Afghanistan — House of Commons, 2021-08-18
Topic: International Affairs
Caroline Lucas (Green Party, Left): Watching the scenes at Kabul airport this week left me and many others with feelings of overwhelming grief and anger: grief for the millions of Afghan women and girls in particular who were promised a brighter future and the opportunity to learn, work and pursue their dreams; and anger that the many pledges made to the Afghan people over the past 20 years have been broken as they were abandoned to their fate The stories being told by terrified Afghans are heart-rending. There are the women students who are now hiding their diplomas and certificates for fear of punishment, and in the belief that in any case their qualifications will be useless as they will not be allowed to use them. There is the female mayor who says that she is now waiting for the Taliban to come for people like her and kill them. There is the Afghan journalist, now in hiding with his family, who said: "There was a lot of promise, a lot of assurance. A lot of talk about values, a lot of talk about progress, about rights, about women’s rights, about freedom, about democracy. That all turned out to be hollow." That journalist is in danger of being proved right We have to do whatever we can now to honour our commitments to the people of Afghanistan. That starts with fixing our failed refugee and asylum-seeking system. For all the hand wringing of Government Ministers in the last few days, the reality is that their actions over the past few months have left thousands of ordinary Afghans in terrible danger. Interpreters and contractors who worked side by side with UK forces have been refused resettlement on the grounds that they were technically subcontractors. That is shameful I fear for the thousands of ordinary Afghans who supported the UK in delivering aid and supporting other projects, often in the interests of our foreign policy objectives. They are now at real risk of being seen as collaborators working against the Taliban’s interest. The NGOs they worked with are now powerless to help them, but the UK Government are not, yet we have heard very little about what the Government are doing to persuade and support them. Many are not covered by the Afghan relocation and assistance programme because they worked for UK organisations other than the Government—for NGOs and other civil society organisations, even though they were paid by UK aid. They are in extreme danger, so that ARAP programme must be expanded to encompass them, too. The scheme was far too late to get off the ground and only started in April when Taliban advances and atrocities were already all too apparent, and it has been drawn all too narrowly. It must be amended to allow visas for the family of people who would have been eligible but who have died, and for people who have fled Afghanistan but would have been eligible had they remained in country The resettlement scheme announced by the Government last night is welcome, but it is not enough. Places must be based on need, not on numbers. There should be no artificial cap. When the Government are already failing to achieve their existing target of settling 5,000 refugees a year, we need to hear an awful lot more about how Ministers are planning to deliver for Afghan refugees and guarantees that local government will be properly funded to work with them.