime that took power through violence and displaced a democratically elected Government? The regime persecutes women, journalists, LGBT and religious minorities, to name but a few. We should be identifying any leverage we have: freezing the assets of the Afghan Government or central bank that are in UK accounts or financial institutions; developing sanctions with our partners; and making clear the consequences of Afghanistan once again becoming a safe haven for international terrorism.
We are witnessing the absence of leadership. We hold the presidency of the G7, and we are permanent members of the UN Security Council and leading members of NATO, but the Government are behaving as if they have no agency and no power. They were missing in action when it mattered, and have been dragged to the Chamber today to account for the greatest foreign policy crisis of our generation. It should be sobering for the Government that not one single speech has been uncritical of their approach. In the cold, hard light of the catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, their approach to the world looks so much less palatable than the global Britain gloss they have tried to coat it with: slashing aid with shameful slogans such as the “giant cash machine” in the sky, which pulled the rug out from under people who relied on us; promising to maintain the size of the armed forces in the election, and then cutting them to their smallest size for 300 years; needlessly, repeatedly, trashing the alliances that we need in the world, and our reputation; deliberately violating international law; and shutting down safe and legal routes to asylum. Who can say now that that is not a shameful decision, given what we are witnessing in Afghanistan?
The decision to withdraw troops did not need to lead to this. I have heard the Foreign Secretary say in recent days that there was no alternative but to leave like this, but that is not true. We could have used the past 18 months to plan our exit and make it clear to the Afghan people that we had no intention of walking away from them or their ongoing aspiration for democracy, but that we would withdraw with care, with planning and with redoubled efforts to be a long-term partner to the Afghan people, even without our troops on the ground. The alternative to a chaotic exit is not endless war, as the Foreign Secretary has tried to argue, but a patient, tireless, pursuit of peace and a Government who have the stamina to commit.
We should be inspired by the troops, aid workers, journalists, photographers, support staff, civilian contractors, armed forces who returned to evacuate people in recent days, diplomatic staff—most of all the ambassador, who has embodied what courage looks like—and those who have remained to help those who are trying to exit. They stand for something important. They stand for a country that feels a deep sense of responsibility to our fellow human beings and believes that when we make promises, we should keep them. They stand for a country that knows that the world beyond our shores shapes the lives of people in villages, towns and cities across this country and that we cannot ever afford to turn away. They are supported, as it turns out, by very many more people than we ever knew.
In every nation and region, people believe that we can be a force for good in the world, and through this awful crisis they have found their voice. They are women’s groups raising the alarm for their brave Afghan counterparts, journalists trying to get Afghan colleagues to safety, and local leaders across this country standing up to welcome refugees. They know it is hard and that we have to be in it for the long haul. They know that it relies on give, not just take, to build friendships and alliances that we can call on in times like this. A Government who were honest with themselves would see that, alongside the United States, we must have a broader set of alliances so that we can operate an independent foreign and security policy again. We should not lecture EU countries to show leadership over refugees, but do that ourselves. We should lead by example with generosity and decency, and step forward when it matters, not go missing when things get tough. A self-confident country is one that goes out with courage and conviction and sheds light, not just might, around the world. That is the light that we showed for two decades in Afghanistan. In short, it is everything that this Government are not.
Today the Foreign Secretary has a choice. He can read out the notes that he holds in front of him, or he could tear them up and tell us the truth. How will we help? How will we repair this? How will we rise to the scale of this challenge and show that we are a serious country again, prepared to engage in the world and to stand up for values, especially when that is hard? He has hours, not days, to make this right with so many Afghan people and to repair our reputation around the world. We have so much to be proud of as a country—can it again include our Government?
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)
I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for their contributions. The debate has demonstrated why this House’s voice had to be heard and why it was right to recall Parliament. We have heard important speeches and interventions from Members on both sides of the House expressing deep concern about the situation that we can all now see unfolding in front of our eyes in Afghanistan. Together, we think of the sacrifices made by so many of our armed forces to keep us safe at home, and to lay the foundations for hope and a better life for the people of Afghanistan. I know that many hon. Members have served in the armed forces, some in Afghanistan, and how important our response to the current crisis will be to Members on both sides of the House.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) made a very powerful contribution about the gains made in the last 20 years in protecting and supporting women and girls. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) made the case for ARAP and the support we give to those involved. I hope that the Scottish Government will help us with that resettlement and I will take him up on the overture that I think he made in good faith. I also thank the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who spoke particularly powerfully about the generation of women and girls empowered by UK and western intervention over the last 20 years. She is absolutely right that we must do everything we can to safeguard the gains that were made.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) made important points about the over-centralised paradigm that had been applied in Afghanistan, and that was echoed by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood). There was some agreement across the House about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) gave voice to the frustrations that many veterans will feel as we withdraw. He also made an important point—he was referring to PTSD and other conditions—about dealing with the mental health of our veterans at what will be a very difficult time for many of them.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the many brave members of our armed forces who have returned to face the world after their service in Afghanistan with life-changing injuries? Will he also join me in thanking the past and present staff of the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, which is now based in Stanford Hall in Rushcliffe, for their tireless work to help those people?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend. We pay tribute to all those who have returned and paid the price, through physical or mental health injuries, and, of course, a huge tribute goes out to all those organisations that are supporting them.
Dominic Raab
May I make a little progress and then I will come back to the hon. Gentleman?
I thought that the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis)—I do not know whether he is back in the Chamber—spoke particularly powerfully about the need for a concerted international response. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) gave voice to a veteran in her constituency, Jack Cummings, and spoke about the sacrifices that were made by so many on the battlefield.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) also made a very powerful speech in which he made the point that how we leave is as important, if not more important, than the question of withdrawal itself. I can tell him, because he asked a specific question, that we tested the approach very rigorously with our US allies when they consulted us. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) also gave witness to the many terrified Afghans who now face the threat and risk that come with Taliban control.
Chris Bryant
Lots of my constituents have got in touch today to say that the thing that they are most anxious about—many Members reflected this during the debate—is those people who are terrified in Afghanistan today and want to get out. We want to help many of them to get out of Afghanistan but, for some reason, we are saying that we will take 20,000 over several years, but only 5,000 this year. If the Government could simply say that whoever manages to get here this year, we will take this year, that would be a significant advance.
Dominic Raab
I will come on to address that matter, but I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) gave a courageous speech.
Dominic Raab
Can I just make a little progress? I have already given way and will do so again when I come to that point.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire gave a truly courageous speech. I welcome his contribution and we welcome him back to the Chamber. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) asked us about the application of ARAP to the British Council staff and indeed whether it applied. It does apply and we are straining every sinew to make sure that it can work and be applied to them as effectively as possible. I will come on to explain the practical arrangements and challenges that we have around that.
Dominic Raab
I will make a little progress.
There were many other heartfelt, insightful and truly valuable contributions in the House today.
I also listened very carefully to those on the Labour Front Bench. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, the leader of the Labour party, made it clear that he supported the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. He listed a range of things that he quite rightly wants the Government to do, including supporting the UN efforts, taking action in the UN Security Council, gaining support through NATO, providing support for ordinary Afghans, and not allowing money aid to go to the Taliban. We are doing all those things, and rightly so. He did not give a single example of an action that he would have taken that we have not—not one—but then issued a series of searing criticisms. The shadow Foreign Secretary took a similar approach in her speech, and I will come to address the various points that she and he made.
Dominic Raab
I will make a little progress.
I welcome what the shadow Foreign Secretary said about our ambassador, Sir Laurie Bristow, and the team on the ground. In case there was any doubt, the shadow Foreign Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), said yesterday that the Labour party has no problem with the American decision to withdraw troops. The leader of the Labour party agreed with the decision to withdraw, but now, with his predictable proclivity for hindsight, criticises the consequences of a decision that he backed, and he does so with no serious or credible alternative of his own—not even the hint of one. It is a reminder of Shakespeare’s adage that the empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
In any crisis, it is how we respond that is critical, and the Government have two overriding priorities. First, we must evacuate our own people—the British nationals and the dual nationals in Afghanistan who now want to leave—and those who have served our country so loyally. Allied to that, we must live up to the best traditions of this country in playing our part in offering safe haven to those Afghans who are now fleeing persecution from the Taliban.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
It is absolutely right that the United Kingdom makes this generous offer to the people of Afghanistan who need somewhere safe to come, but there is concern among my constituents that, in being generous and open, we do not open the door to those who wish to come here to do us harm. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm that robust checks will be in place to ensure that no one who wished to do us harm will be able to get here through this route?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, we need to be open-hearted and generous, but if we were to allow people to come to this country who subsequently attacked this country, we would be back in this House debating a very different set of issues. Therefore, we need to make sure that we have some basic checks in place and that the seats on those planes go to those whom we want them to go to.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dominic Raab
I will make some progress. I have been very generous.
I pay tribute to those leading this work. I have already mentioned Sir Laurie Bristow, our ambassador. There is a phenomenal cross-Whitehall team of military personnel—I pay tribute to the Defence Secretary, the Home Office officials and also the Home Secretary. The teams are working hand in glove. With gunfire overhead, those on the ground are working to save others before they get out themselves.
I want to pay tribute also to the rapid deployment team that flew into Kabul last night to support that effort and to the troops who went in to protect them and secure the airport so that we could prosecute this evacuation effort. We are straining every sinew on that evacuation effort, and it is supported by the crisis team in King Charles Street, with Home Office experts and military planners. They are working around the clock, and I pay tribute to them, having visited them yesterday.
Yvette Cooper
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way. May I ask him specifically about the ARAP programme? Will he expand it to cover not just the British Council, but those working for UK aid agencies and UK contractors, and those who have worked for UK-funded programmes, who are also in fear for their lives, hiding from and being chased by the Taliban as we speak? Will he include them in the relocation programme, as Members from both sides of the House have called for?
Dominic Raab
Let me come on and address the totality of the arrangements—I think that will answer squarely her point. The evacuation effort has three strands, and by the way, it has been in place for four months.
First, it is worth recalling that we advised all British nationals to leave Afghanistan back in April, and many hundreds did so on commercial flights, with the benefit of consular support and advice from our team. Since the security situation deteriorated last weekend, we switched to charter flights to get nationals out, as well as those under the ARAP scheme. The first flight left Kabul on Sunday with around 150 UK nationals and their dependants on board, and they have arrived back in this country safe and sound. In the last 24 hours, 646 people have been evacuated—a combination of nationals, Afghans who worked for us, and UK allies—and there will be eight flights following today.
Dominic Raab
I will make some more progress because I have only four minutes and I have already given way on a number of occasions.
The crucial point is that in order to secure the airport, we had to inject 600 British forces, and we had thousands come in from the Americans. Without that, we would not be able to get any of those people to the airport, or indeed out of it, or process them in the way we need to.
The second strand of the evacuation, beyond British nationals, is the ARAP programme. It was also set up—by the Defence Secretary, back in April—to help those who worked for us and who now face the risk of retribution precisely because of the loyalty that they showed to our country. To date, we have resettled over 3,300 Afghan staff and their families, including 2,000 since April. It is the most generous scheme of its kind offered anywhere in the world, and rightly so.
Rehman Chishti
I am most grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way, and I thank him for all he is doing. The United Kingdom led the way on the Friends of Syria group in convening the international community to bring forward a humanitarian package. Will the United Kingdom do the same for Afghanistan, with countries like the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Kuwait, which are also part of the NATO action in Afghanistan?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right to raise that point, which I will come to if he allows me to.
The third strand of the evacuation scheme is, as my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary announced today, our plan to provide a bespoke asylum offer to settle 20,000 Afghan refugees over five years. Like the Home Secretary, let me just say that, as the son of a refugee, I am deeply proud that this Government are continuing the big-hearted tradition of the British people in offering safe haven to those fleeing persecution. We are getting out our nationals and those who worked for us, and we are providing a lifeline to the most vulnerable. I can also tell the House today that we have contacted all the Chevening scholars in Afghanistan, not just to tell them that they can come, but to actively make arrangements for the upcoming flights to the UK.
At a time of crisis, we also need to look to the longer term, and there are four areas that need particular focus. First, on counter-terrorism, we must never again allow Afghanistan to be a haven for terrorists. We will work very closely with all our partners within the parameters that the current situation allows.
Secondly, the international community must be prepared to respond to the humanitarian plight caused by the Taliban’s campaign. The UK is already using our convening power and our aid budget to galvanise the global response.
Thirdly, we must work to safeguard regional stability. That will require us to work with different partners, and it will require engagement with key regional players, including India, China, Russia, Pakistan and central Asian states, however difficult, complex or outside of our comfort zone that may prove. We will fully support the efforts of the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Jean Arnault.
The fourth area is human rights and accountability. Through our domestic sanctions regime and by working with the Indians, who chair the UN sanctions regime for Afghanistan, we will make sure that we can exercise a moderating influence on the Taliban regime. We will pursue each of those areas with vigour. As the Prime Minister has already made clear, we will convene a special meeting of G7 leaders to consider a concerted and co-ordinated response. We will look at the question of a contact group of international partners on Afghanistan, and we plan an event at the UN General Assembly next month to focus minds and raise funds for the humanitarian response.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the situation in Afghanistan.
Ministerial Correction
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Cabinet Office
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chloe Smith
A theme that we will return to time and again with the Elections Bill is the broad-based nature of our politics in this country. It is something to be proud of that our democracy is built on volunteers and grassroots participation. I acknowledge that there will be an argument for taking regulation to the extreme degree. One of the recommendations in the report by the hon. Members for Aberavon and for Edinburgh North and Leith and their APPG, which I have read carefully, is to reduce to zero the threshold for non-cash donations, for example. I am concerned that such a recommendation might damage that space for legitimate grassroots participation in our democracy inside this country, which I will defend to my dying day. I am sure we will return to that in further debates, but I thought it helpful to set out my thinking on that at this point.
[Official Report, 8 July 2021, Vol. 698, c. 327WH.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith):
An error has been identified in my response to the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins).
The correct response should have been:
Chloe Smith
A theme that we will return to time and again with the Elections Bill is the broad-based nature of our politics in this country. It is something to be proud of that our democracy is built on volunteers and grassroots participation. I acknowledge that there will be an argument for taking regulation to the extreme degree. One of the recommendations in the report by the hon. Members for Aberavon and for Edinburgh North and Leith and their APPG, which I have read carefully, is to effectively reduce to zero the threshold for non-cash donations, for example.
Petitions
McVitie's Tollcross factory proposed closure
Voter ID
Sprint Route and Car Park
VAT on sunscreen
Written Statement
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Shootings in Plymouth
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)
In the wake of the tragic shootings in Plymouth on 12 August, my heartfelt condolences are with the family and friends of those who lost their lives—Maxine Davison, Lee and Sophie Martyn, Stephen Washington, and Kate Shepherd—as well as with those that were injured and the people who witnessed this truly terrible event.
The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are working closely with Devon and Cornwall Police and with victims’ services to ensure that those affected by this tragedy, including bereaved families, have all the support they need.
We must do all that we possibly can to avoid something like this happening again.
The UK has some of the strictest gun control legislation in the world and comparatively low levels of gun crime. Yet while tragedies like last Thursday’s are rare, their impact is profound. We constantly assess what sensible and proportionate steps we can take to help prevent such terrible loss of life.
This is now the subject of an ongoing police investigation, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is looking at actions taken by Devon and Cornwall Police in relation to issuing a firearms licence, so it would be inappropriate to comment further on these matters while that work is ongoing.
However, as a matter of urgency, I have asked every police force in England, Wales, and Scotland to review their current firearms licensing processes—in particular the processes that they follow for returning a certificate—and ensure they are appropriate as set against the current Home Office guidance and legislation. This current guidance asks chief officers to ensure high-risk decisions are approved at a sufficiently senior level. Such decisions include granting a certificate following a previous refusal or revocation, including by another force; where there is evidence of violence, domestic abuse or medical unsuitability; or where concerns have been raised by someone known to the licence holder.
The Government keep firearms licensing controls under constant review. The Home Office is bringing forward new statutory guidance to improve how people applying for a firearms licence are assessed in future. The new guidance draws on previous lessons learned and will ensure better consistency and improved standards across police firearms licensing departments. It will mean that that no one is given a firearms licence unless their doctor has confirmed to the police whether or not they have any relevant medical conditions, including an assessment of their mental health, and it will make explicit that firearms applicants may be subject to social media checks. The police will have a legal duty to consider the new statutory guidance when it is published. We plan to publish this new guidance in the coming weeks. We will keep the new statutory guidance under review, especially in light of this terrible incident, and we will update it as necessary in due course.
The police have not declared this to be a terrorist incident. Investigations into Davison’s motives for committing these terrible attacks continue. Whether or not an incident is determined to be terrorism-related is a decision made independently of the Government by the police, based on the specific circumstances and what the police find during the investigation.
The UK has one of the most robust counter-terrorism frameworks in the world. Our definition of terrorism includes an act or the threat of serious violence to advance an ideological, religious, racial, or political cause. The Terrorism Act 2000 definition is sufficiently broad to capture modern causes of terrorism, including “incel” violence. It is this definition that is applied when determining whether specific individuals are engaging in terrorism and if incidents should be classified as a terrorist attack.
This appalling event has shaken the whole country, and in particular the people of Plymouth. Our hearts go out to them. This is something which no community and nobody should have to endure. I would also like to thank those police officers and others who attended the scene for their incredible bravery.
[HCWS250]
House of Lords
Arrangement of Business
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now begin. Some Members are here in the Chamber while others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. The social distancing requirements in the Chamber have been removed, but I strongly encourage Members to continue to wear face coverings while in the Chamber except when speaking and to respect social distancing in relation to the staff in the Chamber.
I begin by recalling the shocking and tragic incident that took place in Plymouth on 12 August. I know that I speak for the whole House when I extend our thoughts and condolences to the loved ones of those who lost their lives and to the whole community of Keyham. I place on record our continued thanks to the police and emergency services, which work tirelessly to keep us safe, and to those members of the public who displayed courage and bravery when helping the victims and their families.
I also place on record today, as we gather to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, our gratitude to all the service personnel of this country who have died, been injured and risked their lives during this conflict.
Deaths of Members
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the deaths of the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, on 2 August and of the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, on 15 August. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lords’ families and friends.
Afghanistan
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That this House takes note of the situation in Afghanistan.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, I thank everyone participating today and all the parliamentary staff who have enabled us to meet at such short notice. Before I turn to today’s debate, I want to echo the words of the Lord Speaker in sending our condolences to the families and friends of those killed in Plymouth last week. Investigations are ongoing, but we will learn every possible lesson from the tragedy.
It is clear to us all that the situation in Afghanistan is extremely grave and exceptionally concerning. The number of your Lordships taking part in this debate demonstrates how seriously this House takes the situation, and my noble friend Lord Ahmad and I look forward to hearing today’s contributions. We are fortunate to have across the House a wealth of expertise in diplomacy, defence, human rights—particularly in relation to women and girls—international aid and development, and some Members of the House have very personal experience of Afghanistan. I pay tribute to all who have served there during the past 20 years, including of course our staff and noble Lords. We remember in particular the 457 British troops who tragically lost their lives and all those who sustained injuries, some of which were life-changing.
At this difficult time, it is important to remember why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Our primary objective, when NATO invoked Article 5 of its treaty for the first time in its history and the United Kingdom and others joined America in deploying, was to ensure that Afghanistan was not used as a base for international terrorism and to do whatever we could to stabilise the country. We succeeded in that core mission: there has not been a successful international terrorist attack on the West mounted from Afghanistan since, terrorist training camps in the mountains were destroyed and al-Qaeda plots against this country were foiled. As the Lord Speaker rightly said, we should be immensely proud of the role that our Armed Forces, diplomats and development specialists have played in supporting Afghanistan over the past 20 years.
As noble Lords will know, the main combat phase of our mission ended in 2014, when we brought the great majority of our troops home and handed over responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves. Since then, conflict unfortunately continued and significant parts of the country remained contested or under Taliban control. After two decades, the Americans have now taken their long-predicted step of a final extraction of their forces. We looked at many options, including the potential for staying longer ourselves, finding new partners or even increasing our presence, but, like all our NATO allies, we believed that it was not feasible from the position we were in. Since 2009, America has deployed 98% of all weapons released from NATO aircraft in Afghanistan and, at the peak of the operation, 90,000 of the 132,000 troops on the ground were American. The West could not continue this mission without American logistics and US air power.
Countries around the world are now grappling with the enormity of this situation and we must adapt quickly. We have worked at speed to develop five strands to our approach. Our first and immediate focus must be on helping those to whom we have direct obligations, including UK nationals together with those Afghans who have assisted our efforts over the past 20 years. We do not know what the next few days or weeks will hold, but we are working intensively within government and with our international partners to do everything in our power to get them out of Afghanistan safely. We are deploying an additional 800 British troops on the ground to support the evacuation operation and I can assure the House that this will continue for as long as conditions at the airport allow—at the moment they are stable in comparison to some of the terrible scenes that we saw over the weekend and earlier this week. It is an extremely difficult task in the current circumstances and I know that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the bravery and commitment of our ambassador, Sir Laurie Bristow, our commander on the ground, Brigadier Dan Blanchford, and the entire British team in Kabul, who have been working round the clock saving hundreds of lives every day.
So far, we have secured the safe return of 306 UK nationals, while 2,052 Afghan nationals have been resettled as part of our programme and a further 2,000 applications have been completed, with many more being processed. We are actively seeking those who we believe are eligible but are as yet unregistered. We are also doing everything possible to accelerate the visas of the Chevening scholars, so that these brilliant Afghan students can come and study here.
At the same time, we are intensifying our efforts to evacuate those whom we can. We continue to urge the Taliban to ensure the protection of civilians and uphold human rights, especially those of women. We are committed to supporting the brave Afghan women who have risked their lives to help rebuild their country. We are closely monitoring the situation on the ground and exploring how we can best support at-risk women, human rights defenders, peacebuilders and women leaders to ensure that they do not suffer reprisals.
Secondly, we will intensify our efforts, with others, to protect Britain, our citizens and our interests from the threats of a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. These concerns are shared by our international partners in NATO and the Security Council. As noble Lords will be aware, the Prime Minister will chair a virtual meeting of the G7 in the coming days to discuss how we can work together internationally.
Thirdly, the UK has provided £3.3 billion of aid funding since 2002, which has helped to improve the lives and rights of all Afghans, including women and minority groups. Life expectancy increased from 56 years in 2002 to 64 years in 2018. Some 9.6 million more children are now in school than in 2001 and 39% of children enrolled in schools are girls. Maternal mortality has almost halved and infant mortality has decreased faster than in any other low-income country since 2001.
We will now focus our efforts on increasing the resilience of the region and have called on the United Nations to lead a new humanitarian effort, bringing together the international community. To support this, we will double the amount of overseas aid that we had previously committed to Afghanistan this year, with new funding, taking this up to £286 million with immediate effect. We call on others to match this funding and to work together on a shared United Nations programme, which needs to begin in haste.
Fourthly, we need to ensure that there are safe and legal routes for those most in need. The Prime Minister has confirmed today that, in addition to those Afghans who have worked with us directly, we are committing to relocate another 5,000 this year through a new, bespoke resettlement scheme focusing on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. We will keep this under review over future years, with the potential of accommodating up to 20,000 over the long term.
Finally, we must face the reality of the change in regime. In the past three days, the Prime Minister has spoken with the NATO and UN Secretaries-General and with President Biden, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron and Prime Minister Khan. We have been clear that it would be a mistake for any country to recognise the new Government in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally. Instead, those countries that care about Afghanistan’s future should set common conditions about the conduct of the new regime before deciding together whether to recognise it and on what terms. We will judge this regime based on the choices that it makes—on its attitude to terrorism, crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian access, the rights of women and in particular the rights of girls to receive an education. Defending human rights will remain of the highest priority.
NATO and our allies will remain vigilant to the return of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan. Everyone has an interest in making sure that it does not again become a safe haven for terrorists. The Taliban must understand that they will be accountable for that and for any abuses that take place in the territory that they now control.
Alongside our core mission to prevent the continuation of the terrorist threat, we had higher goals for the people of Afghanistan. The heroism and tireless work of our Armed Forces contributed to national elections as well as to the promotion and protection of human rights and equalities in a way that many in Afghanistan had never previously known. Over the past 20 years, despite where we are today, we have made crucial progress and gains.
As I said at the outset, we will always owe a huge debt of gratitude to the 150,000 people who served in Afghanistan, in particular those 457 British troops who tragically lost their lives. For 20 years, they denied terrorists a safe haven to launch attacks against the United Kingdom, working with allies and Afghan security forces. They enabled development that has improved millions of lives and transformed Afghan society. We must now face the harsh reality that the Taliban control Afghanistan, but the world is watching what they do. We will use every diplomatic lever at our disposal, alongside our international partners, to protect these hard-fought rights. The Afghan people have suffered enough; the Taliban must not inflict even greater tragedy on them.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, before I start, I concur with the Lord Speaker’s and the Lord Privy Seal’s comments about the tragic and terrible events that we saw in Plymouth. I also place on record our sadness at the loss of our two colleagues, Lord Smith and Viscount Simon.
Deep in my heart, I keep telling myself that I have done nothing bad. I might face consequences, but I guess that is the price that we pay for trying to make the world a little better. Those brave and understated comments in an interview by Rangina Hamidi, the Afghan Education Minister, who spoke for women and girls across Afghanistan and for all those who spoke out and fought against the Taliban and for human rights and democracy, that they now fear for their future, and even their lives, shames us. The confidence and courage shown by Rangina and other women who stepped forward to play such important roles in civic life—in politics, education, medicine and business—have now been replaced by dread and fear.
I welcome that Parliament has been recalled following these shocking and tragic events, but the scale and the urgency of this tragedy, this catastrophe, means that it should have been sooner. The urgency with which our Government, with others, need to act is desperately evident. As disturbing news emerged of the Taliban’s staggering advances, it was clear that the predictions of those responsible for this exit strategy were not just wildly optimistic but devastatingly wrong. With the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary both on holiday as Taliban militants entered Kabul, it seems that, even in these final hours, they were oblivious to the unfolding catastrophe.
To fail to prepare for even the possibility of a swift Taliban resurgence is a strategic failure of historic proportions. There is no doubt that, as western forces withdrew on such a hard deadline, Afghan confidence and spirit crumbled as the Taliban seized the obvious opportunities. As recently as 8 July, during questions on his Statement, our Prime Minister committed to maintaining the British embassy in Kabul. That commitment lasted just a few short weeks. Having bravely sought to rebuild their country, the reality now is a cruel and tragic situation for the people in Afghanistan.
We must pay tribute to the work of our military over the past 20 years, including the Members and staff of this place and the other House. It is a mistake to view our military presence since 2001 only as a failure, but it will clearly now be overshadowed by a withdrawal that has returned Afghanistan to chaos. Our military ensured that the people of Afghanistan enjoyed freedoms and rights that seemed a distant prospect two decades ago. They made a difference. Critical advances were made in denying terrorists a safe haven, in supporting the building of the institutions needed in the country, in the training and support of the Afghan military forces and, so importantly, in supporting the advancement of women’s and girls’ education and their rights in society.
As we have heard, that progress came at a high price: 457 of our service men and women lost their lives, and many thousands more and their families continue to endure physical and mental injury. More than 70,000 Afghan citizens also lost their lives. This makes this chaos all the harder to bear.
Our involvement was never intended to be open-ended. Since 2014, when our combat operations ceased while training and logistical support continued, it was always recognised that at some point it would be appropriate to work with the Afghan Government on a managed and tactical departure. However, as I put it to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House on 12 July:
“Progress made is not … the same as those gains being secured and irreversible.”—[Official Report, 12/7/21; col. 1551.]
The Biden Administration’s decision followed the agreement between President Trump and the Taliban, not the Afghan Government, 18 months ago, so I asked the noble Baroness on 12 July about the “ongoing commitment to Afghanistan” and details of our engagement with the US Government prior to this decision being announced. I sought information about whether, at any stage, we had discussed alternative courses of action, warned of the dangers of the timescale or sought additional NATO support. Even at that stage, this outcome was not inevitable.
Did we ever seek to build any regional consensus that we had previously? I quote the Prime Minister’s comments:
“we shall use every diplomatic and humanitarian lever to support Afghanistan’s development and stability.” —[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col. 1104.]
I ask what that meant in practice. Those questions were not answered, and perhaps that was wise, because clearly there was no satisfactory answer. It is not for today, but at some stage the Prime Minister must address these points.
Because there were no answers then, the situation now in Afghanistan is an international humanitarian and political crisis. With the Taliban firmly in control, reports are now emerging of militants searching door to door for individuals who have previously worked with British, US and NATO forces. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme is warning that over half the country’s population is already in need of humanitarian assistance, and chaos continues for those trying to fly out of Kabul. I have nothing but praise for the British officials and troops doing their duty there. Shocking reports now also suggest that children in rural areas are already being targeted to marry soldiers, and others are being murdered for their opposition to the Taliban.
Three key areas now need to be addressed. First is the immediate humanitarian crisis. With thousands desperately trying to flee, we have seen horrific scenes at Kabul airport, showing the depth of fear of the Taliban, given its previous brutality and fundamentalism. We urgently need a generous British Afghanistan resettlement programme, open to interpreters, support staff, the media and others who are now at risk. However, the Government’s sanctuary scheme shows that they have failed to plan for this eventuality and are now scrambling in an attempt to meet the scale of the challenge. Can the noble Baroness the Leader, or the Minister who is responding, confirm how the Government reached the figure of 20,000 and how it was decided that only a quarter of that number would be welcomed in the first year, given the immediate danger that so many will now be in? Having heard the Home Secretary on Radio 4 this morning, I had no sense that she understood the urgency that is needed.
We must use our role in multilateral institutions and work with other countries to push for the safe passage and protection of those at risk, such as women judges, students and journalists, including over 100 BBC staff based in Kabul. Few could not have been affected and dismayed by the reaction of Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, as he admitted that not all who were endangered through working with us can be brought to safety. We have an obligation to them.
The second area is the future of Afghanistan. Reports are mixed. While in Kabul, female journalists have remained on TV, but there are many other seriously disturbing reports. Others in your Lordships’ House today will speak of their contacts with judges, teachers, students, politicians, aid workers, journalists and others who are under threat. We have heard of working women being forced home and told that they cannot return to their jobs and must wear the hijab. Many of these women were encouraged to speak out by us and other countries, and that makes them and their families more vulnerable. The Taliban has a history of female oppression and of brutality. Our hearts ache for the young women and girls who dream of an education and freedom to choose their own path in life, if that is then snatched away from them by a failure of political decision-making.
The third area is international efforts to protect against terrorism. We should be driven above all by our decency and responsibility to confront suffering, but we must also understand that, if we fail, Afghanistan could again breed extremism that poses a threat to us all. Al-Qaeda and other extremist Islamic groups are already present in Afghanistan, and the Taliban’s takeover will be seen as a boost to militants elsewhere in the world. The way in which this withdrawal was carried out will do nothing to convince other countries that the West can be relied upon to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
As we consider the future, we must affirm that the Taliban has not taken control through legitimate means, and our Government are right not to offer and provide official recognition. Attention must now turn to how the UK and likeminded allies respond, and the Government must find the courage to lead. We must now utilise our unique role, as the G7 president and a leading voice within the UN and NATO, and seek alliances to protect those at risk. While we must push for democratic and humane values to be maintained, we must also plan for a situation in which they are not. This means protecting those most at risk from harm.
Unfortunately, the Government’s strategy so far has been fraught with hesitation, and the delayed arrival of the FCDO’s rapid deployment team has left British soldiers and the small diplomatic team doing excellent work in the most difficult circumstances and conditions. We fully support the recent troop deployment, and the Government must now ensure that they are in Kabul and fully resourced to carry out their work. We must also review decisions that have been taken. I understand that, today, an announcement has been made about increased aid to Afghanistan—so we have to examine the impact of an almost 75% cut to this aid over the past three years. We should never take a short-sighted view of supporting those who most need our help.
In conclusion, for the people of Afghanistan, the past week has been in equal parts traumatic and devastating—but we should also recognise the incredible bravery shown by some in response. Just yesterday, incredible images were circulated on social media of women protesters with placards on the streets of Kabul, but questions remain about whether the Taliban will continue to stand by if the eyes of the West turn away. The Taliban has taken control, but the final destiny of the country is yet to be seen. We cannot abandon Afghanistan and must use every available diplomatic route to stand up for the basic rights of all its citizens.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I begin by joining others in expressing the sympathy of these Benches with all those affected by the Plymouth tragedy.
What a difference a month makes. On 8 July, following his excruciatingly complacent Statement on Afghanistan in the Commons, the Prime Minister confidently declared that
“there is no military path to victory for the Taliban.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col: 1107.]
On Monday this week, he blandly asserted that
“we’ve known for a long time this was the way things would go”.
These two statements say a lot about the Prime Minister and, in particular, his irresponsible habit of saying whatever is most convenient on the day to get himself out of a hole, with no regard for consistency—or indeed the truth. But they also say a lot about the casual way our Government have overseen the final chapter of our latest involvement in Afghanistan.
The words now being used most to summarise this chapter—“failure”, “panic”, “humiliation” and “betrayal” —barely do justice to the situation that the precipitate departure of western alliance forces have created in Afghanistan. Of course, the primary responsibility for the debacle rests with President Biden and it is no excuse for him or the Prime Minister—as he did on 8 July—to say:
“The international military presence in Afghanistan was never intended to be permanent”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col. 1104.]
and, therefore, that it was inevitable that we would be withdrawing now.
The US has shown, most notably in Germany and South Korea, that it is willing, in certain circumstances, to station its troops in a foreign country for decades, if it thinks it necessary for regional and global strategy. It simply chose not to take the same view about Afghanistan. Time will tell whether international security will be jeopardised, as al-Qaeda, Islamic State and other terrorist groups now eye Afghanistan as potential future operational bases. There is no doubt that, for the population of Afghanistan, particularly women and girls, the return of the Taliban threatens a return to the Dark Ages—and this was preventable. The decision by the western allies to withdraw all forces brought it about, and it is to our shame.
No doubt China and Russia will be pointing out today that the US and NATO lack staying power and cannot be trusted long-term allies, and that the global influence of the US, the UK and NATO as a whole will be much diminished. Realisation of this new reality will be causing alarm across western capitals, but for the UK it is particularly chilling. For this complete and utter debacle has laid bare the hollowness of the Government’s claims to be a global power. We may be able, as a gesture, to send an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, but we cannot act on our own in a real-life crisis such as Afghanistan.
The US did not even consult us when it decided on its final troop withdrawal timetable, and there is no indication that we even attempted to suggest that it had got it wrong. Perhaps the Prime Minister realised that there would not have been any point. Speaking to President Biden yesterday was good, but the horse had already bolted. With minimal influence in Washington, greatly reduced involvement and influence with our European partners, cuts in our most effective tool of soft power—the aid budget—a shrinking Army and a Navy incapable of independent action, the Government’s promotion of “global Britain” is a sad delusion.
In the absence of any credible action, the Government have resorted to platitudes. On 8 July, the Prime Minister said:
“I hope that no one will leap to the false conclusion that the withdrawal of our forces somehow means the end of Britain’s commitment to Afghanistan.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col. 1104.]
This week, he said that Afghanistan must not become a “breeding ground for terror”—but what does our current commitment amount to and what exactly do the Government intend to do to stop the country becoming a terrorist breeding ground? These are questions to which we now need clear and urgent answers.
In the months ahead, we will need to explore how all the western intelligence agencies were so off the pace as to the consequences of the troop withdrawals. Given the lead role that the UK—not the US—played in the Kabul security force, we have some particular soul searching to do in this respect. Most importantly, we will have to look afresh at a credible role for Britain in the world. How do we adjust to a situation in which our interests and those of the US may increasingly diverge? How do we rebuild links with our closest natural allies —our neighbours in Europe? We will have to work very hard to persuade much of the world that we can again become credible, reliable partners.
However, for today there are more pressing issues. The most important is how to respond to the humanitarian crisis. As the Government accept, the starting point must be to offer residency not only to interpreters who worked for our troops and their families but to any locally recruited staff who worked for our troops, for our embassy or on our aid effort, and who might now be at risk. More broadly, as a minimum, we should certainly resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees, as the Government now propose. We need to identify those most at risk of persecution, with a particular focus on women in public life, those who have set up girls’ education schemes and other marginalised groups, and we should offer sanctuary to journalists, who are particularly under threat, starting with the 100 or so BBC staff in Kabul.
But we must move quickly. The threat to these people is urgent and we should certainly not limit our ambitions to taking just 5,000 refugees over the next 12 months. We should also move rapidly to resolve the status of the 3,000 Afghan asylum seekers already in the UK and make it clear that we will not return a single one to Afghanistan. We must work with allies to investigate the possibility of establishing a safe-passage corridor for those who now wish to leave the country, and we need clearly to refocus and increase our aid to help deal with the immediate humanitarian crisis. The Foreign Secretary said yesterday that we have increased the aid budget to Afghanistan by 10%. Great—but, as we know, this is a small fraction of the cuts that have taken place since this Government came to power.
