Afghanistan

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, that, sadly, there is no escaping the ignominious nature of what has occurred in Afghanistan. It is the consequence not just of a single misjudgment but of an accumulation of misjudgments by successive Governments and Administrations in the western world. Allocating blame may be invidious and even unhelpful, but we must be sure to learn vital lessons from what has occurred, and we must also resolve to do the right thing now.

I am sure that my noble friend Lord Empey was right to say that there has been a terrible failure of intelligence. There has also been some unfortunate—perhaps spectacularly unfortunate—management of expectations, with far too much talk of long-term nation-building, when the western powers, and the United States in particular, evidently had no intention ever of committing on such a scale. It is surely high time we learned that it is not possible to build a secure and sustainable nation state by force, by imposition or even by exhortation where the requisite social and economic foundations are just not in place. In such a scenario, the only options are an impossibly expensive and protracted long-term colonisation or so-called surgical strikes, or the kind of time-limited, ultimately ineffective occupation that we have just witnessed, with its inevitable aftermath.

What we leave behind in Afghanistan is a chaotic and tribally and religiously divided nation with an uncertain future, including thousands of individuals who now, as many noble Lords have explained, fear being treated as collaborators by the resurgent Taliban, and all of whom will feel understandably abandoned and betrayed. I do not believe it is right or even possible for the western powers to intervene on any meaningful scale in Afghanistan again, but it is within our power now to honour our obligations to the many individuals who have committed their energies to the noble ideal of a free Afghanistan—in other words, the supposed mission which we and our allies now seem to have abandoned.

Afghanistan may not be a safe haven for the foreseeable future, so we must decide quickly where one can be established for those who seek to escape the clutches of the Taliban. The only true safe haven may be here in the United Kingdom. At last, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary appear to have acknowledged that, and I welcome both their candour and their decency. It is a matter of humanity and a matter of honour.