Afghanistan

Lord Suri Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.