We need to stiffen the UN’s resolve to remain in Afghanistan to co-ordinate the humanitarian effort. It has the trust of the Taliban, which we simply lack, and could now play a powerful humanitarian role. On broader issues of respect for human rights, the role of women and girls, and the re-establishment of terrorist camps in Afghanistan, we must accept that our direct leverage over the Taliban is extremely limited. We should, however, be asking our allies, particularly in the Gulf and Pakistan, to use the influence they undoubtedly have to hold the Taliban to the commitments it made yesterday in these areas.
It is difficult to imagine your feelings today if you served with our forces in Afghanistan or are a family member of a British soldier or airman who died in the conflict. How could you satisfy yourself that all that effort and suffering was not in vain? I do not believe that the Government can give a comforting answer to that question, but the least we can do now is to take every action, limited though that may be, to show that we have not ended our commitment to Afghanistan and that, more generally, we are finally prepared to accept a more realistic view of our role in the world. There are clear lessons to be learned from this disaster, and it is imperative that we learn them now.
Lord Judge (CB) [V]
My Lords, for me, the recriminations can wait: the urgent question is the humanitarian crisis. I want to take just one example of aspirations which have turned out to be based on paper-strong foundations which we in the western world have laid down.
A few years ago, when I was Lord Chief Justice, an international meeting was held in London for women judges from all over the world. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, was presiding over it. When five judges from Afghanistan answered the roll call, the entire meeting acclaimed their pioneering courage.
Today, we truly appreciate how much courage was indeed needed. There are just under 300 female judges and magistrates in Afghanistan. Today, you can forget about security of tenure, whether for women or for men: the rule of law has been shattered. My particular concern today is for the personal safety of every one of those women judges. To establish decent foundations in Afghanistan, on the basis of our support, each one of them had the temerity—from the point of view of the Taliban, the sinful effrontery—to sit in open public courts; contrary to sharia law, to sit in judgment over men, to give judgments against men, to pass sentence on men; and to imprison Taliban terrorists, murderers and rapists. All those men are now free and will dress up their revenge as a debt they owe to their God.
The peril those brave women are in is terrifying. They were our allies in the war against barbarism. We went into Afghanistan and have left Afghanistan because we act in accordance with our loyalty to our allies; we do not desert them. We must not desert those women—these allies who we have left behind.
The Archbishop of Canterbury [V]
My Lords, I look forward especially to hearing noble and gallant Lords, diplomats and others with local knowledge of Afghanistan. We rightly remember the courage, suffering and sacrifice over the past 20 years and the courage being shown currently by our ambassador and service- people in Afghanistan, together with their colleagues, and reporters.
When we look back, I remember a cathedral full for the funeral of a soldier: family and many colleagues silent in dignity, some wounded, mourning their loss. The failure we face today is not military or diplomatic—they did all they could—it is political. Recovery and hope will come to Afghanistan with our supporting commitment to the neediest and most desperate. We have proven capacities in soft as well as hard power. We owe an absolute, lavishly generous moral covenant to all those who are at risk because they served with us in Afghanistan or took seriously our frequently professed commitment to its future, women and girls included.
An Afghan refugee, now a UK citizen, said to me this week, “Families, in such times of trouble, belong together.” His words are not politics but humanity. This is about morals, not numbers. Will the Government confirm that their policy will reflect moral obligation and not be controlled by numbers?
In Pakistan, a country facing huge pressure, including from refugees, we must undertake dialogue and support, learning afresh the religious and cultural literacy which is essential to effective work. We must not put any groups there or in Afghanistan into a corner where they may be driven to greater extremism. The aid we offer must support dialogue, inspire hope and prepare reconciliation, and must be genuinely additional, not a transfer from other places of need. I ask the Government: will that be the case?
We must renew commitment to freedom of religion and belief everywhere, a point not much mentioned so far. That will count in Pakistan and Afghanistan for Christians and religious communities such as Shia, Hindus, Jains, Ahmadis and Sikhs. A WhatsApp from a Christian in Afghanistan yesterday asked for support there and in Pakistan. Memorably, he said, “I am willing to die for Jesus, but I do not want to die forgotten.”
This is a very bad time, especially for so many in Afghanistan and for those who serve there. It is a time for prayerful humility and for us to display generosity, virtue and courage. Rebuilding our reputation in such ways will give many others hope as well.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the most reverend Primate and strongly agree with his remarks.
I start by paying a warm tribute, as have others, to the tremendous number of our forces, including colleagues in both Houses of Parliament, who have served during this long period, which has brought so many benefits to the people of Afghanistan, and our great sadness that that some were not able to return. These recent events reminded me of my maiden speech nearly 20 years ago in your Lordships’ House, when we had just gone into Afghanistan. I had in my pocket the cap badge of my old regiment, which was the Somerset Light Infantry, and on its top is inscribed its battle honour, Jalalabad. Some may remember that there was a successful defence of Jalalabad, which had the duty of welcoming back the returning army from Kabul: 5,000 troops and 10,000 dependants. Your Lordships will remember that only one person arrived. Part of what contributed to that disaster was that six Afghan army regiments deserted during that tragic retreat. I said at the time that it was easy to get into Afghanistan, but often very difficult to get out. Obviously, I very much share that feeling now.
Having said that, the challenge is: what do we do? At the moment, it is difficult to know quite what the Taliban position is. It is all over the place, obviously itself extremely surprised at the speed with which this has happened. It has a PR spokesman offering rather more encouraging pictures, but it is still governed by a 20 year-old manifesto. The question now is what attitude it is going to take.
It is against that background that I particularly welcome the Statement by the Prime Minister today, with his determination to get the maximum international co-operation to make absolutely clear that the Afghan Government, the Taliban Government, now have to bring themselves up to date from their 20 year-old dreams and decide that, if they want to have any sort of relations with other countries in the world, they must start to bring themselves in line with what are the true interests of the people now in Afghanistan, which is very different from what it might have been 20 years ago. We must protect the changes that have happened, particularly for women and children.
There is so much to say in this situation but, to add another thing, while I welcome the announcement about giving more accommodation to desperate people seeking to escape from Afghanistan, we have to realise that the problem of mass migration of refugees has been yet further hijacked and increased by this terrific event that has happened. That will be a continuing challenge for us in the weeks, months and years ahead.
Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I endorse especially the points so ably made by my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon. I was a junior Foreign Office Minister, first covering Afghanistan from July 1999 until January 2001, and then, from June 2001, was Europe Minister during 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan to eradicate al-Qaeda’s base. I am therefore implicated in what Tom Tugendhat, Conservative MP and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, described as Britain’s
“biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez”,
questioning what on earth so many British soldiers, coalition forces and Afghans bravely fought for—and sacrificed their lives for.
We must now find ways to incentivise the Taliban—and, yes, that includes engaging with them alongside regional powers like China and Iran—so that they are discouraged from returning to their bad old ways, including their oppression of women and girls. A United Nations panel reports that the Taliban have kept up a close relationship with al-Qaeda, permitting them to conduct training and deploy fighters alongside its forces. Something similar may be true of ISIS.
But experience from Northern Ireland—hard learnt at bloody cost to life and limb—shows that you will fail if you treat groups like the Taliban as pariahs. As Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, explains in his excellent book Talking to Terrorists, you have to negotiate with them, offering economic incentives and tough deterrents to respect international norms and human rights. The costly nation-building, democracy-building strategy of the West over these past 20 years has failed abysmally. A fundamental mistake of US-UK policy from the outset was not accommodating the Pashtun, the biggest group in Afghanistan, from where Taliban power comes. Instead of cultivating only Afghan forces and individuals amenable to the United States from 2001, instead of occupying a country that has always rejected foreign invaders—from Britain in the 1830s to the Soviets in the 1980s—surely after 9/11 the West should have negotiated a deal to remove al-Qaeda with the Taliban and other Afghani leaders.
And, yes, the story might have been different if the US and UK focus on Afghanistan after 2002-03 had not been diverted by the calamitous invasion of Iraq. We all share the shame, both the Labour Government in which I was proud to serve and, since 2010 the Conservatives—including Liberal Democrats when in coalition—in our betrayal of the millions of Afghans. It is no good just finger jabbing at Biden or Bush, at Johnson or Blair; there must instead be a proper reckoning by this Parliament and by Congress about the real lessons of our common culpability in this utter catastrophe.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, I do not think that today is the day for recriminations. The time for reckoning, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has talked about, should come later, at a time when, I trust, there will be a full inquiry into British activity with our NATO partners in Afghanistan. Today is the time to think about urgent action.
In the last few days, the situation in Afghanistan has seen the clocks go back 20 years or, for women, several centuries. Women and girls are now in a profoundly vulnerable situation—not just the judges, about whom we heard so movingly and effectively from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, but the wives and daughters of those who have worked with NATO forces or with NGOs. It is absolutely vital that we urgently find a way of getting out as many people as possible.
We have heard today the suggestion of 20,000 refugees. That is great, but only 5,000 this year is woefully inadequate. We have, apparently, already brought in 3,000 interpreters and their families. What can the Government tell us about all the other people who need to get out of Afghanistan and brought over as a matter of urgency? This is not just interpreters but the cleaners, catering staff and others who worked for the Army and in the embassy—locally engaged staff who were sometimes employed directly by the embassy, sometimes not. The provisions in place are for those who were employed but, occasionally, people lost their jobs perhaps because they had smoked cannabis. Government Ministers do not necessarily lose their jobs when they admit to having taken drugs; surely these people should be given every opportunity to leave Afghanistan.
Can the Minister tell us, in responding, what contact the FCDO has had with interpreters who are still in Afghanistan and what offers have been given in recent days to people who maybe do not have passports? Surely there is a need for the Government and Home Office to understand that some of the people we need to bring out of Afghanistan will need to come without the normal paperwork. Our ambassador is doing a fantastic job, as I understand it, in making sure that paperwork is expedited, but we need to ensure that people are not being kept back because of issues to do with petty bureaucracy.
Does the FCDO have any idea of the number of people who are vulnerable because they have worked for the UK and our allies? Is it working on a figure of far more than 5,000 people? The numbers are not sufficient. The RAF is doing a fantastic job at the moment, but can we assume that those numbers of maybe 1,000 people a day can go on at least until the end of August and that we will deal with the debt that we owe to people who have serviced our service men and women? In concluding, I of course pay tribute to our service men and women for everything that they have done. It was not in vain because, for 20 years, we gave the people of Afghanistan hope.
Lord Dannatt (CB)
My Lords, in the time allowed in this very welcome debate, I wish to make three points.
First, notwithstanding his attempted explanation on Monday, the manner and timing of the Afghan collapse is the direct result of President Biden’s decision to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. At a stroke, he has undermined the patient and painstaking work of the last five, 10, 15 years to build up governance in Afghanistan, develop its economy, transform its civil society and build up its security forces. The people had a glimpse of a better life, but that has been torn away. With US forces withdrawing, other NATO allies, including ourselves, had no option but to leave too, denying the Afghan national army the technical and training support that it needed and the moral support of friends who encouraged them to take the fight to the Taliban. Until a few weeks ago, the Taliban was being contained and may even have been persuaded over time that a military victory was impossible and a negotiated settlement was the better course. Those possibilities are now a closed chapter of history, an opportunity lost, and the world’s western superpower is looking enfeebled. The only glimmer of hope today is that the Taliban of 2021 is not the Taliban of 2001.
Secondly, amid the chaos of Kabul and its airport, I sincerely hope that all those who have stood with us, as interpreters or locally employed civilians, will have the opportunity to seek safety in this country. Many in your Lordships’ House joined many senior retired military commanders in co-signing an open letter urging the Government to be more generous towards this group of people, and to do so quickly. Frankly, this whole discussion has dragged on for two or three years on the back burner, hence the need for that open letter. I sincerely hope that the operation now in progress in and around Kabul international airport will succeed in evacuating our entitled British nationals and the Afghan citizens who worked for us. I would be grateful for an assurance from the Minister in responding on the Government’s commitment to our Afghan civilian employees.
Thirdly, I strongly believe that the whole campaign in Afghanistan should be the subject of a public inquiry, to be convened in the coming months—not another expensive and drawn-out Chilcot-type inquiry, but one with appropriate terms of reference. Its scope should include the reasons that took us into Afghanistan in 2001—probably the least contentious part of the inquiry; the debate around nation-building in 2002 and beyond; the background to the decision to go into Iraq in 2003 and its effect on the Afghanistan campaign; the decision-making process that placed the UK in the lead of the new operation in southern Afghanistan in 2006, and the conduct of that campaign. It must also include our relations with our allies, principally the US and NATO, the discussions around the ending of combat operations in 2014 and our residual training and mentoring role that ended so abruptly with President Biden’s decision to withdraw by 9/11 2021. Some might say that such an inquiry is not needed, but I am convinced that it is: it should focus particularly on our strategic decision-making at both the political and the senior military levels and, crucially, their interface. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comment on this proposition.
Lord Hammond of Runnymede (Con)
My Lords, as a former Defence Secretary, I pay my own tribute to the 457 British service personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan and the many hundreds more who suffered life-changing injuries. I know that many people will be asking whether their sacrifice was in vain, and I want to assure them that it was not. For nearly 20 years, we held the ground in Afghanistan; we denied that territory to Islamist terrorist extremists who would have attacked our populations using the safe haven of Afghanistan. Many other benefits flowed, but that was our primary purpose, and the mission was a success in those terms. I salute the heroism and commitment of our service personnel and I record the huge debt of gratitude that we owe them for keeping us safe over that long period.
What has happened now is a catastrophic failure of western policy, and, more particularly, US policy because, as my noble friend has already set out, whatever the romantics tell us, once the US decided to leave, it was inevitable that no other partner in the coalition could safely deploy modest numbers of troops effectively in the theatre. The die was cast. I confess that I do not understand the reason for this decision. Since the end of combat operations in 2014 and the drawdown of forces, we were deploying relatively small numbers of troops at relatively small cost and delivering a hugely leveraged effect on the ground in Afghanistan, denying space to terrorists to organise and excluding our strategic challenges from exploiting the situation in that country. It might have been messy, but it was a whole lot better than the alternative that could have been.
When I listen to the US President, I cannot help reaching the conclusion that this decision was made out of a sense of political tidy-mindedness: we need to close a file; we need to draw a line; it has gone on for too long. I fear that that tidy-mindedness is a western disease that is unsuited to modern asymmetric military conflict, which is messy and enduring. Our strategic adversaries understand that—they thrive on messy compromise, ambiguous outcomes and frozen conflicts. The western alliance has brought this catastrophe on itself to save a very small-scale deployment.
Today, the victims are Afghans, particularly Afghan women and girls. Tomorrow, however, the victims might be our citizens if our streets once again echo to the sound of Afghan-based terrorism. Let us now discharge our obligations to those who have worked closely with us in Afghanistan, but let us also learn the lessons of this debacle. Let us make it clear that we, for ourselves at least, are prepared for long-term low-intensity deployment of our troops to reinforce local militaries and reasonably friendly governments in order to deliver relative stability. We will be able to do that only with US support. Mr Biden said on Saturday that he had learned that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces. I fear he was right and that that is the price of being a superpower.
Lord Blunkett (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I pay tribute, as others have done, to our brave men and women, including those aid workers and people of Afghanistan who have given so much over the last 20 years. What has happened over recent weeks is a blow to internationalism, to global security and, I fear, to future interventions on security and humanitarian grounds which would and will be necessary.
Some 20 years ago, as Home Secretary, I was being interviewed by Jim Naughtie on the “Today” programme when we went over to John Simpson, who was entering Kabul with the Northern Alliance, supported by our troops. Last Sunday, that was completely reversed and with it went 20 years not just of sacrifice but of an international effort to ensure that the world would be a safer place.
I have two questions for the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. First, will the Government reverse the decision not to replace James Brokenshire as a dedicated Security Minister? We need that position filled more than ever at this moment. Secondly, and reflecting on the words of my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, will the Government now consider setting aside those elements of the immigration and borders legislation that preclude support for, and the proper processing of refugee status for, those who do not have full documentation? It would be ridiculous—I reflect what has been said about the Home Secretary’s interview—if people, not just in the months but in the years ahead, were refused their rights as refugees simply because they did not have documentation. It is either not available to them or had to be destroyed in order to save their life or well-being.
I introduced the gateway programme all those years ago, which is now renamed the resettlement programme. It is crucial that there be a safe corridor, but it is also, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said this morning, critical that we engage with Pakistan. Anyone who read Charlie Wilson’s War will understand precisely why the Taliban retained the capacity to be able to sweep aside the Afghan forces over recent months. Pakistan has played both a constructive and a very destructive role over the last 20 years. Now is the time to engage with it, but it will take a combined effort across the globe to ensure that we put right the terrible disaster that has befallen the people of Afghanistan over recent days. It could easily be reflected in a resurgence of the jihadists, who have rejoiced at what has happened.
Today is a very sad day for us all, but there is something to learn from and reflect on in terms of our humanitarian commitment and our willingness to re-engage with security.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD) [V]
My Lords, I join with others in their expressions of sympathy and support and the tributes that we have already heard from all sides of your Lordships’ House. Once again, I declare my interest as an ambassador for HALO, a charity based in Scotland that is currently engaged with the clearance of mines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan. HALO employs some 2,400 local staff and, notwithstanding recent events, I am advised that it intends to continue with that necessary humanitarian work.
I shall never forget the sight of hundreds of Afghan men seeking to climb on to the outside of a moving military aircraft in the despairing and irrational belief that it would provide escape. They were driven, no doubt, by the recollection of the pitiless and savage regime presided over by the Taliban, with its particular subjugation of women and girls. But now we are told that the fundamentalists have become pragmatists, but always within their own definition of Islamic principles. We shall wait and see, but we know that, already, there is increasing anecdotal evidence of a return to the old ways, with house-to-house searches for individuals.
I want to look a little wider. As the people of Afghanistan are sorely troubled, the two principal advocates of the rules-based system are being mocked in Beijing and Moscow. To return to the point made by my noble friend Lord Newby, what price global Britain now? How would the British Government now define the special relationship? The harsh truth is that we have lost influence, trust and reputation. Of course the status quo could not last for ever, but why were we not aware of the disillusionment with the Afghan Government? Why were we not aware of the corruption and mismanagement in the Afghan forces, and of the lack of confidence among them when they were denied support from the army and other forces of the United States?
Let me finish with some questions. Did either the Trump Administration or the Biden Administration tell the British Government of their intentions in advance, and, if they did in either case, what representations did we make to them? Faced with the ineptitude of Trump and the determination of Biden, just what influence did our Prime Minister really have? We are entitled to know.
Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB) [V]
My Lords, in September 2001, shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, when I was deputy head of MI5, I flew to Washington with the head of MI6 and the head of GCHQ to discuss with our American colleagues what more our intelligence community should do to counter the threat. The threat was not new but the scale and audacity of the attacks were, although we had been expecting a major attack by AQ for some time. The decision was about al-Qaeda, its base in Afghanistan and its close relationship with the Taliban. I do not remember any discussion on Iraq. Subsequently, there were divergences of policy and approach but at that stage we were as one; indeed, most countries in the world wanted to support America.
Twenty years on, I could weep. Has all that effort been in vain? Were all those lives lost and lives ruined for naught? In this, I agree with what the Lord Privy Seal and the noble Lord, Lord Hammond of Runnymede, have said. In one respect, it certainly has not been wasted. I say this to dispirited veterans and to grieving families of servicemen who lost their lives in Afghanistan: remember that no terrorist attacks have been launched from Afghanistan for the last two decades, as far as I know. But now I wonder whether my hope that progress in helping Afghanistan move from its medieval past might last. I recall bitterly the comment of al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy, made five years in, to the effect that this time not even Dr Brydon would get home. That should remind us of the patience, long-term nature and sense of history that the West rarely shows but which the Taliban and their supporters have.
Others in this debate will cover much more eloquently than I can the acute humanitarian crisis, the strategic implications, including for NATO, and the need to begin, when appropriate—here, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hain—a dialogue with the Taliban, however unpalatable, to explore incentives for good behaviour. Others suggest that they have changed. I am afraid that I am sceptical, but we shall see.
I end by warning of two major security concerns. First, there is inspiration. The Taliban victory and its rout of western forces, as it appears, will inspire and embolden those who wish to promote jihad against the West. Events over the last few days show that the success of this ideology is possible and that will excite, encourage and spur terrorists. Secondly, on safe space, even if we believe the Taliban when they say that they will not allow terrorists to operate from their territory, I doubt they could stop that happening. The border with Pakistan is porous and its Government supportive of the Taliban. There is plenty of room to recruit, plot and train a new generation of terrorists. I wish I could end on a more positive note, and maybe my pessimism is misjudged, but I expect more terrorism directed against the West, based on extreme Islamist ideology.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con) [V]
My Lords, I believe that we were right to intervene in Afghanistan and wrong to withdraw. I say “we”, but of course the decisions to intervene and to withdraw were made by the Americans. We could not have gone it alone. The original decision to intervene was a reaction to the attack on America, the 20th anniversary of which we commemorate in a few weeks’ time. More recently, the intervention has been in response to an invitation from the legitimate Government of that country to help them overcome a barbaric insurrection which posed a terrible threat to its people, especially its women, and to the welfare of the wider international community. If the values of what we loosely call the West are to have any substance, we were right to respond to that invitation. I believe it justified the lives, the blood and the sacrifice of so many of our young men and women, and those of our allies, to whom I pay heartfelt tribute.
The responsibility for the decision to withdraw rests with President Biden. Up to now, many of us have been rather impressed with the president’s performance in his first few months in office, although that may in large part be due to the relief at the absence of his unlamented predecessor. But I am afraid that President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan is, and will be seen by history as, a catastrophic mistake which may well prove to be the defining legacy of his presidency.
It is a mistake which will, I fear, have calamitous consequences: first, for the people of Afghanistan, and especially its women; secondly, for the countries, including European countries, to which many of these people will seek to flee; thirdly, for the security of ourselves and our friends and allies, who will once again be vulnerable to attack from that country. It has been widely reported that those loyal to al-Qaeda and Islamic State have been fighting alongside the Taliban. They will expect their support to be rewarded.
Fourthly, and in some ways perhaps most importantly of all, it fatally undermines the credibility of any assurance of support—past, present or future—that we in the West offer to those who need it. Any future promises will be in debased coinage. These are dark days for those of us who believe in the values of what we loosely call western civilization. They mark a significant staging point in its decline. If that decline is to be reversed, or at least arrested, we are in dire need of statesmanship of a very high order. Sadly, that statesmanship is today conspicuous largely by its absence.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab) [V]
My Lords, there is little doubt that after the rapid success of NATO’s original invasion of Afghanistan, which smashed al-Qaeda and threw the remnants into the Pakistan FATA, we should have withdrawn and left those in Afghanistan to cobble together some form of settlement, however shambolic it might have been, as some of us said at the time.
We did not; rather, we allowed things to drift. The multitude of errors and changed strategic goals in our Afghan policy leading to where we are today is water under the bridge. A blame game at this stage will not help, but there needs to be a detailed assessment of decisions and actions over the last 20 years when events have stabilised. What is unsurprising is that, with the US predicting a Taliban takeover in months, there was a collapse in Afghan army morale. If you tell people they are going to lose, they generally do.
In the recent months it has become clear that large numbers of Islamist fighters of various persuasions, including al-Qaeda, Daesh and the Chechens, have joined the Taliban ranks. The international community cannot allow Afghanistan to become a haven for global terrorists again. It needs to be made clear to the Taliban that, if ever Afghanistan harbours international terrorists and training camps, as it did prior to 9/11, NATO will return to smash them and those responsible for allowing them to flourish before withdrawing again.
The malign influence of Pakistan and in particular the ISI should be highlighted. The ISI has been responsible for a great deal of the chaos in Afghanistan. We should make it clear to the Pakistan Government that, should Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists and they are implicated, fiscal and diplomatic action will be taken against them.
Military withdrawal means that our influence is limited. No matter how much we might loathe the Taliban’s treatment of women and its narco-economy, the return of allied troops to try to restore the status quo ante is a non-starter and should not be contemplated.
Lord Empey (UUP) [V]
My Lords, my party leader Doug Beattie MLA and my colleagues Andy Allen MLA and Councillor Ryan McCready all served on the ground in Afghanistan. Captain Beattie was awarded a military cross. My colleague Andy Allen lost both his legs and a large amount of his sight and hearing, and he suffered other damage. Councillor McCready was wounded by shrapnel from a Taliban grenade.
All of them and my other colleagues are disgusted by events. The questions they are asking are these. Why did the withdrawal need to happen with such speed, especially at this time, during the fighting season, thus helping the Taliban? Did the US and UK have clear evidence that Afghan security forces could go it alone? Is there even agreement on the size of the Afghan forces? Why were all our top officials, including the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, so ill-informed only a few days ago? What are the consequences for minorities such as Christians, left abandoned by the West?
I join the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, in stating the need for an inquiry, whether through Parliament or another mechanism. We need to understand why we had such a spectacular intelligence and strategic policy failure. What is the ongoing role of NATO? Is it a one man band where the US alone decides what to do and where to do it? The inquiry must look at all of this.
The consequence is that dictators around the world will call our bluff. As a nation, our bark is worse than our bite. Our critics can now say, sadly with justification, that there is no promise we will not break, there is no cause we will not ultimately betray and there is no principle we will not abandon. We are not even prepared to stand up and fight for our own citizens wronged by a foreign power; I refer to Libya, where we still fail even to seek justice for our people. A thug like Lukashenko can laugh at our threat of sanctions on him and his regime. We talked tough on Syria and encouraged the local population to resist Assad, but US red lines on chemical weapons were crossed with no consequences for the regime and Putin walked in and filled the vacuum.
We continue, despite some encouraging content in the integrated review, to hollow out our Armed Forces, and we have a fleet of destroyers that are not fit for proper service. That needs to be addressed. All the messages that we are sending out are wrong. In the end, we need to be able to match our rhetoric with ability and determination. The Taliban has taught us one thing: determination and zeal mean a lot more than fancy weapons. As a nation we must work to ensure that our bark and our bite match up and must be taken seriously.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, in representing a military barracks in my former constituency during the military phase of our operation in Afghanistan and personally knowing bereaved families, I admire as others do the great sacrifices our service men and women have made. But it is our duty to ask questions, however awkward, difficult or uncomfortable they may be for our country.
The Government told the International Relations and Defence Committee on page four of their response to our Select Committee report on Afghanistan that:
“UK forces lead assurance of security in the capital, Kabul, working alongside NATO Allies. This is vital for the security of the Afghan government and diplomatic presence”.
When the Taliban were making manoeuvres and it was obvious that they were approaching the capital, why were the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary absent? Did UK forces advise the Government that there was a likelihood that the capital would fall? Were contingency plans put in place for what we are now seeing happen in a chaotic manner? Why did the Government not indicate what those contingency plans may be?
The assumptions underlying the integrated review and even the defence Command Paper published on 30 July, plus the warnings from the head of MI5 and others, including Ministers, in response to our committee report, range from security from terrorism to the fact that the illicit trade in heroin from Afghanistan represents 95% of all heroin on UK streets. This will be used strategically by the Taliban and is now a direct national security threat. Will the Government now urgently update the integrated review and defence Command Paper, taking into consideration the new realities?
Regarding development and people, there were many warnings that there would be consequences of a 43% reduction in UK aid to Afghanistan for 2020-21, with further cuts being planned. Can the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, confirm that the position is the same as when he told the committee that UK support for Afghanistan was conditional on the Taliban not forming part of the Government? Is that still the position of the Government? Given the fact that half of UK aid went directly into Afghan Government funds, which are now defunct, is this aid to be new money, as the Leader of the House indicated? Is it not simply a reallocation of what had been proposed for three years of direct UK government support and has now been reallocated to the United Nations? On people, the government resettlement scheme does not permit third-country applications under law. That means that those who have fled to other countries from Afghanistan are not currently able to apply for UK resettlement. Will this now be changed by the Government in legislation?
Finally, it is no surprise to me, with the great difficulties that we have seen in Tunisia, that it was reported that the ISIS newsletter has sent out messages around that world that, for Libya, Tunisia and now Afghanistan, democracy does not work. Very simply, we must reassert that if the UK is committed to supporting open, tolerant and democratic approaches, we must publicly and openly work with our Gulf allies and the United Nations to offer as much leverage as is now possible. If there is to be dialogue and practical humanitarian support within Afghanistan, we must use all the allies, as uncomfortable as it may be for Pakistan, and ensure that we have a clear and public UK presence.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, all of us involved over the last 30 years in one way or another in policy towards Afghanistan will feel pretty gutted at the events of the last few days. Many of us have seen at first hand the courage and commitment of our soldiers, diplomats, aid workers and others and, of course, of the Afghan men and women with whom we worked. There will, of course, come a time to look at how we got to where we are now—and, indeed, the circumstances in which military intervention may be justified. In my view, today is not the day to do that. But I do hope that out of all this will come a foreign policy based more on cold realism and less on rhetoric.
I will make three points. First, we must, if at all possible, maintain an embassy in Kabul, provided, of course, that our people are safe. Without it, we lose influence and understanding—and neither of those can we afford. I hope that Laurie Bristow, for whom I have the highest admiration, can stay. Can the Minister give us any assurance on this, at least of the Government’s intention?
Secondly, we must offer and seek to deliver—not easy, I know—humanitarian aid. Thirdly, we must work with others—the EU, the US, China, Russia, Afghanistan and Afghanistan’s neighbours to try to ensure a stable Afghanistan that is not a breeding ground for terrorists. There is surely a common interest here and the UN will have a key role to play, as the noble Baroness mentioned in her opening speech.
No one knows what sort of Taliban regime will emerge from the present crisis, nor how coherent it will be. With others, we may be able to affect things; on our own we will not. It will be a hard slog and it will be unglamorous, but it may just make a difference, and we owe it to those who have given so much.
Lord Robathan (Con) [V]
My Lords, there have been some very good and very well-informed speeches, which I cannot emulate. I shall just make three points. First, I join others in paying tribute to the 457 British personnel who died in this campaign and the many more who were maimed for life. They were brave young men—and three women—who were doing their duty, serving our country and the Government and Parliament in which we sit. What do we say to their parents, their spouses and their children, who will be asking whether they died in vain? Well, we shall see, but this is heart- breaking.
Secondly, we should not underestimate the disaster and humiliation that this has been. It is on a par with the first Afghan campaign, which humiliated the East India Company and then the British Empire when Dr Brydon returned alone from Elphinstone’s army. This is a humiliation of the West, of NATO, of us, of course, but especially of the US—which, apparently, leads the free world, or so we are told. President Biden said that “America is back”. Robert Gates, Defense Secretary to the Administrations of both George W Bush and Barack Obama, said in his memoirs that Biden had been on the wrong side of every national security issue of the past 20 years. I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Hammond—who I worked under as Minister for the Armed Forces—said on this point. The humiliation and disaster of the West is appalling. The West is seen as an unreliable ally.
Thirdly, the consequences are that the West’s values of freedom and democracy have been trashed. China is now taunting Taiwan. Russia is cosying up to the Taliban already. Iran will be celebrating. Pakistan has questions to answer about its role in support of the Taliban. We have never understood Afghanistan. It is more than a foreign country; it is totally different. It is a tribal country. It has tribal elders. It has a religion that we do not entirely understand. It can be very backward and has some barbaric practices. Valley by valley it is different.
Expansion of the mission in 2005 was a grave error. We became an occupying force and our soldiers became a target, similar to 1840 to 1842. We have spent billions in military spending and billions on aid, which is now wasted. Let us not delude ourselves: it has been wasted. Nor should we willingly give more aid to Afghanistan unless we can ring-fence it—but I do not think we can. It will go straight into the pockets of the Taliban.
We need to focus on restoring the standing of the West, of NATO and of Britain and our values around the world. We need to show confidence in our values, our history and our society. We should be proud of our history and not apologise the whole time, caving in to incredibly ignorant left-wing activists such as Black Lives Matter elsewhere. Our enemies sense our collapse in confidence and our weakness. The USA, in particular, seems to have given up on its leadership of the free world, and the idea that the Taliban will be interested in dialogue with the West is for the birds. This is a disaster, and totalitarian regimes in now in the ascendancy.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab) [V]
My Lords, over two decades, NATO and those who served with ISAF did much to reduce the terrorist threat to the people of this country. Those who served can be justifiably proud. We were always going to eventually leave Afghanistan to the Afghan people, but, instead of a conditions-based, gradual withdrawal, this shambolic, reckless and disorganised retreat will weaken NATO and the West, strengthen our adversaries and betray those Afghans who trusted us, especially girls and women.
But hand wringing in debates such as this is not going to help the future. First, we need to prepare for an increased terrorist threat here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, has just warned. Secondly, we need to rebuild the regional coalition to hold the Taliban to account for what it is saying today. Thirdly, we need to learn the lessons of this mission, especially about conducting a distant military operation with an inadequate, half-hearted determination to win it.
When I was NATO Secretary-General, I repeatedly warned the NATO countries and the wider world that we have to go to Afghanistan or Afghanistan will come to us. I greatly fear that that is just what is going to happen.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I am not going to talk about the foreign policy, military or security aspects of the catastrophe in Afghanistan. I am not equipped to do so, and many others in this debate are, not least the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who has just spoken.
My only inquest question is to ask why a plan for refugees emerged only last night and why there was no contingency scheme ready to announce an action well before Kabul fell. The Prime Minister told MPs this morning that it is not true that the UK Government were unprepared. Well, it looks like it. Why is the process for issuing visas protracted and bureaucratic? Much as one can admire the heroism of our ambassador Laurie Bristow in administering visas at the airport, this is not the image of simplified and fast-tracked applications and evacuation that one would expect.
I second what others have said about the UK aid budget, but I also urge the Government to scale up our support for the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR. In 2020, Germany individually gave almost three times as much as our $135 million, which was not much more than what was given by much smaller countries such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands—and all those contributions were on top of the EU contribution of $0.5 billion. Resources, as well as diplomatic influence, must also be used to support neighbouring countries to keep their borders open, in order to provide safe havens to refugees fleeing Afghanistan—as they have long done.
The Home Secretary has announced a UK Afghan resettlement scheme of 20,000 over a number of years, drawing comparisons with the seven-year scheme for Syrians. But that figure needs to be a start rather than a cap, and it needs to be front loaded as an immediate response. The Prime Minister says that the Taliban is allowing the evacuation to go ahead and that we just need to get people out while we can. Why are the Government not simply responding to need and to the moral imperative that others have referred to? Chris Bryant MP asked in the other place:
“What are the 15,000 meant to do? Hang around and wait to be executed?”
Good question—what is the answer?
It would certainly be welcome if the Government committed to a resettlement scheme that was long-term, sustainable, and an embedded part of policy—not just dropped when the news cycle changed. Then, a target figure of, say, 10,000 a year, would make sense. What funding—genuinely new funding—will there be for local councils to house, support and integrate those refugees, without placing even more strain on their overstretched budgets?
I will not repeat what others have said about the ARAP scheme, which must be expanded to contractors. We must also not forget families. Reuniting families and bringing those in Afghanistan with family in the UK here to safety must be a top priority. I draw attention to the Bill that I have in progress on refugee family reunion, which has its Second Reading on 10 September, and I invite more speakers.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con) [V]
My Lords, this crisis in Afghanistan is a terrible disaster, not just for Afghanistan but for all the international community. It was predictable and preventable, sweeping away 20 years’ work and the money spent there with, of course, the tragic loss of life, both military and civilian, as well as life-changing injuries. The scenes from Kabul are chilling: the panic, the chaos, the fear. The immediate reaction has to be to help on the humanitarian front, and I commend the Foreign Office and our military for all their outstanding work.
We must act fast—there are so many in danger. The world has ignored that, for some time now, the Taliban has been targeting women, Hazaras, university graduates and those who worked in the military and for the Government. As well as extracting people to the West, can we not persuade countries in the region to help, as was the case with Syria? The Taliban now says that it has changed, but look at the atrocities it has recently perpetrated on the ground: hands being severed, people hanged at the entrance to cities, young girls seized to be married to fighters, and other barbarous acts. In Kabul, I understand, prominent government officials’ doors have been spray-painted. This does not bode well.
There are so many questions. Was the US announcement to withdraw unilateral, and if so, why did the UK not speak out then? Was there intelligence that this would happen? How is the Taliban so well organised, so well equipped, so well informed, and so logistically able? This calls for an inquiry to understand better why the West has so comprehensively failed. Now that there is to be a transitional government, please can the UK ensure that we have another Security Council debate, perhaps to put in a UN peacekeeping force to ensure that there is an end to violence and human rights abuse? Can we try to get a human rights observer into every province in the country?
