Afghanistan

Lord Judge Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.