Afghanistan

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, it is my sincere hope that blood and treasure have not been squandered in vain in Afghanistan, but the global existential threat, the manner of foreign powers’ leaving and the immense and pervasive fear on the ground all amount to a desperately concerning and unstable situation. Yes, the Taliban are inviting women to join the Government and offering a general amnesty, but they could, of course, be dissembling to steady the national mood and to give a nod to assurances made to the Americans. What the Taliban high command say at a global news conference and what younger fighters, intoxicated by victory, do in communities are scarily different things.

We could not maintain a presence in Afghanistan indefinitely. Not only has nation-building proved to be a particularly elusive goal, but the US President made it clear that it was not one he shared. However, we have to ask ourselves why, as per the chair of the Defence Select Committee, the biggest military high-tech alliance we have ever created was defeated by an insurgency armed simply with AK-47s and landmines.

We have to recognise that it was also armed with a powerful, compelling ideology, however disagreeable many aspects of it are to us. The West has no similarly potent value system to muster in response. Our hyper-liberal individualism is, by definition, incapable of inspiring concerted action against a common foe when there is no unifying concept but the importance of “me”. The Second World War was the last time this country was united against forces of evil, standing alone and being ready to fight to the death for our values and freedoms. Then, the nation’s Judaeo-Christian ethical underpinning and trust in God were far less threadbare than today, to our detriment.

Freedom of speech is fast becoming a meaningless concept in many western societies. Universities and institutions dictate rigid orthodoxies and ensure that people who deviate are hounded out of employment and cast beyond the pale. Yet, ironically, much effort in Afghanistan was focused on laying down deep seams of freedom in the national culture and sowing seeds about the importance of equality of opportunity for men, women and minorities.

The Taliban believe in a God; Christians believe in a God who values every life; whereas the root of secularism is simply a belief in the infallible “me”. We despair of the chaos on the ground in Afghanistan, but the disintegration of our spiritual backbone blinds us to the chaos all around us, and to its inevitable end-point: the decay and decline of the West.