I welcome the announcement about aid, but can we ensure that any given to the Afghan Government will be conditional on ending violence and ensuring that human rights are upheld? Most at risk are the courageous women of Afghanistan; we encourage them to challenge their society and come forward to take their place in public life. I received an email this morning, which said: “In the past two days, different groups have visited my house three times. They took my house, my vehicles, the safety weapons of my guards.” This woman is terrified, and it is not just high-profile women in danger; it is illiterate women and widows. All the women are in fear of their lives and will lose their freedom.
While I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday, can we ensure that it includes vulnerable women peacebuilders, supported through the UK’s work on women, peace and security? How will the UK’s humanitarian response deliver for women and girls? How will we ensure that girls’ education there is not reversed? We must not abandon the women of Afghanistan—we owe them our support.
Lord Ricketts (CB) [V]
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Jay, in paying tribute to the work of Sir Laurie Bristow and the British embassy team in Kabul during these dangerous days. I also fully agree with other noble Lords who have spoken about the need for Britain to be a major player in the looming humanitarian crisis and for a resettlement scheme which enables large numbers to come quickly to this country, particularly vulnerable women and those who are at acute risk because they worked with us in Afghanistan. They trusted us to stick with them, and we have let them down. We also face the reality that to ensure safe passage for vulnerable people, we will need to deal with the Taliban authorities, which is a point to bear in mind when it comes to issues of recognition.
I want to touch on the strategic implications of what has happened, starting with NATO. Good allies need to be honest with each other, so it needs to be said that the American handling of Afghanistan these last two years has been a decisive contribution to the current disaster. President Trump’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban undermined the Afghan Government. President Biden’s decision to set an arbitrary deadline to suit US political purposes has really knocked the morale of Afghan security forces and triggered the unravelling of events that we have seen in recent days. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hammond, that the low-level western security presence over recent years provided reassurance to the regime and deterrence against Taliban adventurism, at low risk to western forces. That is all now gone. The chaotic scenes in Kabul are on a par with Saigon in 1975, except in that case, the humiliation was American; in this case it is shared with all American allies.
Our objective in Afghanistan was never simply to deny safe space to the terrorists. The first ISAF mission that the UK commanded in 2001 set out with a wider objective. The name itself is significant: the International Security Assistance Force. That is the mission that many allies went into Afghanistan with, in solidarity with the Americans. They stuck it out for 20 difficult years, and we have left precious little security behind.
Confidence in NATO has been damaged. China is the main beneficiary of President Biden’s decision. “America is back” now sounds rather hollow—“America is backing down” fits the case better. The British priority must be to address the damage done to NATO, to rebuild effective political consultations within NATO, and to focus on European security and the risk of Islamic terrorism in Europe. Rather than tilting to the Indo-Pacific, that is where the UK needs to put its national security energies.
In the light of the sorry end to the Afghanistan mission, we also need to rethink how the West can use force in the future where it is necessary to protect its interests, as it surely will need to do again somewhere, sometime.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]
My Lords, it is very difficult to express just how sad and horror-struck I am after the events in Afghanistan. Of course, it is not only now but in the weeks, months and years ahead that we will all feel the repercussions. My noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle will speak later in the debate on the geopolitical aspects of the events, but I will concentrate on the people of Afghanistan who have become refugees, particularly on the fate of women, who are now living in Afghanistan under a Taliban regime.
Regretfully, our record as a welcoming and responsible country is very damaged. Last year, about 79.5 million people worldwide were forced to leave their homes and become refugees, and we took in just over 20,000 of those—approximately 0.026% of the world’s refugees. We must not forget that we are responsible, because of the way that we behave, for many of those people.
What could and should our Government do to demonstrate the best and most honourable intentions? Well, we can offer solidarity, humanity and refuge for as many as we can. Immediately, we should offer amnesty to undocumented Afghans in the UK. Many Afghan asylum seekers were refused on the grounds that they could return safely to Kabul, but that is clearly false now. Immediately, for those refugees en route, the Government should increase their shameful arbitrary limit of 20,000 over five years. To enable this, local authorities must be fully financed to help with the resettlement, with an especial aim to reunite families. We have to be bold, kind and generous.
And then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, mentioned, there are the women who are still in Afghanistan. We must support the women and girls facing Taliban erasure of their rights, education, freedom and, potentially, their lives. Afghan women, particularly those known to be feminists—that will be a very broad definition for the Taliban—will be heavily attacked in one way or another. We must demand that our Government commit to give refuge to women who are known because they are part of the women’s movement: because they are judges, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge mentioned, professors, high school teachers, women police, women firefighters, women in the army, and women who are taxi drivers, musicians, artists or journalists. All these women are vulnerable now. Of course, women who do not have passports for their children must be allowed in without their passports. Refugees are people who have lost control of their lives. We have to remember that, if our Government do not start to take climate change seriously, we ourselves could be refugees too.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)
My Lords, the images of Kabul airport will remain in people’s minds for a very long time. This has been a deeply humiliating episode, deeply damaging to the credibility of the West. Like every other speaker in the debate, I pay tribute to our soldiers who have served in Afghanistan. They can hold their heads up high; their sacrifice has not been in vain, and we appreciate it.
After 20 years, it is hardly surprising that in America the appetite for the war was waning. However, if withdrawal was inevitable, the manner in which it was done was catastrophic. Did it have to be so abrupt and absolute? The US negotiated in Doha the equivalent of a surrender to the Taliban. All that was left was for the Taliban to follow through.
However, President Biden had a point when he said that America could hardly continue to fight when the Afghans themselves would not fight. After 20 years of training and expensive weapons, the Afghan army evaporated in the face of a smaller Taliban force. Perhaps that was to be expected when so many soldiers had not been paid for months and officials in Kabul diverted salaries into bank accounts. Corruption was the one institution that worked in Afghanistan. What has happened is tragic, but part of the tragedy was also the idea of Afghanistan as an incipient law-based democracy. It was always a challenging concept. Perhaps it worked in the better parts of Kabul or Herat, but not in Kandahar or in the rural areas, or in a country as tribal and as fragmented geographically as Afghanistan.
None the less, remarkable progress was made in developing civil society, education and women’s rights, and I pay tribute to the courageous women in Afghanistan. However, even after 20 years, that progress was fragile, depending as it did on a continuing protecting western military presence. That presence could not go on forever; the West would always have to leave at some point. And so this tragedy demonstrates why intervention is often so difficult. So often our interventions in the region, such as in Iraq and Libya, have not worked out as planned, and so often they have had unintended consequences. It is going a long way back, but remember that the Taliban came into existence out of US-Saudi support for the mujaheddin. All the original leaders of the Taliban were members of the mujaheddin who were welcomed in the White House in 1983 by Ronald Reagan. The US created a monster it could neither control nor defeat.
Some dignity needs to be salvaged out of this fiasco. We need to rescue as many as possible of the brave Afghans who supported our Armed Forces and women’s NGOs. As the Prime Minister said, countries should wait before recognising any new Government in Kabul. The US and NATO need to make clear to the Taliban that any hosting of al-Qaeda or ISIS will not be tolerated and will meet an immediate reply. But above all, we need to reassess our own policies and capabilities. We need a hard-headed, realistic view of our place in the world. Perhaps we should be a little bit careful about parading our aircraft carriers around the world, sabre-rattling to American cheers.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I join those paying tribute to the 457 and to all those who have helped to make the last 20 years safer for all of us. Like others, I do not believe it was in vain, but I have some questions that I would like the Minister to consider and answer.
My first question is: what went wrong with our intelligence collection and analysis? It is inconceivable that the West would have gone ahead with this withdrawal in this way if we had known that this catastrophe would have unfolded as it has. There must have been a comprehensive intelligence assessment at the highest level, both in the UK and in the US, with whom we work so closely. Therefore, we have to ask what went wrong and we need to have a full and urgent inquiry into this. I was chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee at the time of 9/11, the Bali bombing and the Iraq war. At that time, the ISC was allowed very good access to see what had happened and to consider the intel that was available. The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, as it is now called, must undertake an urgent and comprehensive inquiry into what can only be called an intelligence failure. There are reports that the Government want to curtail the power of that committee. I hope that that will not happen, because it must be allowed to work in an unfettered way. I hope that the Minister will today confirm that that will be allowed.
My second question relates to the quality and the nature of the training that was given to the Afghan armed forces and to those involved in nation-building and developing the economy. When I was a Minister in the MoD, when I visited Afghanistan I was told that the quality of our training across the board was second to none. If that was the case, why was there no resilience and why did the forces of the state collapse so completely and so quickly? A senior military figure said today that it may be because we were trying to replicate our own systems and approaches. That is the kind of issue that needs thinking about carefully, and Parliament has an important role in examining such questions.
Parliament must also have a role in ensuring that the welfare of our Afghan veterans is considered yet again. This will have been a great shock to all those who served. We must consider the repercussions of this on their mental health, because they need perhaps more support than ever, given what has happened in the last few days.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, Tom Tugendhat has compared the implications of this crisis for the UK’s international standing with the Suez crisis, which abruptly demonstrated the extent of our dependence on the United States and the unwillingness of the US Administration to take British interests into account when American priorities were at stake. The precipitate nature of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has shown us that Trump is not the only US President who puts America first.
Yesterday, I reread the Government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, published only five months ago. It is full of Boris Johnson’s boosterism on global Britain, as a science and soft-power superpower, as extending its military reach to the Pacific Ocean, as exerting disproportionate influence on the global order through its position at the centre of interconnecting diplomatic networks. The Prime Minister declares in the introduction that our most valuable and influential partnership is that with the United States. It is now clear that the idea of global Britain is a Johnsonian fantasy. There is no special place for the UK when the US President makes crucial foreign policy decisions, even when we have contributed military, intelligence and diplomatic support to the US-led efforts in Afghanistan, including substantial development assistance.
Our response to this latest development has been closer to that of our European allies than to that of the USA, but we have excluded ourselves from the multilateral foreign policy networks that Mrs Thatcher’s Government helped to establish with other European Governments, so we have struggled to consult multiple capitals one by one. The Government are now calling for collective action on the likely surge of refugees towards Europe and the threats of increased drugs trafficking and transnational terrorism, so we will share our sovereignty with our neighbours in devising common responses to challenges that spill over international borders. So much for Britain’s reassertion of absolute sovereignty. When the going gets tough, we have to work with others.
I read in the Financial Times today that our Prime Minister has told the Prime Minister of Pakistan not to act unilaterally in recognising the Taliban regime. Boris Johnson clearly lacks any concern for consistency or sense of shame. He acts unilaterally by breaking an international agreement he has only recently signed, but he tells others to behave more responsibly. The integrated review is now inoperable. As my noble friend Lord Newby said in his opening speech, we need to develop a more realistic view of our place in the world, not the post-imperial rhetoric that our Prime Minister so loves.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, I will make just three points. First, the strategic purpose of our engagement in Afghanistan, for which so many brave people sacrificed life and limb, was to prevent that country being, or becoming again, a safe haven for international terrorist groups. This remained our purpose right up until these last weeks. It was not, as President Biden has implied, about educating girls or supporting other civil reforms. Worthy though such objectives are, they were, in a strategic sense, ways of achieving the end, not the end itself. Now, it seems, that strategic purpose is at risk. The Taliban leaders have said they will not allow terrorist groups to re-establish themselves in Afghanistan—but, judging by the rapidity with which they have ignored other undertakings, we must surely assume that this one will be equally ephemeral. Perhaps the Minister can say where this leaves our counterterrorism strategy.
Secondly, President Biden has suggested that the Afghans are not prepared to fight for their own country. But this ignores two facts. The first is the very large number of Afghan security forces personnel who have been killed on operations over the past two decades, and the second is that Afghan society has always placed much greater importance on loyalty to family, village and clan than to a central Government. In such a society, a military force modelled on the US army could never, in the short term, endure without the logistical, technical and moral support of the US armed forces. Once that was withdrawn, its collapse was both predictable and predicted. In another two or three decades it might have been different, but not today.
Thirdly, President Biden purportedly wishes to withdraw from Afghanistan in order to concentrate on China. Yet his actions have immediately benefited China on several fronts. China is increasingly engaged commercially in Afghanistan and has been negotiating with the Taliban. Taken together with Pakistan’s increasing reliance on China, this creates a disturbing nexus of power in the region. Even more important is the perception of other countries. If the western powers are to resist China’s assault on the current rules-based international order, they will require strong political, economic and technological allies in the Indo-Pacific region. Who now, though, will be prepared to throw in their lot with a US-led effort, when that country’s leadership has proved such a fickle friend to Afghanistan? Perhaps the Minister can say what the implications are for the UK’s own tilt to the Indo-Pacific, which was such a prominent feature of the recent integrated review.
For now, though, we must concentrate on fulfilling our moral obligations to those Afghans who have supported us so well over the years. We owe them no less. The Government have said that they will be generous in this regard; I trust that their actions will match their fine words.
Baroness Helic (Con) [V]
My Lords, I start by paying tribute to all those who served in Afghanistan, those who lost their lives and those who were injured. I agree that this is a disaster. The coalition’s withdrawal has created a long-term problem: a major humanitarian crisis with no end in sight and an ongoing risk of Afghanistan once again becoming a terrorists’ safe haven. I welcome the decision to receive 20,000 refugees, but, given the urgency of the situation, I fear that 5,000 is insufficient for the next year. When people face death, the prospect of asylum in a year’s time is not much hope. Most Afghans will stay in Afghanistan, and 20,000 is less than 0.1% of the population.
The world should open its doors to refugees with generosity, but we cannot empty the country. What is going to happen to the Afghans left behind? Humanitarian aid will be necessary. We cut our aid funding for Afghanistan by 78% this year. That has to be reversed fast. Supporting women and girls with education and healthcare will be more important now than ever, whether they are in refugee camps or in towns and villages throughout Afghanistan. This will be far harder than before, but we must find a way.
We must also ask how we ended up here. How did an army collapse overnight? The withdrawal of American troops was a severe blow to capability and morale. The importance of the 2,500 American soldiers far outweighed their number. Their presence was a sign of the weight of global backing behind the Afghans on the front line. They were a crucial buttress for the Afghan national army—a core part of its design. Their withdrawal left it unsupported, demoralised and ready to crash down.
Even more worrying than the effect of the withdrawal on the Afghan national army was its apparently similar effect on NATO and the international coalition. I understand that the MoD tried to rally international partners to take up America’s role. That that proved impossible does not reflect well on the strength of NATO and on our ability to act abroad or without the US by our side. Only five months after it was published, the integrated review is out of date. It said:
“We will continue to support stability in Afghanistan, as part of a wider coalition”
and that providing support to the Government of Afghanistan would be a key part of our counterterror strategy. The Government of Afghanistan are no more, the wider coalition has collapsed, and our influence in Washington seems alarmingly limited, as is our influence in Europe.
The past week has been the most extraordinary of the reversals. The Afghan Government were flawed but they were democratic. The direction of travel was right. Now they have been swept aside and all the gains of the past 20 years could go into reverse. As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11 next month, the Taliban control more of Afghanistan than they did when the Twin Towers fell. That leaves us with three urgent questions. How do we support the Afghans now stuck under the new rule? Where does this leave our allies and our foreign policy? Where does this leave global Britain? The Government must try to answer them.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab) [V]
My Lords, since before I left government service in 1991, I have been involved one way or another in Afghanistan, with all its complexities with outside forces. Because of time constraints, I shall make five very short points.
First, much of the criticism of the Afghani forces is unfair and wrong. In many provincial centres, civil leaders beseeched Afghani commanders not to fight the Taliban, to avoid the human and material destruction that would entail for their communities.
Secondly, did no one think that the 20th anniversary of their defeat was as important symbolically and politically to the Taliban as to the US and its allies, and that their determination to achieve victory by that date was as strong as the US’s to withdraw? So why the surprise that they moved so quickly?
Thirdly, when we are considering our responsibilities to Afghanis who helped our forces and NGOs, we must also remember the more than 100 BBC World Service staff in Afghanistan, on its Pashtun, Dari, Persian and English services. Whether they want to stay in or leave Afghanistan, they and their families deserve our protection.
Fourthly, as a long-term admirer of President Biden, I cannot be alone in being disappointed by his speech on Monday. Did he not remember the chorus,
“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it
That’s what gets results”?
Fifthly, the only positive comments I have seen so far are from China, Russia and, predictably, the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Does that not tell us something?
In conclusion, I do not know whether I am more angry, horrified, upset or ashamed by what has happened and how it happened. To tell the truth, I am all of those and then some.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I want to start with our moral duty as a country to the locally employed staff—interpreters, embassy staff and others—and their families. The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, made the point of principle about extracting them from Afghanistan as soon as possible. I also echo my noble friend Lord Purvis’s comments on the Afghanistan resettlement plan. However, I see from the ARAP notice last month that these key people are to be given only five years’ leave to remain. That is completely unacceptable. There is no likely return for years, if ever, so resettlement should be made permanent from the start.
I also understand from the Local Government Association that around 2,000 have already arrived in recent weeks. Does this mean that the UK is taking only 3,000 more this calendar year? It is apparent that these numbers are woefully inadequate. Does the Minister agree that the Government must increase them in light of the current emergency?
For those who do arrive, there are many practical problems, so the principles of the military covenant should be provided for those in the ARAP scheme, many of whom will have lived through the same as, and worse than, our wonderful service men and women. I am hearing that GPs in some of the receiving areas are already full and not taking new patients. Access to urgent health services, especially mental health services, is vital for new arrivals.
While the Home Office is paying for hotel accommodation for quarantine and beyond until permanent housing can be found, can the Minister say what financial support will be given to local authorities, which are being asked at very short notice to find permanent housing for families when there is already a national shortage? Many local authorities are accepting their responsibilities and stepping up to help, but the cuts that local government has faced in recent years, as well as pandemic pressures, mean that resources to help these families, which are vital if they are to settle swiftly, will be difficult to find. One council leader told me of problems in their area in finding any school places, because all their schools are already full. It is vital that these children start school with everyone else. Using the principles of the military covenant means that local solutions absolutely must be found, and children deserve that support.
Finally, I completely agree with my leader, my noble friend Lord Newby, about the effect of this debacle on service personnel who were deployed in Afghanistan, especially those injured and those who lost loved ones, and their family and friends. Having talked in the last few days to UK service personnel who were deployed to Afghanistan, I am hearing that many, whether still serving or veterans, are having difficult memories reawakened and worse. Some are having flashbacks and their PTSD is triggered. The MoD is ensuring that current service men and women are being signposted to help, but can the Minister say whether there is specific signposting for veterans no longer in the services so that they can get any urgent help that they need?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]
My Lords, I very much agree with that last point from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It is very hard to overestimate the scale of the catastrophe following the Biden Administration’s disastrous implementation of the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The report of your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Select Committee, The UK and Afghanistan, which was published as recently as January, has sadly proved prescient. It is disappointing, to say the least, that so many of its recommendations fell on stony ground. The committee, under the outstanding chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Anelay, warned:
“The UK’s interests in Afghanistan are not unique and distinct: they are bound up with those of its allies, led by the US. The UK has had limited opportunities, and has shown little inclination, to exert an independent voice and, along with other NATO Allies, has followed the US’s lead. This is regrettable, not least in view of the UK’s very substantial commitment to Afghanistan, both financially and militarily.”
It went on:
“There is a real risk that the principal national security challenges still posed by Afghanistan, namely terrorism, narcotics and regional instability, could worsen, and the gains made since 2001 could be lost.”
It was utterly disingenuous for President Biden to present the Afghans as unwilling to fight for their country, after having withdrawn vital US support services without an agreed ceasefire, precipitating the collapse of the Afghan state. The US allies, including the Afghan Government, were bypassed in Doha by President Trump, who signed a withdrawal, not a peace, agreement. Twenty years of sacrifice were abandoned for bumper-sticker politics, with no effective plan to protect those who had put their trust in the United States. Again, the Select Committee of this House warned:
“The ongoing presence of UK troops in Afghanistan depends on the deployment decisions of the US. We were disappointed by the … analysis of the implications of the planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan provided by ministers”.
On 12 October 2006, at Oral Questions, I asked the then Defence Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Drayson:
“has the Minister read the history of foreign intervention in Afghanistan, and why does he think that history will not repeat itself on this occasion?”
In his reply, he said:
“I have studied Afghanistan’s history and think the important point is that the Soviet campaign and the campaigns of the British Empire were absolutely different in nature from what we are undertaking. We, with our coalition partners, are supporting the development of a democracy in Afghanistan, with the complete support of the people of Afghanistan as expressed in their democratic elections. That is completely different.” —[Official Report, 12/10/06; col. 359.]
Listening to President Biden, it was apparently not about that at all. History is repeating itself, and exacting a terrible price in human misery and insecurity.
Baroness D'Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, the tragedy that is Afghanistan today is the consequence of many miscalculations, assumptions, faulty intelligence—or perhaps political decisions to disregard intelligence reports—and hubris. The fact is that 20 years of largely successful endeavours in building democratic institutions, and above all in educating girls, may be lost.
On the face of it, regardless of the policies the UK may have wished to implement in Afghanistan, the fact is that there was no room for manoeuvre at all once the USA had decided to withdraw its troops. The UK was hemmed in and had no alternatives to pursue other than US policy and action. It is therefore fair to say that UK foreign policy is now so firmly tied to that of the USA that independent action is virtually ruled out.
Post 9/11, the UK Government at the time agreed with the US that the onslaught in October 2001 was aimed at getting rid of al-Qaeda and preventing further terrorist attacks targeting the USA, and that a stable democracy with a trained army would be the best insurance for both these goals. Billions of dollars were then spent on a wide range of programmes aimed at building the institutions of democracy. President Biden’s most recent claim that there was no intention to impose any kind of western model is, to my mind, wrong. There clearly was: the US ODA programmes went far beyond rendering al-Qaeda impotent.
Then, for domestic electoral reasons, the Americans wanted their forces out. That was understandable but the mechanisms employed, as set out in the US-Taliban Doha agreement in 2020, flew in the face of any democratic process. Enormous concessions were granted to the Taliban with few, if any, guarantees. The talks began with a refusal to include either the legitimate Afghan Government or major allies among other interested parties. The demands set out at the beginning of the talks were the result not of any negotiation but of Taliban diktat—for example, the withdrawal of not only troops but all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisers and supporting service personnel, and the release of Taliban prisoners.
The talks were not about achieving any kind of peace but promoted the reputation and political influence of the Taliban. The Taliban’s insistence on removing all counterterrorism operations does not bode well for the future. Despite the many serious flaws, the talks were agreed without amendment by other NATO allies so the “war” was in fact settled in February 2020, and the carnage between then and now has merely been a Taliban way of keeping the upper hand at the Doha talks. Why were there no objections to, for example, the absence of any protections for human rights or the rights of women? Why did Pakistan get off so lightly that it could continue to enable Taliban atrocities?
Why is the world so surprised by the success of the Taliban in gaining complete control? It was given to them in the interests of satisfying an American electorate by those very nations that sought to eliminate them. Can the Government now assure the House that lessons have been learned and that an independent foreign policy might well follow?
Lord Goldsmith (Lab) [V]
My Lords, there are many in Afghanistan whose safety must now be protected, including those who have worked to support the rule of law, such as Mr Rohullah Qarizada, president of the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association, who has been engaged in hundreds of cases fighting for human rights and now fears for his life and the lives of his family.
I particularly join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in drawing attention to the situation of 250 Afghan women judges who are uniquely at risk, not just because they are women but because they are judges who have served on anti-terrorism, anti-corruption, drug and criminal courts and have sentenced Taliban members. Those sentenced might be angry at any judge but the fact that a woman judge would exercise that authority enrages them. The judges are therefore getting phone calls with threats and their contact details are readily available through bribes. They are burning their law books to avoid being identified. They are at grave risk of revenge by murder and assassination. The situation is urgent. As the Taliban have advanced, they have been opening prisons and releasing prisoners, including from Bagram, where some of the worst terrorists were incarcerated.
These brave women need protection. Many were trained with assistance from the West, including this country. As the president of the International Association of Women Judges said in a statement, these women should be extended the same special measures applying to interpreters, journalists and other personnel who provided essential services.
Our Government should support this case. In listing the vulnerable groups who deserve protection and will get it, the Lord Privy Seal did not include women judges in Afghanistan. I ask the Minister to confirm when he replies that they will be included in those groups. The shame that we already have at deserting Afghanistan will be doubled if we do not help women whom we have encouraged to serve their country by promoting the rule of law and who now find themselves in deadly peril.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, all my life I have been pro-American and favourably disposed to the United States, but not any more at this moment. What Biden has done in Afghanistan will go down in ignominy as one of the most shameful and despicable acts of betrayal by any American President. Tens of thousands of men will be slaughtered, thousands of young girls forced to marry these Taliban brutes and 14 million women driven back into slavery. Afghanistan was emerging into the light with freedoms for women and children, who will now be ruled with 500 year-old barbaric religious laws. That is Biden’s legacy. He cannot blame it on Trump; Biden boasted that in his first 100 days he issued a record 24 executive orders, all of which were direct reversals of Trump policies. He should have listened to his generals and changed this policy also.
This is not like Saigon; it is far worse. First, the retaliation against the population by Islamist fanatics is likely to be far greater than what the North Vietnamese did to the beaten south. Secondly, the appalling humanitarian crisis described in this House today will centre on Afghanistan but the terrorist consequences of this US sell-out will affect us all. The Viet Cong had no agenda outside Vietnam but Afghanistan is now under the control of Islamist fanatics who want to wage war on every western democracy.
The US spent billions equipping the Afghan army. A few weeks ago, Biden said:
“We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools—let me emphasize: all the tools”.
He has just donated all those tools to the Taliban—the largest arms haul in history. He has given the Taliban and al-Qaeda state-of-the-art military equipment. The Taliban of course will not need all those weapons and will pass them on to terrorists around the world. Just as the Stingers that the CIA gave the Taliban to fight the Soviets in the 1980s were used against the Americans from 2001 onwards, so these US weapons will now be used against us. The Taliban will empty the bank vaults but fill the opium factories. They will fund terrorism around the world, aided and abetted by their corrupt ally and partner Pakistan, with its totally treacherous ISI security service.
The final disaster in this is the question of who will stand up to China now. China has been working with the Taliban hand-in-glove so that it can get into Afghanistan and rob it of every mineral that it can get its hands on. I am afraid that this blundering President—who, according to press reports, apparently got lost in his own garden—has now lost the credibility of US leadership with this surrender.
Biden has put America back, all right—back into the bunker. The lesson for China is this: play a long game and America will not have the stomach to stick it out. China is a threat to world peace, but how can we now trust the US to lead the long battle against it? Biden may have condemned the world to Chinese domination in future and the end of western liberal democracy.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD) [V]
My Lords, sadly, there is no way to dismiss the fact that this is an absolute catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan, especially its women, those who have supported principles of liberal democracy and those who have attempted to enforce proper justice in that country, all of whose lives are now under threat, let alone those who worked directly and bravely to support our forces—and let us not forget the 70,000 Afghan troops who lost their lives in this fight. President Biden’s comment that that they did not have the stomach seem entirely inappropriate to me. The stomach was taken from them by the Americans withdrawing the contractors who supported and enabled their air force and then telling them that they were destined for defeat. What more could have been expected?
We must act on behalf of those people whose lives are threatened in Afghanistan. There is only so much that we can do, but places for 5,000 this year do not come near what we owe those people who have worked so hard for us in those countries and for our values, and whose lives are now under threat. I cannot go through all the details in the time allotted, but the Human Rights Watch report circulated to Members of this House sets out comprehensively the series of steps that need to be taken to support those who supported us, their families and those now at risk, let alone the journalists and lawyers. Those steps must be taken. I hope all Ministers in this Government will read that report and take action on it.
Secondly, this catastrophe may be even more profound beyond the borders of Afghanistan than within them. The simple fact is that since the Cold War we have somehow believed that liberal democracy was inevitable and the battle of ideas was over, but that is clearly the opposite of the truth. The rise of authoritarian dictatorships, the strength of China and the reinvigoration of Russian interventionism are all empowered by this situation because those countries see the absolute weakness of those who believe in liberal democratic values. There is no willingness to see things through or take them to the end. This withdrawal was for the sake of a few thousand troops—not a huge engagement—who were supporting genuine liberal reforms, the progression of democracy in Afghanistan and, above all, providing enormous protection for the rights of women and others in their daily lives. Many will die as a result of this decision.
However, that is as nothing compared to what we have seen, from Syria to now Afghanistan, of the unwillingness of western liberal democracies, led by America, to take a stand. We now have to accept that we cannot rely on American leadership. We need to reach out to our other allies, across Europe and the wider world, to make sure that we have the ability to assert ourselves. If that lesson is not learned, China, Russia, Iran and many others will draw their conclusions, as indeed they are celebrating today.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, that, sadly, there is no escaping the ignominious nature of what has occurred in Afghanistan. It is the consequence not just of a single misjudgment but of an accumulation of misjudgments by successive Governments and Administrations in the western world. Allocating blame may be invidious and even unhelpful, but we must be sure to learn vital lessons from what has occurred, and we must also resolve to do the right thing now.
I am sure that my noble friend Lord Empey was right to say that there has been a terrible failure of intelligence. There has also been some unfortunate—perhaps spectacularly unfortunate—management of expectations, with far too much talk of long-term nation-building, when the western powers, and the United States in particular, evidently had no intention ever of committing on such a scale. It is surely high time we learned that it is not possible to build a secure and sustainable nation state by force, by imposition or even by exhortation where the requisite social and economic foundations are just not in place. In such a scenario, the only options are an impossibly expensive and protracted long-term colonisation or so-called surgical strikes, or the kind of time-limited, ultimately ineffective occupation that we have just witnessed, with its inevitable aftermath.
What we leave behind in Afghanistan is a chaotic and tribally and religiously divided nation with an uncertain future, including thousands of individuals who now, as many noble Lords have explained, fear being treated as collaborators by the resurgent Taliban, and all of whom will feel understandably abandoned and betrayed. I do not believe it is right or even possible for the western powers to intervene on any meaningful scale in Afghanistan again, but it is within our power now to honour our obligations to the many individuals who have committed their energies to the noble ideal of a free Afghanistan—in other words, the supposed mission which we and our allies now seem to have abandoned.
Afghanistan may not be a safe haven for the foreseeable future, so we must decide quickly where one can be established for those who seek to escape the clutches of the Taliban. The only true safe haven may be here in the United Kingdom. At last, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary appear to have acknowledged that, and I welcome both their candour and their decency. It is a matter of humanity and a matter of honour.
Lord Adonis (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the immediate emergency facing the Government and the House is the refugee crisis. I would like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, if he could reply to three specific questions at the end of the debate.
The first is on the issue of just 5,000 Afghan refugees being admitted this year. He will have heard across the House acute concern at that level of admissions and that it should be significantly higher. Is it the case that 3,000 of those are already accounted for by translators and immediate staff working for the British embassy and British forces in Afghanistan? If so, that figure of 5,000 will be grossly inadequate.
Secondly, the number of 20,000 appears to have been plucked out of the air. The Government have given a commitment in respect of Hong Kong Chinese residents who are affected by persecution in Hong Kong, which amounts to many hundreds of thousands who would have the right to come to this country. Why has a similar commitment not been given in respect of Afghanistan? Will the Government keep an open mind about increasing that 20,000 figure if, as is likely, the number applying with very good reason for refugee status increases?
Thirdly, much mention has been made of staff working directly for British forces and the British embassy in Afghanistan, but there is also a big issue in respect of staff working for NGOs. Will refugee status and priority be given to staff working for NGOs? In an email I received this morning, the leader of an NGO set out the issue in stark terms, saying that
“the UK employed thousands of Afghans to work on their projects in Afghanistan—mainly on improving people’s lives through strengthening government systems or delivering basic services. These people in many cases now have specific threats to their life. I’ve heard of members of our staff who have been hunted down by the Talibs and had to flee with their families to hide in basements, just because they were our office manager or trained people on tax procedures. Unfortunately, the UK, although it is relocating its embassy staff and translators, is providing no means to evacuate or relocate those staff who worked on their projects and are at risk of death or harm. This stands in stark contrast to the US, who are relocating even the cleaners of some US media organisations.”
My noble friend Lady Ramsay of Cartvale mentioned BBC staff, but I think this issue goes much more widely to include all staff employed by or helping UK-based NGOs. The House would appreciate a response to that issue when the Minister replies.
Baroness Fall (Con) [V]
My Lords, these are grave days that we are witnessing; the good intentions of 20 years lie in tatters. Those many British and Afghans who risked, and in some cases paid with, their lives to bring stability and hope to Afghanistan deserved so much better. I think that we can all agree that this is not the endgame any of us would have wished for. Let us be clear: few supported the continuation of the large deployment of troops we had a decade ago, but there is a very big difference between a draw-down and a chaotic exit such as this.
In recent years, with a small number troops, we were able to bring stability to the country, help train the Afghan army and police, and support aid operatives doing so much good on the ground. Then President Trump announced a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, with no discussion with his NATO allies and with no apparent concern that this undermined any success of the peace talks. It was clear to us on the foreign affairs Select Committee that it was impossible to deliver peace with no leverage and that such leverage should come from the ongoing presence of US and NATO troops. Like many others, I have wholeheartedly welcomed President Biden’s return to a more multilateral approach, which made all the more disappointing his decision to press ahead with a complete American withdrawal. This was never a peace plan; it was an exit plan, and a disastrous one at that.
First, the speed and efficiency of the Taliban campaign has obviously surprised everyone. This speaks either to a failure of intelligence or a failure of leadership. Secondly, it seems extremely disappointing that we were not able to exert more influence on our closest ally to prevent this course of events. Let us not kid ourselves: the damage to the US’s global reputation and that of its allies—in other words, us—is immense. The heartbreaking images of us walking away from the people and their families who supported our coalition over 20 years and put their trust in us is a matter of grave shame which will linger. Our neglect is the gain of others whom we do not call our allies, such as China, Iran and Russia. And for what? Twenty years on, we have simply delivered the very thing we were trying to avoid: a Taliban-run Afghanistan; a country which is likely to harbour terrorist groups and store up security issues for the foreseeable future—the very reason why we went in in the first place.
Of the many people we have let down, the potential and terrible impact on the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan weighs heavily. Afghanistan was already one of the most aid-dependent countries in the world and we are now looking at a potential humanitarian disaster.
While so much harm has been done, there is still time to try to do some right. First, we must do all we can to secure safe departure for the many Afghans who served alongside us, and I welcome news of the government settlement. Secondly, we must do what we can to avoid a full-blown humanitarian crisis—news of an aid package is welcome. Finally, we must exert as much international pressure as we can to stop Afghanistan reverting to the dark days. No one wanted a for-ever war, but we have now sown the seeds for a long-term security and humanitarian crisis, and we must do all we can to stand by the people who put their trust in us.
Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]
My Lords, the decision to intervene militarily in Afghanistan, just after 11 September 2001, was the first and only time NATO applied Article 5. It was a unanimous decision—an attack on one member is an attack on all. The mission was accomplished almost immediately. It took another decade to find Osama bin Laden and now, another decade later, we have left.
A point made by other noble Lords was on the difference we made with a relatively small number of people in Afghanistan, changing, training the army and making a huge difference, with no terrorist attack on western soil emanating from Afghanistan in these two decades. This was with less than 20,000 personnel, including from the USA and the UK. In Germany, the USA alone has more than double that number and they have been there for over 75 years, as they have in Japan. They have been in South Korea for decades.
We can never thank our troops enough for their service and sacrifice—our brave, amazing, best-of-the-best troops. The sad ultimate sacrifice was made by the 457 who died, those who have been injured and their families. But their sacrifice was not in vain; they made a huge difference to a country, giving hope to a country of young people. Some 64% of the population of Afghanistan is under the age of 25. The hopes and dreams of these young people is Afghanistan’s future, and we must do all we can to help them. We cannot thank enough the thousands of UK-employed civilians and their families. We have a moral duty to resettle them here immediately. There are no limits of 5,000 a year—whatever it takes, we must do it now.
Britain has to show global leadership on the global stage. With the presidency of the G7 and the G20 coming up, and NATO, we have hard and soft power in abundance. We have cut our development aid by 75% and now need to increase aid to Afghanistan dramatically. Do the Government agree?
Just this week, along with my co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Students, I wrote to the Prime Minister saying we must do everything possible to support Afghani students—35 Chevening scholars and others—to get their visas so they can travel to the UK. In Birmingham University alone, where I am chancellor, we have 27 potential Afghani students for this coming academic year. Can the Government reassure us on this?
We have heard that the BBC has 100 people on the ground and that it is a trusted service there; 60% of the adult population of Afghanistan use the BBC as a source. We have heard that the development has been amazing: in 2003, less than 10% of girls were in primary schools; now, it is 33%. In secondary schools, it has gone from 6% to 39%. There are 3.5 million girls at school and 100,000 at university, and 20% of the work- force is women. Yet Afghanistan is on the brink of returning to a narco-state, with almost 40% of the Taliban’s revenue coming from opium.
