Afghanistan

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.