Afghanistan

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con) [V]]

My Lords, there have been some very good and very well-informed speeches, which I cannot emulate. I shall just make three points. First, I join others in paying tribute to the 457 British personnel who died in this campaign and the many more who were maimed for life. They were brave young men—and three women—who were doing their duty, serving our country and the Government and Parliament in which we sit. What do we say to their parents, their spouses and their children, who will be asking whether they died in vain? Well, we shall see, but this is heart- breaking.

Secondly, we should not underestimate the disaster and humiliation that this has been. It is on a par with the first Afghan campaign, which humiliated the East India Company and then the British Empire when Dr Brydon returned alone from Elphinstone’s army. This is a humiliation of the West, of NATO, of us, of course, but especially of the US—which, apparently, leads the free world, or so we are told. President Biden said that “America is back”. Robert Gates, Defense Secretary to the Administrations of both George W Bush and Barack Obama, said in his memoirs that Biden had been on the wrong side of every national security issue of the past 20 years. I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Hammond—who I worked under as Minister for the Armed Forces—said on this point. The humiliation and disaster of the West is appalling. The West is seen as an unreliable ally.

Thirdly, the consequences are that the West’s values of freedom and democracy have been trashed. China is now taunting Taiwan. Russia is cosying up to the Taliban already. Iran will be celebrating. Pakistan has questions to answer about its role in support of the Taliban. We have never understood Afghanistan. It is more than a foreign country; it is totally different. It is a tribal country. It has tribal elders. It has a religion that we do not entirely understand. It can be very backward and has some barbaric practices. Valley by valley it is different.

Expansion of the mission in 2005 was a grave error. We became an occupying force and our soldiers became a target, similar to 1840 to 1842. We have spent billions in military spending and billions on aid, which is now wasted. Let us not delude ourselves: it has been wasted. Nor should we willingly give more aid to Afghanistan unless we can ring-fence it—but I do not think we can. It will go straight into the pockets of the Taliban.

We need to focus on restoring the standing of the West, of NATO and of Britain and our values around the world. We need to show confidence in our values, our history and our society. We should be proud of our history and not apologise the whole time, caving in to incredibly ignorant left-wing activists such as Black Lives Matter elsewhere. Our enemies sense our collapse in confidence and our weakness. The USA, in particular, seems to have given up on its leadership of the free world, and the idea that the Taliban will be interested in dialogue with the West is for the birds. This is a disaster, and totalitarian regimes in now in the ascendancy.