Afghanistan (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, on her excellent chairmanship of the International Relations and Defence Committee and on the work she did in ensuring that this report came to fruition one year ago. Like so many Members of the Grand Committee, I served on the committee that produced this report and like so many noble Lords I express my grave dissatisfaction at the fact that it has taken one year for this report to be debated.

Normally, as the good people of Hansard will be aware, if I am winding for the Liberal Democrat Front Benches, I spend my time scribbling notes all through the debate. I tend not to have a speech when I arrive because I think it is important to make sure that I have listened to the debate. While I do not pretend that I am doing the Minister’s job of listening to the debate and responding, I think it is useful for Members of the House—or, on this occasion, the Grand Committee—to know whether the Liberal Democrats agree or disagree and where we stand on things.

However, when I saw this debate listed, I had a very different sense: I knew immediately what I needed to say and that I needed to write a speech. This is not merely a debate about a report from one of your Lordships’ committees that was written over a year ago and debated with hindsight, as so many of our reports are. It is a debate about something that affects the United Kingdom and our standing in the world. It is about whether we take moral responsibility and stand up for what we believe in.

We are speaking only in Grand Committee today. What a great shame it is that we are not in the Chamber, being watched and engaged with by the rest of your Lordships’ House. Yet again, this is a committee speaking by and large to ourselves—with the exception of one or two noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, my noble friend Lord Purvis’s official opposite number in Labour. The point is that we are not speaking to the Chamber or the outside world, but we should be. My remarks today seek to speak to your Lordships’ House and the Government, but also to the people whom we have left behind in Afghanistan, their friends and families here in the United Kingdom and the NGO community that is trying to support them.

It is so easy for people to forget about Afghanistan. We have a real problem with the news cycle. In August 2021, all we heard about on the news was Afghanistan, the attempts to get people out and, for a while, the attempts to get dogs and cats out of Kabul. The news of the animals and their sponsor seemed at times to be more important than getting individuals out, which perhaps says something about how we were viewing the crisis. How quickly the media move on.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, rightly said that ITN has recently been producing extremely moving and important short reports from Afghanistan to highlight the problems of people on the ground right now, during winter, when they are facing starvation, do not have enough heat and do not know where their next food is coming from. For most people in the United Kingdom, though, the Afghan crisis is something that happened last year, not something that is going on in January 2022. The main focus of our news broadcasts at the moment seems to be whether the Prime Minister attended a party. We must wait for Sue Gray, so we are told; that is what the headlines are all about. However, the people of Afghanistan do not know or care who Sue Gray is, and they certainly cannot expect to attend a party because, in most cases, the opportunity to do things that they might want to do at a party, such as singing, dancing and having music, have been banned by the Taliban. More importantly, they cannot envisage having a party because they cannot envisage where the food would come from.

As other noble Lords have pointed out so eloquently, the report we produced over a year ago stated just how dependent Afghanistan is on aid. That was a year ago, before the collapse of the Government in Kabul, before the Taliban came and before the reprehensible western withdrawal that led to chaos, carnage and leaving behind so many people without the opportunity to find a living.

Back in January 2021, we noted that, without aid, the public services of Afghanistan could not function. That was true then; it is true now. One of the issues that has barely been touched on in today’s debate is the situation with the banks. The letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, and others to which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, referred refers to the banks. Can the Minister tell your Lordships what this Government will do to work to ensure that, as far as possible, people in Afghanistan have money in future? The freezing of aid and the banking system means that people have no money.

Another thing that has barely been mentioned today is the fact that so few people are actually earning any living at all in Afghanistan because before, the funding was being provided through aid for 80% of the people. They were dependent on jobs in the public sector and those people, including teachers and medics, are not being paid. There was talk about women not being able to teach but there are still women working in hospitals as midwives, nurses and doctors. Even the Taliban knows that those people are necessary but they are not being paid. The only reason they still go to work is because they feel they have a duty, but for how long can that go on? What are the Government doing to ensure that aid gets to Afghanistan and the people who need it?

We need to make sure that people who are working are being paid but, beyond that, there are serious problems for women in Afghanistan at the moment—particularly widows, whom the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, talked about, but also for married women whose husbands are away looking for work. Afghanistan is essentially an agricultural economy but it currently faces its worst drought in 27 years. Even if it were not for the Taliban or Covid, there is drought. The men are away looking for work. The women are at home, more vulnerable than ever because the Taliban has put in restrictions on the movement of single women and those who have no chaperones, while trying to feed their children. There might be eight, 10 or 12 children. How would any of us feed our children when we have no income and when the cost of fuel has risen and there is no cooking oil? There is a grave humanitarian danger right now and we need to be responding.

However, that danger is so much worse for the people whom the United Kingdom left behind—the interpreters and judges, the British Council people, the GardaWorld force and the Chevening scholars. I refer in particular to the British Council because, for the past four and a half months, I have been writing again and again to the Government, asking what is happening to those people. It is a microcosm of the problem in this British response. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said that there has been no structure or strategy to the response. That seems to be the case with ARAP. The British Council people were told, “You can come out under ARAP”. A few did but many were left behind. I kept being told about rumours that ARAP is time-limited and that the numbers are limited. So I kept writing to the Government but was told, “No, ARAP is not time-limited and the numbers are not limited”.

That might have been true, but the rules have changed. If you worked for the British Council you might now be able to come under the ACRS. That is great, but we still do not know what the rules are or how you apply. We believe that if you are already in this country you might be eligible for the ACRS, through some opaque means. We understand that if you are in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan you might be able to apply, but it is not quite clear how. Over the last six months, again and again, the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the MoD have passed the buck one to the other.

Individuals in Afghanistan, their families and others, and the diaspora communities in the UK need to understand who to talk to and how they can assist people. How can we, as Members of your Lordships’ House, assist? How can NGOs help? We understand that some of the referral routes will be through the UNHCR, but the NGOs are there on the ground. They know the situation. What are the Government doing to explain to them how they can make referrals, or, if they cannot, who can?

Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that the people suffering the most are precisely those who worked most closely with the United Kingdom. If everybody faces famine, it is even worse for those whom the Taliban know worked as interpreters or taught English for the British Council—not just English but British values: the very values the Taliban are most opposed to. The Taliban are going door to door. Many of the people who worked for the British Council and as guards have moved to safe houses, but they have to move again and again. If their children are left behind, some have been taken by the Taliban, either as child soldiers or as child brides. The word “bride” is not appropriate; they are children being raped. What are the Government doing to help all these people?