India is one of the top trading partners of Afghanistan. Has the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, had a meeting with the Indian Foreign Minister Dr Jaishankar? The UK and India need to partner together. India has invested hugely in development projects in Afghanistan, such as on power, water supply, road connectivity, healthcare, education, agriculture and capacity building.
I can find no better way to conclude than by quoting Ambassador TS Tirumurti, the Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations. On 16 August, he said:
“Afghanistan has already seen enough bloodshed in the past. It is time for the international community to come together unitedly, rising above any partisan interests, to support the people of Afghanistan in their desire for peace, stability and security in the country and to enable all Afghans, including women, children and minorities, to live in peace and dignity.”
Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]
My Lords, I will focus on the humanitarian situation. I declare an interest as an honorary fellow and former board member of UNICEF UK, to which my allowance for today will be donated. I know that many of my colleagues will be making similar donations.
The ordinary Afghan people, particularly children and their mothers and carers, are defenceless. They have no choice about their future; they just want peace and security. Currently, about half the population— 18 million people—needs humanitarian aid. Only the NGOs are there to help them. In addition to UNICEF, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee and many others need donations, because our Government have drastically cut international aid to Afghanistan over the past year. The UK slashed its international aid commitment from $78 million last year to only $18 million so far this year. The Foreign Secretary’s statement yesterday that UK aid to Afghanistan will be increased by 10% left me aghast. That 10% of a very reduced amount is pathetically little and the Government should be ashamed of themselves. My first question to the Minister is: will the Government immediately restore their cuts to the international aid budget and ensure that an increased amount goes to Afghanistan and the region, through reliable NGOs and working together with other western donors?
Although the top priority must be to rescue those whose lives are in imminent mortal danger, there are 350,000 internally displaced people on the move in the country—women and children, fleeing to Kabul from the violence in their villages, sitting on the street or in bus stations, with no food, water, protection or medical help. With the breakdown of the Government, only the NGOs can help them. The majority of NGO staff are Afghanis, but they need supplies and organisational expertise from abroad. Many of them know their lives are in danger, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, just mentioned. The next priority should be to help the thousands of vulnerable people who cannot travel abroad and thus remain on the street. Therefore, my second question to the Minister is: what are the Government’s plans to provide practical help to the NGOs? Are they engaging in the Doha talks and will they press the Taliban to ensure the safety of NGO staff at all levels, as they go about their brave work?
Finally, 30,000 people are fleeing the country every week, many to Commonwealth countries, such as Pakistan and India, before the borders were closed. My last question is: what discussions did the Prime Minister have with the Prime Minister of Pakistan yesterday, regarding our and Pakistan’s commitments to Afghan refugees?
Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]
My Lords, this is a moment of defeat, possibly of great disaster. It follows the unlearned lessons of Suez, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Syria. This was not only foreseeable; it was foreseen. There were voices aplenty—generals, politicians and almost every serious historian—who said we could not win in Afghanistan, and they were right. No foreign power ever arrived in Afghanistan and left behind anything but bleached bones. We have lost lives on a colossal scale—our own and our allies, but many more Afghans, those we were supposed to be saving. Our reputation has been dragged through the dried-up riverbeds of Helmand. Our enemies rejoice and, today, our friends—great democracies in the Baltic, Asia and elsewhere—have woken up in a more dangerous world.
What do we do? Do we turn our backs on intervention and refuse to help those who are oppressed? Of course we do not, but there are limits to such a policy. We cannot win every war, everywhere. Do we send in the bombers and leave behind nothing but mountains of dust? There is no victory in that. Do we simply follow, mute and blind, behind our American allies? That has not worked very well in recent years either. It is time for us to be more grown-up about that relationship with America and NATO, remembering the lessons of the Cold War. It is not just force of arms that overcomes great challenges, but the still-greater power of persistent persuasion, overwhelming by example and showing off the best of western values, not just the sharp end of our missile systems.
Above all, we need once more to find belief in ourselves—to stop talking our values down and to redefine, re-engage with and re-energise them. Then, perhaps, once again, we can send them around the world to speak for us and regain the trust that we have lost—but that will take time. I applaud Ben Wallace for his honesty in acknowledging that we will not get everyone back. His tears spoke more powerfully than the self-serving, self-deceiving—even cowardly—White House communiqués.
We have suffered a bitter defeat. The only response must be to move forward, determined but without arrogance, having learned, I hope, many painful lessons. But if we fail to learn the lessons, there will be worse to come.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB) [V]
On the geopolitics, I echo the comments of my former colleagues, the noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Ricketts, but I will use my time to point to a lacuna in the Lord Privy Seal’s five-strand speech.
I have in mind the plight of the 3,117 Afghan asylum seekers who are already here, trapped in the 70,000-long queue of those seeking asylum, not allowed to work and with no recourse to public funds, other than the miserable £5 daily subsistence allowance. It is plainly wrong that, as recently as last week, some of them were receiving rejection letters based on the current Home Office guidance, which states that
“the proportion of the population affected by indiscriminate violence is small and not at a level where a returnee, even one with no family or other network and who has no experience living in Kabul, would face a serious … threat to their life or person”.
That is shaming. That was last week. Surely it was obvious by then that anyone who had fled Afghanistan, perhaps particularly those who had come here, would be at serious risk if sent back. We must not send them back.
Is it not obvious that, where someone has been refused asylum and is in the long, slow appeals process, the initial claim must now be reassessed, in the light of the changed situation, to see whether asylum can now be granted and the stress and expense of the court procedure avoided? I would be grateful if the Minister replying to the debate assured us that all current Afghan asylum cases will now be so reassessed—better late than never. Let us do the decent thing.
I hope that he will also respond to the leader of the Opposition’s call to drop the plan in the Nationality and Borders Bill to criminalise those fleeing from the Taliban who arrive in small boats. I hope that he will also respond to the Liberal Democrat leader’s appeal to extend the scope of the ARAP programme to anyone, employee or contractor, who worked for or helped any UK agency, military or civilian—be it the BBC World Service, the British Council, the embassy or NGOs. The Taliban will not discriminate by the British funder and neither must we. The scheme must be extended to those who have fled Afghanistan but would have been eligible for it had they felt able to stay. I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that score as well. We may be facing defeat, but we can still avoid dishonour.
Baroness Pidding (Con) [V]
My Lords, when western forces arrived in Afghanistan in 2001, the country’s population was 20 million. It now stands at 38 million, the majority of whom are under 18. While imperfect, American, British and allies’ engagement in Afghanistan has fostered a generation of Afghans, particularly women, who have had access to education and routes for empowerment. While we have kept the wolves from the door, we can be proud of what we have achieved. We can be proud of our Armed Forces, who gave so much, with so many giving the ultimate sacrifice: their life. I wish to pay tribute to a member of my own family, Sam, who, like countless others, sustained serious life-changing injuries while serving in our Armed Forces, fighting for the freedom of the people of Afghanistan.
Progress made in Afghanistan is now at grave risk. While much of the focus in the western media has been on the need to evacuate diplomatic personnel and those brave Afghans who have worked alongside our troops for the past two decades, another debate needs to be had. The question is: what will become of the countless thousands—in the fullness of time, perhaps millions—of refugees who have already begun pouring out of Afghanistan into neighbouring states? The international community abundantly failed to plan for the eventuality that, upon US troop withdrawal, the Taliban would make such rapid progress in seizing control of the country.
There can be no excuse now for the international community, particularly the US, the UK and the EU, not to work closely with aid bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross to formulate an urgent plan to assist these refugees. The biting cold of the Afghan and central Asian autumn and winter months is only weeks away. We must face the reality that many Afghans will not be able to flee: they will be stuck in a metaphorical prison of the Taliban’s creation.
To this end, we must look at what the UK Government and the FCDO are able to do, within the bounds of possibility, to continue to fund projects focused on education and sanitation in the country. Of paramount importance will be ensuring that young Afghans continue to have a path to participate in the Chevening Fellowship scheme. The tragedy of this conflict is not the loss of face that it has brought for western government, although that will be sincerely felt; it is the loss of homes, livelihoods and dreams among ordinary Afghans, most notably women and girls. We cannot and must not fail them.
Baroness Amos (Lab)
My Lords, it is eight years since I visited Afghanistan, and the appalling scenes from Kabul, the heart-breaking testimony of women and girls, the despair of aid workers and the questioning of the value of our interaction and presence by so many of our Armed Forces brought back to me forcefully the anger and frustration of dealing with conflict situations, particularly where the rhetoric of the international community does not match the reality.
Previous speakers have spoken eloquently of the scale of the global diplomatic failure, the long-term security consequences, the urgency of the humanitarian catastrophe facing the country, the need to support the Afghan people—particularly women and girls—and the importance of focusing on what we do now and next. From my experience, I know that the Afghan people will feel abandoned. They will not know where to turn, as they await reprisals for the glimmer of hope they allowed themselves to feel that their country was opening up and that the gains that had been made were being consolidated—gains that were made on the back of the courage and bravery of millions of Afghans.
Many of the things that struck me about Afghanistan all those years ago are still relevant today. The first is the complexity of the country—its urban and rural regional differences. Some areas outside Kabul were actually peaceful. The complexity is reflected in its history and the different interests of the UN Security Council members and neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan.
One of the major failings of Britain and the international community seems to be our ongoing lack of understanding of culture and context. In 2018, the ODI produced a report called Life under the Taliban Shadow Government, which concluded:
“The Taliban set the rules in vast swathes of Afghanistan, controlling education, access to information, healthcare, economic activity”
and so on, which impact the lives of millions of Afghans. Had we done our homework, we would not have been surprised at the speed of their recent success. It underlines that we use the language of global Britain to mask a failure of comprehensive policy analysis to inform strategic decision-making. I ask the Minister: when the Prime Minister speaks to other G7 leaders and engages with the Security Council, what will change in our approach?
Secondly, in terms of the need for dialogue, the Taliban are not a monolithic organisation. We saw the way that local staff working for civil society organisations, for example, negotiated locally for access and service provision. We need to create the possibility that the extreme voices do not flourish. Track two diplomacy is a real thing, used in every conflict; it is a nonsense to pretend otherwise. Can the Minister say what plans we have in that regard? Can he also say whether we will support a resolution to protect women and girls—indeed, whether we will initiate such a resolution—at the Security Council? How do we intend to support UN and other agencies working in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries as they respond to the unfolding crisis? Will the Government rethink their decisions on the aid budget?
I have watched every time that we have let people down. I ran out of things to say; I ran out of excuses to make. Let us not do it again.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Amos.
In a fully functioning democracy, we would have expected the Government to inform us about the constantly changing situation in Afghanistan; until today, it has not been possible. The Foreign Secretary has almost remained muted for a long time, and it is our high-calibre journalists and newspapers that have been at the forefront of updating us about what precisely is going on in a country where we have substantially invested in promoting democracy and democratic values and human rights.
In the past, I have avoided the temptation to contribute in debates with a large number of speakers. This time, I have a special reason to make my contribution: I was privileged as a delegate to visit Camp Bastion, the British base, in the company of a number of other parliamentarians. We were privileged to fly in an aircraft that was adapted to bring our wounded soldiers back to the UK.
We talk about over 450 British lives lost; we will have to add to this the large number of casualties we have now lost in civilian lives. What a heavy price we have paid. I was once told by a prominent Army general that you never get involved in a conflict unless you have a clear exit strategy. In Afghanistan, we seem to have lost this particular point.
However, let us thank our Armed Forces for the remarkable humanitarian work that they undertook. Despite fierce resistance from the Taliban, the British Army delivered a turbine for a large-scale power scheme at Kajaki dam, which generates enough power to feed 1.5 million people. Our medical and surgical facilities at Camp Bastion ensured that even enemies were not denied help.
I have also had the privilege to meet a number of Afghani delegates at inter-parliamentary conferences abroad. One point that they often raised was about Britain’s idea about promoting democracy in a predominantly tribal society. It is time that we think about how our work can be advanced and how democratic values should be promoted where religion and tribal rules and loyalty play an important part. After 20 years, we seem not to have much of an idea on this particular point.
There is no dispute that those who wish to leave Afghanistan should be assisted, but what lessons have we learned, given that, with a trained Afghani army of over 300,000, the Taliban was successful in taking over Kabul without any resistance? The present crisis points to failures at various levels. Did we ever work out the policy implication of the Taliban takeover? How effective was our intelligence service? The capacity-building work will now be negated. What is likely to replace this under the new regime? The allegations of corruption were rife against the previous Administration. The extent of opium production has remained high all these years. There is still no news about the involvement of al-Qaeda and ISIS in the present events.
My final point is about the Afghani people wishing to leave their homeland. I once had an interesting meeting with Lord Carr of Hadley, who dealt with this type of crisis as Home Secretary. He told me that it took less than five minutes for the Cabinet to take a decision that admitted 29,000 Ugandan Asians to this country. We should look at the initiative that the Government took at that time, which is today proved by the remarkable contribution of this community in Britain. The same can happen with refugees from Afghanistan.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I call the noble Lord, Lord Flight. Lord Flight? I think we will come back to the noble Lord. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, as events in Afghanistan unfolded on our TV screens, my immediate thoughts were with the plight and circumstances of the ordinary Afghani population—particularly those to whom the UK owes a direct duty of care—and the ongoing and worsening humanitarian situation.
Obviously, in addition to our immediate humanitarian concerns, this crisis also calls into question, fundamentally, the future role of the international community and leaders in the UK and US. It is, therefore, nothing short of incredible that, if the end of the conflict was so predictable to the US and UK, with a probable dénouement at Kabul international airport, the western allies have allowed this predictable outcome to descend into the chaotic, embarrassing and shameful ending it has become. Despite all the military analysts, planners and strategists, there appears to have been no real preparation or planning—but then that might have interfered with some people’s holidays.
We can return to the abject failure of the West and the profound foreign policy implications for the UK at a later date, but the real question now is: what do the UK Government and their allies do? What do we all do? The answer must be for us to really step up and grip the humanitarian crisis through direct involvement that is determined and compassionate.
That means, first, helping everyone who wishes to leave Afghanistan, as many noble Lords have said, and providing generously for their relocation, even working with the Taliban or through interlocutors. The UK must take a proportionate share of refugees—I note the plan announced last night—and those displaced, and provide a new start for them. London must work closely with the devolved Administrations in this regard.
Secondly, we must be prepared to give strong financial and other support to the international agencies and NGOs still operating within Afghanistan. We must shoulder our fair share of the effort of the international community.
Thirdly, we should be preparing now to assist with food aid and other help in the event of the expected famine.
Finally, along with other states, we must halt deportations of failed asylum seekers from Afghanistan and ensure broader access to asylum procedures. And, as the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, has already said, we must have a realistic overseas aid budget, which is currently too low and needs to be increased.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]
I agree with all those today who feel sorry for the plight of the Afghan people, and for the service men and women who died or had their lives badly damaged by service in that country. The American decision to withdraw military support was a dreadful one and the resulting chaos should be of no surprise. But, rather than criticise American decisions or show anguish for Afghanistan’s future, I want to use my time to reflect on our own national outlook—our ambition in overseas military involvement, particularly in the context of the recent integrated review, which described an international security situation in which we were already engaged in a battle for ideas, truth and human values.
Some in this House will know enough of military theory to recall Clausewitz’s famous trinity: a trinity of society, government and the Armed Forces which, if any great national endeavour is to be successful, needs to be in harmony. A bond of mutual trust and support has to exist between the elements of the trinity, or the nation will lack the integrity and resolve to see an endeavour through. My own close involvement in the two most recent national campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, has led me to believe that the United Kingdom never remotely enjoyed the beneficial advantage of a trinity in harmony.
Indeed, neither of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan ever enjoyed the unreserved support of a British society that doubted their strategic wisdom. They quickly became unpopular wars, and society’s emotional relationship with its Armed Forces became one of sympathy rather than support. Secondly, once the British Government of the day had sensed society’s prevailing view, damage limitation rather than national resolve became the principal ingredient of strategy. Within Whitehall, troop reductions and military extraction became the true metrics of success. Thirdly, as I closely observed, there existed an unhealthy level of mutual suspicion between military advice, often in pursuit of greater resources, and political judgment demanding the exact opposite.
I fear that the Government’s recent integrated review gave little thought to the state of the Clausewitzian trinity in the UK. I therefore worry that, although we retain an aspiration to be a global Britain, we currently lack the national preconditions to support such an ambition. Our military budget remains primarily invested in the totemic platforms of a bygone age. We cannot afford the aid budget which underpinned much of our global moral standing; our diplomacy seems focused on losing friends, not making them; and our societal instincts are tending to the view that charity begins at home.
I say all this while continuing to believe that the United Kingdom is a wonderful country, a great place to live, a model of tolerance, the envy of many and with the latent qualities to achieve great things when the conditions are right. But the situation unfolding in Afghanistan should teach us the sobering lesson that only when we can combine national integrity, good friends, adequate resources and resolute intent will we be able to succeed in any endeavour that demands prolonged commitment and sacrifice. The one that now confronts us—a global struggle for ideas, values and human decency—must be seen in that light. If we do not, we really are in trouble.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I call again the noble Lord, Lord Flight. No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper.
Baroness Hooper (Con)
My Lords, amidst the tragedy and grief, and sheer fear and panic, that we have seen unfolding in Afghanistan over the last week, let us not forget that there are nevertheless other parts of the world where human tragedy and urgent needs prevail. I speak of Haiti as one such example.
It was my intention in speaking today to focus on the plight of students—young people at the start of their lives, many of them women, and all of whom have been through a rigorous selection procedure to get into universities and colleges in this country. For them to be told that their visas and other documentation had not been completed, so that they could not leave earlier than planned, must have been a shock. I was therefore relieved to hear from my noble friend the Leader that efforts are being made to complete the task, especially for Chevening scholars. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, also emphasised this issue. It cannot be beyond the wit of man to speed up the visa process in such an emergency. The future of Afghanistan, especially if things do not go quite as badly as we anticipate, will require well trained and educated people who have been exposed to international thinking and freedoms to be future leaders. Chevening scholars have certainly proved themselves capable of that in the past.
I will touch on two other special cases. We can only begin to imagine the plight of the BBC staff, for example, who have been providing a vital source of trusted news for the last 20 years, working in three languages. They should certainly be given priority if they find themselves in danger and need to get out quickly. Finally, another small but important UK-inspired organisation under threat is Nowzad, an animal charity that has worked over the years to rescue dogs and cats. It has now 74 members of staff, including Afghan women, some of whom have retrained to become vets. It has started up Operation Ark in an effort to save the staff, plus 140 dogs and 40 cats. I hope that someone will take pity on them.
I have never visited Afghanistan personally, but so many speaking in this debate have considerable expertise and knowledge, so I believe it has been very valuable. I hope and trust that the Government will listen.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, in three minutes I will give three reflections. First, on the lessons of history, the noble Lord, Lord King, reminded us of the unwinnable wars of the 1840s and 1880s in Afghanistan when, in spite of the pledges of safe conduct, our people were massacred in the Khyber Pass. This led to the saying, “You cannot buy an Afghan, only rent one”—which may also help to explain the rapid collapse of the ANA and the unheroic handing over of towns without a fight. But of course we also recall the Soviet intervention in the 1980s, which President Gorbachev called the “bleeding wound”.
What is the Government’s best analysis of the reasons for the rapid defeat? What are the geopolitical consequences of that defeat? President Biden, alas, will be diminished, certainly abroad. Do the Government see any danger of the US retreating into a new isolationism, abandoning the aspirations of nation building, spreading democracy and human rights, and a corresponding loss of trust in the US? Some will repeat the wisdom of the old saying “Do not enter the box unless your exit is clear”.
For the UK, one lesson in reality is in the limits of a post-Brexit independent foreign policy. In spite of our military expenditure and expertise, when the US leaves, we leave. Our adversaries will be emboldened; the jihadists worldwide will celebrate; and there is a loss of trust in our pledged word and our ability to stay the course. Other lessons include that if we allow the pendulum of intervention—after the high point of the Chicago speech and the duty to protect—to swing too far in the opposite direction, it will be to our disadvantage.
How do we respond to the reality of the Taliban? It depends, of course, ultimately on their conduct. Are they latter-day Bourbons or do we believe their PR people, which would be extremely naive? How united in fact are the Taliban and what is the best analysis we have of that? Yes, of course, bring out our citizens and those who depend on us—but we should be extremely generous, particularly in respect of women and girls. We have reduced our aid; who will lose out as a result of the doubling of that aid? Will our aid agencies, the NGOs, be allowed by the Taliban to operate freely?
We should build bridges where we can and where there is an overlap of interest, at least partially, with countries such as China and Russia. But we need to work particularly closely with Pakistan, which will assume a new importance in its regional role. In short, we should look long and learn the lessons of history, and we should remain very true to our own values.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
Last call for the noble Lord, Lord Flight.
Lord Flight (Con) [V]
My Lords, the speed of the Taliban’s success and the failure to act by Afghanistan’s 300,000 soldiers look to be largely the result of Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban to withdraw US troops by May this year and what was potentially an unspoken deal. President Biden declared in turn that he had zero responsibility to Afghanistan, insisting that his obligation was solely to protect America’s national self-interest.
Little could have been more damaging than this and what has been allowed to happen. Let us hope that the Taliban leaders act in accordance with the fairness which they are prone to simply talking about. Clearly, the danger is that other delicate political situations around the world could become destabilised, and where the West’s threatened intervention, if necessary, might not be believed. In particular danger is Taiwan, where China might no longer believe that the US’s commitment would be honoured if China invaded Taiwan. The worst affected in Afghanistan will be women, sometimes forced to marry, forbidden education and forced to stay at home. This is tragic, in that a degree of emancipation of women was one of the few successes of the previous regime.
The failure of the Kabul Government has reflected poor leadership by both government and military officers. The White House handling of the US withdrawal has been described as completely immoral. The US does not care what happens to the many local individuals who have been working with the West. The West faces the risk of the Taliban state becoming again a base for terrorist activity and involvement around the world.
The UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is reported as having said that President Biden’s withdrawal was a mistake, yet the inability of the UK to do anything about it only underscores what US critics of the project have always said: it is Pax Americana, largely paid for by American taxpayers.
The EU’s reaction was farcical when it issued a warning that if the Taliban took Kabul, which it has done, and established an Islamic regime, it would face isolation—as if the Taliban cares. US action has been irresponsible in thus pulling the rug, an action substantially caused by Trump sending a signal effectively inviting the Taliban to walk in. It also sends a dangerous signal for other parts of the world relying on US protection. Russia and China now know or perceive that, in the face of problems, US policy will likely be to cut and run. It looks extraordinary that an Afghan army of allegedly 300,000 should have thus been so ineffective and fallen apart, with many joining the Taliban. Why, after 20 years of successful western support, could the Afghan state still not protect its people? I trust that the West will help all those Afghans who have worked with the West by getting them out in time and providing them with somewhere to live.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD) [V]
My Lords, my experience over many years has been in dealing with the human cost of wars: in supporting and helping refugees, those who have fled conflict and oppression, particularly girls and women. Refugees are not migrants; they are not illegal people, and it is time that we stopped seeing the demonisation of these human beings. Three million Afghan people who have already paid such a high price for many decades have now been displaced. It is reported that 80% are women. These past few weeks I have been desperately trying to help to get Afghan individuals whom I know very well out of Afghanistan. These are people who, for many years, worked with the British and our allies, believed in us and our values and trusted us, and are now targeted. They applied and were quickly, and in my view callously, rejected for the existing resettlement scheme. They are now in danger and in hiding, and I feel ashamed.
I want to raise a few practical points. The chaos we are seeing at Kabul airport continues, along with the suspension of commercial flights. For those like my friends who have passports and those with documentation, there is no point if Kabul airport remains inaccessible to them. Just today, there have been reports of shooting just outside and people injured. There is no coherent system for processing people and thousands cannot leave. Can the Minister assure us that more will be done in the coming days to increase the issue of visas and that charter flights will be used to airlift vulnerable Afghans? There are Taliban checkpoints surrounding the airport, and I received a message earlier that the Taliban now has a checkpoint at the entrance, physically preventing people from leaving. Will the Minister tell us who will take charge of airport security if the Americans conclude their evacuation mission on 31 August? What, if any, discussions are taking place? Will the Taliban take over control there?
Turning to the new, bespoke scheme, how can Afghans such as my friends apply for that scheme if we do not have an embassy in the country? If they are expected to make their way to the UK, that would surely exclude those without financial means and would almost certainly exclude women and children and vulnerable people from leaving. More than 7,000 Afghans alone work for the British, and if we include their families, that would be more than 20,000, so 5,000—the reported figure that we have heard—is completely inadequate. It is a failure of moral responsibility before we even start.
Finally, the Taliban leadership said that they would honour women’s rights within the limits of Islamic law. Nowhere in Islam and our cultural practices is there the promotion of the violation and oppression of women and girls that we have been seeing. There is no such thing as limitations: we read that as their own version of Islamic laws. I am therefore extremely sceptical that they will respect women’s rights, and we have already seen evidence of brutal treatment. To the Government I say this: cutting international aid just weeks ago for projects that educated 6,000 Afghan girls does not send a signal that we actually care. We must now step up, show leadership and support the Afghan people.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, sometimes in politics there are no good options. You have to choose between bad alternatives: you can do X and ugly things will happen or you can not do X and ugly things will still happen. Whichever one you have chosen, the media and a chunk of the public will point to those ugly things as clear evidence that you should have picked the other course, either because they do not understand the concept of lesser evils or because they affect not to.
The reality is that ever since the terrorist abominations of September 2001, we have been in a world of lesser evils. Every course of action open to the West will have carried costs. Going into Iraq and Afghanistan carried visible costs, dissipating blood and treasure and causing civilian deaths. I was and remain an opponent of the Iraq war: I continue to believe that the costs we incurred were higher than the costs that we would have incurred through non-intervention.
I am not going to pretend, however, that the costs of non-intervention would have been zero. There is always a balance to be identified, and to that extent I have some sympathy with at least the part of President Biden’s argument where he said, “Look, given the way in which the authorities collapsed, it is clear that our only alternative to Taliban rule would have been an open-ended occupation.” That is not a knock-down argument. As other noble Lords have said, the US has had a fairly open-ended commitment to South Korea since 1957.
All I am saying is that we should accept that every decision in Afghanistan was a choice among bad options. Going in was a choice among bad options. Prolonging the mission after the degradation of the al-Qaeda bases was a choice among bad options. Extending the mission to cover nation building, female emancipation and education was a choice among bad options. Leaving was a choice among bad options. None the less, I consider it to have been the worst choice. It would have been one thing to have gone in, attacked al-Qaeda and pulled out, but once we were committed, once we had made a statement of intent, our honour was on the line.
Let me quote, rather unwontedly, that sly and calculating former President, Richard Nixon. This is what he said in 1970, justifying what we would now call a surge, seen as a prelude to withdrawal from Vietnam:
“If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”
Who can doubt that he was right? How do the decision and the events of last week look from Beijing or Moscow, the two great illiberal powers having just conducted a massive set of joint exercises in north-western China? How does this look from Taiwan or even Pakistan? If you are an up-and-coming young officer cadet, do you want to train in the US or in China? Might you start thinking of learning Mandarin? Has it not emboldened every tinpot tyrant from Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, partly because they are no longer in awe of the English-speaking powers?
We have become very blasé about the world through which we have lived. We can be anti-colonialist and dismissive in an attitude bred from decades of peace and security. But as that world reaches its close, we may soon have the opportunity to regret what has passed.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, reference has been made in the debate to the International Relations and Defence Committee report on Afghanistan published in January. Negligently, its prescient recommendations and conclusions have never been debated. That report excoriated the Government for showing
“little inclination … to exert an independent voice”
and criticised the US for “undermining NATO unity.” It warned that troop withdrawal
“runs contrary to the UK’s objective of securing a durable negotiated settlement”
and had
“the potential to further destabilise the security situation”.
in Afghanistan. So let no one suggest that no one foresaw or predicted the consequences.
As we look to the future, we now need belatedly to seek an urgent strengthening of a co-ordinated and coherent NATO approach. This must surely include a united response rejecting the international recognition of the legitimacy which the Taliban craves that is likely to be given by China, Russia and Pakistan. Such recognition should never be given while female university students, women journalists and 250 women judges—and minorities such as the Hazaras and the Christians, as well as countless others—go in fear of their lives.
As Afghanistan now becomes a global terrorist academy, and the Taliban give sanctuary, training and funding to terror groups, we must steadfastly ignore their public relations insistence that they are not labelled as terrorists. The Select Committee pointed to Taliban links to al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network and called for an urgent review of the Home Office failure, not replicated in other Five Eyes countries, to include Islamic State Khorasan Province on its list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former distinguished ambassador to the United States, who gave evidence to the Select Committee, said this week:
“But what is happening in Kabul will not stay in Kabul. Radical Islamists, armed with the powerful narrative of driving out two superpowers through jihad, will challenge the American-led order across much of the Muslim world”.
As we have heard in the debate, notably from the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, but also from my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup, we should note the recent pact made between the Taliban and the Chinese Communist Party, which undoubtedly now threatens Taiwan.
Some 60% of Afghanistan’s economy is made up of aid. Will we follow Germany and make aid conditional on there being no revenge killings or imprisonment of political opponents, and on girls’ schools remaining open, and how will that aid be channelled through reputable NGOs to ensure that it is not embezzled by the Taliban? When will we sever the money supplied to the Taliban through its opium war, which provides 65% of its income and accounts for 95% of the heroin on British streets?
The Taliban often say, “You have the clocks, we have the time.” We still need to prove them wrong.
Baroness Verma (Con) [V]
My Lords, this has been a really frightening debate. I am even more worried now, simply because we are looking at aid being an answer and moving people out being an answer, yet we have a totally and utterly destabilised region. Where aid is concerned, I suspect that China will do more than enough to fill the Taliban’s coffers and therefore that the Taliban will not look to bring aid into the country from well-meaning countries such as ours.
I am really concerned about the minority communities in Afghanistan. I got an email just this morning about 270 Hindus and Sikhs who are taking sanctuary in a temple. How will they be able to leave the country? Who is going to help their passage towards the airport? Who is going to give them the visas to leave? The debate needs deep consideration, and I ask my noble friend the Minister what he is doing to work with countries in the region, such as India, which have the power and the strength to influence the partners around the region. We are not going to do this by ourselves.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra said so many important and poignant things. America has been fickle in its decisions. We cannot. We just cannot leave the fate of thousands—millions—of people in the hands of those around the region who are stepping up and stepping in because a vacuum has been created. We need to understand how we are going to help those who are trying to leave by getting them access and passage to the airport. As other noble Lords have said, the checkpoints are now manned and armed by the Taliban, so how are people to have faith that they will be able to leave their homes to try to make it to the airport or the border?
Finally, I ask my noble friend what he and the Government are doing, as discussions unfold, to ask: where has President Ghani gone? Where has he taken all the money that has been given to him to help his country? Where on earth have all these arms that are now in the hands of the Taliban come from? Who has supplied them? We need a real, honest debate about how we are going to support that country and the region.
Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, in this chaotic endgame in Afghanistan, we cannot simply clamour for something—anything—to be done; we must learn. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said, those torn between washing their hands of it all and wringing their hands help no one, least of all the Afghan people, in these perilous hours and days.
Today, every honour and gratitude must go to our service men and women, who put their lives and limbs on the line over the last 20 years to give the Afghan people a fighting chance of a decent future, and to those Afghans who have supported and worked alongside us as interpreters and in the NGOs and whose lives are now in terrible jeopardy.
A humanitarian disaster looms, as many have said, and the question so many of us are asking is: why? The speed with which the Taliban marched through that country and took that control was so miscalculated by the UK and our allies. Why was the Foreign Secretary on holiday in the last few days? Why did our intelligence collapse? How did we not realise that behind the cover of the Doha peace talks the Taliban were, month by month, doing deals and paying off local warlords and officials in order for the city gates to be left open when they came knocking this August?
What did Ben Wallace—and I respect what he has said in the last few days—mean when he said that, for those who do not get out immediately,
“we will have to do our best in third countries to process those people”?
Which third countries? How will we negotiate the conditions for that to happen? Is the NATO allies’ stance to negotiate with the Taliban locally while not recognising it nationally? The Taliban may have state-of-the-art mobile phones now and employ press officers, but they are still the same women-hating, drug-trading, murderous thugs they always were—who cut off the tips of women’s thumbs if they wore nail varnish and stoned them to death if they refused loyalty.
What plans are there for an ongoing Berlin-style airlift? The interpreters’ relocation and assistance programme finally being expanded is to be welcomed, but who will it cover and how long will it last? How are our refugee policies going to meet the needs of fleeing young Afghan men and women? Why, as many noble Lords have asked, is there a 20,000-person cap? Why have we been told about this only today? Does it cover those already in the UK? Was the “get the girls out” policy written overnight?
In the years after 9/11 I stood at that Dispatch Box and I honestly believed that our presence and investment would stem al-Qaeda terrorism and help lay the foundations of a new civil society in Afghanistan. Some might say I should have paid more attention to my history lessons. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that, given all the sacrifices in lives, aid and investment, the West cannot ultimately abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP) [V]
My Lords, the scenes from Kabul have filled me and many others with immense sadness, despair and anger—they would bring tears from a stone. I think today of the people who have served in Afghanistan and of the people who are suffering now. I salute our brave troops, as so many noble Lords have, those of our allies in the US and elsewhere, the Afghan interpreters and others who helped our forces. We think of the British personnel who sacrificed their lives and of how their families feel today, and of the immense loses among Afghan forces and civilians.
There is no point in glossing over the truth: our troops have not been defeated and their sacrifices are not in vain. But the US—the West, if you like—has, through a scandalously defective series of political and diplomatic decisions, allowed victory to turn into the ashes of defeat. As someone said, the hard yards have been done; to see 20 years of blood, sacrifice and billions of pounds end like this is heartbreaking. The veterans and their families will need help and support even more today than they did a week ago. I implore the Government to do everything they can, along with veterans’ charities, to reach out and give them that support.
The immediate priority is, of course, for the Government to do whatever it takes to get UK nationals and those who helped us and our allies out of Afghanistan. If, as the Government say, they saw this coming, can they explain why there is a desperate last-minute scramble to rescue people, which is mainly dependent on Taliban acquiescence? Is the reality not that there has been a catastrophic failure of intelligence, or perhaps more accurately, in relation to the United States, a failure of the Administration to listen? There needs to be an inquiry into all of this. President Biden’s speech the other day, blaming everyone and everything except his Administration’s precipitative pull-out, was truly awful.
We have a duty to Afghanistan and its people and we must be generous in allowing people from there to come here to settle if they are allowed to and they can. The word of the Taliban is worthless; we know their record on human rights. Their best allies are terrorist groups. What steps will the Government now take to stop Afghan territory being used as a base for terrorist training and a launch pad for terrorist attacks?
I fear that the US decision to pull out in the way that it has will have dire consequences. It sends a message to the terrorists and rogue states that the West can be defeated. It sends a message to our friends that, at the end of the day, they can be abandoned. It sends a message to those who want to live in freedom and with human rights guaranteed, especially the women and girls of Afghanistan, that we cannot be relied upon.
The lesson of Afghanistan must be that, if we are to intervene abroad, we must be prepared to stay the course, otherwise we need to be careful not to raise false hopes, embolden our enemies and destroy lives needlessly. The families of the 457 service men and women who died, the thousands injured and maimed, and the tens of thousands who served, must get the constant, enduring and effective support they need in the years ahead.
Lord Lilley (Con) [V]
My Lords, after hubris comes nemesis. Let us not dwell on the nemesis—the humiliation visited on America and her allies—but identify the hubris that led to it. It was right and inevitable that America, following the twin towers atrocity visited on that great country, should take punitive action against the perpetrators. That meant demanding that the state that had harboured al-Qaeda hand over its leaders, eradicate its bases and expel its supporters. Failing which, the US was perfectly entitled to enforce its demands from the air or with boots on the ground. But, as the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, said, that being done, it should have left. The hubris was to imagine that the US or NATO had the power or the right to transform the character and culture of a distant nation—something neither the British Empire at its zenith nor the Soviet Union with all its ruthlessness could achieve.
What is the moral of this tale? It is that morality depends on recognising reality. We have no obligation to attempt what we do not have the power to achieve. As Enoch Powell once put it, in the form of an equation, power equals force divided by distance multiplied by will. What we have the power to enforce in our own neighbourhood we may not have the power to attain where we cannot deploy force, or where any forces are tenuated by lengthy supply lines. Where we can exert force, we will have the will to exercise it effectively only if it is clearly in the interests—moral as well as material—of our own nation, as otherwise it will not be sustainable.
