New UK peer Lord Hintze paid for 500 flights to rescue people on 'Taliban kill list'

More than 100 female lawyers and their families were among those saved with the peer's funding

The Australian-British businessman served in the Australian military and is an honorary captain in the Royal Navy reserve. Bloomberg

Lord Hintze, who entered the House of Lords in November, has received praise for funding the evacuation of hundreds of people from Afghanistan, including 103 female lawyers.

The Australian-British businessman, who gave his maiden speech on Thursday during a debate on the state of the armed forces, served in the Australian military and is an honorary captain in the Royal Navy reserve.

The billionaire hedge fund boss was put forward for a peerage by Boris Johnson after donating millions of pounds to the Conservative Party.

Lord Hintze, a philanthropist, also paid for flights out of Afghanistan for 500 people organised by human rights lawyer and Labour peer Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws.

Human rights campaigner and independent cross-bench peer Lord Alton told the upper chamber: “I’m especially pleased to be speaking in the same debate as Lord Hintze — he’s a long-standing and good friend.

“Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws has a commitment away from the House today, but she would want me to recall the remarkable response by Lord Hintze when she was desperately trying to evacuate women judges from Afghanistan.

“Flights had to be arranged at great expense and Lord Hintze did not hesitate in a Schindler’s List moment in finding the lion’s share, making a spontaneous, generous and very substantial contribution in enabling women with a Taliban price on their heads to get out of Afghanistan.”

Women banned from university education in Afghanistan — in pictures

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have banned university education for women nationwide. AFP

Women were stopped by armed guards from entering Afghan university campuses, a day after the nation's Taliban rulers banned them from higher education. AFP

The move has provoked condemnation from the United States and the United Nations over another assault on human rights in the country. Reuters

Taliban security personnel stand guard at the entrance gate of a university in Jalalabad. AFP

Schoolgirls return home after sitting their high school graduation exams in Kabul. AFP

An Afghan female student leaves the Mirwais Neeka Institute of Higher Education in Kandahar. EPA

A curtain separates males and females at a university lecture in Kandahar Province. AFP

Lord Alton continued: “Five hundred people were evacuated, 103 were women lawyers and judges, all of whom with their children and husbands were on the Taliban kill list.

“I’ve met some of those women judges — and know that Lord Hintze’s intervention and that of the author JK Rowling undoubtedly saved many lives.

“His voice is one that deserves to be listened to with respect and admiration in this House.”

In August 2021, large-scale evacuations of foreign citizens and vulnerable Afghans took place amid the withdrawal of US and Nato forces during the final days of the war in Afghanistan.

But after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, thousands of people were left stranded, among them women who, in the two decades since the Taliban were ousted, had qualified as judges in Afghanistan’s new legal system.

Afghanistan's lost female athletes in Kabul — in pictures

Girls and women in Afghanistan have been barred from playing sports by the Taliban, but some refuse to give up the games they love. All photos: AP

Women took part in sports including the Chinese martial art of wushu before the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Some continue to practise their sports in secret.

An Afghan woman with her cricket bat in Kabul. The Taliban have issued bans on girls' education and barred women from many types of work.

Female Muay Thai enthusiasts in Kabul. Afghanistan's former government introduced national sports programmes and school clubs for women and girls.

A Muay Thai competitor with a punching bag used for training.

A mixed martial artist with her trophies in Kabul. A female competitor has said she was forced to flee a tournament in the Afghan capital as the Taliban advanced in 2021.

An Afghan woman plays volleyball. The Taliban’s Sports Organisation and National Olympic Committee has said the authorities are looking for ways to restart sports for women.

The Taliban have enforced a dress code for women, as well as barring them from education.

An Afghan girl who once took part in taekwondo. Several women in the country used to practise martial arts.

An Afghan girl with her skateboard. Women in once enjoyed sports have faced threats from the Taliban.

