Afghanistan

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, this has been a really frightening debate. I am even more worried now, simply because we are looking at aid being an answer and moving people out being an answer, yet we have a totally and utterly destabilised region. Where aid is concerned, I suspect that China will do more than enough to fill the Taliban’s coffers and therefore that the Taliban will not look to bring aid into the country from well-meaning countries such as ours.

I am really concerned about the minority communities in Afghanistan. I got an email just this morning about 270 Hindus and Sikhs who are taking sanctuary in a temple. How will they be able to leave the country? Who is going to help their passage towards the airport? Who is going to give them the visas to leave? The debate needs deep consideration, and I ask my noble friend the Minister what he is doing to work with countries in the region, such as India, which have the power and the strength to influence the partners around the region. We are not going to do this by ourselves.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra said so many important and poignant things. America has been fickle in its decisions. We cannot. We just cannot leave the fate of thousands—millions—of people in the hands of those around the region who are stepping up and stepping in because a vacuum has been created. We need to understand how we are going to help those who are trying to leave by getting them access and passage to the airport. As other noble Lords have said, the checkpoints are now manned and armed by the Taliban, so how are people to have faith that they will be able to leave their homes to try to make it to the airport or the border?

Finally, I ask my noble friend what he and the Government are doing, as discussions unfold, to ask: where has President Ghani gone? Where has he taken all the money that has been given to him to help his country? Where on earth have all these arms that are now in the hands of the Taliban come from? Who has supplied them? We need a real, honest debate about how we are going to support that country and the region.