The hubristic belief that we can exercise military power we do not possess is matched by and often rooted in an illusion that we have a moral authority and moral obligations on a global scale. There is not a problem in the farthest corner of the globe that we do not demand Ministers take responsibility for; there is not an issue, from global warming to migration, biodiversity and global poverty, on which we do not imagine that the rest of the world is hanging on our actions to follow our example. How strange that, despite the loss of empire, liberal imperialism has flourished and grown—not least in this House and on the Opposition Benches.
I do not advocate that we retreat within our own carapace in these islands, and still less that we abandon genuine moral responsibilities, but we must recognise that our obligations extend no further than our power to fulfil them. We should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because we vainly imagine we are leading the world.
Lord Alderdice (LD) [V]
My Lords, I remind the House of my registered interests in war and conflict studies.
On 4 October 2001, less than a month after 9/11 and a few days before the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom, we debated what should be done. I intervene again today, like some other participants of 20 years ago, but miss my dear friend, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon. In a powerful speech then, Paddy focused on the history of Afghanistan. His family connection went back a century before his birth, in India, in 1941, to his great-grandfather, who had been in Kabul caught up in the first Afghan war, from which we withdrew in 1842, suffering one of the worst military disasters of the 19th century. Paddy reminded us that Afghanistan had rarely been at peace and advised of the perils of engagement. I said that day that the problem was not the absence of socioeconomic development but of a wholly different culture and beliefs, which we would not change for the better by military intervention.
The first rule of Afghanistan is that invaders do not win, and the second is that it will not be a liberal democracy in any foreseeable future. For 20 years now, bookended by the geopolitical catastrophes of 9/11 and August 2021, we have engaged in a war undertaken in 2001 to address our concerns. It was not undertaken primarily at the time to aid the Afghans, and what could have worked as a short, punitive strike was ultimately doomed when it tried regime and culture change.
Another colleague we miss today is Baroness Williams of Crosby. She rightly asked then about UN involvement, but that was blocked in early 2008, when the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, vetoed Paddy Ashdown’s appointment as UN envoy, despite his highly successful mandate in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Our response then should have been to engage in talks with the Taliban. That was the advice given later to the Foreign Office by my Northern Ireland colleagues, brought in by the British ambassador. It was dismissed by London. That is my second point: do not ignore the advice of those who have lived through terror-afflicted violence and come out the other side; we may understand the messy reality better than those whose optimistic wishes dominate their diplomatic assessment.
Thirdly, research has shown that it is not overwhelming military power and technical sophistication but the passionate spiritual commitment of devoted actors that wins wars, and this should inform every response to the demand that “Something must be done”. We do not have time for a long Chilcot-type inquiry, because these lessons are relevant to current involvements across the Muslim world, including, as I learned from some leading Palestinians earlier this week, in Israel-Palestine.
Does the Minister recognise that we ignore history at our peril; that we are unable to build liberal democracies from the outside; and that, ultimately, we are likely to end a conflict best by understanding the spiritual strength of our enemies and negotiating with them when the time is right? It is too late to do that when you have decided you are leaving.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lords, I say quickly that almost every speech has gone over time and we are now nearly half way through. Can we all please keep an eye on the time, because we do not want to eat into my noble friend’s speech, so he can answer all your questions fully? Thank you.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, it is my sincere hope that blood and treasure have not been squandered in vain in Afghanistan, but the global existential threat, the manner of foreign powers’ leaving and the immense and pervasive fear on the ground all amount to a desperately concerning and unstable situation. Yes, the Taliban are inviting women to join the Government and offering a general amnesty, but they could, of course, be dissembling to steady the national mood and to give a nod to assurances made to the Americans. What the Taliban high command say at a global news conference and what younger fighters, intoxicated by victory, do in communities are scarily different things.
We could not maintain a presence in Afghanistan indefinitely. Not only has nation-building proved to be a particularly elusive goal, but the US President made it clear that it was not one he shared. However, we have to ask ourselves why, as per the chair of the Defence Select Committee, the biggest military high-tech alliance we have ever created was defeated by an insurgency armed simply with AK-47s and landmines.
We have to recognise that it was also armed with a powerful, compelling ideology, however disagreeable many aspects of it are to us. The West has no similarly potent value system to muster in response. Our hyper-liberal individualism is, by definition, incapable of inspiring concerted action against a common foe when there is no unifying concept but the importance of “me”. The Second World War was the last time this country was united against forces of evil, standing alone and being ready to fight to the death for our values and freedoms. Then, the nation’s Judaeo-Christian ethical underpinning and trust in God were far less threadbare than today, to our detriment.
Freedom of speech is fast becoming a meaningless concept in many western societies. Universities and institutions dictate rigid orthodoxies and ensure that people who deviate are hounded out of employment and cast beyond the pale. Yet, ironically, much effort in Afghanistan was focused on laying down deep seams of freedom in the national culture and sowing seeds about the importance of equality of opportunity for men, women and minorities.
The Taliban believe in a God; Christians believe in a God who values every life; whereas the root of secularism is simply a belief in the infallible “me”. We despair of the chaos on the ground in Afghanistan, but the disintegration of our spiritual backbone blinds us to the chaos all around us, and to its inevitable end-point: the decay and decline of the West.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, as a long-standing campaigner for the Afghan interpreters and a former member of the MoD’s assurance committee for LECs, I appreciate the dedicated work of our teams on the ground, both civilian and military, over the past few years in trying to reach the most secure and fair outcomes for each case, first under the redundancy scheme and, lately, under ARAP, including relocating about 3,000 interpreters and families so far to the UK. The desperate need now for the UK to step up much further leads to several specific questions, which I hope the Minister can answer either today or urgently in writing.
First, how many interpreters and their families had already been granted permission to relocate to the UK before the Taliban took over but had not yet received their visas or had the chance to travel? What arrangements are in place to prioritise and expedite their relocation? What are the expectations and practical arrangements of the remaining embassy team for securing the safe passage of those families to Kabul and the airport, given that by no means all of them live in the capital?
Will all other former interpreters be guaranteed the chance of relocation—if necessary, by getting them immediately to a holding position in a safe third country while the security checks and immigration paperwork are processed, away from the direct threats inside Afghanistan? Will he also confirm that the Government will take equal responsibility for the interpreters whose employment we contracted out to a private company, and will he guarantee that no wives and children of relocated interpreters will be left behind?
Finally, will relocation also be offered to the 45 Afghan nationals who have been working for the British Council as school ambassadors, trainers and English resource centre managers? Are the MoD and the British Council working together to rescue those individuals? Given that the British Council was headquartered with our embassy in Kabul and is viewed as part of the British Government there, it would seem reasonable to assume that these 45 Afghans qualify for relocation and so should also benefit from safe passage, first to Kabul and then to a third country, while their paperwork is processed.
UK-based colleagues have already lost contacts with many of them and fear the worst. One who had already been cleared for relocation does not live in Kabul and is now trapped. He managed to send a message saying that he is in hiding in the ground under his house, in a deep and narrow hole without much oxygen. His mother throws down bottles of water when she can, and his wife is traumatised.
The US has expanded its relocation scheme to Afghans who have worked for US NGOs and similar bodies, as well as to their interpreters. Will the UK do likewise, and will we help not just those who have worked for us as interpreters, journalists or educators but also the guards, cleaners, cooks, drivers and others, who will be just as much a target in the eyes of the Taliban?
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, this is a bleak day for freedom and democracy across the world. The great democracies of Britain and the United States have walked away from defending Afghanistan and its people, a people who, with each passing day, were coming to value a life that only freedom and democracy can bestow on humanity. Leaving these defenceless people to the mercy of the Taliban is a shameful act. What an epitaph for those in our Armed Forces who, when the order came, deployed to Afghanistan and gave their lives. Try telling those loved ones they left behind that their sacrifice was not in vain.
Who will believe us now when we proclaim the value of a free and democratic society and tell the oppressed around the world that freedom, liberty and democracy are worth fighting for? The Russians and Chinese will once again say that the West cannot be trusted. President Putin will exploit it for all he is worth. As the commentator and writer Edward Lucas said of Putin, he is decisive, we are not; he is willing to break the rules, we are not; he is willing to use force, we are not. As for the Chinese, they want Afghanistan’s vast deposits of copper. I am sure that President Xi will not be put off by anything that the Taliban do.
By withdrawing US troops, not only has President Biden destroyed the hopes of people in a fledgling democracy but he has made the world less safe. If ever there was a country that knows how dangerous a less safe world can be, it is the United States. That is even more so now, as we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Here in Britain, we too know how a less safe world takes the lives of men and women on our streets, of children and young people at a Manchester concert and of a brave police officer guarding this Parliament. Britain fell into line behind President Biden. In doing so, our Government have increased the risk of terrorism globally. On Sunday, the Prime Minister said that the UN and NATO should work together to ensure that Afghanistan did not lapse back into terror, but our withdrawal has made it ever more certain that that will happen.
We helped the Afghan people taste freedom. We helped liberate women, who had been denied basic human rights. We helped children gain a future through education. Who now will protect Afghan women? Who now will ensure that children get an education? As a former Veterans Minister, I ask: who will keep safe those Afghans who helped our soldiers? Ask any veteran and you will be told of the vital intelligence support given to us by Afghans.
Britain and the United States have made a terrible mistake and there will be a price to pay. The legacy of our decision to leave Afghanistan in this way will leave the world less safe for our children. Harold Macmillan said:
“History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.”
Perhaps he was thinking of the Old Testament prophet who, 800 years before Christ, said that they who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. They are wise words, which leave me wondering when we will ever learn the lesson that they teach us.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con) [V]
My Lords, in a debate such as this with so many valuable and knowledgeable contributions, especially in this House, where noble Lords have relevant and deep experience, it is inevitable that whatever I say will either have been said before or be better expressed as the debate continues, so I am going to concentrate on two areas of concern.
First, it is right and proper that in these circumstances, as major players in Afghanistan in recent years, the UK should ensure that those who are now in danger, as defined by the UN Convention on Refugees, should be supported, including being safely provided with sanctuary. As the Minister responsible for our Bosnian refugee resettlement programme in the 1990s—a much smaller but important programme under UN auspices—I know how positively we can respond in such emergencies. Our NGOs, local authorities, educationalists and health and social services all went the extra mile then and I am sure that they will do so again now. The decisions as to who should get priority and sanctuary here should be based on need and categories must be determined. This should not simply be a matter of a numerical target. We must discuss with others, in the USA and Europe, how we can effect a successful programme. We have a proud record of accommodating oppressed people in the UK and we now have a chance to demonstrate it again.
My second point is made as a president of the West Yorkshire branch of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity that offers support to serving personnel, veterans and their families and has done so for many years. The positive effects of their participation in Afghanistan should not be underestimated. We lost more than 450 men and women service personnel, whose families continue to mourn. Others were seriously injured and disabled. Some of those injuries are not obvious to see, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorders. The courage and commitment of these men and women must not be forgotten. However, our support must be in a tangible form. The Armed Forces Bill must be reviewed to ensure that the Armed Forces covenant is extended so that it recognises wider needs than at present and places greater responsibilities on national, not just local, government.
There are those who have served their country and there are families of those who died who now feel that their courageous service in Afghanistan was in vain. Whatever the current situation may be, the positive contribution to protection from terrorism and drugs and the social changes, including the emancipation of women and children, which even the Taliban will have difficulty in reversing, was worthy and worth while. Those who served can all be very proud of what they did. Our forces are forces for good, supporting freedom and democracy, and I hope that they will continue to be so.
Baroness Sheehan (LD) [V]
My Lords, I listened with alarm to the words of the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, on the “Today” programme this morning, when he said that maybe the Taliban should be allowed a grace period to show that they have changed. I respectfully suggest that while he and I can watch at a safe distance to see how their promises will pan out, the Afghani people who helped us with our mission on the ground in myriad ways, particularly women who visibly led in the quest to normalise education for girls and to establish images of women in the workplace, including the Afghan Parliament, await their fate with terror, as do minorities, journalists, legal professionals and aid workers. Who will come to their rescue if the Taliban’s promises are cast aside? What is there in the Taliban’s recent history that says that the most vulnerable can trust them? Nothing. Can the Minister assure the House that we will not employ a wait-and-see approach but will act with the utmost urgency to bring to safety the vulnerable women, girls and men who placed their trust in us?
I welcome the news that the Government will give safe passage to 20,000 Afghani refugees, but how was the figure arrived at? Even with the inclusion of the Afghanistan relocation and assistance programme, it is inadequate and risks leaving stranded many of those who helped us in good faith. The completely arbitrary five-year period for resettlement adds insult to injury and will endanger the lives of many. The Government must get a grip and display a greater sense of willingness and decency to do the right thing or risk shredding even further their reputation abroad.
I ask the Minister when we will be in a position to say to those whom we are hoping to resettle where they must head to for safe haven. Will the UN administer the process, as it has done in the Syrian resettlement process? The establishment of a safe corridor in negotiation with the Taliban is an essential prerequisite. Is that happening?
I end with a word about accountability. The Minister will know, as a fellow Muslim, that there is no such sentence as stoning to death for adultery in Islam. No one should be in any doubt that, if such a sentence is established in the so-called Islamic emirate that the Taliban speak of, it will be an afront to Islam. I ask the Minister: in our dealings with the Taliban are we making it crystal clear that all humans rights atrocities are anti-Islamic and that barbaric punishment such as stoning to death will be documented and action taken against perpetrators? We must make the Taliban fully conversant with Magnitsky-style sanctions.
Lord Sheikh (Con) [V]
My Lords, we went to Afghanistan with the United States 20 years ago. I believe that we have achieved much in the country since then. We have built significant infrastructure and rebuilt the cities. The allies trained a military and police force of 300,000, but they capitulated rapidly and surrendered their arms. With the United States, we have spent a total of $2.3 trillion. This sum shows the extent of our involvement. We should not have left Afghanistan in a hurry and handed everything to the Taliban. I think that there has been a flaw in our intelligence.
Furthermore, 454 British troops gave their lives to secure peace, security and prosperity in Afghanistan. What did all these young men and women die for? In addition, a number of our servicemen have been injured.
Our soldiers were fighting to disrupt the narcotics trade, which accounts for a significant part of the Taliban’s revenue. However, Afghanistan remains a large producer of opium and the Taliban can now supply drugs more extensively than ever before. Furthermore, our withdrawal could encourage extremism and inspire acts of terror worldwide. I ask my noble friend the Minister: how will our Government tackle the problems of security and the drugs trade?
We need to ensure that girls’ education and the status of women will not be harmed under the Taliban regime. Islam does not forbid women going into business or pursuing education.
The refugees are indeed in a desperate state. I am pleased to note that we have agreed to take 20,000 refugees, but can my noble friend confirm that there will be a clear process in place for dealing with the applications?
We need a global approach and to work with international partners. There is an immediate need to provide humanitarian aid, and the Muslim charities I know are providing help. Furthermore, we must ensure that all Afghans who worked for the British Administration are allowed to come to the UK. I have been approached by relatives of people who worked for the British Administration and who need help to get to the United Kingdom. Can my noble friend the Minister give me the name of someone who I can contact to discuss specific cases?
Can the Minister comment on what sort of relationship we will have with the Taliban and whether all considerations will be taken into account? Geopolitical implications are of paramount importance, with China and Russia ready to act on our withdrawal. The West is at risk of losing all influence in Afghanistan and severely limiting its operational effectiveness abroad. This cannot be allowed to happen, and we need to be proactive.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB) [V]
My Lords, enough has been heard today about why and how things have gone so wrong after such sacrifice by us and Afghans, so I want to concentrate on the here and now. I welcome the government announcement of the Afghan resettlement scheme. In that context, I need to record my role as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The EHRC is an “A status” institution under the UN system of national certification and, along with partner human rights bodies, has supported the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, AIHRC.
AIHRC has been a brave and singular critical voice, defending human rights in Afghanistan’s volatile, violent and complex environment. In the past year alone, it has lost several members of its staff and membership. Now, as many of these figures are known nationally and locally, they are easily identifiable for retribution due to their work and profile. Of 392 AIHRC staff, 90 have been identified as being at high or very high risk from the Taliban, only—I stress “only”—because they have been prepared to defend women and girls and other victims of the Taliban’s cruelty and violence.
I wrote to the Foreign Secretary on Monday, requesting that, in addition to the chair, who I believe has been evacuated to the UK, other high-profile staff, who are in the greatest fear of their lives, should be given priority in the evacuation. The work of defending human rights in Afghanistan will have to continue—even, ultimately, only from the West. I hope the Minister will be able to give me some reassurance on this.
I also want to make a brief reference to BBC staff and other journalists braving it out in Afghanistan—in Kabul and its environs—to bring us the truth. What are the Government doing to facilitate the rapid evacuation and/or protection of journalists in Kabul and beyond, as they have pledged to do?
I want to close on the loss of western and US credibility. This matters, as the whole concept of deterrence is founded on believability—that your opponent will hold back as they believe that you will do what you say you will do. Who in East Asia now—Japan, under the US security umbrella, or Taiwan, facing an increasingly belligerent China—can depend on the US or the West for support? Which of the countries that are seeing the rise of Islamist terror, in Africa or the Middle East, will look to us for support? Both Russia and China will use this defeat to warn others who resist them that the West is an unreliable ally. The urgent task for the US, NATO and the rest of us is to stand steadfast, to demonstrate to our allies that we will learn from this disaster, and be firm in our resolve as we go forward.
Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]
My Lords, whatever history’s verdict on the wisdom, conduct or shambolic conclusion of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, it is hard to overstate the consequences of the victory of the Taliban over the modern military might of the West.
The lightning speed of the Taliban advance may have had two causes. The first is the failure of the West to win the hearts and minds of the rural communities of Afghanistan. This was apparent 12 years ago, in July 2009, when the coalition launched Operation Panther’s Claw to clear the Taliban from Helmand province. Although by that time the coalition claimed to have trained over 90,000 Afghan troops, only some 600 Afghans could be persuaded to join the coalition force of some 15,000. Many of the others just melted away.
Secondly, once President Trump had done his February 2020 deal with the Taliban, the Taliban used the next 17 months for secret negotiations with many provinces to surrender without contest.
During our debate on the Queen’s Speech in May, I suggested that political Islam was one of the most far-reaching threats to global political stability and economic prosperity. Political Islam is that assembly of entities ranging from IS and al-Qaeda to the Taliban, largely schooled in the madrassas of Pakistan, which, in the shade of the Muslim Brotherhood, has hijacked the great Abrahamic religion of Islam to promote and justify jihad for a world caliphate with theocratic government under sharia law. Another Islamist Government in Afghanistan will surely be seen as a further step towards a global caliphate. Britain is now in a much greater danger.
Finally, may I say that I view with concern the proposal of the National Muslim War Memorial Trust to erect in the grounds of the Imperial War Museum a memorial to the Muslims who fell in both world wars? Both were wars between nations, not religions or races. That is why such care was taken to make the Cenotaph in Whitehall so secular and so neutral. There may be separate memorials to the fallen from different nations, regions or even villages; that is different from one to the fallen of one religion. Surely this is not the time to erect on an important publicly owned site a potential shrine to Muslims who have died fighting. Can we risk something which could become a shrine to jihadists?
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, Afghanistan has historically long been the graveyard of imperial pretensions on the part of global superpowers, and the references that have been made in our debate today to the first Afghan war testify to that. One hundred and eighty years on, we are still wringing our hands. However, the difference today, and the tragedy of recent events, is that those events have dealt a mortal blow to the democratic hopes and aspirations of a substantial proportion of Afghanistan’s very own people. They are the ones who stand to lose most from what has happened in recent days and weeks. Surely it is our duty to them and to our own dead and injured, who we rightly honour today in this place, not to betray the values that we have espoused as universal as we depart that country and deal with the fallout from that departure.
We have suffered a profound political, military and diplomatic setback. There is no use pretending otherwise. No doubt there will be a time to look into the reasons for that, and it is important that we do so. However, we should all be able to unite now around our values and our belief in universal human rights and the innate dignity of each and every one of us regardless of race, creed or gender.
The central question for me is whether we will do all we can to mount an effective humanitarian relief programme for those who are left behind and extend a genuine welcome to those who are fleeing that country now, even as we speak. Will the Government reverse the cuts in overseas development assistance to NGOs and multilateral organisations delivering that humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan? The figure of 10% is simply not enough. We need full restoration and a real increase of resources to address this humanitarian catastrophe. Will the Government step back from what has on occasion seemed to be, and actually has been, a mean-minded policy towards refugees and think again about ensuring that we do nothing towards any group of refugees, not just Afghani refugees, that undermines the international rule of law in that respect, as they are undermined by the proposals that we are shortly to see enacted in this House in the Government’s new asylum policy? We need to be among the most, not the least, generous in that respect.
Specifically, will the Government undertake to halt all forced removals of existing asylum seekers to Afghanistan and abandon the pretence that was on the website only 48 hours ago that Afghanistan is now, or is likely to become in the foreseeable future, a safe country for that purpose? The reality is that we are not treating fairly Afghani refugee asylum seekers who are here in this country now. Will the Government undertake to do that and to restore their full rights to them in the knowledge that they cannot return to that country? Will they undertake that no Afghani asylum seeker will be housed in the appalling conditions that exist in the Napier barracks in Kent and that we will support the desire of local authorities up and down the country to provide decent accommodation for asylum seekers? They need resources to do that.
The reality is that we need a clear plan going forward. We need to ensure that as we depart Afghanistan we do not abandon those people and the values that we share with those who believed what we told them. We owe them that at least.
Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]
My Lords, of course the UK could not stand alone once US troops pulled out. However, the chaotic withdrawal means that there is no prospect of holding the Taliban back. I fear that this hasty US withdrawal has far more serious implications for the West than the Vietnam exit, which was not a real threat to Britain or the US itself. This is an unmitigated disaster and proves that global Britain needs to partner with like-minded countries such as our European neighbours.
US citizens were understandably tired of foreign interventions, but this catastrophic situation exposes the dangers of applying short-term populist thinking to important long-term commitments. Today’s leadership may have dangerously taken for granted the success of the West’s presence in controlling Afghan extremists’ terrorist atrocities. Can my noble friend say what assessment has been made of the implications for anti-terrorism protections in the UK and what measures are planned to counter rising narcotic dangers on our streets? The Taliban and other authoritarian regimes will no longer fear US military might or western sanctions, so domestic risks have risen inexorably. As so many noble Lords said, authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia will offer support to Afghanistan’s Government without concerns for the fate of ordinary Afghans. This means that our precious values and way of life are more fragile today than just a week ago.
I too pay tribute to the bravery and dedication of our troops, local staff and aid workers and to those Afghans who helped us. In the name of humanity we must live up to our moral debt, as the most reverend Primate stated, to all those at risk in a Taliban Sharia state: Christians, other religious minorities, journalists and BBC staff there, as well as so many brave women now at risk, including those female judges who risked their lives to uphold our vision of the law, not the Taliban’s version that is now to be imposed. What is the Government’s estimate of the numbers of people involved here?
In closing, I urge greater appreciation of our western freedoms, which are often taken for granted: freedom of religion, equality, women’s rights, respect for diversity. Most of us assume these values will always be there for us. But we are not the global norm. Having worked so hard to build and maintain these values, it saddens me that so many in our country have criticised our past. It is tragic that today’s western leaders, after encouraging other countries to adopt and aspire to our freedoms, have abandoned them too rapidly. Short-term populist thinking has meant that the US lost patience before the Afghan people were ready to live with our values. We are honour bound to help as many as we can.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB) [V]
My Lords, a sense of strategic failure is widespread. It leaves me with feelings of great regret for the lives lost or harmed. But what a dreadful failure of intelligence, or failure to heed it if it was right, about the intentions and strength of the Taliban over the past few weeks. They were set on seeing all foreign forces out of their country, and they were enraged because it would not be in May. An armchair strategist could have predicted that they were bound to apply maximum pressure as the attention of the US and other allies was deeply focused on the final stages of withdrawal and force levels were right down. The need to increase strength on the ground so rapidly shows how ill prepared western nations were for this turbulent and messy final withdrawal.
In spite of the efforts made to train and equip the Afghan forces, too much false credence was placed on their will and morale to resist the Taliban, at least long enough for us to leave. They became ineffective, their morale failed the test, and the idea that the Taliban were defeatable does not accord with their persistent presence over past decades.
One must conclude that either out of fear, with genuine support or—given the endemic corruption in Afghanistan—through bribery, backing for the Taliban is much greater than expected. The advance became more and more pronounced, with all major cities and Kabul occupied in less than two weeks. Why did intelligence get all this so very wrong?
How will the Taliban turn their military conquest into political government? One must hope that they will have learned from the failure of their total disregard for human rights and their savage treatment of citizens during their time in power. Their approach this time seems less deplorable, but it is a gigantic leap from a fighting force with proscribed colleagues to one of recognised political authority in government. Whatever form of authority is established, it may be disrupted by endless disputes and internal conflicts with regional warlords, and those in authority one day may be over- thrown the next.
With or without us, Afghanistan is a mess. Meanwhile, those who are rescuing or being rescued from Kabul need our fullest support.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]
My Lords, this situation reminds me of the dark days of Dunkirk in more ways than one. The military events in France and the hurried evacuation of the British troops from Dunkirk were caused by the failure of the French army and the French Government, who refused to fight, surrendered and then collaborated with the Nazis, as did most of the European continental countries to a greater or lesser extent. Did anyone criticise the United Kingdom Government for Dunkirk? Yes, they certainly did: the French were dishonest enough to blame the UK.
From 2003 it was NATO that led the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force—ISAF. Its mission was to help the Afghan Government to exercise their authority throughout the country and build up their national security forces. This was accomplished in December 2014 when the Afghans assumed full responsibility for the security of their country. In 2015, NATO started its Resolute Support mission to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces. The United Nations, NATO and a total of 49 countries have been involved in Afghanistan in the past 20 years. Why, then, do politicians single out and blame the United Kingdom?
Although President Biden has tried to shift the blame on to President Trump, that simply does not work. President Biden had the power to stop the withdrawal of the troops but failed to do so. To be fair, this situation may not be easy for President Biden to deal with because he does not seem to me to be in good health. There are many examples of the disease of a national leader having a disastrous effect on a country, a continent or even the world. How does the Minister react to this explanation?
It is regrettable that Secretary-General Stoltenberg of NATO failed to appear on the public scene until yesterday, and even then he was not very convincing. As NATO, the United Nations and the USA are held responsible for the fiasco in Afghanistan, is it not about time that politicians and the media stopped attacking our Government and directed their fire to those responsible for the chaos? The senior German politician Armin Laschet is to succeed Angela Merkel as leader of her party. He wrote yesterday that the chaos in Afghanistan is the greatest fiasco that NATO has ever suffered in its 70 years.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, last Friday, the Prime Minister called a COBRA meeting and announced that there is no military solution. Tory MP Tom Tugendhat pointed out two days later that there was a military solution and that the Taliban had seized it. On Sunday there was a second COBRA meeting, with the line that the West has to tell the Taliban that nobody wants Afghanistan to become a breeding ground for terror again. It was too little, too late. The Taliban just walked into Kabul and took over.
There was no mention by the PM of the rights of women and girls or of LGBT individuals, democracy, education and human rights after 20 years of fighting for those things. There was no mention of the British troops who had fought there and no message for the families of the 457 British soldiers who died there. The UK Government did not disagree with the current Biden plan nor with the consequences of these actions which have now completely reversed the previous stability and, particularly, the major advances for the lived experiences of women and girls and minority groups.
However, it is welcome news that the Government will now reverse a previous decision and try to help 35 Afghan students get their visas as Chevening scholars. There continue to be real fears for their safety as a result of being chosen for this prestigious scheme, and the Government must ensure that they can safely leave the country to take up their studies.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is unable to speak in today’s debate as she is en route to the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, but I am grateful to her for this fact: the historic first appearance of a female athlete from Afghanistan at the Paralympics will now no longer happen. Afghanistan was due to be represented by two taekwondo players at the Paralympics, Zakia Khudadadi, who was set to be the nation’s first female Paralympian along with fellow taekwondo athlete Hossain Rasouli, but they can no longer attend and further restrictions likely to be disastrous for women’s sport in Afghanistan will now follow.
Finally I would like the House to note the words of Wales’s First Minister:
“We want Wales to be a Nation of Sanctuary and we’ll do everything we can to support evacuations from Afghanistan. We’re working with the Home Office and councils on preparations to support those who need it.”
I trust that the Prime Minister agrees with Mark Drakeford’s statement and that the Westminster Government will provide the ways and means to support those who have done so much on behalf of the UK Government and now seek their urgent and humanitarian assistance.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, from rereading the reports of the International Development Committee in 2007 and 2012, it is clear that we were in no doubt about the challenges facing not only the international community but the leaders and ordinary people of Afghanistan. Travelling across the country, we learned that corruption is rife, social values are deeply conservative, poverty is everywhere and the country is riddled with crime, violence and factionalism. Given that the Taliban regime harboured Osama bin Laden to execute major terrorist attacks, the case for going in was overwhelming. However, the minute the Bush regime prioritised the invasion of Iraq, it was clear that the resources Afghanistan needed would not be sustained.
Despite Afghanistan being a NATO-wide commitment, the US, as the biggest player, set the terms of engagement. This meant that donor co-ordination was less effective. The committee found that UK aid spending was several times more cost effective than that of the United States. We recognised that the commitment would be long term. We said that it would be a generation or more. It was not about building western style liberal democracy but helping to create a viable state with space for development and poverty reduction.
For President Biden to say that the collapse of the Government and the defence capability was the Afghans’ fault is truly sickening. With limited allied troops and strategic air cover, the country was functioning, if imperfectly. The rapid withdrawal demoralised the domestic forces, who were often deployed far from home with no protection or support for their families against the Taliban, so it is hardly surprising that they chose not to fight. Now the cost of failure could outweigh by many times the cost of maintaining a minimal presence. In the diplomatic fallout, what did the Prime Minister say to Imran Khan following his comments that the Taliban have
“broken the shackles of slavery”?
Pakistan was supposed to be an ally.
The committee challenged President Karzai over the rights of women, 80% of whom said they experienced violence from their husbands or other male relatives, yet by contrast the principal of the university in Bamyan told us that the enrolment of women had increased dramatically after the defeat of the Taliban.
Our priority now is to offer protection and support for those who relied on promises from the international community and now experience the bitter taste of betrayal. The numbers and timings for refugees announced fall short of our obligations—will they be urgently reviewed? The international world order looks pretty dysfunctional today. The savage cut to the aid budget was appallingly misjudged—will it now be reversed? Afghanistan is poor; it needs aid and development focused on poverty reduction, especially for women and girls.
Yesterday, Taliban leaders, masters of public relations, sought to give assurances that women will be allowed education and other rights. If the Taliban is serious, which many doubt, it should accept the presence of outside agencies and delegations. Will the Government test their good faith? Will they engage and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, suggested, consider an aid and even a diplomatic presence? Otherwise, how will we reach the millions left behind?
Lord Choudrey (Con) [V]
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords before me for their contributions. I am grateful to the Government for recalling Parliament so that your Lordships can offer advice to them in dealing with the very difficult situation in Afghanistan.
For the past five decades, the people of Afghanistan, through no fault of their own, have been suffering from violence, displacement, disease, hunger and deepening poverty. Some of this has been imposed on them from the outside. The Afghan economy has been ravaged by years of misrule and mismanagement. With high levels of infection and very low Covid vaccination levels, this has further deteriorated the already alarming Covid situation in the region. The influx of large numbers of unvaccinated refugees will put further pressure on the already stressed healthcare systems of Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries.
The people of Afghanistan deserve our empathy and support. The Prime Minister quite rightly said today that the UK has an “enduring commitment” to the people of Afghanistan. I also welcome the statement made by my noble friend Lady Evans about doubling the aid to Afghanistan. Given our historical ties and deep understanding of the region, Her Majesty’s Government are uniquely placed to play a leading role in encouraging the international community to provide immediate humanitarian aid in the first instance and then to assist in formulating a sustainable development strategy, based on trade and investment, for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan.
The gains made in Afghanistan through the selfless sacrifices of our brave service men and women should not go in vain. We must use our considerable influence on the international stage and call for an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led development plan that would stimulate economic growth and create employment. A dignified, confident and self-reliant Afghan nation would benefit the whole region and help achieve the allies’ original objective, which was to establish a stable and prosperous Afghanistan as a responsible member of the world community.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB) [V]
My Lords, many of us here have been lucky to visit Afghanistan, which, despite its troubles, remains one of the most beautiful and hospitable countries on earth. We tend to see the Taliban as a phalanx, but, in reality, it is a chequered movement, originally of students and mujaheddin, made up of many different groups. As Rory Stewart found on his famous long walk, there is a new regime on the other side of every mountain and, when the dust settles, warlords will continue to dominate—we must wait to see what coalition they come up with. Our response must surely be based on a multilateral consensus, through the UN.
It has been a privilege to work with a variety of Afghan NGOs over the years, most because of their ties with UK aid agencies. Let us not forget that aid workers can take risks and lose lives as often as soldiers. While some will be at risk now, others such as the Halo Trust, will decide to stay on, especially if they are seen and known to benefit local communities.
NGOs can and do already work in Taliban territory. I remember in particular an education programme in Badghis, where mothers trained as teachers so as to become less conspicuous. We will see a lot of compromises. People talk of wasted effort, but I feel that there has been so much change in 20 years that not everything will go backwards to pre 9/11. However, at this early stage, with some very alarming stories coming in, we should treat all Taliban PR claims with great caution. After all, the most extreme mullahs and fighters in rural areas will not necessarily pay attention to Kabul.
Meanwhile, refugees are rightly the world’s major concern. The sight of so many desperate men and women at Kabul airport has already persuaded Ministers of the necessity of a UNHCR resettlement scheme on the scale of the Syrian scheme. I welcome that, but can the Minister say whether we will now closely co-ordinate our response with that of the EU, as in the past? The ARAP scheme should be extended to civil society and include NGOs, journalists, the BBC and the British Council —anyone at risk because of their work on human rights.
Deportations of failed asylum seekers back to Afghanistan should of course cease, at least until the situation is more stable and individual cases can be reassessed. More immediately, once security at the airport is guaranteed and commercial flights build up, the Afghan refugees in most danger must be able to travel out of the country as soon as possible, perhaps through neighbouring countries.
Our entire aid programme will have to be reassessed. I expect the FCDO to attend to this as soon as possible, or when there has been some formal engagement with the new Government. NGOs that remain may very well become the best channels of UK aid.
Finally, I pay tribute to Alison Blake, our ambassador until June, who has worked tirelessly on behalf of the Afghan people.
Baroness Warsi (Con) [V]
My Lords, many years ago when I made my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House, I spoke about the rights of women in Afghanistan and the responsibility we had as a member of the allied force. As Foreign Office Minister with responsibility for Afghanistan from 2012 to 2014, I was involved in the negotiations of the political agreements, including the trilateral discussions between the United Kingdom, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I saw at first hand the work of our Armed Forces in Kabul, Helmand and more widely. As the proud mum of a child in our Armed Forces, I pay tribute to those who served so bravely and to those who paid the ultimate price with their lives. Three minutes is not long enough even to start to unpick our intervention and withdrawal. I sincerely hope my noble friend will commit today to a timely and thorough inquiry. However, for today, I have some specific questions.
What we have seen was entirely foreseeable and predictable. What consideration was given to averting this and what judgments were made that the obvious, which we are now seeing on our screens, was not going to happen? What representations did we make, if any, to stop the end of a relatively small but effective deployment, with little loss of allied lives since 2014? What efforts were made to persuade the US not to withdraw air support and what consideration was given to building a coalition without the US? What, if any, efforts were made to build that coalition?
The second thing that could come out of today’s debate is for the Government to sharpen their approach and focus their mind on dealing with the current catastrophe over the next few days and weeks. I, along with many in this House, have spent the last week trying to arrange visas, exit routes and flights for Afghan colleagues and friends we have worked with, particularly women. While I appreciate what colleagues have tried to do, particularly my noble friend Lady Williams, my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary and in particular our ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow, ad hoc calls and personal pleadings cannot be the answer.
Can my noble friend detail in a written note, and place it in the Library today, the practical process for getting out those who will be killed if we do not act? It is a tragic failure of our Government and shame of our response that my colleagues and I are reaching out to colleagues in Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey and other countries to pick up and assist those who assisted us, to give refuge to those whom we let down and to protect those who supported us. We need our Government to act, not announce, and to act now.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
My Lords, we all saw the painful pictures on our television screens of what happened at the airport in Kabul. We have seen brave Afghan women—judges, teachers, the Education Minister and members of humanitarian organisations—say what dangers they are in. They made me feel—and I am sure all other noble Lords feel the same—that we must not desert them.
Some years ago, thanks to my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton when she was Defence Minister, I was in a delegation that visited both Camp Bastion and Kandahar. I saw for myself what the British Army was doing and came away very impressed. At that time, the marines were in charge at Camp Bastion and I was very impressed by what they were doing. If President Biden felt obliged to pull out, surely he did not have to do so in such a hasty manner. Were we given any warnings or did we make representations to Washington that there should be a planned pull-out, so that we could protect the people who are in so much danger today? If Washington did not respond to our requests, it was a little slap in the face.
