MPs call for 'critical' review of UK's involvement in Afghanistan

'Fallout from the withdrawal from Afghanistan will continue for generations to come', says Tobias Ellwood

House of Commons defence committee chairman Tobias Elwood. Getty

British MPs have called on the government to hold an “open, honest and detailed review” of the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan, from 2001 until the chaotic evacuation in 2021, MPs have said.

The cross-party House of Commons defence committee has prepared a 30-page report that also calls on the government to detail its plans to ensure safe passage to the UK for thousands of Afghans still eligible, having worked with the British mission.

The withdrawal of British troops as Kabul fell to the Taliban was highly criticised, with Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood calling it a “dark chapter in UK military history”.

The evacuation in August 2021 saw 15,000 people taken to the UK, but many left behind, say MPs.

A review by the government is of “critical importance”, MPs said in the report.

“This thinking would have been helpful to contribute to the update to the Integrated Review that is currently under way,” the report said.

MPs, who found that the withdrawal revealed the limits of Nato’s “military capability” without US involvement, said that the government needed to show “what action they are taking to ensure safe passage to the UK for eligible Afghans who remain to be evacuated” under the Government’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme.

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

The Commons committee report also had criticism for officials involved in the events of the summer of 2021.

“While it was never going to be possible to evacuate everyone who met the eligibility criteria as part of the operation, there was an obvious lack of effective co-ordination across government, with real and painful human consequences for those who reasonably expected to be evacuated but were not,” the MPs said.

Mr Ellwood said: “Well over a year since the end of Operation Pitting, thousands of Afghans eligible for evacuation remain in Afghanistan.

“They are at risk of harm as a direct result of assisting the UK mission.

"We can’t change the events that unfolded in August 2021, but we owe it to those Afghans, who placed their lives in danger to help us, to get them and their families to safety.

“The rapid fall of Kabul will have been painful to many of the British troops and veterans who served in Afghanistan.

"We welcome the additional funding that has been provided to veterans’ mental health charities since and the medals awarded to those who contributed to Operation Pitting.

"The bravery of those on the ground was never in doubt.

“The fallout from the withdrawal from Afghanistan will continue for generations to come. We need to get to grips with the factors that led to the Taliban’s swift return to power and the wider impact on global security.”

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.

He said that the committee was calling for a government review “to take an unflinching look at where we went wrong”.

“It is only through this that we can learn the necessary lessons and prevent this from ever happening again.”

A Ministry of Defence representative said: “We owe a debt of gratitude to Afghan citizens who worked for, or with, the UK armed forces in Afghanistan and to date we have relocated over 12,100 individuals under the scheme.

“During Operation Pitting, we worked tirelessly to safely evacuate as many people out of Afghanistan as possible, airlifting more than 15,000 people from Kabul, and their dependants.

“We estimate there are approximately 300 eligible principals to identify and our priority is finding them and bringing them and their families to the UK.

"In doing this, we are prioritising minimising risk to life, maximising the pace of relocations out of Afghanistan and ensuring when individuals arrive here in the UK, they are set up for a successful life.”\

“We acknowledge the report and its recommendations, and will be providing a response in due course."