Afghanistan

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, the images of Kabul airport will remain in people’s minds for a very long time. This has been a deeply humiliating episode, deeply damaging to the credibility of the West. Like every other speaker in the debate, I pay tribute to our soldiers who have served in Afghanistan. They can hold their heads up high; their sacrifice has not been in vain, and we appreciate it.

After 20 years, it is hardly surprising that in America the appetite for the war was waning. However, if withdrawal was inevitable, the manner in which it was done was catastrophic. Did it have to be so abrupt and absolute? The US negotiated in Doha the equivalent of a surrender to the Taliban. All that was left was for the Taliban to follow through.

However, President Biden had a point when he said that America could hardly continue to fight when the Afghans themselves would not fight. After 20 years of training and expensive weapons, the Afghan army evaporated in the face of a smaller Taliban force. Perhaps that was to be expected when so many soldiers had not been paid for months and officials in Kabul diverted salaries into bank accounts. Corruption was the one institution that worked in Afghanistan. What has happened is tragic, but part of the tragedy was also the idea of Afghanistan as an incipient law-based democracy. It was always a challenging concept. Perhaps it worked in the better parts of Kabul or Herat, but not in Kandahar or in the rural areas, or in a country as tribal and as fragmented geographically as Afghanistan.

None the less, remarkable progress was made in developing civil society, education and women’s rights, and I pay tribute to the courageous women in Afghanistan. However, even after 20 years, that progress was fragile, depending as it did on a continuing protecting western military presence. That presence could not go on forever; the West would always have to leave at some point. And so this tragedy demonstrates why intervention is often so difficult. So often our interventions in the region, such as in Iraq and Libya, have not worked out as planned, and so often they have had unintended consequences. It is going a long way back, but remember that the Taliban came into existence out of US-Saudi support for the mujaheddin. All the original leaders of the Taliban were members of the mujaheddin who were welcomed in the White House in 1983 by Ronald Reagan. The US created a monster it could neither control nor defeat.

Some dignity needs to be salvaged out of this fiasco. We need to rescue as many as possible of the brave Afghans who supported our Armed Forces and women’s NGOs. As the Prime Minister said, countries should wait before recognising any new Government in Kabul. The US and NATO need to make clear to the Taliban that any hosting of al-Qaeda or ISIS will not be tolerated and will meet an immediate reply. But above all, we need to reassess our own policies and capabilities. We need a hard-headed, realistic view of our place in the world. Perhaps we should be a little bit careful about parading our aircraft carriers around the world, sabre-rattling to American cheers.