Afghanistan (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Baroness Anelay of St Johns Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Grand Committee

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[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee The UK and Afghanistan (2nd Report, Session 2019–21, HL Paper 208).

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce our report The UK and Afghanistan. I thank the members of the International Relations and Defence Committee and our staff, including our specialist adviser Dr Weeda Meehran, for all their hard work in producing our report. It was published one year ago—when few others were either debating or writing about Afghanistan.

We noted that the UK’s prioritisation of Afghanistan had slipped over the previous decade. Yet the scale of challenges facing the country had not diminished during the period of the UK’s involvement there. Challenges to stability were—and still are—terrorism, drug production, drug trafficking and the fragile nature of the Afghan state. We noted the substantial level of aid dependency of the Afghan Government, with little prospect of developing alternative sources of revenue in the immediate future.

Against that bleak background, we praised achievements made over the previous 20 years, including progress on human rights, particularly for women and girls. However, we warned that the Taliban remained “ideologically opposed” to much of this progress and could seek to undermine it. The past few months have shown that warning to be prescient. We highlighted that the Hazara

“have a long history of suffering … persecution”

and pressed the Government to find ways to protect them and other groups from such persecution. We also warned that there was

“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.”

At the time of our inquiry, peace talks had been launched between the Afghan Government and the Taliban in Doha. But we expressed our deep concern that the planned withdrawal of US and NATO troops would undermine the position of the Afghan Government in those talks and destabilise the security situation in Afghanistan. Despite our warnings, withdrawal plans were accelerated and the situation in Afghanistan rapidly deteriorated over the first half of last year. By mid-August the Afghan Government had collapsed and the Taliban took Kabul, declaring their control of the administration of the country, ruling by violence and intimidation. While events have overtaken some of the findings of our report, most of the challenges we highlighted remain and have been exacerbated by the Taliban’s actions.

In the integrated review the Government committed to

“continue to support stability in Afghanistan”.

This debate provides an opportunity to take stock of the situation now and ask the Government about their priorities and their plans to keep true to that commitment. The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has clearly worsened considerably since August and is dire. I am grateful to the director of the UK office of the UN World Food Programme for her up-to-date assessment of the situation. The UNWFP calculates that the number of people facing acute food insecurity—another description of famine—has risen to 2.8 million, more than half the population, and 3.2 million children are expected to suffer acute malnutrition by the end of this year.

It is now the harsh wintertime in Afghanistan, which threatens to cut off areas of the country where families desperately depend on humanitarian assistance to survive the freezing months ahead. It is vital that those countries that sought to bring stability to Afghanistan over the past 20 years do not turn away now. International support is needed more than ever to tackle the humanitarian crisis on the ground. Our report highlighted that Afghanistan is the most aid-dependent country in the world. According to the World Bank, grants financed 75% of public funding in 2018-19. The UN and aid organisations now warn that basic services in Afghanistan, including the health service, are at risk of collapse.

Of course, the Taliban takeover led to a pause in international aid to the country. It is not clear how much aid is able to get to Afghanistan and, when there, how much actually reaches those who are in desperate need. I welcome the Government’s pledge last August to increase official development assistance to Afghanistan to £286 million but that is still less than our commitment in 2019, before the crisis, and it is not clear how much of that has actually been disbursed. On 15 December 2021 the Government stated that £81 million had been disbursed within Afghanistan and £10 million to refugees in the region. About a month later, on 12 January this year, Minister Ford said that £145 million had been disbursed, but I do not seem to be able to find any other mention of that figure. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could clarify the position on that today.

Witnesses to our Select Committee told us of their concern about the time taken to disburse the funding and the extreme challenges of operating in the context of sanctions and the breakdown of the Afghan banking system. The UK played a vital role, of which we should be proud, in successfully negotiating UN Security Council Resolution 2615 last month. That should provide real support to aid operations in Afghanistan by reassuring banks that they can securely and lawfully offer the full range of financial services needed to facilitate humanitarian activities there.

However, NGOs such as the Norwegian Refugee Council and Christian Aid are concerned that the FCDO appears to be considering imposing new and burdensome restrictions on NGOs and the financial sector when the Government bring before Parliament the statutory instrument that should incorporate Resolution 2615 into law. It is feared that the provisions of the SI will undermine the very purpose of the UN humanitarian exception that was authorised under the UNSC resolution itself. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could give an outline of the SI’s provisions and give an assurance today that the statutory instrument will not have that chilling effect.

It is important that the UK works with international partners to halt the rollback of the progress that has been made on human rights, particularly on women’s and girls’ rights, which had been hard won over the past 20 years. We were pleased to hear from the Minister, my noble friend Lord Ahmad, about the work that he has done on that issue. Events since August last year prove that our concern that the Taliban remained ideologically opposed to the progress on women’s rights was well founded. The position is now infinitely worse for girls, who cannot access their previous levels of education nor hope that they will be permitted to work unless in the most menial of tasks. What discussions has the Minister had with Ministers of like-minded countries to bring hope to the youth of Afghanistan?