Noura, a female footballer, says she was beaten by her mother when she was 13 after gaining national recognition as the best player in her age category. "That was the beginning of worse days," she says.

Noura later turned to boxing. She says she cut her wrists and required hospital treatment after the Taliban swept into Kabul.

A woman with the equipment she used to build strength while practising ju-jitsu.

As the Taliban took over, they feared for their lives, especially those who had prosecuted men that were now being released.

Lady Kennedy, the director of human rights for the International Bar Association, previously recalled how she was receiving phone calls asking for help.

She organised the transport and documentation for hundreds of female lawyers and their families, a task which required a large amount of money.

Lord Hintze, who offered a substantial sum to ensure this happened, was later supported in his introduction to the Lords by Lady Kennedy herself.

Child labour in Afghanistan — in pictures

The number of children put to work in Afghanistan, already high, is growing, fuelled by the collapse of the economy after the Taliban took over the country and the world cut off financial aid just over a year ago. All photos: AP Photo

A recent survey by Save the Children estimated that half of Afghanistan’s families send children out to work to keep food on the table as livelihoods crumble.

Nowhere is the malaise clearer than in the many brick factories on the motorway north out of the capital, Kabul.

Conditions in the furnaces are tough even for adults. But in almost all of them, children as young as four or five toil alongside their families from early in the morning until dark in the heat of summer.

Children are involved in every step of the brickmaking process.

They haul cannisters of water and carry the wooden brick moulds filled with mud to put in the sun to dry.

They load and push wheelbarrows full of dried bricks to the kiln for firing, then push back wheelbarrows full of fired bricks.

Everywhere they are lifting, stacking, sorting bricks.

They pick through the smouldering charcoal from the kilns for pieces that can still be used, inhaling the soot and singeing their fingers.

The children work with a determination and a grim sense of responsibility beyond their years, borne out of knowing little else but their families’ need.

When asked about toys or play, they smile and shrug. Only a few have been to school.

Nabila, 12, has been working in brick factories since she was five or six. Like many other brick workers, her family works part of the year at a kiln near Kabul, the other part at one outside Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border.

A few years ago, she got to go to school a little in Jalalabad. She would like to go back to school but her family needs her work to survive, she said with a soft smile. 'We can’t think about anything else but work,' she said.

The landscape around the factories is bleak and barren, with the kilns’ smokestacks pumping out black, sooty smoke. Families live in dilapidated mud houses next to furnaces, each with a corner where they make their bricks. For most, a day’s meal is bread soaked in tea.

Rahim has three children working with him at a brick kiln, ranging in age from 5 to 12. The children had been in school, and Rahim, who goes by one name, said he had long resisted putting them to work. But even before the Taliban came to power, as the war went on and the economy worsened, he said he had no choice.

'There’s no other way,' Rahim said. 'How can they study when we don’t have bread to eat? Survival is more important.'

Workers get the equivalent of $4 for every 1,000 bricks they make. One adult working alone is unable to make that amount in a day, but if the children help, they can make 1,500 bricks a day, workers said.

According to surveys by Save the Children, the percentage of families saying they had a child working outside the home grew from 18 per cent to 22 per cent from December to June. That would suggest more than a million children nationwide were working. Another 22 per cent of children said they were asked to work on the family business or farm.

The surveys covered more than 1,400 children and more than 1,400 caregivers in seven provinces. They also pointed to the swift collapse in Afghans’ livelihoods. In June, 77 per cent of the surveyed families said they had lost half their income or more compared with a year ago, up from 61 per cent in December.

“The world is becoming more complex and indeed dangerous,” he said in the upper chamber on Thursday.

“The ability to legislate freely is something many take for granted. We should feel blessed, rather than burdened, that we have a solid constitution with checks and balances, built up by precedents and by the lived experience of generations over centuries.

“This is not easy — it is protected by exceptionally professional, ethical and effective armed forces, who are there by consent, commanding respect of our nation, our allies and of course the world.”