Afghanistan

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

My Lords, my party leader Doug Beattie MLA and my colleagues Andy Allen MLA and Councillor Ryan McCready all served on the ground in Afghanistan. Captain Beattie was awarded a military cross. My colleague Andy Allen lost both his legs and a large amount of his sight and hearing, and he suffered other damage. Councillor McCready was wounded by shrapnel from a Taliban grenade.

All of them and my other colleagues are disgusted by events. The questions they are asking are these. Why did the withdrawal need to happen with such speed, especially at this time, during the fighting season, thus helping the Taliban? Did the US and UK have clear evidence that Afghan security forces could go it alone? Is there even agreement on the size of the Afghan forces? Why were all our top officials, including the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, so ill-informed only a few days ago? What are the consequences for minorities such as Christians, left abandoned by the West?

I join the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, in stating the need for an inquiry, whether through Parliament or another mechanism. We need to understand why we had such a spectacular intelligence and strategic policy failure. What is the ongoing role of NATO? Is it a one man band where the US alone decides what to do and where to do it? The inquiry must look at all of this.

The consequence is that dictators around the world will call our bluff. As a nation, our bark is worse than our bite. Our critics can now say, sadly with justification, that there is no promise we will not break, there is no cause we will not ultimately betray and there is no principle we will not abandon. We are not even prepared to stand up and fight for our own citizens wronged by a foreign power; I refer to Libya, where we still fail even to seek justice for our people. A thug like Lukashenko can laugh at our threat of sanctions on him and his regime. We talked tough on Syria and encouraged the local population to resist Assad, but US red lines on chemical weapons were crossed with no consequences for the regime and Putin walked in and filled the vacuum.

We continue, despite some encouraging content in the integrated review, to hollow out our Armed Forces, and we have a fleet of destroyers that are not fit for proper service. That needs to be addressed. All the messages that we are sending out are wrong. In the end, we need to be able to match our rhetoric with ability and determination. The Taliban has taught us one thing: determination and zeal mean a lot more than fancy weapons. As a nation we must work to ensure that our bark and our bite match up and must be taken seriously.