Afghanistan

Debate between Patrick Grady and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

Four hundred and fifty-seven UK service personnel, in excess of 3,000 coalition forces, nearly 70,000 Afghan Government troops and police, aid workers, journalists, humanitarians and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed over the past two decades. Many, many thousands more have been injured or brutalised. I hope—it is only hope—that all that pain and suffering was not in vain, but I fear greatly when I see the current scenes at Kabul airport.

Before I start properly, I wish to make an observation. The right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) both mentioned intelligence. I do not know whether there was a failure of intelligence or of intelligence assessment, whether those who had the facts had the access or the confidence to speak truth to power, or whether the Ministers who were in receipt of those assessments understood them or ignored them, but when the autopsy on this situation is complete, we need to know whether there was in any way an intelligence failure.

Let me put the Afghan situation into a slightly broader regional context. On 2 August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. On 16 January 1991, 700,000 troops, including from the UK, launched Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Sabre and destroyed Iraq’s air defences, communications, Government buildings, weapons plants, oil refineries, bridges and roads. Iraqi resistance collapsed on 28 February, but Saddam Hussein was left in power, and uprisings by the Kurds and the Shi’ites in the south were brutally suppressed.

On 20 March 2003, the Iraq war started when allied forces, including UK forces, launched an attack on Iraq. Although the fighting was mainly over by 1 May, it would be six more years until UK combat operations came to an end. The war would cost at least $1 trillion dollars—some say between $3 trillion and $6 trillion—and perhaps a million people would lose their lives. It would see the rise of ISIL—Islamic State—which at one point would control a third of the territory of Iraq. By the time that conflict was ending, Libya had a revolution, or a civil war or, more accurately, a NATO-backed insurrection. A second civil war followed and there were at least 10,000 dead people and two competing Governments. Of course, I could add that the UK and others are supporting rebel forces in the ongoing tragedy that is Syria.

Within a decade of the start of the first Gulf war, we had 9/11. There were four planes: one went into the north tower of the World Trade Centre and one into the south tower; one went into the Pentagon; and one went into a field in southern Pennsylvania. In the World Trade Centre, 2,600 died; 125 died in the Pentagon; and 256 died on the planes. The US death toll was bigger than that at Pearl Harbour.

On 7 October 2001, the bombing of al-Qaeda and Taliban positions by US and UK forces started, with conventional ground forces going in 12 days later. That action was completely justified. By November 2001, the Taliban were in retreat. By 5 December there was an interim Government and by 9 December the Taliban had collapsed. One would have thought we were coming towards the endgame.

It took more than another 10 years for combat missions to stop. We then did not heed the warnings as province after province fell and the Taliban began to control more and more territory. We did not heed the warnings in 2018, when 115 died in suicide attacks in Kabul. We should have heeded the warnings and seen what was going to come next and the rapid way in which the Taliban took over almost the whole of Afghanistan.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Is that not why it is so important that the UK Government maintain and increase their aid commitment? No matter what the Foreign Secretary says about doubling aid, the reality is that less aid money will go into Afghanistan this year than was previously planned—a direct result of the unfortunate decision to cut aid from 0.7% to 0.5%.

[Stewart Hosie]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the aid budgets must at the very least be maintained at their previous level, and probably increased. I also agree with all the calls today that it is not simply UK citizens and those who work directly for us who are at risk; it is many, many of us whose lives are at risk from the Taliban, and we, the west, must do everything that we can to evacuate all—all—of those who put their faith and trust in us and whose lives are now in jeopardy.

I have a question, which I know many members of the public have. Why is there always the political will and the funding to go to war, but rarely the foresight to work out what the consequences for ordinary people will be, although those consequences are always the same; and why are there never the resources to rebuild and reconstruct, and never a plan to win the peace?

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Patrick Grady and Stewart Hosie

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

I do not doubt that some of the assessments given for what might have happened to date, before we leave, were wrong. I was very clear from the outset of the referendum that nothing would happen. My personal view was that nothing would happen in the first couple of years. Indeed, even after we leave I do not think the impact will be immediate. But when we look at big foreign direct investment decisions on £1 billion investments to access a market of 500 million or access a market of 70 million, I suspect at that point we will begin to see some very substantial and negative consequences for the UK economy.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Does all this not prove that it stands to reason that the best possible relationship with the European Union must be membership? If the deal was going to be so beneficial for the UK economy, everybody else would want the same deal and the whole European Union project would implode. That is simply not possible and demonstrates that, no matter what people were voting for, they were not voting to become poorer.

[Stewart Hosie]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am not going to do it today, but certainly in previous debates we have gone through quote after quote after quote from Brexiteers who said that we would not be leaving the customs union, we would not be leaving the single market and we would still have the right to travel freely throughout Europe. Not everybody voted for a Brexit that was based on any single assessment damaging the economy, living standards and opportunities for their children and grandchildren.

The last of the assessments is the most recent, the Government’s assessment, which again shows a central forecast in all circumstances broadly in the minus 2% to minus 9% range. I find it extraordinary that the Government in essence have ignored every single serious assessment of the economic damage Brexit will do. What we see now with this proposal on the withdrawal agreement are rabbits caught in headlights, walking the economy towards danger, rather than pausing, thinking and changing course.