There are brave people working in many of the NGOs in Afghanistan. I recently saw David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, on the television. If the Government want to know more about Afghanistan, they could do worse than talk to him, as he has a large organisation of people working on the ground in Afghanistan.
What should we do now? We are told that 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan will be accepted by the British Government. Does that apply only to those currently in Afghanistan? What about those who have already escaped to neighbouring countries since the Taliban onslaught began? What about the refugees, particularly child refugees, who are now in Calais or the Greek islands? Will the 20,000 scheme cover them or will there be another? I am frequently asked why it is mainly young boys from Afghanistan who fled to Calais and the Greek islands. I have asked them this, and many of them give me a simple answer: if they had stayed in Afghanistan, they would have been compelled to join the Taliban and become a fighter. That is why they fled. Now there is a desperate need for family reunion, including where one family member is already here and desperate to have other family members, particularly sisters and parents, join them.
Will the Government urgently review the Nationality and Borders Bill, so that it does not become a criminal offence to arrive in the UK on a boat or dinghy across the channel? Will they give an assurance that there will be no returns to Afghanistan, as it is entirely unsafe? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said earlier in this debate, it is wrong that Afghans and other refugees should have to wait so long for a decision.
Finally, I have a few questions. What about the Syrians who are waiting to come to this country, who are now in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan? Will they be allowed to come or will we forget about them? Will the Government report regularly on the situation with Afghan refugees? Will they tell us what has happened to the British Council and the World Service? I have two final points. Will there be any diplomatic representation in Kabul, so that some departures can be facilitated? What about our relations with Pakistan? They have to be looked at again.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I have a deep and loving relationship with and understanding of south Asia. I lived in Pakistan, I lived and worked in India for several years and I lived and worked in Sri Lanka. I go to that part of the world as often as possible. These last few weeks have been a bleak time for western democracy there, particularly for the USA and the UK. I am reminded of partition and the horrors that took place then, once again against a time limit. It is my duty to ask a few questions. Was the UK at and a party to the various stages of the US statements of withdrawal—in February 2020, the review of 2021 and the withdrawal statement of 2021?
We still had on the ground in Afghanistan the Resolute Support Mission. Did it not know that the Afghan soldiers were not being paid properly? Was it not aware that the Taliban would mass against individual villages or small towns and make it quite clear to the mayor and the locals that either they gave in or they would be slaughtered? Surely that must have been communicated to someone in the United Kingdom Government.
Why on earth did we choose to replace our ambassador, Alison Blake, in June 2021 while this was going on? Would there have been any other UK person who was better briefed or had a better knowledge, having been there for several years, of what was actually happening on the ground? I find that an extraordinary situation.
I pay tribute to what Sir Laurie Bristow is doing on the ground now, but he had a very important role at home running COP for about a third of the world. Can we have an undertaking from my noble friend that he will stay in Afghanistan, or is he to be pulled back as well in a few weeks’ time?
I know Pakistan quite well. It is a key country in relation to Afghanistan. The poor refugees who want to get out of Afghanistan will turn to Pakistan. We need to help Pakistan; we need to help India; we need to help Bangladesh and south Asia, and provide the resources to look after those refugees. We talk about 20,000; it will probably be nearer 120,000 or even a million coming into south Asia. What we are doing is only a drop—an important drop—in the ocean.
My noble friend mentioned UN involvement. I have my sceptical views on that. The UN is not very good at that sort of role.
The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, called for a public inquiry. I think he is right. I hope, too, that dispatches from our ambassadors will be published openly, rather than our relying on a freedom of information inquiry perhaps from someone such as me. This is a really sorry time for the world, particularly in view of the real threat to the United Kingdom from terrorism.
Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD) [V]
My Lords, I know a bit about panic. I saw it when I was in Hong Kong after the Chinese fired on protesters in Tiananmen Square. I saw it when I was an election observer in the Gambia, when the police opened fire on opposition supporters, and I experienced panic of my own when a man with a sword attacked me in my constituency office and killed my assistant. The scenes in Afghanistan in recent days reminded me of those events.
There are almost 40 million people in Afghanistan. Those aged over 20 know what it was like living under the Taliban. Now they face it all over again after they had thought that we, their friends, and the Americans and others would stop the barbarism ever happening again.
I have met people from Afghanistan. I went to a village cricket match not so long ago where the local team played against a team of Afghan refugees—yes, Afghanistan is a nation of cricketers, just like us and their neighbours in Pakistan. One young man told me that he liked it in our village because the countryside and the hills reminded him of home. Afghans are just like us: they are people with hopes and aspirations. Now many of them are full of fear for the future of their families, their country and themselves.
We have a moral responsibility to accept as many refugees as possible—not just 20,000 over the long term, as the Lord Privy Seal said at the start of this debate. Some may apply to stay permanently. They will make a great contribution to our country. I hope we will be generous to them. Let us base our actions on the example we set with the Vietnamese boat people who fled from the Viet Cong. We settled whole families, first at Sopley in Hampshire, and then let them choose where they would like to live. Some came to Cheltenham and set up successful businesses—I know some of them and count them as personal friends.
Today, Afghanistan faces the triple threat of the pandemic, a climate change-induced drought and the Taliban takeover. It is our duty to do whatever we can to help those affected. When they arrive, we want no more “hostile environment” tactics from this Government. For starters, they can scrap plans in the Nationality and Borders Bill to criminalise and punish refugees. And, for another suggestion, why do not Mr Johnson, Mr Raab and Ms Patel go to see for themselves what is going on in Afghanistan?
Afghans are wonderful human beings. Many have had bad experiences and fear more of the same; we should welcome them and help them feel at home.
Lord Jopling (Con) [V]
My Lords, we can only hope that the early protestations of the Taliban, promising reasonable, fair governance, will be realistic, though of course we have our doubts. I want to ask why it was that the irresponsible action by the United States to withdraw in the way that they did caused both them and us to be taken aback in surprise when the Afghan army collapsed so dramatically once it was left on its own. I think some of us were not surprised.
I say that because, some 10 years ago, the foreign affairs sub-committee of the European Union Select Committee carried out a study of the training and effectiveness of the Afghan police, which was reported to the House. Some of us, during that inquiry, found that this police force, which had been trained by the United States and its allies in NATO in parallel with the Afghan army, was highly deficient, to put it mildly. We felt it suffered from absenteeism, corruption, illiteracy, incompetence, irresolution and general disloyalty. Speaking for myself, I was not surprised when the army collapsed in the same way as I expected the police would also do when confronted by the Taliban. I cannot believe that the allied military that trained the Afghan army did not have grave misgivings and were also not surprised at the collapse of the Afghan army. Nor can I believe that, as a consequence, the Governments of the United States and its NATO allies did not have adequate warnings of the dangers ahead if the Afghan army was left on its own.
I therefore have two questions. Can the Minister, when he winds up, tell us the extent of the forebodings fed back to the Government by the military that to leave the Afghan army on its own too suddenly would expose it as a paper tiger? If these warnings were fed back by the military—I would be surprised if they were not reported back in that way—then our Government have some explaining to do. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, made the same point. Likewise, if the military did not realise the fragility of the Afghan army, then it too has some explaining to do. In saying that, it must not be reflected as any criticism of mine on the outstanding courage of our forces in Afghanistan.
Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB) [V]
My Lords, let me first say: shame on the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, for making cheap, divisive remarks in this debate about Afghanistan by claiming that Black Lives Matter is somehow against the interest of the UK. Black Lives Matter is about equality, diversity and decency—something that he lacked today.
Today, the slogans of “America is back” and “Global Britain” both sound shockingly hollow. We must take responsibility for the catastrophic and humiliating failure to the British soldiers who paid with their lives and, above all, the Afghan people, including the brave judges, the police, the army that we promised to support and the women and girls to whom we pledged we would give a future they were denied some 20 years before. We have failed the young, creative minds that will now be shackled due to the Taliban takeover without any precondition.
“Global Britain” was already sounding hollow when we decided to withdraw a promised £4 billion in foreign aid to some of the poorest people on the planet. Yesterday the Foreign Secretary talked about a 10% increase in aid to Afghanistan, but last month he made a cut of 78%. Urgent serious humanitarian aid is needed not only in Afghanistan but also in earthquake-ridden Haiti, which today is forgotten as we see the unfolding tragedy of Afghanistan. We can and must have a global Britain, but we have to step up to the leadership plate. Present-day Afghanistan is in part our mess, and we must take our responsibility.
I have three action points for the Minister. First, we need a resettlement package for refugees that is not just for thousands but for many tens of thousands and not just in five years but in one or two years. Secondly, we must not just reverse the £4 billion cut in foreign aid but add to that aid in this troubled world, which is exacerbated by Covid-19. Lastly, we must redouble our great British statesmanship, something that I feel we have abandoned. We must collectively work with our international partners—some of them are easier than others, but they must include China, Russia and the Taliban. This time, our North Star should first and foremost be the Afghan people, which will be good for them and, ultimately, safer for us at home, too.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the current situation of the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan. The Taliban have been fighting in Afghanistan for many centuries. This week, they walked into Kabul and other provincial areas to claim them as their territory. The Taliban have been emboldened by this, which could lead to the imposition of their ideology, especially denying girls and women access to education and careers.
Such difficulties are also faced by non-Afghani residents. At one time, 500,000 Sikhs were living and working in Afghanistan, but that population is now considerably reduced to 3,000. Sikhs were subjected to discrimination and harassment. They were forced to wear yellow scarfs or aprons so that they could be readily identified as Sikhs. They were prohibited from fulfilling their religious ritual of cremation. To this day, it is forbidden to carry out a cremation; I understand that a deceased person was sent to Pakistan for cremation. During the civil war in the 1990s, several gurdwaras—Sikh temples—were destroyed. President Ghani sometimes claimed that Sikhs and Hindus were an integral part of Afghanistan. I urge our Government to engage with the nations of the world to seek a path where women—girls in particular—and minorities are not subjected to the hostilities previously inflicted by the Taliban.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I share the horror, the despair and the incredulity about the situation in Afghanistan and the fear and the sadness about the danger and suffering of its citizens. Have we learned nothing from previous conflicts? I am ashamed. We have abandoned a people and their progress.
Despite the Taliban’s reassurances and their PR efforts in Kabul, the reality on the ground in the provinces is very different. They have stopped girls going to school and women going to work—not to mention the barbarous executions. I give one small example: a woman banker was ordered home by the Taliban and told that her brother should take her place. Have they really changed? What is their interpretation of Islamic law? As Malala said,
“I fear for my Afghan sisters.”
Women, especially the courageous women leaders and activists, are terrified—and so am I on their behalf. In a meeting a couple of years ago with Afghan women MPs, one told me that she was willing to die for democracy. I fear that she might.
The Minister knows of my specific concern about the safety of Afghan women and children who have been cultural ambassadors—in the spotlight as emblems of cultural change and promoters of liberal values. This includes women and young girls who have participated in cultural exchanges promoted by the UK Government to publicise British-assisted social progress in Afghanistan. I know the FCDO crisis team is aware of these young women, for whom I believe we have a responsibility, and I urge the Minister to ensure that they are able to leave the country.
We are in the midst of a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and the Government must respond with urgency and generosity. Five thousand refugees this year and 20,000 in the long term is simply not enough. As part of the resettlement scheme families must be reunited and, wherever they are settled in the UK, there must be adequate funding for the local authorities which will be expected to provide for them. We also have a duty to provide support to Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries, which will receive by far the greatest number of refugees.
I pay tribute to our military and officials who are handling the hugely difficult situation at Kabul airport—a friend who was in the airport on Sunday said that it was quite extraordinary. Can the Minister please assure the House that they will stay until the vulnerable people have left the country? It must not be left to the Taliban to decide who can and cannot leave.
I urge the Government to expand the Afghan relocations and assistance policy to a new category which should incorporate those who are in fear of persecution, including academics. Universities and colleges up and down the country are willing to help by providing sanctuary and a place for academics to continue their careers, but they need to get out of the country safely. Will the Minister give an assurance that academics will be included in ARAP? I welcome the reversal of the decision on Chevening scholars and now hope that students and staff in Afghanistan, including those who are due to start next term, will have their visas accelerated so that they can come to the UK. Our universities are anxiously waiting to welcome them. Finally, as a supporter of Universities of Sanctuary, which includes Somerville College—my own college—and Mansfield College, I ask the Government to grant refugee status to all Afghan students currently in this country who do not yet have that protection.
Baroness Morrissey (Con) [V]
My Lords, I declare an interest as the lead non-executive director at the FCDO. As all other speakers have done already, I despair at the horror unfolding in Afghanistan and the fear and panic we are witnessing, especially among its 19 million women and girls, but wringing our hands and beating our chests will not solve anything. We cannot stand by and watch this disaster worsen, especially since the manner of the allies’ military withdrawal precipitated it. We must investigate the intelligence failings but the urgent priority must be to right our terrible mistake.
Today’s debate will serve a really useful purpose only if it brings forward real solutions to alleviate the suffering of Afghans, prevents a resurgence of the terrorist threat to the rest of the world, and discourages other bad actors from exploiting our failure. This is a critical moment for the West. With the Biden Administration turning their back on the problem, Britain must show leadership, pressure the US and work with other NATO allies to form an effective plan. None of the alternatives are appealing. Let us not be naive and expect to influence the Taliban through diplomacy. Those who force marriage on 12 year-old girls, and think nothing of beheading or torturing those who stand up to them, obviously have fundamentally different values from ours.
Make no mistake: the Taliban saying that women’s rights will be protected as long as they follow sharia law effectively means that they have few rights, given their interpretation. The Taliban’s opposition to girls’ education is central to their religious ideology, and actions speak louder than words. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, set out some examples, to which I would add that we have already seen pictures of women being literally whitewashed over, the reintroduction of the burka and house-to-house searches. Back in July, a House of Commons research report noted restrictions on girls’ schooling in districts already controlled by the Taliban. Sadly, the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme, targeted at the most vulnerable, can never be enough: 20,000 means millions more left behind.
To put right our wrongs, I am afraid we must be willing to reconsider military engagement to disrupt the inevitability of total Taliban control. I understand the great reluctance to do that, especially after all the sacrifices made by our brave military personnel, but we have no moral choice other than to sort this mess out. Renewed military intervention need not be the same type of operation as the one just concluded. It needs to show the new regime that we have not gone away and that we will protect the human rights of Afghan people as well as the broader values we stand for.
Whatever we do, it must have real teeth, otherwise any increase in humanitarian aid, and efforts to protect women’s rights and to reduce violence and corruption, will fail in the face of a regime that is totally opposed to what we believe in and wishes to spread its appalling ideology across the globe. If we do not act, the world will be a less stable, more dangerous place, far beyond Afghanistan. Britain prides itself on being a force for good in the world; now is our opportunity to show it.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD) [V]
My Lords, we have seen clearly from this debate that we will have to look again at our immigration policy—but not according to the new Bill that is going through the other House at the moment, which is completely opposed to every sentiment expressed in this debate.
How able is the United Kingdom to accept and proceed with 5,000 new applications? We know that, already, the Home Office has a queue of people waiting for approval, or for their applications to at least be processed. Surely we cannot let this queue grow on and on. We have to look again at what we intend to do with the present and proposed immigration procedures.
I also suggest that, in accepting people here, we must make the most of what they are able to contribute. Already, we know that we are going to get a lot of interpreters—I am delighted to have them; they can help us proceed with those 5,000-plus, I hope, applications in the first year. They have a contribution to make. We must be ready to train our staff also. Have we got enough new staff in the Home Office to cope with all these new arrivals, not only from Afghanistan but from Hong Kong and other places?
We have to look again, and clearly we need a complete revision of what has, on the whole, been a hostile attitude towards immigration and new immigrants. I remember I did a fair bit of work on Syrian immigration, and I was so disappointed in the way that the Government responded to the need at that time. I hope this will not be repeated with the needs of the Afghan people.
Lord Cormack (Con) [V]
My Lords, I have heard every speech in this very sombre and sober debate. One thing that has come out in almost every speech is the abject failure of leadership by the greatest of all democracies. That failure has made the world a much more dangerous place than it was even 10 days ago. The muddle, chaos and confusion of the last 10 days has given a boost to the power and influence of the second great power in the world, one which represents the greatest threat to democracy and human rights in Asia and Africa, following its belt and road initiative, and indeed throughout the world.
We have to face that fact that the bombast of Trump, followed by the ineffectual decency and demonstrably catastrophic incompetence of President Biden, has caused this terrible situation. The USA, guarantor of civilised values for the last century and more, stands humiliated before the world—and so do we. “Go it alone”, “take back control” and “global Britain” mean evacuating from Afghanistan without a coherent plan or a clearly defined purpose. Our future as a nation—a nation that still has some influence in the world councils—will depend upon our having such a plan and a purpose.
I agree with almost everything that has been said about handling the refugee crisis, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said, it is important that we keep our embassy in Kabul open and do everything in our power to sustain and protect those aid workers, BBC journalists and others who wish to stay. We should therefore table a resolution at the Security Council of the United Nations to test the good faith of recent Taliban statements, urging them to accept the presence of a United Nations peacekeeping force, a council of reference drawn from Muslim nations—particularly including those that have had women as Head of State—and another council, drawn from leading universities around the world, to ensure that women continue to receive a decent education in Afghanistan. These are absolutely vital issues, and I hope that, when he winds up, my noble friend will refer to our tabling such a resolution in New York.
We are going through a moment of shame at the moment, but we need an inquiry; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and others. It should be a parliamentary inquiry, composed of Members of both Houses.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, the Taliban exist within Islam and its sharia law—they are Islamists. This brings us up against the problem of how we describe and distinguish between the vast majority of our own Muslims, who are peaceful and a great credit to our society, and their violent co-religionists. We talk about “political Islam”, “radical Muslims” and “Islamists” when we refer to the violent type and about “Muslims” when we refer to our peaceful friends. This confusion is perhaps most on display in the concept of Islamophobia, which is an unhelpful word because it is not phobic to fear the modern world’s most violent ideology, as pursued by the Islamists et cetera.
The evil in human nature is also active today in China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims and in the Buddhist Burmese treatment of the Rohingya. However, according to thereligionofpeace.com website, in the 30 days before the recent Taliban success there were 182 deadly Islamist attacks in 24 countries, in which 1,084 people were killed, with 1,100 wounded. Since 9/11, there have been 39,849 such attacks worldwide, or roughly four every day. The vast majority of these attacks have been on other Muslims, but by no means all—Charlie Hebdo, the Manchester Arena, London Bridge and Streatham come to mind. In the three years to 2014, more than twice as many British Muslims went to Iraq and Syria to wage Jihad than joined the British Army. Staying at home, the Batley schoolmaster remains in hiding for his life, just because he showed his pupils a picture of Muhammad.
So I submit that it is not phobic to fear Islam, which is responsible for by far the most violence on our planet today. However, if we so much as even try to learn and talk about Islam, we are immediately called Islamophobic by the Muslim Council of Britain, Tell MAMA and other suspect organisations, yet we can say what we like about any of the world’s other religions and nobody turns much of a hair.
However, there is good news, too. The Abraham Accords are holding up, and the Grand Mufti of Egypt has recently issued a fatwa, declaring that the Islamist terrorists are criminals, in which he is supported by over 100 leading muftis worldwide. This is a landmark event. More and more Muslims are coming into the open with interpretations of Koran that put it into a modern context and deny its Islamist interpretation. Some of them are in this country risking a death penalty. The burden of my story today is to ask the Government and our security services to watch over them and so help them to further their purpose. The future of our civilisation may depend on that.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con) [V]
My Lords, the very large number of speakers on this subject has been matched by the high number of speeches about different aspects of it that have presented widely varying problems. Clearly we are not all satisfied with the present system, and we favour managing and overcoming future difficulties. The personal messages I have had show that the disempowering situation for women is the greatest cause for concern. Certainly this matter has been raised many times among the almost 90 speakers before me.
Under the former Taliban regime, girls were blocked from attending school and women were largely banned from appearing in a public place without full body covering and a male escort. The 120 speakers on today’s list show us the great interest in this subject and the speeches have been wonderfully wide-ranging. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, spoke about women who have status or a major qualification and who go in fear of being treated in a way that shows almost opposition to their not having education.
There is another message that I would like to express. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, spoke about the money that is sent by the Government as foreign aid. That is very valuable and important, but having been chairman of a charity working throughout all the poor countries of the world for a long time—20 years, I think—I found that it is no good sending them aid without telling them what to do with the articles. You can visit these places and they have piles of wonderful medications on the ward and no one has any idea of what to do with them. The same happened where we had an orchard. The children had lessons there with a pile of timber beside them. The timber was to give them a prefab school, but no one knew what to do with it. We have to be helpful and do what we can to see that some expert is available to provide the necessary information.
There is an awful lot more to be said on this subject, but the time I am allowed has run out, so I simply have to hope that this will be taken up by our Government and looked into in much more detail.
Baroness Bakewell (Lab)
My Lords, I join those who have already spoken of their gratitude to those who have contributed so much in the past 20 years in Afghanistan, but I want to speak on what actions we can take at once in this country.
The Home Office will have to recalibrate its whole approach to refugees. Its shortcomings have been evident for many years to many groups seeking to help those fleeing persecution. Women for Refugee Women, Human Rights Watch and the Refugee Council all bear witness to that. In 2015, a British court ordered that deportations to Afghanistan be suspended because the country was unsafe. The Government had that decision reversed on appeal. The UK has slashed aid to Afghanistan by many millions in recent years, indicating to our allies a retreat from the world stage. This entire mindset needs urgently to be reversed.
As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and others declared, the Home Office should now offer an amnesty to all Afghan asylum seekers already here and make it easier for families to be reunited. Emergency visas should be made easily available to those most at risk. Paperwork must be minimised. Home Office actions must support the many words spoken today. Britain’s offer of asylum to, at most, 20,000 over five years is not fast enough—or enough; 5,000 now will not meet the immediate demand.
Much attention has already been paid—rightly—to the plight of women under the new Taliban Government. When they offer reassuring words, we need to judge by actions. There are more than 1,000 women journalists in Afghanistan, 100 BBC staff, many hundreds of women practising law, and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, tells us, 300 female judges. A high percentage of university students in Afghanistan are women—as many as 60% of the students at Herat University. They are rightly making their voices heard but we must not neglect the voiceless—the poor women and the women in minority groups. For example, 85 girls killed at a school in Kabul a few months ago were Hazaras. Hazara girls and widows are forced into slavery and child marriage. We must not prioritise the elite at the expense of the poor. Both need our active and immediate support. I hope that this Government will give it.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, my heart goes out to all those who have lost their loved ones, both our own troops as well as Afghan civilians. The Taliban is back as we end the 20 years of our incursion and occupation. While we speak of the remarkable achievements we may have made—aside from the colossal disaster unfolding before our eyes—the vast majority of Afghans may never have experienced or will never experience these remarkable changes in their country.
As a former officer of the all-party parliamentary group, I had the privilege of working with many women leaders post 9/11 so I feel an obligation to speak today. Why did we not prepare for the consequences of our proposed plan to withdraw? Why and how could our intelligence services and political leaders not forecast the Afghan Government falling so cataclysmically? Recriminations aside, our responsibility for scrutiny must be heightened as the mess continues to unfold.
What plans are in place for rescuing all the men and women who wish to escape who worked alongside western regimes, including the NGOs, as well as judges, political leaders—male and female—cricketers and artists? We again stand to create a legacy failure for the next century. We cannot say that history did not teach us the repercussions of our military and strategic foreign policy disasters, not least as Kashmiris, Palestinians, Iraqis, Libyans and people in countless African countries continue to glare at us, seeking justice and international resolutions for their ongoing conflicts—British intervention failures as we abandoned millions of citizens battling horrific civil wars and conflicts not prevalent on that scale prior to our intercession.
I contend that, like in other failed nations, the people of Afghanistan—ordinary Afghans—will question our motives for shock and awe and consider that it could have been about helping to improve democratic structures or empowering all women, not just those who worked with us or were “with” us. Masses of people, including women, have continued to suffer gross poverty while corruption remained embedded and the elites enjoyed western funds, stripping away Afghan resources, for 20 years. Even the opium flooding our markets was under our watchful eyes.
Afghan civilians have swum in blood, tears and fears as a result of western incursion and occupation. Leaving aside any future inquiry, we need to respond now to evacuate all those who are awaiting our rescue plans. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness Lady Amos, and the noble Lords, Lord Boateng and Lord Woolley; I echo their sentiments to the letter and the word.
What strategic plan is in place to—
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, I remind the noble Baroness of the speaking time advisory limit.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
I am finishing. What strategic plan is in place to ensure that local authorities have sufficient funding to meet the needs of housing and education as well as mental well-being services?
Lord Green of Deddington (CB) [V]
My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate, and I add just two points. One is a warning note on military interventions and the other concerns the possible future scale of asylum claims from Afghanistan. First, I suggest that we must be much more careful in future about military interventions in foreign countries, especially in the Middle East. The liberation of Kuwait was certainly successful, perhaps because it was a relatively limited operation in both time and scope, and because it had full support from the people of that country. Since then, we have had Iraq, Libya and, I would add, Syria. All of them have largely failed. Having served for 15 years in the Arab and Muslim world, including as ambassador in Syria and Saudi Arabia, I have concluded that those outcomes were mainly because we fail to understand the internal dynamics of those very complex countries. I support the calls by other noble lords for a wide-ranging inquiry—and the sooner the better, so that lessons can be learned.
Secondly, of course we should grant asylum to those who have worked directly for us, together with their families; the same should also apply to female judges and officials, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, pointed out, but we need to be careful. The scale of further applications from Afghanistan could be huge. The Afghan population is now about 40 million, and there are a further 5 million who are refugees, mainly in neighbouring countries.
The British Government recently made a promise of eventual settlement in the UK to 4.5 million people from Hong Kong. Meanwhile, our own society is already struggling to cope with massive levels of immigration, which has averaged 300,000 a year. That is despite 10 years of promises to reduce it. This has driven population growth of 7 million in the past 20 years, placing considerable strain on our social cohesion.
The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, pointed out in a 2016 report that there are
“worrying levels of segregation and socio-economic exclusion in different”
areas of the UK. She is right. The Government should be very careful about adding to our difficulties in this very delicate area.
Lord Balfe (Con)
There are one or two facts we might like to face. First, what has happened is quite predictable. President Trump announced the withdrawal from Afghanistan; President Biden confirmed it. We knew it was coming; we just do not seem to have prepared very well for it. Secondly, President Biden is accused of not talking to his allies, but what have they to say? “Please don’t do it”, is all they would have said. If I were him and sitting in Camp David, I would have said, “Let’s not waste our breath. We know what they are going to say.”
Thirdly, the United States is fully within its rights to withdraw. We have to face the fact that, as has been said, we in the United Kingdom, or even in the EU, cannot mount a mission on our own without the United States. We are dependent on the United States where the mission goes. There were 90,000 US troops out of 130,000 at the height.
My noble friend Lady Morrissey talked about values that we may have to live with. We are going to have to talk to the Taliban; we may not like it, but if we do not, we will have the entire Afghan middle class as refugees. That is the reality. We have to talk to the Taliban; that is why we have a Foreign Office. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, the job of the Foreign Office is to talk to foreigners. I suggest that the Foreign Office should settle down, start to make some contact with the Taliban and talk to them about what their plans for the country are, because it will still be there, right on the edge of all our concerns.
The point has also been made that Afghanistan was the first NATO Article 5 operation. Yes, it was, because we could never agree on an Article 5 operation anywhere near Europe, and I predict to noble Lords that we could not do so now. If Russia decided to move against the Baltic states, we might just about get an Article 5—but if it moved against Ukraine, I am not sure the Baltic states would support an Article 5, because they would be worried about themselves.
The biggest job for the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence in the coming time is to start to talk seriously in Europe about what we want to achieve in the world. This is where my noble friend Lord Cormack was absolutely right. We talk about “taking back control”, but we have not—we have abandoned our international duties. It is about time that the Foreign Office got back to its job of talking to foreigners and looking after British interests.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I endorse all that my noble friend Lady Smith and so many noble Lords have said about the horrors unfolding in Afghanistan, and about our responsibility to act. With so many people desperate to flee, it is good that there will be a resettlement scheme, but it needs a scale and urgency that are so far missing. Ministers also need to be flexible in their response to Afghans at risk who could not wait for help from a scheme as yet unborn but fled by whatever means they could find, like generations of refugees before them. That is a reminder of why the world needs the refugee convention and why we should do nothing to undermine it.
I hold the higher education brief, so it falls to me to ask specifically about Afghan students. The Minister will have seen the letter sent to this year’s Afghan Chevening scholars, saying they could no longer come to Britain as the British embassy in Kabul did not have the resources to process their paperwork. The letter acknowledged that this was disappointing but said that they could defer until the next academic year. This letter came while Afghanistan was in meltdown. Some of these students are women. Did the FCDO think that they could just take a gap year and then maybe ask the Taliban whether it would be okay for them to fly to London to take a master’s programme next September? This really raises some questions about grip.
I welcome the U-turn and the assurance from the Lord Privy Seal that the Government are
“doing everything possible to accelerate the visas of the Chevening scholars”.
However, the delay will have made things more difficult and dangerous. These students have been identified as future leaders and are therefore an obvious target for any radical group. So I ask the Minister: what is being done to ensure their safe travel to the UK? Are they being guaranteed a place on a British flight out of Afghanistan? If so, how will they be supported to reach the airport safely?
More widely, how many Afghan students are presently in the UK? What support will be given to those who do not feel it is safe to return home? Will they be eligible for resettlement or will they apply for asylum in the usual way? What will happen about visas for students due to join or return to higher education courses here?
The British Council in Kabul plays a key role in administering the Chevening programme. The Minister will know that in 2011 the British Council in Kabul was attacked by the Taliban, which led to 12 fatalities. British Council staff are extremely vulnerable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, has already pointed out, yet it seems that school ambassadors and other locally engaged British Council staff are still not automatically included in the scope of our relocation and assistance policy. Can the Minister clarify whether that is true? If so, can he assure the House that steps will be taken swiftly so that all British Council staff will be supported?
Like many others, I have wept more than once while watching the television coverage in the last week. The thing is, Afghans do not need my tears; they need our help—practical and urgent help—and they need it right now. Let us step up to the plate and give it to them.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Horam, has withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow—unexpectedly—the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has already focused on our essential responsibility to provide refuge for the people who served us and to whom we promised safety. In the other place, Caroline Lucas highlighted how the Government’s planned Nationality and Borders Bill would criminalise
“a woman fleeing the Taliban with her children”—
an intention the Home Secretary has reportedly confirmed since my Green colleague spoke.
In my brief time, I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Newby, in looking at the bigger picture, given that we now have to make an urgent root-and-branch review of our nation’s place in the world. Of immediate import is to end exercises in US-inspired sabre rattling, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. As the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, said, the integrated review of security, published just in April, is already hopelessly outdated.
The tragic events in Afghanistan are a powerful indicator of the post-hegemon world in which we live. We must never again see the UK blindly following the US, particularly into war, but also into other dangerous international policies. The UK should be working through international institutions, within the rule of international law, and with likeminded nations to strengthen and support these mechanisms. That can start by working to rally the international community to present a common front to the Taliban, demanding respect for human rights and democracy.
Next, the UK needs to stop pumping out weapons into a world awash with them. The Taliban is now extraordinarily well armed. Of the $83 billion the US spent on Afghanistan’s army and police, a very large percentage was on weapons, now largely in Taliban hands. In the past decade, the UK has licensed the sale of £16.8 billion-worth of arms to countries classified as “not free”. The standout, obvious disaster is Saudi Arabia. Since the war in Yemen started, the UK has licensed the sale of £20 billion-worth of arms to it. The uses to which our weapons are now being put by Saudi Arabia are indefensible, but, when regimes such as this fall, as such regimes always fall, where will those weapons end up? They will likely be in hands such as the Taliban’s. We must stop being arms pushers.
Finally, there are our nuclear weapons, which were acquired in the Cold War, now a long-gone era. I can only assume that, when the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, referred to
“totemic platforms of a bygone age”,
he had those weapons in mind. They are of course irrelevant in the Afghan crisis. They keep us in the club of nations that have hideous weapons of mass destruction, while their use is unthinkable. We could take a major positive step towards a new geopolitical order by joining the majority of the world’s nations in backing a ban on nuclear weapons. More modestly, we could join the pushers for no first use, and to end the sole authority for use, which left so many terrified in the last days of the Trump presidency.
On a final note, coming back home, what extra help are the Government going to provide to veterans who served in Afghanistan, and those still serving, to deal with the shock of this month’s events? This is a huge issue, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, highlighted.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB) [V]
My Lords, I briefly echo some words spoken in the opening stages of this debate by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Among the bravest of those involved in the creation of some semblance of just law in Afghanistan in recent years were its women judges. Admired by jurists around the world, despised and feared by the Taliban, hated by those members of the Taliban whom they convicted and sentenced, these extraordinary figures now face the greatest and most imminent peril. This is precisely because they conducted their work in open court before the public gaze, as any decent, self-respecting judge would. In question now is not so much their self-respect but ours. What will our country, a safe harbour and international advocate of judicial independence, do to help those who are perhaps its most courageous contemporary practitioners?
I can do no better than to quote the president of the International Association of Women Judges:
“The IAWJ urges governments to include the Afghan women judges and their families, who are in such a desperate and precarious position, in the special measures extended to interpreters, journalists and other personnel … By serving as judges and helping develop the Afghan judicial branch, women judges have helped establish the rule of law in their country … Allowing them to be at the mercy of the Taliban and insurgent groups, given what they have sacrificed, would be tragic indeed.”
I add only that it would, perhaps, be not so much tragic as shameful.
Our country has some claim to be the birthplace of the rule of law, and we certainly proselytise for the rule of law around the world. So, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, I urge the Minister to confirm in his reply that the brave women judges of Afghanistan will be among those groups offered succour and refuge by the United Kingdom.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, the invasion of Afghanistan—a combination of regime change, although yesterday President Biden said that the USA was not in the business of nation building, and the need to stop al-Qaeda and to confront its leaders after 9/11—was quickly followed by the second Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq with no clear endgame other than regime change and a failure to think through what would happen when we won. We saw the total dismantlement of the Baath Party and anyone involved in government, and we left a vacuum that we have struggled to fill ever since.
In both cases—Iraq and Afghanistan—we, the West, poured in resources to build new Governments and created new armies to police the country. In both cases, these armies were in trouble as soon as western support was withdrawn. The parallel between the collapse of the Iraqi army when faced with ISIL, and the collapse of the Afghan army in the face of the Taliban, is frighteningly similar. It is not that these armies were populated by poor people, and many had been fighting the Taliban for many years with great bravery and had paid a terrible price with the loss of troops. In both cases, however, they struggled to handle a well-motivated opponent and were saddled by weak politicians, who, in turn, had done nothing to stop corruption and political patronage within both the military and the Government.
We cannot now walk away and say that it was only a matter of time until the Afghan Government collapsed without western support. The Trump Administration undermined the Afghan Government by negotiating directly with the Taliban. Again, little thought seems to have been given to what would happen as the USA left. We and others went in there to support a US-led invasion and, from what I can see, were never part of these negotiations.
We must now, as a House, ask what government policy is in Afghanistan. President Biden might not want to do nation building, but we will not deal with the terrorist threat until we help Afghanistan create a stable Government who are free of corruption and recognise that it is not in their people’s interests to harbour terrorists. This is going to be a long journey and one that, regrettably, I suspect, will not be achieved without future intervention at some point. I do not think that anybody believes that Afghanistan will not be a new home for ISIL, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. They are there already and are not going to be leaving any time soon.
Most immediately, we need to be assured that we have an anti-terrorism monitoring and intervention capacity in that part of the world. As we have closed all our bases, I struggle to know how we are going to do that. To do this, we must start to engage with our friends and look at opening up direct links with the Taliban and start negotiating, as has already been said. For that, we are almost certainly going to need an embassy, which will be no easy task. Recognition of the Taliban as a Government, which will come in due course, must come at a cost, and that cost has to be in curtailing terrorism, curtailing drug exports and becoming a worthy member of society.
Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]
My Lords, I shall not repeat the many calls for urgent humanitarian action articulated by most of the previous 99 speakers around the House, which of course I support. In the short time available, I will focus instead on one issue—why? Why has the manner of our withdrawal been such a shameful shambles? Why is our nation’s previous reputation for integrity and reliability now shot to pieces? Why is nobody likely to trust the word of the United Kingdom any more, whether they be a war zone interpreter or world leader?
The answer comes down to leadership, or lack of it. What qualities do good leaders have? As well as integrity, vision and values, there is a key one: being able to spot threats and make hard decisions to mitigate them promptly while there is still time to affect the outcome. Throughout last week, it was abundantly obvious to anyone who followed the news that the Afghan army had collapsed, that the Taliban were advancing rapidly and unopposed, and that the forecasts of how long Kabul could hold out were wildly optimistic. That should have triggered emergency action by our Government but there was none.