Last August, we all viewed from afar the horrors of the Taliban takeover in Kabul and the desperation of those who wished to flee for their lives. I congratulate our Armed Forces on their professionalism and courage in delivering thousands to safety during Operation Pitting. But there are many who remain in danger in Afghanistan—in danger, because they worked with western Governments and NGOs to bring the hope of a better future to their country. Now they face the reality of reprisals wreaked on them by the Taliban.

The ARAP and ACRS are indeed welcome, but it is disappointing that the Government narrowed the eligibility criteria in December, leaving many UK partners such as the British Council in considerable uncertainty about the fate of their colleagues. I am pleased that the Government have now provided a little more detail on the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which was launched earlier this month, but there is still much uncertainty and concern among NGOs about how it will operate.

Last year, our committee wrote to the Foreign Secretary requesting clarification about the position of women judges and journalists, who are particularly vulnerable. We were disappointed by the response we received. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could clarify today how the ACRS in particular will help those remaining in Afghanistan, whose lives are clearly in danger.

Finally, it is important for the Government to look ahead and set out whether and how they could engage with the Taliban on a diplomatic level to address the following three challenges. The first is the extent to which any engagement should be conditional on the Taliban halting the reversal of human rights advances over the past 20 years, while taking into account the significant humanitarian crisis faced by the people of Afghanistan. The second is the extent to which the Taliban appears to be influenced by terrorist groups in the country. Our report noted the close links between the Taliban and the Haqqani network and al-Qaeda. We also noted the threat posed by ISIS-K. After the August withdrawal, American officials labelled that organisation as the most imminent terrorist threat to the US coming out of Afghanistan. The third is the extent to which the UK can or should work with partners such as Pakistan, Iran and other regional actors to reduce instability within Afghanistan and the region.

This is not the time for the international community to avert its gaze from the heavy challenges of securing stability in Afghanistan and the region. The humanitarian crisis within that country makes it more important than ever that the Government should maintain their commitment, given last year, to

“continue to support stability in Afghanistan”.

I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister how the Government plan to do just that. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has contributed to our debate and my noble friend the Minister. He reminded us that he has been on the Front Bench a mere 10 years, with hardly a grey hair to go with it. When I met my noble friend, I was the Government Chief Whip. He joined our Whips team. I knew then, as I know now, that he is a man of faith and honour. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott: Whips can be people of both faith and honour, can’t they? I knew the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, when I first became the Opposition Chief Whip back in 2007. He could get away with murder but never actually committed murder—I think.

Today, we have had a reminder of where duty lies when you purport to be a leading power in the world. We were reminded early on how important it is to have a view of history—and I do not say that just because I used to be a history teacher, a lifetime ago. We heard speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, my noble friend Lord Balfe, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and others that put our debate within the context, within the frame, of the lives of those who live in Afghanistan and the region. They reminded us that we should not think in terms of today but remember that tomorrow is built upon yesterday.

My noble friend Lady Fall said that we must remember why we went into Afghanistan in 2001 and why we intervened as a member of NATO, making sure that we upheld the rule of NATO that, if one of its members is attacked, so are the others, which all bear that responsibility of responding. She also made the point, which I shall remember very well, that the unified purpose of intervention means that, if you win, you have a straightforward military result, but the real problem is what comes next, which is where so many colleagues focused their remarks. Despite the continuing challenges mentioned by many Members today, progress was made.

However, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made the telling point that last August was a potent reminder of the ghastly consequences of political miscalculations. How true that is. Again, the question was asked: what next? How can we maintain our work with those in Afghanistan? How can we ensure that we fulfil our commitments on humanitarian aid without in any way compromising our position by talking to an Administration whose actions can be, and are, so deplorable? How can we balance everything we do with the duty to stand by the commitments that we have given?

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said that we should ensure that our defeat last August does not lead to our dishonour. He put me in mind of the two Oslo meetings. One has already been referred to; I shall briefly describe the other. We have heard about the Oslo meetings last weekend. I learned about them only by seeing on Twitter a tweet from one of the members of the Taliban, who was there on behalf of the political office of the Emirate. I do not describe him that way; it is the way that he describes himself. As I read his tweet, which he wrote in four sections, I was carried back to one of my first overseas visits as a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as it was. I went to Oslo at the end of 2014 to meet a Moses Room-sized room full of women. It was a conference of Afghan women who had travelled to Oslo to be able to talk about their hopes for the future. Some of them were teachers, some were doctors, some were politicians—all aspired for their children to have the same kind of freedom that they had found after 2001. As I listened to them, I felt very strongly our country’s responsibility that, when we make commitments to people whose whole future and lives depend on others, we should maintain those commitments. I am very pleased to hear the strength of what my noble friend the Minister said today.

I come back to the issue of dishonour. As a British citizen and parliamentarian, if I ever meet any of those nearly 60 Afghan women again, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, “We have not forgotten you, and we will not do so.”

Motion agreed.