Afghanistan

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the 457 British military personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan and the many thousands who have been injured. I do not think their sacrifice was in vain. I think they kept us safe for 20 years and they changed the lives of millions of people in Afghanistan. I also pay tribute to the hard-working staff of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office in Afghanistan and, indeed, in Whitehall, working tirelessly to make something out of the crisis that has been created.

This has been a very wide-ranging debate. It has covered the blame game, as it were, and it has looked widely at Britain’s place in the world, given what has happened. I would like to contribute thoughts on that, but not in this debate, given the number of expert speakers who have participated and the short time allowed. Instead, I wish to concentrate on one narrow issue, which is the role of arts and culture in Afghanistan. Britain played a leading role in regenerating Afghan culture, and we must now support those who helped us undertake that work.

My attention has been brought to numerous important cases, and I hope that Ministers will focus on those as well as on the other urgent cases; for example, the extraordinary Afghan teacher, Aziz Royesh, who set up the Marefat High School, which educates 4,000 children, half of whom are girls. I gather he has now made it to the airport and hopes to be airlifted with his family either to the US or the UK. He is a prime example of an individual in Afghanistan who stepped up to the plate, with the opportunities provided by the defeat of the Taliban, to make a real difference, but who is now a target.

I think also of the staff of the National Museum of Afghanistan. The lives of eight curators and their families are in danger. They are considered to have collaborated with the West, when all they were doing was restoring their own country’s cultural heritage. I think of the British Council contractors—there are 25 individuals—and their families, who worked to create links between British and Afghan schools and who taught English. They are now ostracised; they are accused of being spies and of promoting Christianity.

There is now a campaign to look after artists and musicians. Afghanistan had national orchestras, and orchestras made up solely of women, whose lives are, again, under threat. There is the work of Blue Shield International, ably supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is important to recognise that every department in Whitehall will be working in some shape or form to help with this current crisis, but I pay tribute to the civil servants at DCMS in particular who are working to try to preserve the cultural artefacts and heritage of Afghanistan.

Shining a light on these few examples brings to life the fact that there was, to a certain extent, what one might recognise as a normal life in Afghanistan after we had defeated the Taliban, which was coming back. That is what the tragedy is about, but it is also about the here and now—these personal stories—and trying as best we can to secure the safety of the Afghan civilians who helped us so much in our work.