Afghanistan

Lord Dannatt Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

My Lords, in the time allowed in this very welcome debate, I wish to make three points.

First, notwithstanding his attempted explanation on Monday, the manner and timing of the Afghan collapse is the direct result of President Biden’s decision to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. At a stroke, he has undermined the patient and painstaking work of the last five, 10, 15 years to build up governance in Afghanistan, develop its economy, transform its civil society and build up its security forces. The people had a glimpse of a better life, but that has been torn away. With US forces withdrawing, other NATO allies, including ourselves, had no option but to leave too, denying the Afghan national army the technical and training support that it needed and the moral support of friends who encouraged them to take the fight to the Taliban. Until a few weeks ago, the Taliban was being contained and may even have been persuaded over time that a military victory was impossible and a negotiated settlement was the better course. Those possibilities are now a closed chapter of history, an opportunity lost, and the world’s western superpower is looking enfeebled. The only glimmer of hope today is that the Taliban of 2021 is not the Taliban of 2001.

Secondly, amid the chaos of Kabul and its airport, I sincerely hope that all those who have stood with us, as interpreters or locally employed civilians, will have the opportunity to seek safety in this country. Many in your Lordships’ House joined many senior retired military commanders in co-signing an open letter urging the Government to be more generous towards this group of people, and to do so quickly. Frankly, this whole discussion has dragged on for two or three years on the back burner, hence the need for that open letter. I sincerely hope that the operation now in progress in and around Kabul international airport will succeed in evacuating our entitled British nationals and the Afghan citizens who worked for us. I would be grateful for an assurance from the Minister in responding on the Government’s commitment to our Afghan civilian employees.

Thirdly, I strongly believe that the whole campaign in Afghanistan should be the subject of a public inquiry, to be convened in the coming months—not another expensive and drawn-out Chilcot-type inquiry, but one with appropriate terms of reference. Its scope should include the reasons that took us into Afghanistan in 2001—probably the least contentious part of the inquiry; the debate around nation-building in 2002 and beyond; the background to the decision to go into Iraq in 2003 and its effect on the Afghanistan campaign; the decision-making process that placed the UK in the lead of the new operation in southern Afghanistan in 2006, and the conduct of that campaign. It must also include our relations with our allies, principally the US and NATO, the discussions around the ending of combat operations in 2014 and our residual training and mentoring role that ended so abruptly with President Biden’s decision to withdraw by 9/11 2021. Some might say that such an inquiry is not needed, but I am convinced that it is: it should focus particularly on our strategic decision-making at both the political and the senior military levels and, crucially, their interface. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comment on this proposition.