The Foreign Secretary has pleaded that nobody could have predicted this. He should have said, “Boris and Dominic didn’t spot what everybody else could see.” It was a huge opportunity squandered. That lost week was crucial for rescuing British nationals, the interpreters and other supporters of our mission and their families, as well as Afghan women and girls, who rightly fear for their future under a Taliban regime. Instead, the Government belatedly sprang into action when the Taliban were already surrounding the airport and only a few of those needing to escape can now do so—a classic case of shutting the stable door.
However, we should not be surprised. The Prime Minister has plenty of form on procrastinating until it is too late, presumably while he establishes which option will do the least damage to his popularity rating. In the Brexit trade negotiations, he frequently postponed the difficult decisions about the Irish border, repeatedly kicking the can down the road, and, as a result, in a last-minute stitch-up, we are saddled with an unworkable protocol that he himself now repudiates.
In spring last year, he dithered for weeks over calling the first lockdown and, in the autumn, over blocking travel from India to prevent the new variant taking hold. The result in both cases was an increase of many thousands in the number of Britons who became ill and died. That fatal indecisiveness is not new and is part of a pattern. The sad fact is that we have a Prime Minister who is temperamentally incapable of acting until after the chance to make a difference has gone. That is why we have this latest disaster. That is not leadership but a leadership vacuum, and it is costing our country dearly. While that situation persists, our country’s future is precarious and, sadly, more humiliation is on the way.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I salute the bravery of those who served in our Armed Forces and those of our coalition partners, as well as those who worked for local and international charities in Afghanistan, the diplomats and others who served our country so well over these past 20 years —particularly the past two weeks—and the Afghan women who, in the past few days, have said publicly that they will not give up the fight and will stand and fight to continue their work in education and government. I salute their bravery absolutely. I also note my declaration in the register.
I have felt sick, in the course of the last few days, at the situation as it developed, but I felt particularly sick last Friday. A friend in Kabul, who I had been corresponding with over recent weeks, was sending messages telling me of family members who had disappeared in Kandahar and other areas, presumed dead, and of family members who had fled when they discovered that their girls were on the lists of those whom Taliban fighters were looking for to marry off to Taliban fighters. I was sick to hear of her and her family’s fear for what might unfold in the days to come. The last message I got from her, on Friday, said that she was trying to organise a way out but that if Kabul fell to the Taliban, her family would have to take her underground, but she would continue to provide me with updates. I have not heard from her since.
This terrifying, horrific situation we have seen unfold over recent days has been 18 months in the preparation. But only the Taliban has prepared for it. Our Government have serious questions to answer. The Americans may have made the big mistake, but our Government and the other coalition partners have been party to discussions in the G7, the United Nations and NATO over recent months that surely must have included this on the agenda. To have sat back over these 18 months and not prepared for this at least likely outcome is a great failure on the part of Ministers—perhaps also on the part of those who advise them.
There are huge questions that need to be answered if we are to learn lessons from this immediately—not after a long inquiry, but immediately—and ensure that our government and its administration are fit for purpose in the months and years ahead. Were the Government advised just a few weeks ago that this was at least a possibility in the days and weeks following the rapid withdrawal? If they were advised of this, did they ignore that advice? If they were not advised of this, why do those advising them not have the knowledge and expertise to give better advice? If government Ministers ignored that advice, what on earth were they doing over these last few weeks as this situation unfolded in front of us? These questions need to be answered right now.
It cannot be that the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister or anyone else in government hides behind announcements or generalisations. We and the people of Afghanistan deserve to know—
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I am afraid the noble Lord has gone well over his time. Can we hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik?
Baroness Mobarik (Con) [V]
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I too refer to the recent report of the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Select Committee, which stated that the UK has shown little inclination
“to exert an independent voice on policy on Afghanistan. Instead, the UK has followed the lead of the US, and has been too reticent in raising its distinctive voice.”
It is time for the United Kingdom to have confidence in its own instincts and in raising its own voice. After all, the UK has a long history with and knowledge of not just Afghanistan but the whole region.
It is also time to treat regional allies with respect—something that has been distinctly lacking from the US. Allies such as Pakistan have been on the front line and have paid a very heavy price, both in economic impact and loss of life, over these past four decades as allies of the West. This should be acknowledged. Instead, the United States has used such allies as scapegoats to distract from its own failings. The United States, and we too, must show some humility and rationality after the events of the last few days. The fact that Pakistan was excluded from the UN Security Council’s sessions on Afghanistan on 16 August beggars belief. It has a greater understanding of the Taliban and its mindset, and the political and religious dynamics of Afghanistan, than any other country. After all, it has had to deal with the FATA region within its own borders.
Conscious of the kind of murderous acts that the Taliban committed within their own and neighbouring countries, such as the brutal murder of 141 schoolchildren in Peshawar in 2014, it is difficult for me to say this, but they must be dealt with tactfully. I do not refer to formal recognition, which is a matter for our Government, but tactful engagement. The stark reality is that it is the Taliban who are now in charge in Afghanistan.
Despite Taliban assurance that everyone will be afforded safety and security, many are fleeing. Many thousands of refugees have already passed through the Spin Boldak-Chaman border crossing into Pakistan in the past few days. Chaos and catastrophe are unfolding as we speak. Pakistan and other neighbouring countries will no doubt be more than concerned about terrorists and their warped interpretation of a great religion entering their borders under the guise of refugees.
We have to admit that, despite the noble efforts of our service men and women over the past 20 years, and despite achievements in certain spheres such as education and health, things have hardly been a resounding success for Afghanistan’s economy. It is still one of the poorest nations on earth, corruption has been left to fester, and narcotics production under the recent Afghan Government was at an all-time high. As things move forward, it is incumbent on the international community to help build Afghanistan’s economy sustainably, for even more than aid, which will be necessary, it is a strong economy which will bring political stability, and ultimately peace and prosperity, to the ordinary men, women and children of that country.
Viscount Waverley (CB) [V]
My Lords, advocating and defending principles is honourable, but the time has come to ask deep questions as to whether a strategy that creates vacuums and a quagmire of devastation and despair in the elusive quest for democracy and civil liberties has been self-defeating. While fundamental responsibility must be taken for our failure and the near certainty of what will befall those brave men and women who will be tagged traitors, my despair is countered only by acknowledging that the United Kingdom was an important but junior partner to the coalition in practical terms. However, this does not excuse government from responding to key questions.
Although it came as no surprise, why did HMG, with all their historical experience of Afghanistan, fail to anticipate the rapid collapse of government and the Taliban takeover? What was our post-withdrawal plan for Afghanistan in the run-up to a western withdrawal? What are our plans now, in the light of the Taliban takeover, and how will the Government, with the discredited western alliance, seek to counter all this?
The United States has a moral obligation to Afghanistan but has now lost credibility, if not all. The writing was on the wall from the start. There was never going to be a political and military solution with the imposing of systems through the prism of western capitals to the exclusion of culture and history. That was our undoing. Reflecting on my forays into Afghanistan over earlier years, meeting all manner of people and learning of missed intelligence, leaves me questioning imposed, corrupt, centralised democratic governance of Afghanistan as untenable—although, to an extent, that is exactly how it may end up.
In defeat, we should not look exclusively at how this debacle is detrimental to our interests but rather consider the detriment to the people of Afghanistan. The potential lot of women defies comprehension. Western media and we in Parliament should not be fooled by the dichotomy between the Taliban’s political wing, with its suave messaging, and events on the ground. I listened with dismay to a heartrending message to world leaders about what is to befall women: “Shame on you”; “We have no hope”; “Afghanistan is being taken back 200 years”. It ended with the most telling statement: “We are disgusted.” Omens are not good, with a Talib leader confirming worst fears.
On the broader front, our involvement in Afghanistan has sullied our reputation and laid open a comparative advantage to the very relationships that government policy castigates—for which read Russia, China and Iran. Has the time come when a far-ranging strategy towards all three should be considered? They will undermine proposals no matter how pragmatic, use vetoes and play their respective hands with an eye to the main chance.
All the negative effects of the narco trade should not be underestimated but given that the Taliban is a creature of Pakistan’s ISI, what of covert support by the ISI? I am hearing that it has firmly informed the Taliban that they will need to deliver on the moderate approach they claim to have adopted if they wish to stay in power. Complexities, such as the inability of the Saud family in government to rein in wayward family members with their abundant wealth and extremist religious ideology, remain a concern. I anticipate proxy organisations supporting terrorism into the western world, with al-Qaeda setting up Afghanistan as the base for operations, with far-ranging tentacles in a wholesale network of terror stretching across the Sahel into Mozambique. My prognosis is bleak and, I trust, wide of the mark. We cannot and must not abandon Afghanistan.
Baroness Goudie (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I pay tribute to all those in the military services, diplomatic services and others who have been working together in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. I also pay tribute to those who have lost their lives and their families, and those I have been privileged to work with.
For two decades, the Afghan women have been leading efforts to build a brighter future for Afghanistan. Encouraged by us, America, Canada and other countries, they have been working hand in hand to make their country a better, freer and safer place. Now the Taliban has taken control of the country again, these women activists are at risk and are at the top of the Taliban hit list because they stood with us and we encouraged them.
When the Taliban came to power 20 years ago women bore the heaviest price. This time will be no different. It is already the same. As we know, women and their children were unable to go the checkpoints today without somebody going with them. It was terrible. They were turned back. We are hearing that the homes of Afghan women are being invaded and their organisations being looted. They fear for their lives and for their families. We are seeing girls being told not to go to school any more. Women are being told that they cannot leave their homes, except with a guardian.
As I said earlier, women activists are at the top of the Taliban kill list. They are targets for kidnapping, torture and assassination. However, the United Kingdom and US Governments have not prioritised getting this group of heroines to safety. By leaving them behind, we are abandoning our allies and abandoning future generations who are in the greatest of need. It is not too late. We can still keep the promise to our partners.
What is the United Kingdom’s ARAP scheme to accommodate women peacebuilders whom the United Kingdom and other countries supported for their work with women who we trained through peace and security? How will the proposed visa scheme for the most vulnerable Afghans ensure—not over the next five years but over the next five days—that it includes women and girls who supported the UK’s work on peace and security throughout and on the borders of Afghanistan? We know that we work closely with America bringing women from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan to try to do peacebuilding between the three countries. What is the scheme for these women?
How will the UK ensure that all the work on girls’ education will not be reversed and how will we keep the momentum going? How will we ensure that women and girls get safely to the airport, as I have asked previously? Further, what are our proposals for the long-term peace talks and will we ensure that in all peace talks there are 50% women at the table, regardless of the Taliban’s asks? We have to have women at the peace table. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hain that, in the words of Jonathan Powell—who I have a great deal of respect for and have worked with many times —we have to talk to the enemy. If we do not talk to the Taliban, we will not know what is happening. I will be pleased to hear from the Minister how we are going to deal with these things immediately. There is not time, as the Home Secretary thought this morning on Sky.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the 457 British military personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan and the many thousands who have been injured. I do not think their sacrifice was in vain. I think they kept us safe for 20 years and they changed the lives of millions of people in Afghanistan. I also pay tribute to the hard-working staff of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office in Afghanistan and, indeed, in Whitehall, working tirelessly to make something out of the crisis that has been created.
This has been a very wide-ranging debate. It has covered the blame game, as it were, and it has looked widely at Britain’s place in the world, given what has happened. I would like to contribute thoughts on that, but not in this debate, given the number of expert speakers who have participated and the short time allowed. Instead, I wish to concentrate on one narrow issue, which is the role of arts and culture in Afghanistan. Britain played a leading role in regenerating Afghan culture, and we must now support those who helped us undertake that work.
My attention has been brought to numerous important cases, and I hope that Ministers will focus on those as well as on the other urgent cases; for example, the extraordinary Afghan teacher, Aziz Royesh, who set up the Marefat High School, which educates 4,000 children, half of whom are girls. I gather he has now made it to the airport and hopes to be airlifted with his family either to the US or the UK. He is a prime example of an individual in Afghanistan who stepped up to the plate, with the opportunities provided by the defeat of the Taliban, to make a real difference, but who is now a target.
I think also of the staff of the National Museum of Afghanistan. The lives of eight curators and their families are in danger. They are considered to have collaborated with the West, when all they were doing was restoring their own country’s cultural heritage. I think of the British Council contractors—there are 25 individuals—and their families, who worked to create links between British and Afghan schools and who taught English. They are now ostracised; they are accused of being spies and of promoting Christianity.
There is now a campaign to look after artists and musicians. Afghanistan had national orchestras, and orchestras made up solely of women, whose lives are, again, under threat. There is the work of Blue Shield International, ably supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is important to recognise that every department in Whitehall will be working in some shape or form to help with this current crisis, but I pay tribute to the civil servants at DCMS in particular who are working to try to preserve the cultural artefacts and heritage of Afghanistan.
Shining a light on these few examples brings to life the fact that there was, to a certain extent, what one might recognise as a normal life in Afghanistan after we had defeated the Taliban, which was coming back. That is what the tragedy is about, but it is also about the here and now—these personal stories—and trying as best we can to secure the safety of the Afghan civilians who helped us so much in our work.
Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I agree with most of the speeches made by various Peers. All that has been said, and the questions asked, are valid. We are facing a disaster that is unfolding in front of us.
My thoughts go back to decisions taken by various Governments after 9/11. Germany allowed thousands to come from Syria. Prime Minister Thatcher allowed east African nationals to come to the UK and others to migrate from the West Indies and the subcontinent. Canada has traditionally allowed many thousands who are in trouble to enter Canada and to stay there. Many who were in trouble went to Canada, and today we face a similar need to allow Afghans who have helped us in Afghanistan over 20 years to come to the UK.
In the minds of many UK citizens is that all these people are Muslims. Unspoken, but deeply felt, is that these immigrants are Muslims, and they will bring terrorism to the UK. I submit that Islam is a peaceful religion and killing is forbidden. Tolerance is in the ethics of Islam, as is living peacefully with others and giving help when help is needed. There are many Muslims who sit on the Benches of your Lordships’ House, including on the Front Benches.
Afghanistan is a landlocked country surrounded by Muslim countries such as Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Pakistan, as well as China, which has a large Muslim community. Afghanistan is one of the most geopolitical countries in the world. There are real fears that the new regime may trigger violence between Shias and Sunnis. We in the UK must face reality and work with the new regime to ensure that human rights are recognised and respected, and violence is avoided. To this end, the UK must bring together many nations through the UN.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB) [V]
My Lords, history records that the Indian subcontinent was repeatedly invaded by Afghan armies bent on looting and carrying off captives for the slave and sex trade. There was very little resistance until the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the 1800s. He fought the marauding Afghans, freeing captives. After prolonged fighting, Sikh forces entered Kabul itself but, instead of acting vindictively, true to Sikh teachings, they showed respect for the Afghans and their places of worship. Trade and mutual respect led to the settlement of thousands of Sikhs in Afghanistan. Today, the latest figures show that there are fewer than 300 Hindus and Sikhs left, mostly huddled together in a Sikh gurdwara. Their lives are in great danger and I make an urgent plea to our Government to help them leave.
The West went into Afghanistan to fight extremism, but eliminating religious extremism requires us to pinpoint its causes, namely the bigotry of belief that the one God of us all has favourites and that my belief is better than your inferior belief. My reference to Sikh rule in Afghanistan was to emphasise the antidote to bigotry: that no one religion has a monopoly of truth and that showing respect for the ways of others wins hearts and minds and is the best way of fighting extremism. Today, although it hurts, we must extend this to the new rulers in Afghanistan, to move them to tolerance and respect for others.
Finally, a word on refugees and the negative connotations attached to them. The reality is that, in the main, refugees bring added value to their host country. This morning, I saw a clip about a young Afghan doctor who came to this country as a teenage refugee. Another, with family trapped in Afghanistan, who works with my daughter in a south London practice, came as an infant and is now a leading voice in primary care and a frequent contributor to the BMJ and other publications. Admission of 20,000 refugees over the years is vague. Will the noble Lord the Minister support my plea that this should be changed to 10,000 in the next 12 months to help those who are now in real and imminent danger of their lives?
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, I echo the gratitude of noble Lords for the efforts and sacrifices of our Armed Forces over many years in Afghanistan.
Yesterday we watched, with alarm, the return of the Taliban, taking front of stage in Kabul, projecting a new, softer public image. There is no doubt that many fear the Taliban. They have seen them at work and are alarmed for their personal safety, and particularly that of women and girls.
I want to talk about the NATO occupation. Clearly there has been a catastrophic failure in the performance of the regular Afghan army during the last month. The reasons, as opposed to journalists’ speculation, are likely to be many and complex. However, we cannot ignore the fact that, for at least the last decade or more, the US and UK have been heavily involved in equipping and training that army. In any inquiry into this debacle—and there must be an inquiry, which should be independent and not internal—it is important that the implications of the Afghan army’s collapse to a much smaller and less well-equipped force are properly analysed and that changes are implemented.
I also raise a concern that either the rapid collapse was recognised as a significant risk factor in the contingency planning for the timely and safe evacuation of people we are responsible for, or the possibility of rapid collapse was not recognised, which would indicate a serious failure of intelligence. As my noble friend Lord Dholakia said, our cultures are different; we do not always think in the same way. We continually underestimate the ability of our foes and overestimate our own and that of our allies.
One real concern for the future is immediate: the impact of this military and political defeat on the refugee crisis which will arise in the next few months and years—not just directly from Afghanistan and neighbouring countries but from the effect on other regimes emboldened by the failure of western democracies’ collective foreign policy, for example in sub-Saharan Africa. Our current government strategy of creating a hostile environment to refugees to discourage crossings of the English Channel is as effective as a Woodentop army battle plan. The Dover Strait is not the place to conduct an exercise in “comfort persuasion”, when refugees have already demonstrated their determination to escape brutal regimes by clinging to the undercarriages of aircraft about to get airborne or walking across a continent—or two—to get to Calais.
Working with our allies, we need to create a safe conduit so that refugees are welcome and their asylum applications rapidly assessed, and they are then supported properly into our communities. This will not be cheap either in monetary terms or, I suspect, in electoral popularity—but it is the price to be paid for political and military failure.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, the events in Afghanistan are truly shocking, but there is nothing that your Lordships’ House can say today which can change what has happened. There has been much hand wringing over the plight of Afghans left in a country governed by people who do not share western values—but Afghanistan is not unique in that. We cannot even be sure that what the Taliban stand for is unpopular among most Afghans. Research from only a few years ago found extraordinarily high levels of support for aspects of the Taliban’s policies which liberal democracies abhor—including those which impact women. It is an uncomfortable truth that not everywhere in the world wants to be a rights-based democracy.
The Government are right to focus on those who will not be safe staying in Afghanistan and deserve praise for their resettlement scheme, which I believe is in addition to the relocation scheme for those who have worked for us. Unlike many noble Lords who have spoken, I believe that limits are necessary and I completely support the Government in that. The welcome of the British people for refugees will be sincere, but it will not be infinite.
There are over 30 million people in Afghanistan, so we must be highly selective and risk-based. Only those genuinely at risk in Afghanistan should be included in the scheme, but of equal importance is a risk to the security of this country. Those who might present a threat to the UK must be kept out. It is dangerous in the extreme to abandon the need for proof of identity, as some noble Lords have urged. The Government must also step up efforts to deter illegal entry, which is already at intolerable levels. The Nationality and Borders Bill, which your Lordships will consider fairly soon, must become law as rapidly as possible.
I am not sure that this recall of Parliament was needed. We have recorded our shared horror and shame, and a few political points have been scored—but did we really need to come back from recess to do that? There are many issues which are far more important to the British people than that.
Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]
My Lords, it is hard to know where to start on an Armageddon of an event, but it is barely surprising. The repeated warnings of a power vacuum, the endless opportunities for Taliban military, social and political position-building, the final optics of the US midnight flit from Bagram and the Afghani leaders jumping ship or switching sides all propelled us to an inevitable outcome. It is pointless for our Foreign Secretary to affect surprise. The speed at which Afghani forces changed sides was amply demonstrated for us in 2001, yet we apparently learned nothing. Afghani leaders failed Afghanistan, but the sudden withdrawal of logistic, contractor and life support were huge failures for the United States and allied forces, although fully understood by all Afghanis, including, of course, the Taliban. Apparently, we have not learned the lessons of Oman about the 30 years that are needed to build an effective army. We have been short-sighted, dim and forgetful.
What now? First, we must fully honour our obligations to those we employed, used and befriended, and we must honour those in the heroic allied forces who died, to whom I too pay my deep respects. Secondly, it is imperative for all allies multilaterally to try to shape events by setting out the conditions for future aid and any possible changes in political status. The Taliban may reject all this, but the alternative is to leave behind a vacuum to be filled by the Chinese, an untrustworthy Pakistan, Russia and Iran, complex as it will be for any of them. Of course, the conditions must cover human rights, not least for women and girls, but given that we are talking about the Taliban and AQ, there is little ground for optimism. Indeed, we will now have paltry intelligence on them on the ground or on any terrorists’ intentions or those of other malign actors. Thousands of AQ terror prisoners have already been released. It would be mad to underestimate probable radicalisation and recruitment everywhere, not just by state actors. As noble Lords have pointed out, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee showed that 95% of UK street heroin comes from Afghanistan via the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, Russian intelligence and Mafia organisations, mainly co-ordinated in Brighton Beach, New York.
The bodywork of global Britain is badly dented, as is the reputation of our closest ally. The US and everywhere else worldwide will understand this, so, please, no more hyperbole about British strategy. We do not have one, and we never did, other than to give uncritical tactical aid to the United States. The integrated review is largely shredded. We need a rigorous appraisal starting with the understanding that not all wisdom resides with the Government of the day. We have been poor students across a number of Governments, not just this one. The Prime Minister today claims foresight. He actually lacked foresight, insight or even good sense. How mad to follow the lunacy of the Trump/Taliban deal surrendering a unilateral withdrawal date in exchange for nothing. How thin is the relationship with President Biden, and how true is the judgment of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that it may be a defining moment of his presidency. Our defining moment will come only when we grasp that we have pretended omniscience when the reality has been threadbare understanding.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB) [V]
My Lords, this has been a sobering debate indeed, and speeches have rightly been unanimous in their support for our Armed Forces, diplomats, BBC journalists and the women and girls now at risk. I too endorse the pleas for support for religious freedom in Afghanistan. However, those predicaments could pale before the enormity of a geopolitical shift that would see the Taliban aligning with China and Russia, as my noble friend Lord Alton, my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup, the noble Lord, Lord Hannan and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, warned.
Writing in the Times yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, warned us not to turn our backs on future interventions, and he cited our work in Kosovo, but what we have learned once again today is the danger of interfering in other cultures, particularly tribal ones, without a carefully considered exit plan. As Vietnam and Iraq foretold, vacuums are inevitably filled by warlords or groups whose aims are at odds with those of the free world and frequently lead to an even worse situation than that which we sought to improve.
We cannot and should not conflate the cultures of other societies with our own, but, from the Crusades on, I fear that that is what we have consistently done, as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, colourfully described. Like him, I found Ben Wallace’s interview moving in its honesty. I dared to hope when I saw the Taliban press conference that there might be some hope that the Taliban of 2021 is not that of 2001, but we have heard anecdotes and warnings from noble Lords better informed than me that we should be very sceptical about this. Nevertheless, jaw, jaw must, for the time being, be preferable to war, war, even if it is ultimately a doomed exercise—after all, we do business with other countries that invoke sharia law, however foreign it may be to our values.
I therefore have specific questions for the Minister. First, will the Government keep the House informed after the Recess on how the Taliban are behaving on the ground, how they are treating women and children, whether freedom of religious belief is being allowed, and if they are, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, mentioned, pursuing artists and musicians? Secondly, was there no intelligence to suggest the inadvisability of a withdrawal while the Taliban were seasonally in the cities, as opposed to the winter when they tend to withdraw? If so, was this intelligence ignored? Thirdly, is it true that a country-wide disgust at the corrupt failings of the Afghan judicial system, despite the rise of women judges, has meant that there is more support for a return to sharia and the Taliban than otherwise might be the case?
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that we need to come better to terms with our current place in the world to inform our future interventions which, I pray, will be few and far between.
Lord Godson (Con)
I too wish to associate myself with the remarks made in tribute to our forces, civil servants, public servants and aid workers. Many have paid tribute already today, but it is important that the total unanimity and solidarity of this House is heard at this time. It has been a hugely important debate and a privilege to listen to. It may be, as several speakers including the noble Lord, Lord Howard, have said, an inflection point for the future world order and particularly for our alliances going forward.
The role of the United States has been central to this and the Biden Administration have been rightly criticised, I think unanimously—as least, I have not heard any speaker defend their decision here today. It is a uniquely personal decision of this President, who has a long-held view about the necessity of withdrawal from Afghanistan. It has been a shameful and a graceless decision expressed in graceless ways, as has been noted, with insufficient tribute to the Afghan security forces who gave their lives and to allied and NATO countries whose forces—notably our own—also gave their lives.
However, the Biden Administration are not the totality of America. Through much of my political life, having been born an American citizen, I have noted many pessimistic predictions for the US after previous debacles, although perhaps none quite as serious as this, which rolls in many of the features of past debacles into one fell swoop.
I remember the pessimism about the US retreat in Vietnam in 1975 and the debacle of the hostage crisis in Iran in 1979-1981 when the Khomeini regime humiliated the Administration of Jimmy Carter. I was working in America when the bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut and the subsequent humiliating withdrawal of US marines and other forces took place. I can well remember all those things. But because the Biden Administration are not the totality of the United States and its polity, America has an enormous resilience and ability to bounce back, to reappraise, regather and regroup.
It is interesting that, despite the implication that the Biden Administration withdrew so rapidly from Afghanistan for political reasons, the latest polling numbers from Politico pollsters already indicate a 20% drop in US public support for withdrawal from Afghanistan, so humiliating and abject are the terms. Even though the public do not object to the withdrawal per se, the way in which it has been conducted is so obviously unsatisfactory and degrading as to prompt that drop. That is not the totality of United States public opinion and it may be that, in the coming days and months, anti-interventionist groups such as the Quincy coalition will see a further erosion of their support as well, as the American public look at what has been done in their name and whether it is in the United States’ national interest.
As far as wider alliances and partnerships are concerned, I make one final point: there needs to be a serious reappraisal of our relationship with Pakistan. Several speakers have already alluded to this. It is a complex country, with complex motives and a complex system of government. I ask the Minister whether he would be willing, since the UK Government are setting up an office of net assessment, to consider having a net assessment of our relations with Pakistan and more broadly in the region and to have an overall look, now we are at this inflection point, at what can be done here and now.
Lord Garnier (Con) [V]
My Lords, I draw some comfort from what my noble friend Lord Godson has just said but, as other noble Lords have already said, there is no benefit in complaining today about the actions of the United States in pulling out of Afghanistan or the casuistry deployed to justify its decision, despite the obvious and terrible consequences of it doing so for the people of Afghanistan, especially the young women and girls, who face a dark future of repression and sexual abuse. But, if the 20-year sacrifice of our troops and the appalling events in Afghanistan of the last few days tell us anything—and I wish it were otherwise —they highlight some of the unwelcome but indisputable truths about our own country, our international standing, our Government and their leadership which cannot be ignored.
My noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere said that we live in a time of poor options. He is right but, in a time of crisis, the United Kingdom looks to its Prime Minister for an informed opinion, resolution, clear policy, readiness for the unexpected and a sense of purpose. As a member of the United Nations permanent five and the second most important member of NATO, with a once-recognised reputation for probity, steadfastness and national honour, and as a country with the ability to project power diplomatically and militarily, we expect to have some, if not an overriding, influence on the President of the United States and other allied leaders. But it seems we have none.
Mr Biden did not ask for our views because he did not consider them important, nor us a serious interlocutor. Judging from the G7 conference in Cornwall, we are not taken seriously by the leaders of France and Germany either. It does not take much imagination to work out what Presidents Xi and Putin think. The new Government of Iran and the Afghan Taliban now know enough about us to plan their futures untroubled by concerns about what we can or might do. We have arrived at a situation where neither our closest friends nor our foes pay attention to what we say or do and our ambassador and Armed Forces are desperately trying to save people from butchery in Kabul.
When Margaret Thatcher chided President Reagan for invading Grenada, he apologised; when, at the start of the Iraq crisis in August 1990, she told President Bush Sr that
“this is no time to go wobbly”,
he remained resolute. She possessed moral, military and political strength. In the face of the greatest and most obvious foreign policy question that this Government have had to face outside Europe, we find something quite else. I am afraid that we find a failure of leadership, absence from the bridge, delayed decision-making through inadequate intelligence and poor assessment of information and a lack of preparedness. Government is difficult but it is not a branch of the entertainment business. I am not as subtle as my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne; there is a vacuum at the head of government. It is not only nature that abhors a vacuum.
Lord Sikka (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the tragedy of Afghanistan has been exacerbated by power games played by major nations. In the 1970s, western powers were not willing to accept a communist Government in Afghanistan and sought to undermine them by arming and funding the insurgents. The Soviet Union responded by invading in 1979 to prop up its client state. The US and western state powers responded by creating and funding al-Qaeda, yet still there is no reflection on the funding of terrorist organisations to further political objectives—the UK Government have continued to suppress documents relating to their support for al-Qaeda.
The Taliban itself came out of the counter-revolutionary insurgency organised by the CIA in the 1970s and 1980s. The objective was to overthrow the country’s Government. Eventually, the Soviet Union was driven out, but rogue elements gained power. As the noble Lord, Lord Suri, reminded us, during the 1996-2001 brutal rule of the Taliban regime, minorities, including Hindus and Sikhs, were forced to wear yellow badges reminiscent of the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany—yet there was only muted protest from western powers.
The 9/11 tragedy changed that. The US-led war on terrorism somehow became an expensive occupation. The attempts to build Afghanistan in the image of the West have failed, just as they have failed in Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere. The result has been chaos and the deaths of thousands of innocent people. We need a fundamental rethink of foreign policies.
I have three questions for the Minister. Can he assure the House that an independent inquiry will examine the folly of the UK’s foreign policies? Secondly, why did the Government not designate the Afghanistani Taliban as a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act 2000? Thirdly, what are the Government’s preconditions for any recognition of the Taliban Government in Afghanistan?
Lord Cromwell (CB) [V]
My Lords, the many preceding eloquent and erudite speeches reflect perhaps a measure of agreement on a number of points. We went to Afghanistan with the US and others largely to strike, successfully, at terrorist capability based there. However, an Afghan proverb says that community is not created by force. The mission creep that followed resulted in a far wider—laudable, but much longer-term—set of objectives being taken on.
In the subsequent two decades, many have died and been injured and I join in the condolences and tributes expressed by other speakers today. It is for others to decide whether the sacrifice was worth it but, as other noble Lords have said, it disrupted terrorist activity and kept our country safer from attack. It also gave a generation of young people, particularly women, in Afghanistan a tantalising taste of another way of living.
Withdrawal at some point was inevitable and we really had no choice other than to leave once the US pulled out. It is the regrettable manner of the allies’ withdrawal and the chilling messages that it sends that so many have spoken about today. Many points have been made and moving examples cited and I will not repeat them here.
However, I will ask the following questions and I would be grateful for the Minister’s replies. First, on UK relationships, where does this leave the UK-US relationship and what role, if any, does the UK now have in seeking to work with China and Russia on Afghanistan and its neighbours, given the pretty poor relationships that we have with both at present? I cannot help but wonder what their embassies are saying to the Taliban today.
Secondly, on the Taliban, to what extent do the Government actually believe that Taliban 2 is really different from Taliban 1? Will internal pressures with those who have lived and fought alongside them create splinter groups and renewed conflict? We heard a great deal from the Front Bench early in the debate today that the Taliban must do this or not do that, but what ability do we have to enforce any of that? Can we now expect a boom in the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan across central Asia to Europe and beyond?
Many today have spoken about those people coming to the UK. Over the last day or so, the Taliban appear to have been allowing an exodus, but on what grounds does the Minister believe that this will continue for the several months—nay, years—envisaged in recent announcements? Would it not be wise to have a plan for when the Taliban start to restrict or even select—we need to ponder this point—those whom they allow to come to the UK?
I close with a chilling phrase from Sun Tzu’s Art of War:
“When … your ardor”
is
“damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no person, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.”
We need a plan to avert the consequences that, in different ways, now threaten both us and the vulnerable people of Afghanistan.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con) [V]
My Lords, the terrible debacle in Afghanistan confirms—indeed, the debates in both Houses of Parliament today confirm—that the world has reached the end of an era. Among other things, it cannot rely any longer just on American security guarantees. That also has major security implications for the increasingly dangerous situation in Taiwan.
That offers a clear lesson that western security pundits have been rather slow to grasp. President Biden himself says that America
“cannot afford to remain tethered to policies created in response to the world as it was 20 years ago.”
Nor can we. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, observed a few moments ago, my noble friend Lord Hague said that we must not give up on all responsible overseas intervention. That is right, but are we playing the intervention role in the right way and in the right country context?
In truth, our long intervention in Afghanistan was of the classic, old-fashioned military occupation kind of the sort that worked in past centuries—although only with great difficulty in Afghanistan—but in this revolutionary digital-power age influence, persuasion and peacemaking, or peace imposing, work in completely different ways. The lessons are old, but the digital age has magnified those factors a thousandfold. The battlefield now lies almost entirely in the realm of continuous psychological warfare, the undermining and deconstructing of hostile visions, new, ever-deeper and much better intelligence links, and persistent demoralisation and division of the rival camp.
Sheer size of weaponry and defence spend are no longer enough, if they ever were. General de Gaulle once wrote:
“Nothing lasts unless it is incessantly renewed.”
Security and stability within nations now rests on completely changed foundations, as does the prevention or swift suppression of armed and violent conflict. Those foundations depend on the domination of communications, the domination of cyber superiority and constant news and information superiority—plus, of course, carefully targeted funds in the right areas—as much as, or more than, having troops on the ground.
In Afghanistan, account has now to be taken of the entirely altered distribution of world power: hard, soft, smart and sharp—whatever you will. Of course we want America as a partner, but America is no longer the automatic leader in this field. I realise that all this is difficult for the traditional policy and planning mindset to grasp, but to root out medieval dictatorships and the lawless terror methods that they use, we must now—and this is difficult—work with, at least on this front, China, Russia and Asian and African powers generally, and the new networks that govern and are reshaping the modern world, including the worldwide Commonwealth network.
Lord Birt (CB) [V]
My Lords, the United States came to our rescue in two world wars. Without its intervention in the second, Europe—including the UK—might now be under either a Soviet or a Nazi yoke. We should be for ever grateful for that. But the US was a reluctant interventionist. Separated from most of the world by two mighty oceans, there is a deep isolationist tendency in US society. Never forget that it was Japan’s ill-judged attack on Pearl Harbor that forced America into World War II and al-Qaeda’s monstrous attack on 9/11 that took the US into Afghanistan.
We and our allies are broadly united in our foreign policy goals: we want to protect our security; we want a prosperous and accessible global economy; we want—and the pandemic explains why—the benefits of a healthy world; we do not want to see suffering, abject poverty or starvation; and we want a world which promotes democratic values, equality, freedom of expression and the rule of law.
Yet we appear a long way off achieving this better world. So many countries, on every continent, are in the grip of totalitarianism or despots of various shades. The chaotic exodus from Afghanistan, following decades of investment and sacrifice, marks a serious reverse in the most unstable region in the world—the 4,000-kilometre arc that spans from Syria to Pakistan. As then Senator Joe Biden so presciently said in 2003,
“the alternative to nation building is chaos, a chaos that churns out bloodthirsty warlords, drug traffickers and terrorists”.
Europe and the United States share a bedrock of common values. Europe’s GDP, including the UK’s, matches that of the US. However, as America’s unilateral withdrawal so painfully illuminates, Europe is no match for America in terms of military capacity. It is all too clear that the nations of Europe cannot alone protect and promote all their global goals; the risk of dependency on, or even of abandonment by, the US is too great. It is time for all of Europe to stand back, to review and to reflect.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I do not think I shall ever forget the extraordinary pictures we saw the other day of human desperation at Kabul airport. That is one of those dramatic pictures you never forget. The most extraordinary thing about the whole incident was that I got the impression the British Government were extremely surprised by events and had not prepared for them at all. I would have thought that anyone responsible for Afghanistan would have considered the possibility of a Taliban offensive and decided to plan to meet it. However, as far as I could see, no contingency plans were in operation at all, which is most extraordinary. I would have hoped there was a plan years ago focused on that contingency and that it would have been exercised from time to time to keep people alert.
