Afghanistan - Motion to Take Note

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:09 am on 18 August 2021.

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Photo of Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal 11:09, 18 August 2021

My Lords, I thank everyone participating today and all the parliamentary staff who have enabled us to meet at such short notice. Before I turn to today’s debate, I want to echo the words of the Lord Speaker in sending our condolences to the families and friends of those killed in Plymouth last week. Investigations are ongoing, but we will learn every possible lesson from the tragedy.

It is clear to us all that the situation in Afghanistan is extremely grave and exceptionally concerning. The number of your Lordships taking part in this debate demonstrates how seriously this House takes the situation, and my noble friend Lord Ahmad and I look forward to hearing today’s contributions. We are fortunate to have across the House a wealth of expertise in diplomacy, defence, human rights—particularly in relation to women and girls—international aid and development, and some Members of the House have very personal experience of Afghanistan. I pay tribute to all who have served there during the past 20 years, including of course our staff and noble Lords. We remember in particular the 457 British troops who tragically lost their lives and all those who sustained injuries, some of which were life-changing.

At this difficult time, it is important to remember why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Our primary objective, when NATO invoked Article 5 of its treaty for the first time in its history and the United Kingdom and others joined America in deploying, was to ensure that Afghanistan was not used as a base for international terrorism and to do whatever we could to stabilise the country. We succeeded in that core mission: there has not been a successful international terrorist attack on the West mounted from Afghanistan since, terrorist training camps in the mountains were destroyed and al-Qaeda plots against this country were foiled. As the Lord Speaker rightly said, we should be immensely proud of the role that our Armed Forces, diplomats and development specialists have played in supporting Afghanistan over the past 20 years.

As noble Lords will know, the main combat phase of our mission ended in 2014, when we brought the great majority of our troops home and handed over responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves. Since then, conflict unfortunately continued and significant parts of the country remained contested or under Taliban control. After two decades, the Americans have now taken their long-predicted step of a final extraction of their forces. We looked at many options, including the potential for staying longer ourselves, finding new partners or even increasing our presence, but, like all our NATO allies, we believed that it was not feasible from the position we were in. Since 2009, America has deployed 98% of all weapons released from NATO aircraft in Afghanistan and, at the peak of the operation, 90,000 of the 132,000 troops on the ground were American. The West could not continue this mission without American logistics and US air power.

Countries around the world are now grappling with the enormity of this situation and we must adapt quickly. We have worked at speed to develop five strands to our approach. Our first and immediate focus must be on helping those to whom we have direct obligations, including UK nationals together with those Afghans who have assisted our efforts over the past 20 years. We do not know what the next few days or weeks will hold, but we are working intensively within government and with our international partners to do everything in our power to get them out of Afghanistan safely. We are deploying an additional 800 British troops on the ground to support the evacuation operation and I can assure the House that this will continue for as long as conditions at the airport allow—at the moment they are stable in comparison to some of the terrible scenes that we saw over the weekend and earlier this week. It is an extremely difficult task in the current circumstances and I know that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the bravery and commitment of our ambassador, Sir Laurie Bristow, our commander on the ground, Brigadier Dan Blanchford, and the entire British team in Kabul, who have been working round the clock saving hundreds of lives every day.

So far, we have secured the safe return of 306 UK nationals, while 2,052 Afghan nationals have been resettled as part of our programme and a further 2,000 applications have been completed, with many more being processed. We are actively seeking those who we believe are eligible but are as yet unregistered. We are also doing everything possible to accelerate the visas of the Chevening scholars, so that these brilliant Afghan students can come and study here.

At the same time, we are intensifying our efforts to evacuate those whom we can. We continue to urge the Taliban to ensure the protection of civilians and uphold human rights, especially those of women. We are committed to supporting the brave Afghan women who have risked their lives to help rebuild their country. We are closely monitoring the situation on the ground and exploring how we can best support at-risk women, human rights defenders, peacebuilders and women leaders to ensure that they do not suffer reprisals.

Secondly, we will intensify our efforts, with others, to protect Britain, our citizens and our interests from the threats of a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. These concerns are shared by our international partners in NATO and the Security Council. As noble Lords will be aware, the Prime Minister will chair a virtual meeting of the G7 in the coming days to discuss how we can work together internationally.

Thirdly, the UK has provided £3.3 billion of aid funding since 2002, which has helped to improve the lives and rights of all Afghans, including women and minority groups. Life expectancy increased from 56 years in 2002 to 64 years in 2018. Some 9.6 million more children are now in school than in 2001 and 39% of children enrolled in schools are girls. Maternal mortality has almost halved and infant mortality has decreased faster than in any other low-income country since 2001.

We will now focus our efforts on increasing the resilience of the region and have called on the United Nations to lead a new humanitarian effort, bringing together the international community. To support this, we will double the amount of overseas aid that we had previously committed to Afghanistan this year, with new funding, taking this up to £286 million with immediate effect. We call on others to match this funding and to work together on a shared United Nations programme, which needs to begin in haste.

Fourthly, we need to ensure that there are safe and legal routes for those most in need. The Prime Minister has confirmed today that, in addition to those Afghans who have worked with us directly, we are committing to relocate another 5,000 this year through a new, bespoke resettlement scheme focusing on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. We will keep this under review over future years, with the potential of accommodating up to 20,000 over the long term.

Finally, we must face the reality of the change in regime. In the past three days, the Prime Minister has spoken with the NATO and UN Secretaries-General and with President Biden, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron and Prime Minister Khan. We have been clear that it would be a mistake for any country to recognise the new Government in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally. Instead, those countries that care about Afghanistan’s future should set common conditions about the conduct of the new regime before deciding together whether to recognise it and on what terms. We will judge this regime based on the choices that it makes—on its attitude to terrorism, crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian access, the rights of women and in particular the rights of girls to receive an education. Defending human rights will remain of the highest priority.

NATO and our allies will remain vigilant to the return of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan. Everyone has an interest in making sure that it does not again become a safe haven for terrorists. The Taliban must understand that they will be accountable for that and for any abuses that take place in the territory that they now control.

Alongside our core mission to prevent the continuation of the terrorist threat, we had higher goals for the people of Afghanistan. The heroism and tireless work of our Armed Forces contributed to national elections as well as to the promotion and protection of human rights and equalities in a way that many in Afghanistan had never previously known. Over the past 20 years, despite where we are today, we have made crucial progress and gains.

As I said at the outset, we will always owe a huge debt of gratitude to the 150,000 people who served in Afghanistan, in particular those 457 British troops who tragically lost their lives. For 20 years, they denied terrorists a safe haven to launch attacks against the United Kingdom, working with allies and Afghan security forces. They enabled development that has improved millions of lives and transformed Afghan society. We must now face the harsh reality that the Taliban control Afghanistan, but the world is watching what they do. We will use every diplomatic lever at our disposal, alongside our international partners, to protect these hard-fought rights. The Afghan people have suffered enough; the Taliban must not inflict even greater tragedy on them.