I fear that the British Government became extraordinarily complacent and, as people do when they become complacent, began to believe their own propaganda—that Afghanistan was doing well and was well on the way to becoming a stable democracy, as we all hoped it would. There was no evidence for that at all. On the contrary, it was quite clear that the real curses of Afghanistan—corruption, war and the exploitation of women—are as constant there as they have been in previous generations, and are very difficult to eradicate.
Nevertheless, in the circumstances we must ask ourselves what we will do. In this excellent debate, I think there has been consensus that our primary, absolute obligation is to try to save the lives of those who worked with or for us in Afghanistan, whether as interpreters, aid workers or whatever. They must be extracted from Afghanistan as soon as possible and generously treated when we have got them back. Nothing is as important as that.
At the same time, as has already been suggested, we need to have a thorough look at the way in which we make our foreign policy—whom we consult, which countries we are prepared to co-operate with and which we are not—and to develop a new doctrine approach to foreign policy co-ordination. For many years we did not really need foreign policy co-ordination, because we had a special relationship with the United States; we spoke to them and that was good enough. Then we joined the European Union and again we were within a structure in so far as the European Union was concerned, developing co-ordinated foreign policies, which was a good idea in principle.
With both those things now gone, I am afraid that relations with the Americans will take a lot of repairing, so we need to think again about how we handle these things, who we rely on as allies and who we want to speak to about various problems and share the issues of the day with. This should be done systematically, and hopefully quite quickly, because we do not have very much time.
This has been an extremely valuable debate. A lot of people have asked pertinent and sensible questions, and they deserve a considered response. It would not be reasonable to expect the Government to give such a response in a brief wind-up speech, but I hope they will be generous in writing letters to Members who have taken part and will set out the Government’s position on the various points that have been made. That would greatly add to the utility of the whole exercise of Parliament—
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I am afraid I have to interrupt the noble Lord. We thank him for his contribution and perhaps we can move to the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia.
Lord Gadhia (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as we seek to make sense of the unfolding tragedy in Afghanistan, the waning political courage and leadership from successive US Administrations is now clear. This has been compounded by strategic miscalculations and amplified by tactical errors, especially in implementing the withdrawal of US troops. Our experience during the pandemic has demonstrated that policy driven by dates, not data, is highly susceptible to unravelling. It has created a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Taliban to seize control.
The UK is, regrettably, a policy-taker rather than a policy-maker in this situation, but we cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility and we must face the immediate consequences. There are three obvious priorities. The first and most pressing issue is rescue. For someone who comes from a community of refugees, the Ugandan Asians, who were forced to flee their country overnight, the scenes from Afghanistan are especially harrowing. They spark uncomfortable flashbacks to events 49 years ago this month that led to the evacuation of nearly 60,000 people, about half of whom took refuge in this country. In 1972, the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, fulfilled the UK’s moral and legal responsibility. We must do so again. I agree with the Foreign Secretary that we are a big-hearted nation, and the bespoke asylum scheme is welcome. We must keep the criteria under review but, above all, execute it with urgency and do so without artificial caps, securing safe passage for evacuation. Every minute and every hour is crucial in saving lives.
The second consequence is dealing with Taliban 2.0, which is now far better funded and organised and increasingly media-savvy. The ink is barely dry on the UK’s integrated review, which promised deeper engagement in the Indo-Pacific. This is the first big test of global Britain, especially of our ability to negotiate shifting power balances.
That leads neatly to the third concern—namely, elevated instability across the region. An estimated 30,000 mercenaries have been trained. No longer required to capture Kabul, they are ready to be deployed elsewhere. Countries such as India and Bangladesh are bracing themselves. Even Pakistan is not immune from the forces of destabilisation and an influx of refugees.
South Asia’s population of nearly 2 billion people has enough challenges in managing the pandemic, accelerating vaccination and spurring economic recovery. The last thing the region needs is the turmoil associated with regime change and the intensified export of terror. We clearly need to work with allies and partners to pre-empt this serious risk.
In conclusion, the message that I hope goes out from Parliament today is not one of despondency or impotence but of resolve, offering hope to those most affected. We may have lost this battle in Afghanistan, but the pursuit of freedom and democracy is a constant war for hearts and minds that we have not abandoned and never will.
Lord Darroch of Kew (CB) [V]
My Lords, the outcome in Afghanistan is a tragedy for the Afghan people and a humiliation for the West. The immediate priorities are clear. We must honour our obligation to those Afghans who worked for us, a category that we should define widely. I agree with noble Lords who have called for a more generous resettlement scheme, delivered over months rather than years and with the appropriate infrastructure in place here in the UK. I also support the call from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for reconsideration of the asylum applications of the 3,000 Afghan refugees already in the UK.
On diplomacy, it is right to co-ordinate with allies, to be cautious about recognising the new leadership in Kabul, and to judge the Taliban by their deeds, not their words. I pay tribute to the courage of those British military and officials, including some former Foreign Office friends and colleagues, who remain on the ground in Kabul organising the evacuation, and of course to the contribution and sacrifice of British forces throughout the Afghan deployment.
I have one broader point about why we are where we are. During my three and a half years as National Security Adviser I travelled to Afghanistan around a dozen times. I saw for myself the extraordinary transformational work of the British military, but I also could not miss the reports about low morale and high desertion rates in the Afghan army and its total reliance on foreign support. I would hear that without our presence it could not maintain the equipment we were giving it, get basic supplies to its bases or get its wounded to hospitals. It is now being reported, all too believably, that in the run-up to this collapse most Afghan soldiers had not been paid for months and that when the fighting started there was a failure to get ammunition to those on the front line. No wonder the collapse was so swift. It was also clear to me that corruption was deep and endemic in the Afghan system. The Afghan people did not want to return to Taliban rule, but nor did they appear to have much attachment to the Government they lived under.
We went to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 to destroy al-Qaeda. That mission evolved into something approximating to nation building. We had the best of motives, but we were working in an environment where the ordinary Afghan soldier felt little loyalty to his commanders, where the army could not function without hour-by-hour support from international contractors, and where the Government were seen by the people as the corrupt and ineffective creature of foreign powers. In short, we set ourselves a Herculean task that was going to take decades.
Meanwhile, the Taliban strategy was one of waiting us out, expecting our resolve to break, as it did. To compound this failure, the abject Trump exit deal of last year effectively gave the Taliban 18 months to plan their final assault. There was never any chance that the Afghan army would hold out after we abandoned it. Our baling out prematurely meant that it was bound to end like this. It was predictable and predicted, not least by the Lords International Relations and Defence Committee. I believe that this outcome would also have been predicted and anticipated in Washington, although not the speed with which the collapse unfolded, which makes its withdrawal look all the more cynical.
We are left with some big lessons to be learned, perhaps, as some have suggested, through a formal independent inquiry that includes lessons about mission creep, intelligence failures, the danger of wishful thinking and ignoring the facts that do not fit the preferred narrative of progress, and, most of all, the need for strategic patience.
Baroness Northover (LD) [V]
My Lords, over 120 of your Lordships have spoken today. We have had passionate and well-informed speeches, including from those who have had long engagement with Afghanistan, whether in the forces, intelligence, diplomacy, development, or in other ways. There is overwhelming agreement that what has happened is a catastrophe, made all the worse because it was avoidable. Here are some terms used today: ignominious, embarrassing, betrayal, humiliation, failure, shame, defeat, disaster, dark days for western civilisation, human desperation.
Above all, this is a catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan. After all the investment in Afghan young people in particular—girls as well as boys—who should have been the very future of Afghanistan, their prospects, and possibly their lives, have been destroyed in a few short weeks. Women and girls have had their lives cast into the shadows. We already hear that women are no longer seen at work, in education, or in the street. They are being subjected to appalling attacks, whatever the Taliban leaders may be saying. As the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, pointed out, significantly the Taliban agreed to no provision for women’s rights in the so-called peace talks that President Trump initiated.
I too pay tribute to our own troops. Families and friends of the 457 young men and women who lost their lives in Afghanistan will be wondering what their terrible loss was all for. Who could not be moved by what Tom Tugendhat said in the Commons today? What distress and bitterness may be felt by those whose lives have been so damaged by physical and mental injuries? My noble friend Lady Brinton and others were right to highlight this.
Some 20 years ago, after the atrocity of 9/11, there was international agreement to go into Afghanistan. Yes, that was to tackle al-Qaeda, but it was also wider, as the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, said. It was engagement with a failed state that was a breeding ground for terrorism. I recall my much-lamented friend Lord Garden, with his military and strategic background, saying that engagement would need to be for at least 30 years, if not much more. Long engagement was required so that this was not a failed state, with the terrorism risk deriving from that. My noble friend Lord Newby points out that the US engagement in Europe after the Second World War still holds today.
Of course, we know that the West, and in particular President Bush, was deflected by the conflict in Iraq—as my noble friend Lord Bruce pointed out—and we also know that corruption undermined development. However, we have long known that development is immensely challenging, but also worth it—as we have seen in many parts of Africa, or even more recently across the Balkans—pulling people out of poverty but also reducing conflict.
This catastrophic decision, and the lack of planning to which my noble friend Lord Strasburger pointed, has resulted in the collapse of the fragile Government and the potential reversal of all that was achieved over those 20 years. We have cast Afghanistan back to being a failed state, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, with her deep experience, has warned.
Where was global Britain in all of this? What influence did we have or seek with our allies the Americans, to whom we have pivoted because of leaving the EU? I note what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said. What was it that the integrated review said? Apparently, we can
“shape the international order of the future”.
Is this an example? It also said that
“What Global Britain means in practice is best defined by actions rather than words.”
Indeed. It also stated that
“The UK will remain the leading European Ally in NATO.”
The PM failed to answer Theresa May in the Commons this morning when she asked how early he spoke to the Secretary-General of NATO. Can the Minister clarify? If he chooses not to do so, we should ask him to answer all unanswered questions in writing. He is a Minister we respect, and we expect that of him.
The integrated review states that the United States
“will remain the UK’s most important strategic ally and partner.”
What did we say to the Americans about this clearly catastrophic course of action—or did we not? Do we conclude, as my noble friend Lord Wallace said, that there is no special place for the United Kingdom in the US’s thinking? The Government actually seem to share that view, arguing that there was nothing they could do and that they were powerless.
This decision flowed from an ill-informed, populist president: President Trump. The decision was made in February 2020, as the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, mentioned, and, as with his other agreements, he sought settlements with those whom we hardly viewed as allies, securing little or nothing in return. How did we work through NATO to help shield President Biden from the domestic political effects of breaking with this policy or to muster support for a different approach? Can the Minister tell us what we advised and when we advised it? We know that we did not feel that our military leaders wanted to go down this route.
My noble friend Lord Purvis noted that the Government claimed that the United Kingdom was the lead country in NATO for Kabul’s defence and that the capital was regarded as vital to protect diplomatic presence there. Did the UK advise NATO to allow the capital to fall? Now, there are no embassies there except China, Pakistan and Russia, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, pointed out, you can see who has benefited here. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, pointed out that China is likely to supply the Taliban with funds, reducing even further our leverage.
As my noble friend Lord Campbell said, we have lost influence, trust and reputation. As others have said, including my noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham, we do indeed need an independent inquiry into our engagement in Afghanistan but surely, above all, into the manner of our abandoning the country. We are now rightly talking about how we assist people out of the country, as a number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Dholakia, Lady Jolly, Lord Jones, Lord Roberts, Lord Taylor and Lady Walmsley, have urged and explored. What a terrible indictment that is of what we now see as the future path of Afghanistan: that we have to help out of the country its best and brightest.
Noble Lords have been acerbic about the plan which, as my noble friend Lady Ludford pointed out, was announced only last night: that we should take 20,000 refugees but over five years, waiting for most of them to be at major risk first, it seems. As the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said, this needs to be a moral issue, not a numbers issue. Safety from the Taliban should not be for just foreign nationals or the lucky few who made it in time to Kabul airport. How exactly, with an internet blackout, are people to fill out applications to leave? Do the Government recognise that anyone seeking to leave now puts themselves at risk because of Taliban control of all areas with their checkpoints?
There are so many who need to be helped: Afghan interpreters, to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and others referred; journalists, especially women journalists and those working for the BBC; parliamentarians, especially women parliamentarians. I think particularly here of those with whom I have engaged and praised for their returning to their country of birth, and feel so worried now for them, as is my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece. There are those who worked with the British Council; women judges, as mentioned by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Goldsmith; those involved in teaching girls—this was an area that the Prime Minister said was a priority for him. There are Chevening scholars and others. It was astonishing that, at first, the Government were asking Chevening scholars to wait. What on earth were they thinking of? There are vulnerable UN workers and aid workers—so much of the economy was associated with reconstruction; so many will be at risk now.
The PM mentioned this morning that multitudes have appealed to him for help. What did he expect? But he wants most to stay in the region, so exactly what does this mean? As my noble friend Lady Sheehan said, we cannot have a “wait and see” policy here. We are on the UN Security Council; can the Minister fill us in on our role now with the UN? The Secretary-General says that UN workers are staying in country, yet we also hear that they feel unsafe and are leaving. Exactly how will the UK Government use their seat to ensure that the international community is working collectively to hold the Taliban to account on human rights and potentially to establish a safe passage to allow Afghans to escape? What engagement will be taken forward with the Taliban, as advocated by my noble friend Lord Alderdice, with his vast experience?
Others have noted the savage cuts in aid to Afghanistan, and the partial restoration here. Will the Minister guarantee that this does not come from another part of the aid budget? I note that, even so, it does not restore the aid budget to what it was before.
This has been a very important and sobering debate on a catastrophe of our own making. It shows up very clearly that the United Kingdom will need to assess again its place in the world and how it best secures its own as well as others’ peace and prosperity. That clearly requires working together and countering the populism and nationalism that underpinned this decision. There will be many in Afghanistan, and many others around the world and in our own country, who will right now feel far less safe than they did, and that is a terrible reflection on where we find ourselves today.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, this is a truly historic debate and there have been many powerful contributions. We all understand the enormity of the situation and hope that that is reflected in our words. When we read the contributions that have been made, I think it will show that this House has risen to the occasion at a time of great historical significance for our nation and, indeed, the world.
The situation in Afghanistan is truly shocking. What we are witnessing on our TV screens and in our newspapers is a heart-breaking human catastrophe. Women and girls are terrified, there are reports of rape and people are so frightened that they are clinging to planes even as they take off, with tragic consequences, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, referred to. There are countless scenes of refugees—women, the elderly and children—fleeing to anywhere they can. There are reports already of terrorist groups re-emerging. That is the context for our debate and discussion today.
So how did we get here? How is that, just six weeks ago, the Prime Minister said:
“I do not think that the Taliban are capable of victory by military means, a point I have made several times”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col. 1112.]?
As the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, said, how is it possible to have underestimated the speed of the Taliban’s response? Can the Minister explain how there was such a miscalculation of the resilience of the Afghan Government and their armed forces following the arbitrary date of the US withdrawal? As the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked, how will we investigate what happened?
Above all, it was the catastrophic decision of the US President to leave Afghanistan on an arbitrary date without a clear peace plan or follow-up mission that ultimately led to this crisis, as so many noble Lords have noted, including the noble Lords, Lord Dannatt, Lord Newby, Lord Hammond, Lord Blencathra and Lord Forsyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fall. As my noble friend Lady Smith asked back in July, and again today, were any representations made to the US President about this withdrawal and was it raised with any other NATO Heads of State? The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi asked, quite rightly, what attempts did we make to change US policy?
Before I move on, let me agree with the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Bruce, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and many others that President Biden should not have blamed the Afghans. He should not have criticised the Afghans who fought bravely, suffering many casualties and deaths, until the Americans withdrew. Their sacrifice and suffering should be recognised, and are, by this House and many others.
Of course, questions about how we got here and what caused it do not deal with the immediate, appalling humanitarian crisis that we face. What do we do now for the people of Afghanistan, trapped in horror? Can the Minister comment on how we accelerate as a priority the process by which UK nationals, support staff and the Afghans who served us get out? Those people supported us in our hour of need. We must now support them in their hour of need. It is our moral duty.
We still hear reports of people—students, interpreters and others—struggling to get out. The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred earlier to the problems that interpreters are having. Numerous noble Lords have quite rightly raised various issues in respect of the refugee programme. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and my noble friends Lord Dubs and Lord Blunkett raised the need to change the immigration legislation so as not to penalise Afghan refugees arriving in the UK by boat. The same point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. How does the Minister respond to that, and will he make representations about it to the Home Office?
Important contributions were made also by my noble friends Lord Adonis and Lady Bakewell, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Pidding and Lady Brinton, highlighting the need for a proper resettlement programme and for greater numbers to be included. Can the Minister outline how the new resettlement programme will work? How on earth was the figure of 20,000 agreed on and reached? It now turns out, from what we heard on the radio this morning, that it is not 20,000 but 5,000 in the first year. Where is the Home Secretary’s urgency with respect to that resettlement programme? I think that many of us would say that it is simply not enough. My noble friend Lady Royall pointed to the plight of girls in rural areas and the need for the scheme to be open to them. Specific cases and groups were raised by others, including the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Goldsmith, and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, who pointed to the plight of women judges. We must not leave any of them stranded. Will we do that, or will we act? The Minister will need to tell us.
What is happening at the airport? Can the Minister explain the arrangements there? Will the agreement between the US and the Taliban allow us to continue until all our humanitarian responsibilities are met? Are we operating there to a US timetable, or will we be able to ensure, working with our allies the Americans, that our people will be able to get out even if all the Americans have left? Can the Minister confirm that reports this morning that a British evacuation flight left almost empty because of difficulties in reaching the airport are correct? Is it true that shots have been fired at the airport as well?
There is a need for us to consult neighbouring countries. What discussions have taken place with the UN and countries in the region about a broader refugee programme which will deal with those people seeking to go into countries that border Afghanistan as they flee the terror that they face? Many Members of your Lordships’ House have highlighted the plight of women and girls.
The noble Lord, Lord Hammond, is a former Defence Secretary, and the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and many other noble Lords have served in the Armed Forces. I pay tribute to all our Armed Forces personnel, past and present. I hope your Lordships’ House noted the comments of my noble friend Lord Touhig when he spoke about veterans, as a former Veterans Minister. Many of the veterans are here, not only in this House but in the other place, along with members of staff who have contributed to the defence of our country. We should salute all of them, and they should know that we salute all of them and that we do not take their service for granted. We respect and honour them, not only for their place in this House but for what they did in ensuring that we can, in this House, have the freedom of speech denied to so many others.
They served their country and did their duty, but, sadly, 457 lost their lives, while others suffered injury or trauma. They fought for democracy, freedom and human rights; they went to Afghanistan in response to the terror attack in 2001. Will the Minister join me in saying that those soldiers—those Armed Forces personnel—kept this country safe and kept the streets of this country safe by the actions that they took in Afghanistan? We salute them for that, and the British people should understand that. Going to Afghanistan was not a waste: they protected their country, their communities and their families by doing that and, again, we salute them for doing that. Will the Minister join me in recognising that?
Will the Minister say, just for explanation purposes, what the Defence Secretary meant when he said that the military could still deal with a growing terror threat, either through cyber or a kinetic strike? We all welcome the authenticity and integrity of the current Secretary of State for Defence in the way that he showed, without embarrassment, his desire to ensure that he would do all he could to get as many people as possible out of Afghanistan. That was a sign not of weakness but of strength. I salute him as well for that. As my noble friend Lady Ramsay pointed out, we need to talk to Pakistan, Russia and China. Will the Minister say what the Government’s policy is with respect to talking to the Taliban? Is it to talk directly to them or is it to talk through third parties? We need to understand what the Minister feels about that.
As has been mentioned by many noble Lords, the current crisis has huge implications for the global Britain policy that was outlined recently in the various defence reviews and reports, and hailed as a new, fresh start for a confident Britain. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, think that this is not a time for our country to be despondent. Yes, this is a difficult time; yes, this is, frankly, a crisis of historic proportions; but we have passed through those before. We are a leading member of the United Nations on the Security Council; we are a permanent member of that. We are a member of NATO. Now is not the time for us to lose our confidence. We need to learn from what happened and retain the confidence to stand up for the human rights and democracy across the world that so many of us are looking to provide.
Let me finish by saying that it is confidence that we need: not an arrogance, not a belief that we can tell others how to live their lives, and not a way of intruding where we are not wanted. But this country has a proud record, one that we should remember. We have always stood up for human rights, democracy and the rule of law. We have had terrible problems in the past in ensuring that we do that. Now is not the time to lose that confidence: now is the time for us, with our allies, to say that we will look to learn from what has happened, but we will never retreat from what we have stood for, and we should be proud that we have a country that does that.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, I stand before noble Lords at this hour after an extensive and expert debate in your Lordships’ House. Having been the recipient of questions and challenges in this House over a number of years, I can say that the quality of the debate has not disappointed anyone. Indeed, the insights that we have gained from various parts of the House, from military experts to diplomats and other experts, have been very welcome. I have always taken the approach that the insights provided by your Lordships’ House, both within the Chamber and outside it, provide insight to me in the formulation of policy.
From the outset, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Coaker—this is the first time that I have been across the Dispatch Box from him—and I associate myself totally with his remarks about our military. In doing so, as I look around this Chamber, to my left and my right—and as I am handed one final note—I look to the doorkeepers. As a Member of your Lordships’ House over the last 10 years, I say that they have done a sterling job not only in keeping us safe but in their past service as part of our military, which has kept us safe for so many years. I thank them for all that they have done and continue to do.
I have listened very carefully to various debates, and, recalling what the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, I shall seek to answer all questions. Of course, in this ever-evolving situation, I will seek to respond accordingly to questions that I am not able to cover in the time that I have.
The other thing that I will put on record, as I have on other issues, is that I shall certainly seek to update your Lordships’ House frequently on this particular issue and, if required, update noble Lords directly through a note prior to the House returning. Of course, as we return from the Summer Recess, I shall convene a meeting of interested Peers to update them and all noble Lords on the situation in Afghanistan. My noble friend Lady Warsi asked about information. A note is being circulated about key emails and contact numbers that went out to colleagues in the other place—I am ensuring that it is also circulated to Members of your Lordships’ House.
We all know why the Prime Minister called us here today: it is because of the deep concern that we all share for the people of Afghanistan. I have a particular insight in this because I am responsible for the policy for Afghanistan and south Asia and have been Minister for Human Rights over the last couple of years. I put on record that, while I have had this responsibility, I have worked quite directly with many of the people that noble Lords have talked about. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, talked about those fantastic young ladies and girls of the orchestra, and my noble friend Lord Vaizey talked about the cultural instincts. I remember welcoming these young girls to the UK for the first time—perhaps about 18 months ago—in hosting a reception at Lancaster House and watching them play beautiful music.
My assessment, under a Taliban regime, is a dire one. I make an assessment, and I have always quoted that. Indeed, when the International Relations and Defence Committee—the foreign affairs committee of your Lordships’ House—questioned me, I pinpointed that the ideological base of the organisation that is the Taliban is the thing that we should challenge. I speak as a Muslim. We have had debates and discussions on Islam and its role, and I say to the Taliban directly from the outset: the chapters of the Holy Koran, with the exception of one, start with the words:
“In the name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful”.
Are you going to be merciful and beneficent towards your citizens? That is how we should hold the Taliban to account.
I assure noble Lords that, in all my engagements and all the discussions that we will have with international partners, that will be at the heart and soul of the engagement that we need to have with this organisation that seeks to represent a faith that I follow—although its interpretation is so far from the nobility of any faith or sense of humanity. We should be unified in our response to this particular group.
But let us not forget that it is also disparate. Just because we now have polished spokesmen articulating that rights for women matter, that does not mean that local commanders will follow suit. We need to follow a very fluid situation very carefully. I take on board the points that were made by the noble Lords, Lord Green and Lord Berkeley, and my noble friends Lord Dobbs and Lord Lamont. My noble friends Lord Dobbs and Lord Lilley talked about the importance of learning lessons. I assure noble Lords that, whether it is in a formal way or as we evolve our policy, we do exactly that.
As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, reminded us, we must, in our interventions, understand the culture and the nature of the engagement. Yes, it is important that we extol democratic values. Often, when I talk about human rights, I do so not with a pointed finger but by saying that our own journey on democracy and human rights was a difficult and challenging one—yes, and on rights for women as well. We need to apply that learning in a way that is understood by others, while also respecting cultures and communities across the world.
The nature of the US decision to withdraw has been a focus. Of course, the US has a right to take its own decisions on how troops are deployed. Let me assure the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, my noble friend Lord Naseby, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lord Godson, who also reflected on attitudes within the US, that of course we discussed the US decision to withdraw with our NATO allies. Yes, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has been engaging extensively with NATO allies, including the Secretary-General of NATO; he spoke to him most recently, on the 15th. But meetings have been taking place. What was understood, as my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary articulated, was the reasoning that with the extensive nature of the US engagement there was no viable military option without the US. We need to be realistic about that.
I share the point that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and my noble friend Lord Hunt made about the cost to the people of Afghanistan. We have on record only the numbers that are articulated, but there are many more. We should not put down a whole population over the failings of the groups that seek to represent a faith or, indeed, to represent the country today.
I assure the noble Lords, Lord Cromwell and Lord Birt, that we have been engaging quite directly with allies. We have been talking to the US and to European partners. Only a month or so ago I was in Tashkent at a conference on Afghanistan, where I met counterparts from India and Pakistan, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, those from Uzbekistan and a number of other partners. At that point, President Ghani and Foreign Minister Atmar were very much in place, and those discussions were but four weeks ago.
However, I agree that this debate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said right at the opening, comes at a critical and uncertain time. I express my absolute and sincere thanks for all the contributions that have been made and which reflect noble Lords’ exceptional expertise and heartfelt concern. I note my thanks to all noble Lords, but I listened particularly carefully, as I am sure other noble Lords did, to the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the expertise that they provided, as well as to the insights from the diplomatic expertise of the noble Lords, Lord Ricketts, Lord Jay and Lord Kerr, among others.
I will seek to address some specific issues that have arisen, but let me say from the outset that I share all noble Lords’ concerns that the Taliban’s military offensive is unacceptable, as is the takeover of Kabul. The Taliban pledged in the Doha agreement to engage in talks in good faith, yet the actions we have witnessed on the ground reflect a total and utter betrayal of that promise. It is also important to recognise that this takeover of power has followed a coercive and violent military campaign. It has not been a peaceful transition, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. We also maintain our stance that it is not yet too late for the Taliban to pursue their aims through a political process. A point was raised about engaging with the Taliban directly. We do not do so on a bilateral basis, but we have of course been engaged through the political process taking place in Doha and working with the likes of Qatar in this respect. However, the Taliban must cease all hostilities and military action, ensure the protection of civilians and facilitate the safe and orderly departure of foreign nationals and those Afghans who wish to leave Afghanistan.
In this context, I join in the tributes being paid to our ambassador on the ground, who I am in touch with. He is playing a sterling role, along with our military, in ensuring that the security of our staff is fully respected and prioritised, and that we do all we can to deliver on our obligations to get British nationals, as well as those who have helped us, out as fast as we can.
The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, talked about having a small-scale public inquiry into our purpose in deploying support for this exercise. We are learning the lessons from Afghanistan, and it has been a continuous process. That is why, after the conclusion of Operation Herrick in 2014, the Army conducted a thorough internal review. Lessons were also incorporated into the integrated review published by the Government earlier this year.
I say to my noble friend Lord Gadhia and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, that the integrated review is an important document. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, mentioned the Indo-Pacific tilt, which is an important part of the integrated review. Events in Afghanistan have underlined the enduring importance of those objectives and the profound challenges that we face in pursuing them.
As the security situation deteriorates, our ambassador, Sir Laurie Bristow, and a small team remain in Kabul. I cannot give any specific date on when those operations may cease, but their security is of paramount importance. Of course, we are cognisant of the announcement that the US has made of its operations ceasing at the end of this month. I would add that, irrespective of what noble Lords have said on the US decision, the US remains an important ally and we should recognise that the current process of evacuation from Kabul could not take place without the assistance of the brave men of the US military as well as our own.
I assure the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that we do have a security Minister. My right honourable friend Damian Hinds was appointed earlier this month. We are working across government to ensure that we have a co-ordinated presence on the ground including through the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the FCDO. Our officials remain in Kabul to continue our important work supporting the drawdown of British nationals and those we have a moral obligation to help. It is important we do not lose sight of our moral compass in that respect. We will be working through the Afghan relocation and assistance programme. These changes in no way reduce our commitment to active diplomacy in the region.
My right honourable friend the Defence Secretary has provided additional troops to Afghanistan and we have deployed additional diplomats who arrived yesterday, once security could be confirmed, to help the processing capacity. I understand there are concerning reports coming out of Afghanistan of British nationals in distress. I have also been in touch with Members of your Lordships’ House as well as Members in the other place about specific Afghan nationals. I assure noble Lords of my good offices in ensuring that we do all we can to resolve some of these very acute and challenging cases. I am not going to name names for obvious reasons, and I know your Lordships will respect the fact that we need to keep the confidence of and protect the individuals concerned.
Turning to ARAP, many noble Lords including the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, raised the issue of interpreters. We recognise that we owe a debt of gratitude to them and other locally employed staff who risked their lives to work alongside our forces. While we have resettled hundreds of former Afghan staff and their families, I can assure noble Lords that this is an enduring commitment. This programme has now been expanded and accelerated to ensure that Afghans who are not directly employed but none the less provided vital support to the UK’s mission in Afghanistan can be considered as special cases.
I am fully aware of the cases raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, and others. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, that we are expediting processes in terms of visa applications on the ground as I speak. We are also looking at many cases of Afghans who have worked with the British Council and we remain focused on relocating those most at risk, but there is no time limit.
The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, talked of girls and women. Many other noble Lords mentioned this, and I assure noble Lords that they are being prioritised within the ARAP scheme. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, among others, talked about expanding the scheme. I have noted the suggestions that have been made on different categories, including the issue raised by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Goldsmith, of judges. I will take note specifically of this, but again, in the interests of security and safety of individuals, I shall not go into the issue of categories directly.
The noble Lords, Lord Adonis, Lord Taylor and Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Smith, and others, referred to NGOs. I have noted what we are doing in this area. We are looking at resettlement first for women, girls, children and those most in need. The scheme will be kept under review.
The noble Lords, Lord Adonis, Lord Kerr and Lord Taylor, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Bakewell, asked about the numbers. The number we have announced in terms of the new scheme is in addition to the 5,000 we expect to relocate to the UK under the Afghan relocation programme. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, among others, asked why the figure of 20,000 was chosen. It was based on the delivery of the Syrian resettlement scheme and the experience the Home Office has of running this sort of programme. The figure of 5,000 for this year has also been chosen based on the delivery of the Syrian resettlement scheme, but we will keep all the numbers under review.
We promised to do everything we could. The issue of the Chevening scholars was raised. Noble Lords will have seen me dashing in and out. We were progressing this during the day. Therefore, in a very challenging debate, I am delighted to confirm that today our ambassador is in touch directly with the scholars and we are in the process of arranging their travel to the United Kingdom. I am pleased to be able to share that with your Lordships’ House. My noble friend Lady Evans raised that issue right at the start of the debate, and noble Lords can see how fluid the situation is; we have been progressing this during the debate.
Turning to human rights, I am also the Human Rights Minister. Issues around women and minorities are close to my heart. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned minorities and my community, the Ahmadis, in Afghanistan. Christians, Hindus and Sikhs were raised by my noble friend Lady Verma, among others. All of them are among our primary concerns in our dealings. I pay tribute to the work of noble Lords in your Lordships’ House, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith, Lady Royall and Lady D’Souza, and my noble friends Lady Hodgson and Lady Anelay, who have done sterling work on women’s rights. I will continue to work very closely with them on this important issue in Afghanistan. The Government maintain in the strongest terms their stance that the Taliban must protect and uphold human rights, including those of women, girls and minorities—and, as I said earlier, I noted the comments made about other groups.
The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, asked about our assessment of the Taliban. It is simple: if the Taliban continue to abuse human rights, they cannot in any circumstances expect to enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people or the support of the international community. If the Taliban wish to play an international political role, which they must for the security and stability of Afghanistan, they must respect fundamental human rights. They must bring justice to those within their own ranks. Clearly, that is not happening, as we have witnessed on the streets across Afghanistan. The Taliban must prove that they respect the rights of the Afghan people by actions, not empty words. There is a Hadith—a saying of the Holy Prophet Muhammad—which I put to the Taliban. “Your actions are judged by your intentions.” So what are their intentions? They must demonstrate them by their actions.
Turning to humanitarian aid, several noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Boateng, Lord Jay, Lord Purvis and Lord McConnell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, among others, raised prioritisation and support for people within Afghanistan. I assure them that that they have been high up my priority list, which is why the Government have prioritised aid. The noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Smith, raised this issue, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. We are doubling the amount of overseas aid we had previously committed to Afghanistan. This will with immediate effect take funding for this year to £286 million. On its disbursement, my own view is very clear. I assure noble Lords that none of it will be going to the Government or the Administration, if I can call it that—I should not refer to it as a Government—of the Taliban. We will be looking at international NGOs and the UN system to play their part. Organisations such as UNICEF are retaining their networks on the ground and have been given an assurance by the Taliban that they will be protected. However, the Taliban must recognise their duty to prevent the crisis getting worse.
I am very conscious of time and I have not been able to cover many points. My noble friend Lord Sheikh and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, talked about Afghanistan, Islam and the rights and obligations of the Taliban, and I totally share their perspectives. It is true that the international community needs to ensure that we hold the Taliban to their promise.
Many other noble Lords, including the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, raised the issue of security, as did my noble friend Lady Altmann. Work is being done with international partners. In recent days my right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have spoken to the UN Secretary-General, the NATO Secretary-General, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and USAID. We also recognise the important role of regional partners, including those highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and my noble friend Lady Verma. I have already mentioned India, and I am directly engaging with Pakistan and other near neighbours.
In closing my remarks, I assure noble Lords that, on the points that I have not been able to cover, we will work through different parts of our strategy in the coming hours and days. I assure my noble friend Lord Cormack that we are working on the UN Security Council resolution, and I take on board the suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, who speaks with great insight on the UN system about the specific focus on women and girls. I take that on board as the UN Minister.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has announced that he will convene a special meeting of the G7 leaders to discuss the situation and we are seeking also to establish a contact group of international partners on Afghanistan. We are also planning an event with the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly next month, to focus minds to raise further funds for particular issues. I will also participate directly at the Human Rights Council special session on Afghanistan next week; whether it is virtual or in person is still being determined but I will deliver the UK statement and contribution.
I apologise to noble Lords whose specific questions I have not been able to cover, but I assure them that I will write to them. As my noble friend Lady Evans said earlier—I noted very specifically the contributions and statements on this made by my noble friend Lord Howard, among others—the primary purpose of us being in Afghanistan was to ensure that it was not used as a base for international terrorism. Indeed, there have been no successful international terrorist attacks on the West mounted from Afghanistan since that time, but we cannot be complacent. It has not happened because there was a military presence, and we need to be real to the threat. That is why it is important we work with key international partners through the UN.
Afghanistan may now be in the control of the Taliban but, while the Taliban may not have changed, what has changed in those 20 years—as my noble friend Lady Pidding pointed out—is that Afghanistan itself has an incredible and phenomenal body of people within civil society: there are phenomenal women activists in all parts of society, working for NGOs; there is a free press, which has been targeted; there are women journalists, who have been targeted; and there is an education system where there are more girls. The Taliban say it will continue with those commitments; let us see how it delivers on them. I assure noble Lords that we will continue to work tirelessly with international partners to protect the gains that we have made.
My noble friends Lord Sheikh and Lord Marlesford, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lords, Lord Bhatia and Lord Singh of Wimbledon, talked about the ideological base that I started with. In my concluding remarks, I make some specific points just to share with noble Lords my intent. If the Taliban says that it believes in the role of women, it must stand up for that: it must stand up for the rights of women that are provided under Islam—the rights of inheritance and the right to work. I often say to those who challenge me on Islam that, even going back to the time of the Prophet, who is followed by billions of Muslims around the world, it was he who was employed by his wife and it was she who proposed to him. So let us go back to that and give women rights.
I say to the Taliban: “If you believe in that philosophy and ideology you articulate, reflect that. Let us go back to the time of the Medina charter that protected the rights of minorities of every faith and those of no faith. If you are true to your word, we will make an assessment of what you are, whether you have changed and whether you are delivering on your promises.” My own assessment? It is not just that the jury is out on them; it is important to recognise that they in their philosophy and approach may be more polished, but their ideology is very much the same.
Many will say, “Engage directly now” and, as I have said, we are engaging from an international perspective with the political group and working with American colleagues—I met Ambassador Khalilzad when I was in Uzbekistan. It is very clear to me that in the situation in Afghanistan, our short-term priority must be to ensure that we get the people out who need to come out but, equally, we will be building and strengthening international alliances and partnerships. In doing so, I shall be informed by your Lordships’ House in how we direct and inform our policy and how we continue to stand with the courageous people of Afghanistan.